The Short Review

If you are a lover of short stories, you should check out The Short Review, a website that reviews short story collections. Issue number 3 just went live. Both new releases and classic collections are reviewed.

More like 700 Splendid Suns

I found A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini disappointing, especially in comparison to The Kite Runner. I wonder if I would have liked this book more if I hadn't already read The Kite Runner. The Afghanistan culture and politics were interesting to me. Maybe it was just a case of been there, done that.

The story centers around two female characters, Mariam and Laila, and follows their lives over the course of 30 years. From the Soviet invasion, to the Taliban, and finally to the US invasion, these women struggle to survive, and yearn for happiness that is always just out of their reach. They learn to endure.

I liked the characters, and they were well drawn, especially the bad guys. But the second half of this book devolved into a soap opera, and it was almost comical to see what horrible tragedy would befall them next. (I don't want to give specifics here and ruin the plot if you haven't read the book yet. But if you have, you know what I mean.)

The storytelling was too heavy-handed, and after a while I got the point: War is bad. Bad things happen to good people.

As with the The Kite Runner, the story just dragged on and on. Just when you thought it was over, there was yet another ending. Kind of like a cheesy horror movie, where the axe-wielding maniac is struck dead, and you the think the film is over. Then he pops back up to kill some more.

The final 20 pages were work to finish. I just wanted it to end. Thankfully, it did.

3 1/2 stars

American Cool—4 1/2 Stars!

American Cool is Susan DiPlacido's hot collection of short stories. So hot, in fact, that Romantic Times gave it 4 1/2 Stars in its latest edition, on newsstands now. Congratulations Susan!

Realistic jargon paints the settings, and the use of unusual points of view is refreshing. A bit like a literary Pulp Fiction, this book offers a glimpse into the exciting, sometimes dangerous lives of people living on the edge.
—Reviewed by Jennifer R. Wells-Marani, Romantic Times

Be Cool too:
Amazon
iUniverse

Don't forget to read an interview with Susan here.

Tuesday Shorts, and a Free Story!

Hey, I want to tell you about a cool weekly literary blogazine called Tuesday Shorts. Their challenge is to write a short story of 100 words or less. They have a short submission window, so read their guidelines carefully. These very short stories that are accepted run on the following Tuesday, hence the name Tuesday Shorts. So take a crack at it, and show them your shorts.

Here was my (rejected) attempt:

A Bad Day
by Donald Capone
99 words

The day started out just like any other—except for the fact that Tim's penis fell off.

He had gotten out of bed, as usual, swinging one leg then the other from under the covers, his feet sliding into his waiting slippers. Then the walk through the kitchen, where he stopped to get the coffee pot going, before continuing on to the bathroom for his long morning pee. This was always a time of contemplation—the bubbling stream of water issuing forth from his bladder relaxing him both physically and mentally.

But then, a Plop! His day was ruined.

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The Mitchell Report

Former Senator Mitchell issued his report on illegal steroid use to baseball commissioner Bud Selig yesterday. He spent 20 months and supposedly $20 million conducting the investigation. (I could have given MLB a very similar list for free, and about 19 months and 29 days earlier, but I don't have the street cred Mitchell does, who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland.)

Roger Clemens was the one who took the hardest hit. Clemens probably juiced by the looks of him, but the "evidence" in the Mitchell report is pretty lame. Here is a good article by Boston writer Dan Shaughnessy on the subject of Clemens, the lack of hard evidence, and how the greatest pitcher of his generation got thrown under a bus by MLB solely on hearsay:
Dan Shaughnessy


Selig (or the Nutty Professor, as I call him) said this report was "a call to action," and that "I will act." He also said, "Discipline of players and others identified in the report will be determined on a case-by-case basis."

Hmmm.

I wonder, what kind of discipline? None of these players tested positive for the biggie of steroids, HGH (human growth hormone). That's because there IS no test yet for HGH. Besides the fact that when these players allegedly used steroids, there was no drug policy in MLB. Can you get fined for breaking a rule that didn't exist yet?

Even if fines/suspensions/wrist slaps/wedgies/purple nurples are doled out by Selig as punishment, how do you determine it so far after the fact? Take someone like Andy Pettitte. He allegedly used HGH to heal an injured elbow. Should he be punished the same as someone like a Bonds, who juiced every week for seven years just to hit more dingers and break the hallowed all-time HR record held by the classy Hank Aaron? Do you erase the phony homerun records of Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire from the record books? And what about the Hall of Fame voting (McGwire was already shut out in his first year of eligibilty)?

