A book of Poetry
by Paul Watsky
ISBN 9781926715001
Press Release - March 21, 2010
With great pleasure il piccolo editions announced today: Now available,
Telling the Difference
A book of Poetry
by Paul Watsky
ISBN 9781926715001
To quote Norman O. Brown quoting Euripedes, “God made an opening for the unexpected,” and at long last we have what many of us have greatly desired: a collection of poems by Paul Watsky. His is a singular voice in contemporary poetry, with a range that encompasses the wry, the mordant, the laugh-out-loud funny and the deeply moving, often within the same poem. One of Ovid’s earliest critics complained that he did not know when to leave well enough alone. In this he resembles the eponymous hero of Watsky’s “The Magnificent Goldstein,” and, come to think of it, Watsky himself, for which we have cause to rejoice. —Charles Martin
We meet an observant poet telling a story, his story: wryly perceived incidents of family and history—all given with elegance, wit, and intimacy. A concise, carefully crafted, timely view of the world. —Joanne Kyger
About the Author
A native of New York City, Paul Watsky moved to California during the late 1960’s, where, after teaching for five years in the English Department of San Francisco State University, he trained as a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst. His haiku, longer poems, and translations have appeared widely in periodicals and anthologies, including Modern Haiku, A New Resonance: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku, Asheville Poetry Review, Cave Wall, The Cream City Review, and The Pinch. He is cotranslator of Santoka (Tokyo, PIE Books, 2006).
Dec 1, 2010
With Great Pleasure il piccolo editions is pleased to present:
Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return 
by Erel Shalit
ISBN 9781926715032
The razor-sharp edge of religious beliefs and national conflict, of shadowy projections and existential anxiety, that characterize Israel and its neighbors, gives rise to a particular blend of archetypal fate and personal destiny, of doubt and conviction, despair and commitment, of collective identity and personal choice. However, the essence of wonderings reach beyond the shores of the eastern Mediterranean or Jewish tradition. The tension between a sense of exile and return, belongingness and estrangement, are universal aspects, certainly in our post-modern world.
While Israeli reality provides the external context, the story serves, as well, as a metaphor for the exile and return of the soul, which necessarily is a journey through shadowy valleys.
Requiem returns us to an eternal theme, a dialogue with Soul, and we know quite well what happens when one dialogues with Soul—we change, consciousness is enlarged, the impossible becomes possible and we no longer are compelled to blindly follow in the deathly path of our forefathers.
Requiem is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation. While set in Israel sometime in the present, it is a story that reaches into the timelessness of history, weaving discussions with Heine and Kafka into a tale of universal implications.
Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra’anana, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He is the author of several publications and lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe, and the United States. One of his popular lectures includes Requiem and is the basis for Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return.
August 1st, 2009
With great pleasure il piccolo editions presents:
SULFUR CREEK
by Thad McAfee
Drawing from a depth of knowledge and feelings, Thad McAfee masterfully delivers first-rate storytelling in Sulfur Creek. Twelve year-old Anna Marie Cochran has lost her life on the railroad tracks at the Sulfur Creek crossing in a small Midwestern town. Much as the little stream meanders across the countryside, the lives of the mourners who have gathered from afar twist and turn before a heinous crime is uncovered.
For twenty years Sonny Mac has avoided his past. This successful corporate man has had no need or desire to return to his origins to face those old ghosts. But now he is called upon to support a childhood best friend and his grieving family. The local Sheriff, the Railroad Police, and the Coroner are quick to deem the case an unfortunate accident. But things just don’t add up to Sonny Mac, and he manages to drag his best buddy’s younger sister, Emmy Lou Cochran, into this amateur detective case that soon turns into a passionate love affair.
Unsettled by an incomplete accident report, Colonel Rupert Mason of the Ohio State Police decides to pay a visit to this small community and junior State Policewoman Rebecca Steen, the reporting officer who arrived on scene soon after the incident. At a small social gathering, Sonny Mac by chance meets Rupert Mason and expresses his unsettled sentiments about Anna Marie’s death to the Colonel, and from there on, things seem to unravel for the complacent Sheriff and the unsavory Railroad Police investigator, while sweet Emmy Lou helps to finally exorcise Sonny Mac’s old demons.
