The Hungry Artist

My first novel, The Former Things Have Passed Away, is now available as a lovely 236-page paperback with my own personally-designed cover at Create Space! You can purchase it at the link below:

https://www.createspace.com/3790463

It is also available for purchase at Amazon.com at the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/Former-Things-Have-Passed-Away/dp/1470028743/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328834659&sr=8-2

Three chapters have been separately published as stand-alone pieces,the publishing information available in my bibliography. Here is a brief excerpt from the opening chapter:

2000
The big green sign says, A Special Place to Remember. I remember. I remember many things. With the windows down, the breeze, say goodbye, say goodbye. I can’t forget. Because of that sign. Or the hum of the radio – say goodbye. Or maybe it’s this breeze, cooling my hot flushed face with ease. The mind likes to remember things – like – a Tuesday morning. A quarter to nine. A phone call. Ring, ring. “She’s gone.” The round white clock hanging on the wall with its clear black numbers and arrows.
This song is fading. I step out onto the blacktop and get mud all over my shoes. I wipe them off on the wet grass.
There’s a new bench marker here on the hill: Lee & Chang Family Bench. This other one just says, Young, squared off with yellow caution tape, like a fresh crime scene. Still I can read the inscription: 1930-1995. Hers reads: Josephine Cabrera, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1940-1998. ‘Young’ was 65. She was only 58. Maybe it’s okay to die at 65, but not at 58. Now that’s a crime.
There aren’t any trees up here on the incline. No shade. There are fresh bouquets, mini-candles, lanterns, orange and yellow bloated smiley faces, butterflies. There are red, white and blue flags, pinwheels swirling yellow and blue and red. Fake plastic flowers, like the ones Papa leaves between fresh flower changes. I’ve been here dozens of times, and yet I can never remember exactly where her marker is, hidden somewhere under this spectacle of vibrant, rich color. Somewhere halfway-down the hill, neither highly sloped, nor completely level. If I squint and peer deeper, maybe I can distinguish Papa’s fake flowers from the real, or freshly laid, or dying.
A Tuesday morning, a quarter to nine. I had just gotten out of the shower after two unwashed days in the hospital. The phone rang. It rang and rang, and no one ran to answer it. And then I finally picked up the receiver. Tina, she’s gone.

*Thanks in advance for your support!