Or do you just go forward with a clean slate?

Edit 12/23: OK, Pettitte owned up to using HGH twice. So have a few others, like Brian Roberts of the Orioles. Now let's hear from the record setters. Bonds, Sosa, McGwire? We're waiting.

Imagine Peace; Sean Lennon's Friendly Fire

Today is the 27th anniversary of John Lennon's death. Check out the Imagine Peace website for a message from Yoko, and video clips of her and John talking about peace.

I also want to mention here Sean Lennon's Friendly Fire CD. It's been more than a year since this album was released, and I still listen to it on a regular basis. There are just ten tracks on Friendly Fire (there is also a companion DVD that has a video for each song), but each song is solid, polished, and even better when listened to with headphones. I've seen Sean twice live in support of this album, and the songs and his performance were excellent.

It's hard to believe that not only such a solid CD, but also John Lennon's son could fly so far under the radar. Maybe it's better that way. Sean has a loyal following, fans who attend his concerts, know all the lyrics, sing along to each song. Maybe it's easier this way; maybe Julian Lennon's early career so soon after John's death eased the way for Sean. Or maybe Sean's music is different enough from his father's that the comparisons just aren't made (as opposed to Julian, who suffered the comparisons, especially since his voice sounds so much like his father's). Whatever, this is a CD that deserves a wider audience, and I'll continue to listen to it and enjoy it as I wait for Sean's next one.

Breaking it Down

I had the pleasure of meeting author Rusty Barnes at the Boxcar Lounge in the East Village recently. This was the first of a new reading series hosted by Tuesday Shorts' Shelly Rich. He read three stories from his book Breaking it Down, an excellent collection of 18 flash fiction stories in a handy pocket-size paperback.

It's truly amazing what Barnes can accomplish with so few words. A story is considered flash fiction if it is not more than 1,000 words, and Barnes uses even less than that at times. But the characters he creates, their worlds and histories, their dreams, hopes, and regrets speak volumes. His prose pulls you right in, as with this opener to "Beamer's Opera":

Every morning when Beamer milked the cows he sang from his favorite operas, attaching the nozzles to their bags and patting them each on the flank, bursting into vibrato-laden songs of despair and longing while his hands were occupied with his very necessary tasks. He imagined the cows with their deep brown eyes and kind souls were listening to him as he roared forth regret and lust and love and sorrow in an alien tongue.

I definitely recommend this book. I couldn't put it down; as soon as I finished one story, I was on to the next before I even realized it. You might say I read this book in a flash. ; )

The Living Glove

I have these houseplants in my apartment, the kind that you can't kill, the kind that don't need much attention. Just some water and an occasional stick of plant food. Sometimes I'll take a shoot off one and create a new plant. They are all thriving, with leaves that extend for many feet.

One particular plant has grown so much, it has actually incorporated my baseball glove in its expansion (which speaks to how much I have used the glove recently). Look at the above photo. See how one of those tendril things has wrapped around the glove's stitching? What do I do now?

I've left it like that.

New story in Skive magazine

My story Change Is Good is in the December issue of Skive Magazine, available now! It's a paperback, 250 page, 6" x 9" perfect bound book—perfect for gift-giving. It includes 46 stories from a great group of international writers. (It's also available as an e-book.) Support independent writing and publishing!

Joshua Tree at 20, plus a rant

Wanna feel old? It has been 20 years since U2 released their landmark album The Joshua Tree. That's right, 20 years! To commemorate the anniversary, the album has been remastered and reissued, and now includes a second disc with all of the B-sides from the original singles. Also included is "Wave of Sorrow," a song written during the Joshua sessions and recently completed for this set (Bono added the vocals to the existing music).

In case you just woke up from a two-decade-long coma, The Joshua Tree is one of THE classic rock albums of all time. Occasionally you'll even catch it topping a list of "Greatest albums of all time," though usually that slot is reserved for the Beates' Sgt. Pepper. So if you don't own the album, wipe the 20-year sand from your eyes, stretch those coma-tight muscles, and find your way down to Best Buy (don't bother looking around for a record store—they don't exist anymore) or hop onto iTunes and download the deluxe version for $16.99 (single disc version is $9.99).

Now that the plug is done, it's time for me to rant. U2 has long been my favorite band (besides the Beatles, who are in another league. Basically it's the Beatles, then everyone else. Oh, and Bjork is a close second behind U2). So, on to my complaint.

