Paul's Putting A Face On Suicide poster will go to the fair with me I'll be signing books from ten to four tomorrow at the Ventura County Book Fair, and I'll read about ten minutes at 1:30 pm. The fair will be held in Camarillo California at the The Pleasant Valley Community Park Auditorium, 1605 Burnley Street. So I'd love to see my Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara county friends there. But just in case you can't make it, here are a couple of the poems I plan to read from my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. You might have read them here before, but for me they are timeless. My Jazzman My jazzman beat it out on the mighty eighty-eights, played those riffs, tapped his feet bent his head down to the keys, felt those sounds on his fingertips. Yeah, he was a hot man on those eighty-eights. But all too soon his bag grew dark. He went down, deep down. My jazzman played the blues, lost that spark, closed the lid. And, yeah, you got it right, quit the … [Read more...]
Midweek Work Progress Report
This week has been very productive. I've sent off my second piece for the PsychAlive website, and I got word from the editor that it's ready to go live. The piece is called Comforting Those Who Grieve. I'm still awaiting word from my Savvy Over 60 editor about when my November piece for them will be up. I also started working on a piece for a new blog I'm interested in called, Heartache to Healing, founded by grief coach, author, and speaker, JoAnne Funch. Hopefully, the piece will be good enough that I'll be allowed to contribute there once in a while as well. And I started working on my speech that I'm scheduled to make on November 19 for our local chapter of the American Association of University Women. It was suggested I talk about the mental health and suicide prevention services available in our area. I'll do that and expand the speech to tell my story of healing after my son's suicide that I describe in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. And surprise, surprise, I … [Read more...]
