Books
For a time—ninth grade, some of tenth—he'd lost himself in music. Listening, playing along to songs on the stereo, he spent hours in the downstairs rocker, headphones clamped to his head. Clancy Brothers, Beatles, Leadbelly, Emmylou, Zappa, Patsy, Aretha, Hank, Linda Ronstadt, Hoyt Axton…everything in their sizable collection of music spanning the decades. The few instruments around the house not violin-related—a battered rosewood parlor guitar with one tuner that barely turned, a Stella tenor banjo, his mother's upright piano—were alluring and fascinating to him for their sounds, shapes, smells, but most of all for their promise of something beyond or inside the music…and yet magnetizing only up to the point at which his mother suggested lessons: "You like that style? You want to learn how they do that—those kind of Hawaiian chord voicings like what you're trying there? We could get you lessons. You know Rick, Denis's…your dad's friend from over on Vashon, he could show you next time he's visiting. Or Ed! Ed totally knows that idiom. You remember Ed, right? He's a beast on the slack key." Until finally he caved: guitar lessons with the local music store instructor, a semi-retired session guy and songwriter from Austin. And as soon as he'd caved, he knew he was done.
Click link to continue reading....
As the last light of day struck her violin in its open case at the foot of the bed he woke, panicked momentarily at his still unfinished school work—and then let himself be absorbed in the way the sun lit her violin's varnish orange-red, showing the grooves and ruts in the fingerboard. The wear from her hours of practice dimpled the ebony like fossilized imprints of some prehistoric creature. Rosin dust and dirt sparkled under the bridge. A filmy suds of finger marks and smudges shrouded the shoulders. Was there anything, he wondered, as uncompromisingly beautiful and severe as this sight of silver, steel, and nickel-wound strings down the ebony black of a fingerboard? The contrast, the lines of tension from nut to bridge, the colored tail silks—anything as clear and promising as many hours of focus…pure distillate of determination, disappointment, reward?
Click link to continue reading....
Half as Happy (read an excerpt)
The eight stories in Half as Happy reveal with startling clarity their characters’ secrets, losses, and desires. Each with the depth of a novel, these insightful portraits of the darkness and light within us reverberate long after they’ve ended, like beautiful and disturbing dreams.
PRAISE FOR HALF AS HAPPY
"These are vibrant, richly described, indelible stories. Gregory Spatz is a masterful writer, working at the top of his game." Edra Ziesk -- The Nervous Breakdown
"Spatz (Inukshuk) writes like a dream, and he is perfectly at home with the focus on the self, the search for a personal truth, and other tropes of contemporary literary fiction." Publisher's Weekly (boxed review)
"Being as they are 'ruled equally by the infinitesimal and the grand,' these stories resemble our own lives, reflect back to us those human circumstances in which we recognize ourselves, our own better and worse impulses, our own greater and lesser dreams. These stories will mend readers' hearts even as they break them and that is what makes them so wonderful and rare."
—Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers.
"Beautifully-wrought, haunting stories. Spatz is a marvelous writer, with a keen eye for the secrets of the human heart."
—Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake
"Gregory Spatz's stories search out the extraordinary complications of human relationships with great intelligence and unexpected finesse, and their resonance lingers with bell-like clarity."
—Erin McGraw, author of The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard
Inukshuk (read an excerpt)
A poignant tale of the vulnerability of adolescence interspersed with powerfully evoked scenes of the legendary Franklin crew’s descent into despair, madness, and cannibalism on the Arctic tundra, Inukshuk offers readers a modern family drama as well as a compelling historical adventure.
PRAISE FOR INUKSHUK:
“Hauntingly honest and emotionally resonant.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Intimate and meditative . . . A thoughtful and sympathetic look at the sometimes troubled relationship between fathers and sons.” —Booklist
“Bewildering and beautiful. Haunting.” —Zyzzyva
"INUKSHUK is a feat of empathy and honesty, a taut tale of fear and resentment and other threats from within, meticulously observed and fearlessly rendered in vivid, authoritative, gripping prose. It's a virtuoso performance." -- Doug Dorst, author of ALIVE IN NECROPOLIS
“One of the most innovative and unusual fictional incarnations I’ve ever read of the persistent allure of Sir John Franklin’s final, fatal Arctic voyage. It’s a remarkable accomplishment.” —Russell Potter, author of ARCTIC SPECTACLES