I own every U2 album, some of which I've even bought in multiple formats—CD, cassette, vinyl, download. I have their DVDs, their CD singles, I've bought concert tickets for more than twenty years, I've bought t-shirts, calendars, books. Everything. I've given them a lot of my hard-earned mooluh. A lot. And they've earned it by working hard, touring for every album, pushing themselves to do better; it would have been easy for them to just do Joshua Tree part 2, part 3, etc. But they are true artists—they're not Bon Jovi. They've experimented, expanded their sound, took some risks. And they haven't spent their (my) money foolishly, landing in rehab, or packing a gun like Puff Daddy. And we all know of Bono's humanitarian acts.

So. I wonder why I still can't buy the two new songs that were included on last year's "best of" collection U218. See, I already have the first 16 songs of that collection. Multiple times. All I want are the two new ones (the excellent "Window In the Skies" and the raucous collaboration with Green Day "The Saints Are Coming"). But if you go to iTunes and look it up, those songs are only available if you buy the whole 18-song package. Do I really need to spend $15.99 just to get two songs? I wrongly thought that when the album was released in Nov. 2006, that after some time they would make the two songs available individually. Here it is a year later and you still can't download those songs. Who is the greedy party here? Is it U2, or is it Apple? Why can't I spend my money to legally download these two songs?! I want to give U2 another $1.98 of my money, but I guess they don't want it.

This harkens back to the pre-Apple iTunes era when people were forced to illegally download songs because there was no alternative. Music fans were ahead of the curve then; the record companies had no clue what to do. They were still pumping out those CDs, spending money on printing, packaging, shipping, warehousing. But the people spoke and wanted to download! And idiots like Metallica complained and sued, instead of giving the people what they wanted. The people wanted to buy the music—just not in an outdated format. Then Apple came along to save the day, and get the money back into the hands of the artists. Everyone was happy.

But now I can't buy those two frigging songs that I want. So, I'm going old school. If anyone wants to send me those two songs as MP3s, please let me know. With all the money I've given U2 over the years, I won't feel guilty about a couple of freebies.

Re-Kindle Your Love of Reading

Amazon has just launched the Kindle, which seems to be the definitive electronic book reader (so far). It works on its own, too—you don't need a computer to download or sync with. How it works is through wireless connectivity (like a cell phone). You go to Amazon and download the book you want (more than 88,000 titles currently available), with the cost of new releases and best sellers just $9.99. More than books, the Kindle also lets you read newspapers, magazines, and blogs. You can also read Word documents and view pictures. It also has a built-in dictionary.

The Kindle seems poised to bury Sony's Reader. The Sony Reader must be attached to a computer for downloading, and is only available for the PC (sorry Mac users). Plus the Kindle has the advantage of linking directly to Amazon, the king of online book purchases. It holds over 200 titles, and Amazon claims the battery life last for over 1,000 page turns, with the recharge time just two hours.

I've only seen the Kindle online (watch the short demonstration video on the product page in the link above), and I like its many attributes, but one thing looks like it could still stand improvement. In the demo video, the page flip and scroll plastic buttons seem downright antiquated, especially with the touch screen flashiness of the Apple iPhone setting the standard on handheld devices. Maybe the Kindle's next model with incorporate a similar operating system. Oh, and how cool would it be if they added audio, so you could choose between reading and listening to a book?

The price is $399.

The day the mobile shredder came to town

There was a message on my answering machine when I got home from work Thursday night. "The mobile shredder is coming to Tuckahoe!" the recording said. "Between 10am-2pm in Depot Square." Holy crap. This was a dream come true. It was like hearing my favorite rock star was coming to town to play an intimate show at the local cafe, and I was chosen to attend.

Why was I so excited? Well, I had fallen far behind in my shredding. You know, all those personal documents with bank statements, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. that can't just be thrown in the trash anymore because there are criminals out there sifting through your garbage while you sleep at night. Turning trash bins over like raccoons. They're stealing your numbers, stealing your identity, jetting off to exotic places all on your dime. And they must be stopped!

