Dear Writer

Dear writer, I am your reader, I have sorted your stories and I want you to take me to places where I have never been. You may have told these tales many times before. You must have watched wonder pry eyes wide open on your listener’s faces. But as I sit here, I wish to be transported to the scenery, the scenario, the sense of who lives in your thoughts.

Reading glasses on table, legs elevated, lap blanket snug and a cup of cocoa. Ready! I want to smell the flowers, the sewers, the ordinary meal, all. I want to hear the mouse chewing the trailer’s skirts, the child whimpering in his sleep, the traffic in the distance. It’s all in the detail, the minute mundane moment. It lives in the voices, the intonations that presage the deed. The story that you have planted grows and expands into its surroundings.

I want to feel the fear, to anticipate the next blow to the being which you have brought into my consciousness. As I shrink in my skin when words yank at the center of emotion, you hold my plexus in your pen; you can’t tell me what to comprehend, but you have the power to stir, to awaken dormant cells with mere phrases.

Educate me; let me learn the ways of this life or that person, this creature beyond myself. Enlarge the scope, I am eyes, I am ears. Every sense is alert, waiting to be enriched during this time which I devote to one book, one paragraph to receive your message on this page. I am at one with the written word, warm and grateful. For the library.

A review of the new edition of The Fires of Waterland by R.A.Kukkee

The Fires of Waterland. By Raymond Alexander Kukkee.

If a book is to be judged by its cover, then the Fires of Waterland by R.A. kukkee presents the reader with an ominous presence. Fire remains ever present in the belly of the story, in the lives of the characters. Water, its opposite cools the spirits with self doubt and secrecy.

Polar views of the poor, and of those in control arise along raw conflict. They drive suspense with a certain knowledge of the ruts on these roads. Truth and adversity make strange bedfellows in this movie of the mind. “Some things are better left under the bed, like dust balls” said Floyd, a smart man in this saga.

Small town, orphanage, youth and old age, no subject is spared along the pages. The simplicity of the language reveals the  visceral complexity of these lives as they weave in and out of hardship.

Dialog is well served with unwavering accuracy; Fletch and Livvy take us on a tour of youthful yearnings and covert feelings. They lead us into explosive consequences and let us explore the innermost flesh of being. The stuff of living permeates the very innards of this book from page one. Hard and ultimately hopeful; like life. Like fire.

A review by Nadine Sellers. The new edition of: The Fires of Waterland by author Raymond Alexander Kukkee

review of Morgidoo's Christmas Carol, by R.A. Kukkee.

Morgidoo’s Christmas Carol: by Raymond Alexander Kukkee.

“A hundred years ago”, thus begins a journey where sound travels upon snowscapes toward the center of humanity. To follow the story of this silver bell is to dwell in the lost-and-found of goodness.

The classic language holds the voice of childhood through Morgidoo’s words. It is also to trust wisdom in the enduring love of Mr and Mrs George Blister. The text depicts each exquisitely detailed scene as the plot evolves along magical suspense. Original artworks illustrate each step along the pages of this tasteful volume.

Young or adult can pause for a sustaining reading or thoughtful perusing of this contemporary classic; indeed a classy little present in a season of casual excess. This book is a mainstay of the return to the essential purpose of literature through the author’s vision.

Read aloud in a warm and comfortable place, this book has the potential to carve a secure memory path in a life cluttered with expectations. A cup of tea, a CD and Morgidoo. Best yet, Morgidoo on CD?  What a simple pleasure!

Morgidoo’s mindful pursuit aims to enlighten living, to entertain with art, and most of all to strengthen the core; in this, our celebration of sound and spirit in the form of a bell and a boy.

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 a review  by nadine Sellers of the new edition of Morgidoo's Christmas Carol by author Raymond Alexander Kukkee.

Between Abbey and Rimbaud

Between Abbey and Rimbaud.

Yellow sun hanging on the horizon, sage aroma cleansing desert air along a ground hugging zephyr. I am surrounded by sounds of fall, a blue racer slinking to the edge of the salt pond, a last avocet pecking for surviving fish, a lone coyote venturing for an early meal of packrat or roadkill. Dry bunch grass crunching under step, i listen to faded pages flapping against my chest, leaves in a whirlwind.

I paid the price of 3 slices of bread for a tattered paperback of tradition in literature; a single dime which i had found in a parking lot in town. The money was light in the loser's pocket, yet the book rests, long and heavy upon my shelves.. And now authors part pages like open arms, to refill the reader in times of empty. I cannot peruse but a few lines in my will to absorb the direst of thought, minute details hurling images from a lake of words pooled behind my eyes.

A continent apart in another time, another tongue. Memory bidden, transcends form and texture to land upon mind and suspend all others. Two lines and i take flight across frontiers and centuries, unhampered by inventions of man, the current, my only connection.

Dry crumbs fall silently upon my lap, i reach for the canteen full of warm water, swish through teeth, throw back my head and listen to the lonely throat swallowing, begging for more. I pick up a stray cracker, grab a long muscle from the jack-rabbit leg; still tough from a night under hot stones in the sand pit oven outside. The old hare relinquishing essential protein, i make note to send thankful nods to her progeny, I may need them someday; for mine.

I have no hunger but for the single line, transfixed by bird song and empathy. Once the sand stirring wind has passed and consciousness afresh, i am fed and cleared of mundane concern by the light of some stranger, known of others, transcribing another life on paper, for me, another famished unknown at the end of the phrase.