I have a lot on my mind, a lot brewing. I’m just back from Sweden. A week of production on the documentary. Halmstad is a small city on the West Coast, two hours by train north of Copenhagen, which is about two hours by plane from Budapest, gate to gate.

A few photos:

Halmstad is a charming place, small by major metropolitan standards. The people are friendly and I really enjoy the food.

Anyway, I’m back now and figured it was time to share an update on my other works. The novel formerly and lovingly known as Budapastiche has been rebranded, moved out of working title status and has achieved its forever name, which I will now reveal to be this:

Another Morning at Balettcipő

I left off the weekly dispatches at the beginning of last year, at which time I started working on the last hundred pages or so. That took about six months, and then I started rewriting and editing and such. Then some more editing and hell this is really boring, so suffice to say I am ready to share it with anyone who would like to read the final product. I’m hoping to have a formal publication plan for later this year, but I am letting it swirl around with the fates a while longer.

If you email me I will send you a digital copy in the format of your convenience, kindle or Books for the iPad.

In other literary news, I am editing my follow-up novel to AMAB and that manuscript has a working title that goes something like this:

Dead Prague

What can I say about Dead Prague? It’s a first-person jaunt instead of the carousel POV of Another Morning. It tells the story of a struggling writer who painted himself into a corner by way of an impulsive life choice, and that corner is a city that he despises. He moves to Prague for a gig, but in a Godot-like fashion the were gets perpetually delayed, so three weeks turns into three months and he’s marooned in a disgusting flat with a band of misfit expat pornographers. As he eddies out, he’s left to examine the city, its infection of tourists and expats, while distracting himself with his new accidental community of freaks and weirdos.

I have both feminine and masculine muses. I won’t get into that right now, but I had been itching to indulge the latter via prose that nods to my Miller/Thompson (Hunter) influences. And so the world will have Dead Prague with which to reckon. Whereas AMAB was a more sensitive meditation on the matters of the heart simmered in patience, presence, and surrender, Dead Prague is a bit more caustic and confrontational. The protagonist is a sharp-tongued cynic who berates the world for its shortcomings, which of course reflect his own.

Food is on the way. This means Anita. Spanish name, Czech girl. Anita is the only woman who talks about loving Krys. Songbird perched on an alligator spine. She wants a life beyond Prague, thinks maybe one day Krys will come to his senses and want to settle down in Barcelona or Paris, but for now she barters her beauty for companionship with wealthy men who need a statue for their crooked elbows. Under the guise of modeling she travels to Athens, Dubai, Paris, all jet-set, never settling for first class.

You'll find a full sample at the far end of this hyperlink.

I hope to get through this edit/rewrite by the end of the year, then we’ll see what the damn thing needs.

I’m on the balcony now, Sunday morning, there’s rain out there, distant thunder moves closer, and the heat wave is over. A breeze pushes the dark clouds closer, and now the raindrops multiply on the edge of the table.

Last night, dinner with Marta and Radko. Oysters were wildly expensive, the equivalent of $6 US a piece. Somehow I racked up a 20,000 forint bill. The joint was run by Ukrainians.

Now the rain falls, but the eaves of the building protect me, and there’s a bee that often shows up when I write out here, and he’s here again. He seems to heed my commands: cut it out, don’t drink that, and there’s nothing inside.

The thunder rolls, and still no rain on my table. When you can smell the rain before it arrives, it always smells the same - smells like wet dust, a little metallic. Then when the rain comes, it becomes the rain of Budapest, the rains of Rappahannock (1975, specifically), rains of Brooklyn, rains of the Sonoran Desert. All kindred smells but as unique as siblings.

Raindrops test the table, and if they remain modest, I might just let them pucker the surface of this page.

But no, it sounds like the rain is tapering off now, and the rolling thunder carries an air of resignation. A few more passionate roars like the old lion that no one wants to disappear.

Who’s still with me?