I had a very small shredder, a one-sheet-at-a-time kind that died suddenly last year. I had a backlog by the time I got around to buying another one. This one was slightly larger, promised to do more than one sheet at a time, you could even shred a credit card if need be. Still, by then I had a plastic bag full of documents—with more flooding in on a daily basis. Feeding these statements in by hand was hopeless, endless, like Lucy trying futilely to wrap all those chocolates on the conveyer belt before they passed her by. I just couldn't keep up. And damned if I'd start eating them. I began to wish for a huge shredder I could dump the whole load into in one shot. The size of a woodchipper. Something industrial, like Hillary used to shred her Whitewater papers. A magical machine to remove the paper albatross from around my neck.

Then, I got the call.

I went though all of my papers then. I found new piles of mail I had forgotten about. By the time I was done I had a whole Trader Joe's brown shopping bag full of sensitive, identity-laden documents. But I had to wait till Sunday morning at ten o'clock for the big moment. I was like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning. And on top of it all I had to wait an extra hour, thanks to the clocks being turned back during the night.

Finally the moment I was waiting for arrived. It was a beautiful, sunny morning. I grabbed hold of the bag and walked down to Depot Square with an extra spring in my step. There, as promised, was the mobile shredder. What a sight to behold! I was one of the first people there, and only had to wait a minute before my papers were dumped in and shot back out into the bin, cross-cut and indecipherable. What a thrilling moment! What would have taken me months to do by hand was completed in seconds. My only regret was that I couldn't do the honor myself.

Afterward, I lingered because there was also a farmer's market. Cars began to pull in to the lot, happy people with boxes full of paper to shred. Everyone stood around to watch the results, to make sure their sensitive papers were obliterated. People laughing, smiling, relieved. People united in a single cause. The mobile shredder is a uniter, not a divider. What a thing, this mobile shredder!

Now I can do one of two things. Either work with a clean slate, stay on top of my personal documents, shred them as they come in. Or I can save up again, squirrel away my statements for the next time the mobile shredder comes to town. Either way I can't lose.

The Understory by Pamela Erens

The Understory is a great debut novel from Pamela Erens (it was the winner of the Ironwood Press Fiction Prize). This is one of those books you just want to stay home from work to finish reading. The lead character is Jack Gorse, an unemployed loner whose daily routines (that border on OCD) give him a purpose in life. (In this sense the writing reminds me of the best of Magnus Mills, the way you as the reader slip into the character's mind and daily doings.) The routines, however, are upset when Jack is evicted from his apartment. Things begin to spiral out of control for him without these routines, and as he loses his grip on life, he grasps at the straws of an impossible/imagined relationship.

Seinfeld is a jerk

So I tuned into David Letterman on Monday night because former Yankees manager Joe Torre was a scheduled guest. As an added bonus, Jerry Seinfeld was also on the show. Wow, I thought, this is great! I've been a fan of Seinfeld since the beginning. Since before the beginning—when he was just a stand-up comedian on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Seinfeld was there to promote his new animated movie, Bee Movie, about a Seinfeld-esque bee who leaves the hive and has adventure in the human world.

At one point during the interview, I was surprised that the subject of Jerry's wife's alleged plagiarism came up. Jessica Seinfeld has a cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, just published by HarperCollins, that gives recipes on how to slip healthy food into your childrens diets by mashing up veggies and such and putting them into other foods that a child is more inclined to eat, like a brownie. The problem is that The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals, a very similar book by an author named Missy Chase Lapine is already in print, published by Running Press in April 2007. At one point Lapine even submitted the book to HarperCollins, who rejected it. So when Jessica Seinfeld's book hit the shelves with a big splashy promotion budget and an appearance on Oprah, Lapine cried foul. Or more accurately, plagiarism. Which is understandable.

But on Letterman, Seinfeld explained the situation by repeatedly calling Lapine (who he didn't mention by name) a "wacko." He said "So this woman says, `I sense this could be my wacko moment.' So she comes out ... and she accuses my wife. She says, `You stole my mushed-up carrots. You can't put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. I put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. It's vegetable plagiarism.'" He even compared her to the "wackos" who have stalked David Letterman. It was actually uncomfortable to watch.

What an asshole. I realize he was going for the easy laughs, and that most people watching probably weren't aware of the specifics of the case. So they took him at his word. But fuck shit, if I submitted a book that was rejected, and then Seinfeld's wife published a very similar one with the same publisher that had rejected mine—I'd definitely point it out too. Unfortunately, that's how publishing works. People steal ideas, and yes, people also come up with the same ideas independently. But it doesn't make you a "wacko" if you want the situation looked into.