Sulfur Creek is the first in a series of novels by Thad McAfee. Plan to read more of this saga in the not so distant future.
SULFUR CREEK —ISBN 978-0-9810344-8-5, 310 pages, trade paperback. Published by and available for purchase directly from il piccolo editions, an imprint of Fisher King Publishing. Also available from your local bookstore and a host of on-line booksellers. Publication Date: August 1st, 2009
Place your orders for
SULFUR CREEK—by Thad McAfee
ISBN 978-0-9810344-7-8 Paperback $19.95 USD On Sales for $16.95
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March 15th, 2009
With Great Pleasure, Fisher King Publishing announced:
il piccolo editions to publish Dark Shadows Red Bayou.
A new novel by top-selling Fisher King author, John Atkinson, is scheduled for publication on June 1st, 2009. Dark Shadows Red Bayou will be published by il Piccolo Press, Fisher King Publishing’s fiction imprint.
Timekeeper, Atkinson’s novel/quasi-memoir has enjoyed a great deal of success since being introduced in January 2008 and is currently nominated for the Library of Virginia fiction award. Timekeeper is a coming-of-age tale, describing the experiences of a 14-year-old runaway boy’s hardships, victories, and all the inspirational people who guided him on his journey and helped him to triumph over illiteracy. Critics are praising Timekeeper as a deeply moving book written in the spirit of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.
With his rapidly growing popularity in the literary marketplace it was considered a perfect opportunity to introduce the reading public to more of the magic John Atkinson has tucked up his sleeves. Plan to be moved once again as you follow the twist and turns of the masterfully written, mysterious, and highly entertaining Dark Shadows Red Bayou.
Place your orders for
Dark Shadows Red Bayou—by John Atkinson
ISBN 978-0-9810344-7-8 Paperback $17.95 USD On Sales for $14.95
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March 10th, 2009
With great pleasure, Fisher King Press Presents:.
Re-imagining Mary:
A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self
a Jungian Perspective by Mariann Burke
“What is your original face before you were born?”
Artists plumb the depths of soul which Jung calls the collective unconscious, the inheritance of our ancestors’ psychic responses to life’s drama. In this sense the artist is priest, mediating between us and God. The artist introduces us to ourselves by inviting us into the world of image. We mayenter this world to contemplate briefly or at length. Some paintings invite us back over and over again and we return, never tiring of them. It is especially these that lead us to the Great Mystery, beyond image. Re-imagining Mary: A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self is about meeting the Cosmic Mary in image and imagination, the many facets of the Mary image that mirror both outer reality and inner feminine soul. Jungian analyst Mariann Burke offers personal reflections and suggests symbolic meanings in works by several artists including: Fra Angelico, Albrecht Dürer, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicolas Poussin, Parmigianino, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Frederick Franck.
In western Christianity this Mary bears the titles and the qualities worshipped for thousands of years in the Female images of God and Goddess. These titles include Mary as Sorrowful One and as Primordial Mother. Recovering Mary both as light and dark Madonna plays a crucial role in humanity’s search for a divinity who reflects soul. Also discussed is Mary as the sheltering Great Mother that Piero della Francesca suggest in the Madonna del Parto and Mater Misericodia. Frederick Franck’s The Original Face and the Medieval Vierge Ouvrante also suggest this motif of Mary as Protector of the mystery of our common Origin. Franck’s inspiration for his sculpture of Mary was the Buddhist koan—“What is your original face before you were born?”
From the Author: “My first meeting with Mary began with an experience of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (Cortona). I cannot account for my unusual response to the image except to say that, at the time, over twenty years ago, I was studying Jungian psychology in Zurich, Switzerland and was then probably more disposed to respond to the imaginal world. One day as I sat in my basement apartment reflecting on a picture of his Annunciation, energy seemed to surge through me and lift me above myself. Tears brought me to deep center. It was as if I was restored to my truest self. This was an awakening for me—not an ecstasy. Far from leaving my body-self, I seemed to recover it.”
