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Do you enjoy the posts on Write Well? The tips, essays, and, perhaps most importantly, the interviews on Ask the Writer? Did you happen to catch the interviews with Dennis Lehane, Kevin Brockmeier, and Benjamin Percy, among others?

Did it make you want to read their books?

And if you could give back -- at no cost or hassle to yourself -- would you?

I'm pleased to announce the Read Well Amazon-affiliate bookstore. It's just like Amazon, except a small percentage of the money you spend goes back to support the efforts of Write Well.

The prices are the same. It has the same hassle-free navigation as Amazon, the "We also recommend..." links, the customer and starred reviews, the ultra-secure shopping cart, check-out, and shipping. You can see the search box on the right -- an exact duplicate, isn't it?

You even use the same user name and password that you use on Amazon.

As a bonus, though, we've tailored the Read Well store to our site. For example, the opening page is populated by authors who answered questions on Ask the Writer. You can buy Dennis Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone, Ben Percy's Refresh, Refresh, and Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, along with all the other books and movies featured on those pages (be sure to click over at the bottom of the page, so you can see all of the section).

The second link, A Writer's Toolbox (again, pictured on the right) features all the best books on fiction technique, especially the ones referenced in posts on this site -- John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist, Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer, and Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees. It also includes, on the second page, a link to the textbook Missouri State's Creative Writing faculty uses when we teach English 215: Introduction to Short Story Writing (this, of course, would be Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, 7th Ed. by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French).

The university work -- grading papers, planning classes, preparing presentations -- has kept me too busy to post on writing, technique, or anything this week. I'm hard at work on Moon City Press and The Moon City Review.

I'm also getting ready to apply to graduate programs (the Iowa Writer's Workshop among them). Next week I'm driving up to the University of Kansas (KU) to check out their Ph.D. in Creative Writing and see if it would be a good fit for me.

For Ask the Writer: as promised, I interviewed Brian Shawver, author of Aftermath and The Cuban Prospect. I'll have that up later this month.

I have also been polishing several short stories ("The Lexicon of the Sword," "Haunted," "The Surgeon," and a new story, "The Blind Man," which I'm very excited about).

Remember, if you're out there writing, don't give up. I had to post this cartoon; it's just too funny. It's funny because the satisfaction is in the writing, not in being "rich and famous." Charles Schultz knew that, too, of course.

First, for interested readers, I will soon (probably in early September) post another interview as part of my Ask the Writer series. This installment will feature a longer, more informal talk with Brian Shawver, author of Aftermath and The Cuban Prospect.

In other news, I will send off the final re-writes for The Memory of Liars: An Evening with Grigori Efimovich Rasputin to Boston this week. Andrew Paul Jackson, who has been setting the text to music, tells me the opera will premiere in Boston (at the Conservatory) next April. His talented girlfriend Erica Spyres will be directing the show.

If you're not familiar with the history, the story takes place on the night Grigori Rasputin was murdered. The history is mixed up in mythology, so this opera will tell the true story of what happened -- and reveal the nature of the men involved. I'm really excited about the final product, because I know the extent of Andrew's and Erica's talent.

Also -- this is very exciting -- for those interested in writing and therapy, I am pleased to announce the launch of a national program, Read My Story, brought to you by the good people at the Mental Health Center of Crawford County, Kansas.

The idea is simple: People dealing with mental illness, alcohol and drug addiction, and other behavioral challenges can give each other hope.

One of the most valuable things we can do to help one another is to listen to each other's stories. --Rebecca Falls

The CMH has asked me to coordinate the web design and posting of submissions for Read My Story. If you or someone you know has an experience to share with readers, please, send in your narrative. Contact me at ReadMyStory.CMH@gmail.com.

I'm finally back from Anaheim, rested (somewhat), and ready to travel again this week. I'm tired, I will admit, and the words are coming slowly. I'm working on several short stories, including one called The Destroyer, which is based on the true story of a heavily-armored train in Siberia, and The Kurdish Shepard, about a boy and his dog in modern-day Iraq.