Lapine didn't deserve to be attacked so viscously on such a public platform. Isn't it enough that her idea was (allegedly) stolen by a celebrity's wife? That her book will never match the sales of someone who had the good sense to dump her husband right after the honeymoon to marry Jerry Seinfeld? Does she deserve to be labeled a "wacko"? I don't think so.

"It was painful to be called names on national TV," Lapine said, "when I am just a mom who wrote a cookbook to help parents get their kids to eat well."

How many days till spring training?

Well, the Yankees lost in the first round of the playoffs once again. I was at the game. It wasn't a fun game to watch because they were never really in it. Down 4-0 after just two innings against Cleveland's number four starter, you'd think the Yanks would bang their way right back into the game, pound away until they grabbed the lead. That's what they did in the second half of the season when they turned their year around after a dreadful 21-29 start and a 42-43 all-star break record. They were on a roll, reinvigorated with the influx of new young homegrown players like Cano, Melky, Joba, Hughes, Duncan, Kennedy.

But the Yankees just can't score in the post season anymore. And it's not the old cliche of "good pitching beats good hitting" because, in the Yanks' case, bad pitching also beats good hitting. The attack of the gnats in Game 2 didn't help, either. So it's another season lost, and another year where Yankee fans have to watch the Red Sox steamroll their way through the post season without us there to stop them.

Changes are coming soon to the Yankees. A lot of players are free agents, including Mariano, Posada, and soon-to-be MVP ARod, if he opts out of his contract. Plus Joe Torre has probably managed his last game in NY. But the future is still promising. The kids are here already and they're the real thing. Cano is 25 and had 97 RBI. Melky (23) took the CF job away from Damon. Hughes is 21 and was 5-3, and will be in the rotation next year. Joba is also 21 and will be a starter next year. With Wang and Pettitte (if he exercises his option) heading up the rotation, that's a damn strong first 4. Mussina will hang around as the fifth starter since he is still under contract.

But who will manage? Despite a rumor about Tony LaRussa, the two obvious choices still are Don Mattingly and Joe Girardi. I'd like to see Girardi since he has managerial experience. Or maybe John Tuturro can reprise his role as Billy Martin from Bronx Is Burning and bring home the pennant once again.

It's gonna be a long off-season.

Sony blowing a good chance?

So, Sony announced today that they have a new version of the Sony Reader. They launched the original version a year or two ago, didn't know how to market it, and it didn't sell very well. Now they are back with an updated version, hoping to catch lightning by having the first real reader out there to capture the digital market in its infancy. Great idea. I'm all for a digital revolution. Oh, I'll always love to hold a real book in my hands, feel the pages, smell the pulp, stare at the cover art. But that will only be on special occasions, for the books that I know I want to have in my collection, on my shelves, a part of my apartment's decor. The rest I can keep as digital files, to read whenever, wherever, bring along while on vacation, say, or to just have less stuff cluttering my living space.

But Sony isn't letting me be part of the digital revolution.

Why not? Because the Reader isn't compatible with Apple computers. And I'm a Mac user. Only if you have a PC can you use the Reader. Has the wildly successful iPod taught Sony nothing? They are blowing a great chance to take over a new market. Will the Reader go the way of the Betamax tape if Apple decides to do their own version of the Reader and completely obliterate any other competition?

We'll see.

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This was the email I was going to shoot off to Sony, before I realized that they have no email contact information anywhere on their site. Hmmm, I wonder why?

It's good to see a company leading the way in the digital book revolution, but when is the Reader going to be available in a Mac version? Surely the success of the iPod has taught you something. Mac users are forward thinkers, creative people, and by not having an Apple version, you are losing many potential customers. Maybe you are waiting for Apple to put out their version of the Reader so they can steal your customers?

A Mighty Heart

A Mighty Heart is Mariane Pearl's account of the kidnapping and murder of her husband, Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002. After his disappearance, Mariane assembled a team to help find Daniel, and this memoir shows a race against the clock as the team wades through political red tape and corruption to determine who was responsible for the kidnapping and where Daniel was being held. This was such a high-profile crime, that the reader already knows the outcome; this is why this account deals with how the search was approached, what Mariane was going through emotionally, how the international team bonded with one another, and how Mariane was able to look toward a future for her and her unborn son after the murder of her husband. This was good; however, I was a little distracted by the use of present tense writing. I know the idea was to make the story more immediate, like it is happening now, that the reader is part of the search. But I'm not sure it worked; I also don't think the authors (Sarah Crichton was co-author) were very consistent with the tense. I would have preferred the story to be told in past tense, with what was happening to Daniel at the concurrent time interspersed throughout. I hope the film was done this way.