What is spirituality? What does it mean to grow spiritually and psychologically closer to the Feminine Self? How can we begin to see the “outer” image as a manifestation, a projection of the psyche? Can we be challenged by being “betwixt and between” a male dominated Church without a recognized female divinity where God is generally imagined external to the soul and a more feminine depth psychological approach to the Marian mystery and to the Feminine Self? Will we answer the call of the mystic within us? If so, how will we be changed?
Mariann Burke is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Newton, MA. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, Andover-Newton Theological School, and the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She has done graduate work in Scripture at Union Theological Seminary and La Salle University. Her interests include the body-psyche connection, feminine spirituality, and the psychic roots of Christian symbolism. She is a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ).
Re-imagining Mary: A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self —by Mariann Burke
ISBN 978-0-9810344-1-6 Paperback: $25.00 On Sales for $19.95
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February 1st, 2009
With Great Pleasure, Fisher King Press announced:
Available February 14th, 2009
The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness by Lawrence H. Staples
Who we most deeply are is mirrored in our artistic works. Our need for mirroring simultaneously attracts us to and repels us from our creative callings and relationships. It is one of life’s great dilemmas.
Artist’s block and lover’s block flow from the same pool. Often, we fear deeply the very thing needed to create original art,to experience intimate relationships and to live authentic lives: we are frightened by the impulse to be fully revealed to ourselves, and to others, as this most often entails exposing the unacceptable shadowy aspects of our humanity and risking rejection.
Mirrors in all their manifold guises permit us to safely see and experience ourselves in reflection and become better acquainted with the rejected, ostracized aspects of our personalities. Creative work is one of the few places where we can truly express and witness lost aspects of our authentic selves.
Within us a treasure beckons. This is what we spend our lives pursuing. What slows and distracts us is not the object we long for, but where we search. To find this precious gem, we must eventually return to our own creative spirits.
Topics explored in The Creative Soul include:
opposites and creativity
the creative instinct
our unique identity
some elements of creativity
some prerequisites of the creative process
la petite mort
the patriarchal/matriarchal conflict
giving voice to the many lives within
dreams and active imagination as triggers to creativity
creativity as an inner parent
creativity within bounds
the creative gap
the power of small
creativity and independence
art and the quest for wholeness
therapy as art
fear of self-revelation blocks creativity
intimacy and creativity
the importance of mirroring
creativity, guilt, and self-development
creativity and loneliness
life and the tension of opposites
The Creative Soul: Art and the Quest for Wholeness —by Lawrence H. Staples
ISBN 978-0-9810344-4-7 Paperback $25.00 USD On Sales for $19.95
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January 11th, 2009
With great pleasure, Fisher King Press announces another forthcoming title.
Available June of 2009
The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way
a Jungian Perspective by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Who is She, this Sister from Below? She’s certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you’ll allow, She’ll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goosechase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She’s a siren, a seductress, a shape-shifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life—the evolution of Soul.
The Sister emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion—she is the moment of inspiration—the muse. Naomi Ruth Lowinsky writes of nine manifestations in which the muse visits her, stirring up creative ferment, filling her with ghosts, mysteries, erotic teachings, the old religion—bringing forth her voice as a poet. Among these forms of the muse are the “Sister from Below,” the inner poet who has spoken for the soul since language began. The muse also appears as the ghost of a grandmother Naomi never met, who died in the Shoah—a grandmother with ‘unfinished business.’ She visits in the form of Old Mother India, whose culture Naomi visited as a young woman. She cracks open her Western mind, flooding her with many gods and goddesses. She appears as Sappho, the great lyric poet of the ancient world, who engages her in a lovely midlife fantasy. She comes as “Die Ür Naomi,” an old woman from the biblical story for which Naomi was named, who insists on telling Her version of the Book of Ruth. And in the end, surprisingly, the muse appears in the form of a man, a long dead poet whom Naomi loved in her youth.
The Sister from Below is a personal story, yet universal, of giving up a creative calling because of life’s obligations, and being called back to it in later life. This forthcoming Fisher King Press publication describes the intricate patterns of a rich inner life; it is a traveler’s memoir, with outer journeys to Italy, India and a Neolithic cave in Bulgaria, and inward journeys to biblical Canaan and Sappho’s Greece; it is filled with mythic experience, a poet’s story told. The Sister conveys the lived experience of the creative life, a life in which active imagination—the Jungian technique of engaging with inner figures—is an essential practice.