More than that, though, I will shortly be reviewing several new books -- some haven't been released, yet, so I'm hoping to build buzz for their authors -- that I picked up at the ALA convention. Top of the list is Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, a young adult novel about a boy raised by ghosts, and Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, a novel about Boston circa 1917. both are fantastic; I will review them, of course, but first I'd like to check with the editor and publicity teams to make sure that's all right.

As always, keep posted for details on new "Ask the Writer" interviews, upcoming events, and more.

Today Sarah and I leave our apartment on inflated rubber tires, northbound on Highway 13. We're driving up to Kansas City, spending the night at her parents' house, and tomorrow we will catch a flight to Anaheim. I already checked in; I have my sister's boarding pass, her boyfriend's, Sarah's, and mine. I can already hear the loudspeaker voice in the airport: Do not leave your bags unattended. The red zones are for loading and unloading.

I bought a book this morning especially for the trip, Blood Kin, which is terrific so far. It scares me a little. Reading it, I've begun to care deeply about certain characters; people who, in the world of the novel, find themselves in dangerous, even life-threatening, situations. I hope the novel isn't tragic. Fighting back tears on a flight to sunny California is less than cathartic; tragic novels are best read alone, in privacy. Or so I believe.

That's all for now. Upcoming events (in the world of this blog) include a comprehensive report on the American Librarian Association Convention; a detailed account of my behind-the-scenes zoo tour, which will take place this afternoon at Dickerson Park; and an interview on Ask the Writer with accomplished author Benjamin Percy.

Last weekend I flew to Boston, via Providence and Chicago, and I met Sarah in Rhode Island. Then we took the train across the bay and met my friend Andrew Jackson at the South Station. Drew attends the Boston Conservatory; he's a classical composer. From there it was a mad dash to a community theatre, where Erica Spyres, Drew's girlfriend, was debuting in her first East Coast show. The play was called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, loosely based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Sarah and I had a wonderful time, we all left together, and we ate Malaysian food at a restaurant near Erica and Drew's apartment.

Boston is an old city. Every building, including the apartment building, seems as if it was built between 1636 and 1942. Cathedrals and graveyards with crumbling headstones are sprinkled among the fast food chains, mega-bookstores, and office buildings. On Saturday we walked. We saw the graves of John Hancock, Ben Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, and Rev. John Winthrop (the true author of The City on the Hill speech). We ate sushi for lunch and walked down to the harbor where the fog was rolling in.

Saturday night we took the green and red trains to Harvard Square. I bought a sweatshirt with the Harvard name and colors. Sarah got a shirt, too. When the rain started in we ducked into a rare bookstore. The basement was stacked with books, and a Russian poster in the window promised potential. Drew spoted a rare autographed photo of a famous Canadian composer ($8,500). The owner of the store was Russian and he said, "It's very rare," when Drew gasped a little. I bought a first edition of The Short Stories of Anton Chekov ($19.95) published by the Modern Library and another book by Chekov's student, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for literature ($1.95). The second book was called The Gentleman From San Francisco & Other Stories. I couldn't resist! After that we had a wonderful seafood dinner and a beer.

Erica arrived home late from her second performance of Edwin Drood and Drew cooked her a heap of bacon. We were all exhausted from the walking during the day. Sarah and I had to get up early, find a ride to Providence, and fly out at 10:00 am or so. Drew called some of his friends, who pleasantly agreed to drive us up. We were very, very grateful, because it was that or an hour-long cab ride. So the friend, whose name was Matt, drove us into Rhode Island and we flew out. I can't wait to visit again next spring, when Drew and I will present our opera based on the final hours of life Rasputin spent (with his murderers). Maybe we'll run the Boston marathon, too... Maybe.

I would really love to keep messing around with Movable Type; I could work on it for hours. Unfortunately, slogging through code and forums is impairing my ability to write anything. I had considered continuing to work on it, but I just can't. I'll stop writing if I do, and professionally writing is what's important. So I'll probably stay with simple templates until I can set up something better. MT is wonderful, but I think that http://www.movalog.com/ will be equally so.