Also we're told what a great journalist Pearl was, how he tried to make the world a better place through his writing, how he stopped at nothing to get a story, how his personality and love of life came through in his writing. And it's true, I guess. But it would have been nice to have seen this first-hand if Mariane had included an article, a story, or even a personal letter written by Daniel for those of us who have never read his work. Also, it would have given Daniel the last word, and shown how his spirit and message survives, even if the terrorists killed his person.

3 1/2 of 5 stars

The Savage Quiet September Sun

It's hard to believe that the sixth anniversary of 9/11 is just about upon us. For the survivors or those who lost loved ones, it must still seem like yesterday. The world of film and literature has had a few big-name entries that deal with the subject: Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, Adam Sandler's Reign Over Me were recent films, and Don DeLillo's new novel Falling Man, which got a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

But there is also a smaller book on the subject, a collection of twelve stories written by New Yorker Victor Lana. Lana's bio says that he "lost a family member and friends on 9/11" and you can tell by the honesty of the writing how much it hit home. Lana's characters deal with 9/11 and its aftermath: the confusion, anger, grief, guilt, paranoia, and overall coping that were results of the tragedy. I don't know how autobiographic some of the stories are, but it must have been cathartic for him to write these tales.

Some of the highlights for me: In "Nisa," a divorced man's new friendship with a young Middle Eastern woman prevents him from slipping into an all too easy prejudice against Arabs, and helps him realize what's important in his life. In "Dust to Dust," a seemingly harmless office prank has serious repercussions for several of the people involved. "From the North Tower to Eternity" has a still disgruntled ex-worker show up in his former boss's office on the morning of 9/11 with the intent to kill him. But fate has other ideas. In "Our Flag Was Still There" a man who co-owns several beach cottages in Long Island with his brother is convinced the three men who rented one of the cottages are terrorists. No one, including his brother, believes him. So he takes matters into his own hands.

This book is available on Amazon. New Yorkers also can pick it up at New Voices Bookstore, located in the East Village in Manhattan.

Deford Hits a Dinger

Technically, and according to the subtitle ("A Tale of Modern Baseball"), The Entitled is a baseball novel. But calling this just a baseball novel is like saying The Road is just a post-apocalypse novel. There is so much more to it. It's literature.

The lead character of The Entitled is an old-school lifetime minor leaguer, Howie Traveler, who finally gets his shot to manage in the big leagues with the Cleveland Indians. His lifelong dream is compromised, though, when he catches his star player Jay Alcazar (possibly) raping a woman. Now Howie has a moral dilemma. Does he protect his player and his job, or does he come out against the player and jeopordize his career in the process?

This is also the story of Alcazar. It would have been easy to have him be a cartoon character, the selfish, "entitled" superstar modern ballplayer. But Deford gives him a complex character, too, and there is a nifty subplot with Alcazar returning to Cuba to locate family that was left behind when his parents escaped with the infant Jay.

Deford does an excellent job of mixing up the chapters, changing the POV, and feeding the reader the background on the individual characters in a non-linear fashion. And Deford's baseball knowledge and observations are spot-on. You can understand what he's saying, and the nuances of baseball even if you are not a fan. That is the beauty and the art of his writing.

Be Cool

American Cool is a fantastic collection of Susan DiPlacido's best short stories. Many of these stories have appeared in other noted publications, such as the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6, Caramel Flava, and Rebellion: New Voices of Fiction. But to have them all together in one volume is a very special treat. ("I, Candy" won the Spirit Award at the 2005 Moondance Film Festival, and "Bloodlines" was nominated for a 2008 Pushcart Prize award.)

DiPlacido's writing is fast, fun, sexy, and humorous. The stories just fly by as you read them, and before you know it you've started another one. From the bright lights of Vegas in "Neon Nights" and "Shuffle Up (And Deal) to the dusty desert of "Coyote Blues" to the softball fields of "Like a Girl" to the romance of Italy in "Found in Translation," DiPlacido plops you right into the lives of her characters, into their heads, lets you eavesdrop on their lively conversations, their jokes, their wants and disappointments. Whenever I finish a DiPlacido book I feel like I've said goodbye to some close friends.

One last thing—this book has a very fitting cover! I felt cool reading it on the train. Be cool too and get this book.

Amazon
iUniverse

Don't forget to read an interview with Susan here.