The Sister speaks to all those who want to cultivate an unlived promise—those on a spiritual path, those interested in a Jungian approach to life, those who are filled with the urgency of poems that have to be written, paintings that must be painted, journeys that yearn to be taken…
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is the author of The Motherline: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Female Roots (1992) and numerous prose essays, many of which have been published in Psychological Perspectives and The Jung Journal. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies, among them After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Weber Studies, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tiferet and Asheville Poetry Review. Her two poetry collections, red clay is talking (2000) and crimes of the dreamer (2005) were published by Scarlet Tanager Books. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. Naomi is a Jungian analyst in private practice, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a grandmother many times over.
The cover image "Phases of the Moon" is an oil painting by Bianca Daalder-van Iersel, an artist and Jungian analyst practicing in Los Angeles, California. You can learn more about the artist and her work at www.bdaalder.com.
The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way—by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
ISBN 978-0-9810344-2-3 Paperback: $25.00 USD On Sales for $19.95
—estimated shipping date June 2009
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January 1st, 2009
With great pleasure, Fisher King Press announced today,
Now Available:
Resurrecting the Unicorn:
Masculinity in the 21st Century
a Jungian Perspective by Bud Harris
Resurrecting the Unicorn—that's what Bud Harris and Fisher King Press have up their sleeves!
A few months ago, Bud Harris phoned and we visited about the possibility of bringing one of his publications back into production. "What’s the title?" I asked. “Emasculation of the Unicorn: The loss and rebuilding of Masculinity in America,” Bud answered. My knees shuttered a bit before I crossed my legs. “We did quite well with this book and it has even been translated into Spanish,” Bud explained. “Well, send a copy and we’ll have a look,” I answered, thinking, holy Moses, how the heck are we gonna sell a book entitled the emasculation of anything?
The Unicorn arrived a week or so later. After reading the first 15 to 20 pages I was thoroughly convinced that this book had been written and originally published before its time, in an era when men were reading Robert Bly’s Iron John and desperately gathering in vain at weekend retreats in hopes of reclaiming their lost masculinity, in an era when we were just beginning to understand that something wasn’t quite right—when we were just beginning to realize that things were out of balance. The men's movement of the 90s withered and fell along the wayside, as so many fads do, but the issues at hand did not go away—instead, they faded back into shadowland. But as we know, sooner or later, these discarded images come back to haunt us, and that’s where Resurrecting the Unicorn comes into play.
In the present day, our culture's evolving masculine spirit seems to be sputtering out. Many 21st century men have been raised by women—without a masculine role model—and what they've learned about being a man has been defined by their mothers, wives, and outdated or distorted concepts from the 20th century feminist movement. As is the case for both men and women, without a strong masculine image our souls become fragmented and we lose our way. When we are in such a state of confusion and imbalance, we must begin again to search for the Holy Grail. The Grail is the symbolic container of the psycho-spiritual contents that can nourish, balance, and renew our lives.
All the compensatory posturing, chest-pounding or drum-beating in the world won't revive this great masculine spirit! This can only be accomplished by developing a deeper relationship to soul. The mental landscape of metaphors—dreams, stories, myths, fairy tales—deal with the eternal truths of human nature and are the language of soul. In Resurrecting the Unicorn, Bud Harris guides us deep into the realm of metaphors where we can examine the evolution and development of human consciousness and reclaim discarded, yet much needed, aspects of our humanity.
Bud Harris is a diplomate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland. He and his wife, Massimilla Harris, are practicing Jungian analysts in Asheville, NC. Dr. Harris is the author of several publications including Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance and The Fire and the Rose: The Wedding of Spirituality and Sexuality.