In other news, I'm still working on the project Grigorii, which it now appears will be part of a larger work. I'm going to write it as a short story first and then work with Andrew Paul Jackson to make it singable. I'll let you know more soon.

Also, it looks probable that I will be helping with Composing Ourselves, Missouri State's textbook for Freshman Composition. I will be working not only with the text (editing, composing, and layout) but also with the DVD supplement, which will feature authors talking about their experiences and techniques. The most important thing is that the ultimate content is 1) Well Made and 2) Engaging for Students.

More when I get the chance.

This weekend, tired of posting on a blog not integrated with my website, I spoke with my close friend Shan Pesaru at Sharp Hue, Inc. about my options. Today, Shan e-mailed me back and said that, despite a somewhat tricky installation, he had set up such a blog for me, powered by Movable Type, the same program that powered my blog on Typepad. As it happens, Shan has just finished re-launching his own site, which is available from the link above. And it is amazing. If you want to be wowed by a web design genius (or need help with your personal website), then Sharp Hue is the company to call.

The new blog format allows for more interactive discussion, including forums and a community blog which my students may be able to use in the future as a tool to discuss composition.

In the meantime, I have been working feverishly on stories. I received another rejection letter, this time from The Paris Review, but I put it in my binder with the others and tried not to let it slow me down. I have an appointment to meet with the Ph.D. program coordinator at the University of Missouri, Kansas City on February 22nd. I am traveling to Las Vegas in March, and then hopefully to Boston in April, if I can scrounge up the money.

My fiancé and I will fly to Boston, both of us to work. For my part, I'll be working with Andrew Paul Jackson, a contributor to The Red Ink Journal and student at the Boston Conservatory, on a  performance piece dealing with the assassination of Grigorii Rasputin, the spiritual adviser to the final generation of the Romanov family, autocrats of Russia. Rasputin was known for his lechery, his alluring personality, his political influence, and his miracle cures concerning the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexii Romanov. Some of these have never been explained by science.

The main concern of this story is portraying all the people involved not as caricatures, but as flawed human beings. Easier said than done, when so much history has passed and the legends of early-century Russia obscure most facts.

So Andrew and I face a serious problem: How do we make Grigorii Rasputin human again, when he is now so closely associated with the Devil Incarnate?

For that matter, how do we tease out the subtleties of Russian politics? The plot carried out by Felix Yusupov and Dmitri Pavolvich, the self-righteous assassins, best friends, and (perhaps) homosexual lovers who ultimately confessed their part in the murder? The hysterical Tsarina Alexandra, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who's reliance on mysticism, hysterical codependency, and dominance over her husband (not to mention her disdain for popular opinion) ultimately led to her family's grisly end?

That's to say nothing of England's MI-5 and MI-6, the secret service, who may have helped to end Rasputin's life, or at least to hasten it. What of the disfigured ex-whore, Khiona Gusyeva, who tried to kill Rasputin first? Disfigured by syphilis, Khiona stabbed Grigorii - and almost succeeded in killing him - long before the monk met his final death. What of Fyodor Kyzmin, the patrolman who found Rasputin's boot washed up against the icy latticework of an iron bridge - long before Grigorii's body was recovered.

And what of the miracle? When the Tsarevich suffered a blow that should have killed him, lying near death, blood clotting in his groin and hours from expiring, Grigorii Rasputin prayed feverishly from 1,000 miles away, prayed so hard that he 'turned gray' and nearly passed out himself. The Tsarevich's internal bleeding, which is the main concern of  hemophilia, stopped abruptly, as Rasputin predicted. Science never explained the episode. It is either a miracle or a coincidence. Rasputin is said to have 'truly loved' small children and animals, despite being a known criminal. Clearly this was a complex man.

All right, okay, enough is enough. I still have work to do today; let's fire this up and see if it works.