Today we release Stephen Brooke's latest poetry collection, Night Rains. Here's a direct link to the print edition at the retail shop:
www.lulu.com/shop/stephen...
Or visit Arachis Press (arachispress.com) for both the print and the free ebook editions.
I knew about this place (or learned about it) when I wrote the #mystery #novel These Remembered Hills, which is set in the Logan area. I would have liked to have worked it into the story somewhere but it just didn't fit! Available at arachispress.com
www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/only-...
Two hooded figures with lamps approach a moonlit, isolated cottage. A woman answers the door. We have come for the child, says the hooded figure So soon? she asks It is time, says the hooded figure. The woman is distraught. We should never have got him a library card! What is done cannot be undone, says the hooded figure We couldn’t see the harm! We just wanted him to enjoy reading! For most, it ends there, says the hooded figure, turning away and walking into the wilderness Oh lord, What have I done! says the woman, the child walks past her and out into the darkness with them. Do not cry mother. I am a writer now.
my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com
As I have Jack McFee quip in one or another of the novels (writing as Oliver Davis Pike), his jump-ship travels at the speed of dark. #science #sciencefiction #physics
www.livescience.com/physics-math...
Fabrication I imitate the intimate, taught each thought I share; love becomes another glove, worn until worn through. I misstate my each mistake; would you wound me now? Come again to the same sum, naught will not make true. I fabricate, I recreate, the song I once heard wrong; my voice become another noise, ash to ashes new. Stephen Brooke ©2026
Fabrication, a poem - playing around with words again #poetry
The devil is God’s evil twin,
both equal so neither can win!
They argue each day,
as they strive to sway
mankind to do good or to sin!
Stephen Brooke ©2026
a theological #limerick
This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch gizmodo.com/this-ridiculously-simple...
Write what you know. What you don’t know, learn. Then you can write about it too.
I killed my darlings
your book is too short, they said
they live again!
Stephen Brooke ©2026 #writing
My stories all have happy endings. That is, I’m happy to have finished them!
#NOKINGS
I love Jane Fonda.
#CanadianHere
A progress report of sorts on the #scifi WIP
odpike.blogspot.com/2026/03/hist...
Impostor Syndrome I am a proud impostor, an actor on a stage; today I play the author, pretense on every page. And if I play it well, then I become this role, another character I have created whole. I lose who I once was, the lines begin to blur; then who can tell who’s who? Not even I am sure. Stephen Brooke ©2026
'Jump Start' (writing as Oliver Davis Pike) topped out at 19,490 words, placing it firmly in novella-land. Now I need to write a couple more and put them together as a book. These will be related tales of the early days of the development of interstellar travel. #sciencefiction
Children's books should be such as can partly be understood by them and partly not. In our childhood we read every available book from one end to the other; and both what we understood, and what we did not, went on working within us. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
a post about how I (more or less) got into 'indie' publishing
First Effort farleagueranger.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/f...
Chores for today:
work out - done!
bake bread - currently rising!
work on sci-fi novel - aw, do I have to?
Cursive is a relatively modern invention. If it were better than unconnected letters, books would be set in cursive.
Wednesdays The streets slept on those Wednesday afternoons, the eyes of every shop closed, as some napped and some prepared for church. Some would nap there as well. In the unhurried way of then, if some should choose to fish, instead, that was okay. Come Thursday morning, salesmen, grocers, and barbers would come back and doors would open. and small-town life did very much go on. The world little noticed as things changed, as Wednesdays faded into all the rest of life, and every day became the same. No one now sleeps away the afternoons. Stephen Brooke ©2026
I think of genres as descriptions (or even ‘tags,’ if you will) rather than categories. A story can be ‘science fiction’ and ‘horror’ at once, just as a frog can be small and green.
Unbidden Unbidden come these dreams, wending roads of night; let them hang themselves by waning lantern light at each crossroad gallows, as the moon unbars all the darkened gates of the tombstone stars. Calling to the tempest, every word a pact with tomorrow’s demons, sunrise will diffract echo into echo, each into its lies, facets of the wind promised to the skies. Sing my midnight riddles until the answers change; pluck the corpse-white blossoms, seeking to arrange bouquets for loves forgotten, in graves I’ve long hidden, for the roads of night, for these dreams unbidden. Stephen Brooke ©2026
Change All things change. Not for the better, mind you, not for the worse. Just different from the way they were. I, too, change. This way, that way, slowly, imperceptible even to myself sometimes, changing none the less. Each morning must be made anew; each man must wake changed, as all things. Stephen Brooke ©2026
Mean Mary's take on Wayfaring Stranger from the film Hellfire #americana #folkmusic #banjo #meanmary
youtu.be/MymtD5nZz3c?...
I shouldn't be surprised
Yet another reason to stick with @mapquest.com
These days I've ended up creating most of my simpler graphics for posting online with LibreOffice Draw, on Linux. It's not ideal but it generally can do the job. Serious stuff is done with Corel Draw but I have to crank up Windows to use it.
Oh, it started very small... They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves. ~ Ray Bradbury (from The Martian Chronicles)
a concept Bradbury more thoroughly explored later in Fahrenheit 451 #books #sciencefiction #censorship
Pasta made from chick peas must be one of the most horrible things I've ever tasted.
Mexico A fringe of sea oats and yes, some sand-spurs separated manicured lawns from white sand. Beyond, the Gulf, whispered soft onto our shores, as it did on distant beaches, in languages we’d yet to learn. Texas was that way; Mexico a little to the left. We would not swim that far today. Tomorrow we might seek those shores, swimming, swimming, into oblivion. It and Mexico were waiting. Stephen Brooke ©2026
Mexico, a #poem