Resurrecting the Unicorn: Masculinity in the 21st Century —by Bud Harris
ISBN 978-0-9810344-0-9 Paperback $25.00 USD On Sales for $19.95
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July 15th, 2008
With Great Pleasure Fisher King Press announced today:
Now Available:
Enemy, Cripple, & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path
a Jungian Perspective by Erel Shalit
In Enemy, Cripple, & Beggar, Erel Shalit provides new thoughts and views on the concepts of Hero and Shadow. From a Jungian perspective, this forthcoming Fisher King Press publication will elaborate on mythological and psychological images. Myths and fairy tales explored include Perseus and Andersen’s The Cripple. You’ll also enjoy the psychological deciphering of Biblical stories such as Amalek—The Wicked Warrior, Samson—The Impoverished Sun, and Jacob & the Divine Adversary. With the recent discovery of The Gospel of Judas, Dr. Shalit also delves into the symbolic relationship between Jesus and Judas Iscariot to illustrate the hero-function’s inevitable need of a shadow. Clinical material concerning a case of a powerful erotic counter-transference is also an integral part of this deeply insightful body of work.
The Hero is that aspect of our psyche, or in society, who dares to venture into the unknown, into the shadow of the unconscious, bringing us in touch with the darker aspects in our soul and in the world. In fact, it is the hero whom we send each night into the land of dreams to bring home the treasures of the unconscious. He, or no less she, will have to struggle with the Enemy that so often is mis-projected onto the detested Other, learn to care and attend to the Cripple who carries our crippling complexes and weaknesses, and develop respect for the shabby Beggar to whom we so often turn our backs—for it is the 'beggar in need' who holds the key to our inner Self.
As with Erel Shalit’s previously published book The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego, comprehensive views of the concepts and images of the Shadow and the Hero are provided and theory further explored. While directed toward an audience of analysts and Jungian oriented psychotherapists and clinicians, Enemy, Cripple & Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path can be comfortably read as well by an informed lay public interested in Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, and by those interested in the interface between psychology and mythology, and psychology and religion.
Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Ra'anna, Israel. He is a training and supervising analyst, and past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology (ISAP). He is the author of several publications, including The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel and The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego. Several of his Articles have appeared in Quadrant, The Jung Journal, Spring Journal, Political Psychology, Clinical Supervisor, Round Table Review, Jung Page, Midstream, and he has entries in The Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Dr. Shalit has taught at the Department of Psychotherapy, Tel Aviv University Medical School, and lectures at professional institutes, universities, and cultural forums in Israel, Europe, and the United States.
Order directly from Fisher King Press ISBN 13: 978-0-9776076-7-9 / ISBN 10: 0-9776076-7-4, Publication Date: July–2008, Price: $25.00 1st Edition Trade Paperback. To order your copy click the Add to Cart button, or call 1-800-228-9316. International orders call: 00-1-831-238-7799
Regularly $25.00 USD On Sales for $19.95
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With Great Pleasure Fisher King Publishing announced today:
July 10th, 2008
Now Available from il piccolo editions
Journey to the Heart by Nora Caron
"It is easier to fall into the pit of fear than to climb the mountain called Love"—Journey to the Heart
The journey to true love is not easy. It is filled with doubts, fears and anxieties. Most who enter the path will find it is not the fairy tale and dream they first imagined. In poetic fashion Journey to the Heart shows the path of a woman who moves from bitterness and anger into peace and understanding. Lucina, a disillusioned 25 year-old career bound Canadian woman, travels to Mexico to seek healing and to find new meaning in her life. By chance, she encounters a deeply insightful Mexican woman, Senora Labotta, who slowly helps Lucina come into contact with her inner self. But Lucina is stubborn and jaded, and she has difficulty stepping out of her shell and into a universe of fluidity and magic. Teleo, a charming green-eyed herbalist, helps to lure Lucina away from her old self and leaves her with a choice: either return to her fears and anxieties, or follow her heart into an unknown land, a land which has no past and no future.
Nora Caron lives in Montreal, Canada and is currently completing an M.A and working on a Shakespeare thesis which deals with representations of passions on stage. Nora also works as a private English, Spanish, German and French teacher, and spends many days playing music, practicing kung fu, writing poetry, and traveling to various countries.
Order directly from Fisher King Press ISBN 13: 978-0-9776076-6-2 / ISBN 10: 0-9776076-6-6, Publication Date: July–2008, Price: $17.95 1st Edition Paperback. To order your copy in advance click on the Add to Cart button below, or call 1-800-228-9316. International orders call: 00-1-831-238-7799
Journey to the Heart is coming soon! Order your copy in advance and save!
