I was just ego-surfing and found that this very blog you're reading has a pretty decent standing in Googleland, the fact of which convinced me that I'd better try to keep roughly up to date here.

So here's a short post at an ungodly hour to give you some news: I am now a member of the ULA (Underground Literary Aliance). To those who are opposed to the ULA I would suggest looking into the organization a little more deeply; that is, make your own investigation and don't accept what mainstream media says about them. And don't blindly accept what other bloggers and indy media writers say.

Check us out at literaryrevolution.com and decide for yourself. You might find that the complacent and established lit folks might not want to admit that American literature "is a bloated turd" as a man who should know, Neal Pollack would say.

  ¶ 2:02 AM 0 comments

  A selection from my forthcoming novel, Saint M.:


St. M and I walked into the bar that was candle-lit and a bit warm in that there was no air conditioning on this hot June day.

Yo, Mike shouted St. M, you've neglected to pay the electric again have ya?

Oh, shite, M, said the bartender/owner. The only thing that worries anyone here is last call and closing time. Do you think they give a shite if the stout is a tad warm?

St. M chuckled and allowed for how he guessed they didn't give a shite and proceeded to take us through a curtain that separated the main bar from a private area, where there was a group of men listening to another man, who was reading something.

That's Cabe McCabe, said St M. I've brought ya here to show you how real writers get along.

But I get along, I told him. And I'm a real writer.

Bullshite, said St M. If you were the real thing, ya woodna been reading that damn phony writin book this morning.

I supposed he had me there; I should have been well past that sort of amateurish stuff. Still, I did have my honor.

But they write about Joyce in it.

I didn't say it loud, but the word Joyce was picked up by some sort of Irish writer sonar that all at the table possessed. The reader stopped, the listeners put down their Guinnesses and their previously mellow sleepy eyes widened to the size of saucers.

Now boyos take it easy. The kid here was just talkin'. Didn't mean to lessen yerselves by mentioning "Himself", said St M.

They seemed to be satisfied with this explanation, though didn't even say hello to St. M, but simply accepted him as a presence and acted like the utterer of the name of the man whose name was a powerful talisman to them didn't even exist.

That, you know, was me.
  ¶ 10:38 PM 0 comments

  Let me critique my first post, because if the lit world -- or in this case the quote unquote blogosphere -- needs anything, it is more critics. Right?

To start at the beginning: Here, in "I, J. D. Finch" I have in a mere eight characters (this is not including punctuation -- are punctuation marks characters? I'm a writer, not a typographer...) set up a powerful mood, promising lit and journalistic thrills aplenty for the careful reader. I’ll tell you how.

First, one thinks of the classics and in particular "I, Claudius", so you know -- or at least, with this clever device, I lead you to believe -- that there will be confessions here, some perhaps salacious, but, based on my oblique reference to "Claudius" you know (think) they will be high-toned confessions.

But this simple phrase, "I, J. D. Finch" is more than just a classic reference. In fact it is more than a double-edged sword, perhaps even a quadruple edged sword (i.e. more than "a sword and a half", and perhaps even two double edged swords) of meaning that cuts more than one way and usually has a meaningful point. Ouch!

"I, The Jury" was a book by hardboiled writer Mickey Spillane, whose titillating tomes of sex, violence and cruelty were the cause of many a drugstore owner telling curious young potential readers to stay away from the paperback rack and its "dirty titles". Well, perhaps if the reader thinks my "I, J. D. Finch" will offer Spillane-esque titillation they will hang around this blog like a thirteen year old kid trying to check out the "dirty titles". And that would be fine with me. (Unless you are actually thirteen, in which case I can pretty much guarantee the subject matter that will be featured here would bore you to tears.)

But truth be told, when I started the first post I had something else in mind, between the high and low brows mentioned above. And it was "a declaration of principles". I know that down through the annals of time many principles have been declared, but the declaration I'm thinking of is journalistic, via the cinema.

But that will have to wait because right now I see someone about to throw my childhood sled in the furnace.

What’s up with that? (TBC)
  ¶ 11:11 AM 0 comments

  I, J. D. Finch have worked for northern New Jersey newspapers as a columnist, reporter and photographer. I've written on film for publications like Cinefantastique and Fangoria and on collectibles for established magazines large and small. My fiction has appeared on the Internet at nealpollack.com, McSweeney's and others, and in print in national corporate magazines and the antithesis of these, the Literary Fan Magazine, published by the Underground Literary Alliance, which itself may be the future of American literature. I've produced a parody zine (zeen) called McStoney's (can you guess what it parodies?) that I introduced at the 215 Festival in Philadelphia last year. Here at Pale Blue Auto-Mobile, among other things, I will tell you about writers I think are good, and will be prettty-much-silent about those I don't. And I'll post my own writing, because, as the well-known dog joke goes, I can. There will be much else, which I can't really define right now, but which will grow organically out of what I do. I only tell you all this because you should know who you're dealing with.  ¶ 12:01 AM 0 comments