Regularly $17.95 On Sale for $14.36 USD
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March 17th, 2008
With Great Pleasure, Fisher King Press announced today the publication of:
Guilt with a Twist: The Promethean Way
by Lawrence H. Staples, Ph.D.
"Our hunger for the forbidden fruit grows as we get older and our need for it increases. By midlife, we often sense that something important is missing. Then the "unacceptable," "sinful" parts of ourselves that have been rejected begin to clamor with ever greater insistence to participate in our lives."-Larry Staples, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst and author of Guilt with a Twist
Promethean guilt is the guilt we incur for the sins that we need to commit if we are to achieve, both for our selves and for our society, some of the social, political, economic, scientific, psychological, and other changes and developments that we most deeply need to sustain and nourish us. Myth tells us that Prometheus stole fire from the gods and made it available for human use. He suffered for this sin, but human society would have suffered if he had not committed it. There indeed are sins that are destructive to society, but the paradox is that there are also sins that inure ultimately to society's benefit. Those sins that benefit us could not be committed without a creative, Promethean spirit that is supported, when necessary, by an obstinate and irreverent insolence toward authority (political, theological, pedagogical, and parental) and that is informed by a love for freedom. Life inevitably confronts us with the Promethean dilemma: Do we live our lives without fire and the heat and light it provides or do we sin, and subsequently incur guilt, in order to obtain for ourselves and for society those important changes and developments that we need.
After receiving AB and MBA degrees from Harvard, Larry Staples spent the next 22 years with a Fortune 500 company, where he became an officer and a corporate vice president. When he was 50, he made a mid-life career change and entered the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, Switzerland, where he spent the next nine years in training to become a Jungian psychoanalyst. After graduation, he returned to the United States and opened a private practice in Washington, DC, where he continues to work as a licensed psychoanalyst (Jungian). Larry has a Ph.D. in psychology; his special areas of interest are the problems of mid-life and guilt.
Order directly from Fisher King Press ISBN 13: 978-0-9776076-4-8 / ISBN 10: 0-9776076-4-X, Publication Date: March-2008, Price: $19.95 To order your copy in advance click on the Add to Cart button below or call 1-800-228-9316. International orders call: 00-1-831-238-7799
$25.00 USD On Sales for $19.95
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Timekeeper
January 1st, 2008
il piccolo editions announced today:
Story Telling at its finest!
Timekeeper - a novel by John Atkinson
"It’s more humane to face a firing squad than a classroom, humiliated because of illiteracy. One is swift, the other leads to a lifetime of isolation and hardship. Timekeeper is my triumph over letters. Parts of my journey are no longer clear. Forty-eight years later, I have re-imagined events that seem most consistent to my memory. In 1959 ground swept under my feet like a starving man scrambling for his next meal. I’d fled a dysfunctional family in Virginia. I met many people along the way, but no one could compare with Chief in Oklahoma. He filled a void in me and taught me how to join together the many pieces of life. Chief wasn’t surprised that I’d crossed the country at the age of fourteen. I was a big kid and had become hardened to the ways of the streets. Right away Chief understood why I didn’t fit in. The main thing was, I couldn’t read. He looked into my soul and saw the suffering I’d endured in the white man’s world. He also saw into my future. Anyone with a lick of sense would’ve been frightened of Chief, an old medicine man with strange powers. But after everyone else had given up on me, he saw how I could help myself. At first I thought he was foolish as a fish flopping on a riverbank when he said I should go north to a place he’d visited as a boy. Hell, that was back before we had automobiles. But he said I would go with a great power. I couldn’t imagine where the power would come from. I thought it had to be a strong car, a big Buick Road Master. Every boy my age wanted a car. But the old man gave me a name, Timekeeper. I was no longer Johnnyboy, the affectionate name my Mama had called me. But the gift of the new name stayed a mystery for forty-eight years, the time it took me to figure out Chief ’s predictions. For all those years I’ve searched for his meaning, and now I know."
"The first sentence of Timekeeper, a memoir by John Atkinson, drew me in and wouldn’t let me leave until I finished this wonderful book. The writing is first rate and made even more impressive by the fact that the young Atkinson was thought to be stupid by his teachers, unable to be taught how to read like everyone else. It is a story about abuse and a boy leaving on his own at 14 to find answers, and ultimately finds redemption. I’m thankful he takes us along with him. This is a deeply moving book and you will be the better for reading it."
--Sharon Baldacci, author, A Sundog Moment--
"Award winning author John Atkinson tells an intriguing tale of a boy’s coming-of-age with this fast-paced memoir that reveals the toughness of youth as well as its vulnerability. No one with any feeling in their makeup could resist this engaging young man’s journey to freedom and a wild dog’s devotion and uncompromising love and sacrifice."
–Jean C. Keating, award winning and Pulitzer nominated author of the Genna Kingsley and Sky dog mystery series.-
"John Atkinson’s Timekeeper is an engrossing, heartfelt account of a young man’s quest for self-discovery and a place at the table of life. Johnnyboy’s evolution into Timekeeper will have you rooting for this engaging underdog."
-Howard Owen, author of Turn Signal and Littlejohn
"Timekeeper is the story of a troubled young boy locked within himself. It's the story of a youngster who has no-one to rely on but himself and by trusting his instincts, he meets one person after another - each one a possible doorway to a new life. True to himself, he follows his heart, gratefully using the gifts that each teacher offers."
- Pat Adler, Publisher, Live Wire Press -
John Atkinson's novella, Mercy Me, was nominated for a Library of Virginia Award in 2001. Other awards include first place fiction at the Chesapeake Bay Writer’s Conference. Over the past twelve years, his articles and short stories have appeared in local newspapers and magazines. Three chapters of 'Day of Reckoning' were published in 2005 In Good Company. John is an active member of The Chesapeake Bay Writer’s Club, The James River Writers, The Virginia Writer’s Club and two bi-monthly critique groups.
Order directly from Fisher King Press ISBN 13:978-0-9776076-3-1 / ISBN 10: 0-9776076-3-1, Publication Date: Jan-2008, Price: $15.00. To order your copy in advance click on the Add to Cart button below or call 1-800-228-9316. International orders call: 00-1-831-238-7799
Timekeeper Hardcover: Regularly $21.95 On Sale for $16.95 USD
Timekeeper Paperback: $15.00 USD
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SamSara
September 15th, 2006
il piccolo editions presents:
SamSara —book 3 of the Malcolm Clay Trilogy
by Mel Mathews
In SamSara, you might stumble upon a typo or a misspelled word here or there, but you stand a far greater chance of reclaiming a misplaced piece of your soul. A lost-in-life tractor salesman plopped smack dab in the center of Florence, Italy seems a bit odd, but even more bizarre, he's the only man in a group of eighteen women psychologists attending a seminar concerning the feminine aspect of the psyche. In other words, primitive man meets goddess.
Samsara begins with a brief introduction by a Wise Old Man concerning the origins of this novel's manuscript. Then, in the first section, In the Beginning, in diary form, the protagonist, Malcolm Clay, introduces the psychological and social heritage from which he is trying to escape. The next scene, Leaving the Nest, and… well, if drinking coffee with dirt farmers from twice filtered grounds and shagging parts for broken down cotton pickers and grain combines to sipping cappuccinos and eating brioche and budini di riso for breakfast in the center of Firenze isn't leaving the nest, then what is? Then comes, All Fools day, Plus a Few More. In this section, Malcolm leaves the heart of Florence and once again, ventures out into unknown territory, Southern France, all alone, without the help of the eighteen women psychologists to rescue him from the terror of his very own existence. After three days of growing closer to his daemon, as close as he cares to at this point in his journey, he sets off for Paris by train – where he hopes to catch a flight to Dublin and be rescued from his 'condition' by a beautiful Irish lass whom he'd met five months earlier for an entire ten minutes in a coffee shop back in California. In the finale, To Be or Not to Be, Malcolm pursues the Irish woman, but the crafty lass flees and leads him on a chase, forcing Malcolm back upon himself, forcing him to look within and away from what, for most of his life, he had attempted to satisfy in the ephemeral.
Chasing Leprechauns, rainbows, and pots of gold, attempting to unify the masculine and feminine and the dream world of Malcolm Clay with his waking reality… in the most unconventional way, our author somehow manages to disillusion one of false, antiquated beliefs and at the same time marries matter and spirit.
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