Final Call for Submissions to The Book of Scorpio!

Final call!

Brighten Press is publishing a paperback and e-book anthology of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction with a SCORPIO theme.

Deadline March 31, 2020.

Previously published work welcome.

Details at Brighten Press.

Reminder: Submit Your Writing to the Scorpio Anthology!

Brighten Press is publishing a paperback and e-book collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction with a Scorpio theme.

The deadline for submissions to the Scorpio anthology is March 21, 2020. 

Previously published work is welcome, as long as you retain all publication rights.

More information and submission guidelines are available at brightenpress.com/creatives.shtml.

Thank you, and we look forward to reading your work.

Open Call for the Scorpio Anthology

Open call for submissions for a new writing anthology!

BrightenPress is publishing a paperback and e-book collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction with a Scorpio theme.

The deadline for submissions to the Scorpio anthology is March 21, 2020.

More information and submission guidelines available at brightenpress.com/creatives.shtml.

Thank you, and we look forward to reading your work.

from "Taliesin"

Read Render by Gene Hult, poems of love and making believe.

Available in Kindle and paperback editions at brightenpress.com.

from "Lascaux"

Render, poems of love and manifestation by Gene Hult.

Please visit brightenpress.com for more information.

Render, Poems of Manifestation, Available Now

Read Render now.

Paperback

Kindle

Or visit brightenpress.com for more information.

Render: Poetry Book Available Now in Paperback and Kindle

My debut collection of poetry, Render, is now available in Kindle and paperback editions from Brighten Press.

Please visit brightenpress.com for more information.

Or buy it directly from Amazon:

Render paperback

Render Kindle

Thanks!

Render Kindle Edition Now Available for Pre-order!

I'm thrilled to announce that the Kindle edition of Render, my first poetry collection, is now available for pre-order. It will be delivered July 12, 2018.

Paperback and iBooks editions are coming very soon!

A teaser from "Early AM Mysteries":

Nothing remains to believe
except the possibility of belief—
lessening the definition of hope
into nothing more substantial
than bones and skin and
the terror of daybreak.

In the silence of the overnight,
the refrigerator’s sudden buzzing
is a muted alarm, a warning cry
of omen and portent as I leap
from futon to coffee table to loveseat,
afraid of the ravenous piranhas
lurking beneath the surface
of the gray industrial carpeting.

I am tired
of proclamations of doom.

The damp cold is an uninvited guest
boring me with oft-repeated tales
of miseries more dire than my own.

My constant self-imposed solitude
has bewildered the boundaries
of the real and the actual,
like this snowy mountain peak
I hold in the palm of my hand.



The full version of this poem is included in the Kindle edition of Render.

Thanks!
Gene

Render

The diamond firebird—ashes he stirs.

Hear me keening for understanding,
my love? Wait, not yet, while I paint
another sequined scrim of myself.


My first book of poetry, Render, will be available from Brighten Press in paperback, Kindle, and iBook editions on July 12, 2018.

To say I'm excited about this would be an incredible understatement.

I'm calling these "poems of manifestation" because they include themes of creativity, creation, self-actualization, and identity, as well as summoning love into one's life.

These poems span nearly 30 years of writing.

I hope they will be as meaningful to you as they are to me.

Please check out genehult.com or brightenpress.com for more information.

Cabinet of Horrors

It seems as though Donald Trump is picking the worst possible people for his Presidential Cabinet. It's like an open call for the most evil human pieces of garbage in America.

At What Does Henry Stare?

In certain old wives' tales, it was said that you could see ghosts and spirits if you peer through the space between a dog's perked ears.

Review: The Wise Man's Fear

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The second volume in the Kingkiller Chronicle continues the arcanist Kvothe's fascinating journey to his destiny. Again, it's a wonderful fantasy novel, full of surprise, magic, adventure, excitement, and characters to care about.

And again, the accretion of Kvothe's influences and education is the real thrill. Few shortcuts are taken by Rothfuss as he details all the information Kvothe takes in. For all the adventure, it's ultimately an academic quest he's on, and one that's never less than fully engrossing.

The genre influences of the story are equally as compelling. There's academic life like Harry Potter and The Magicians. There's an unreliable but hilarious and lovable narrator like in Gary Jenning's awesome Aztec (and somewhat lesser The Journeyer). There are basic quests abroad that remind of Dungeons and Dragons, Lord of the Rings, Elric of Melnibone, and even Adventure Time, among many others. Ultimately, though, the style and storyline create an entirely entertaining narrative that transcends its amalgamations.

I particularly enjoyed the digressions of place in this book -- across the seas to a new city, with a new set of social mores to decode, and into the realm of the fey, for some fun sexual training with a goddess.

It's all a delight to read. And the biggest sorrow when it's over is that the final book in the trilogy hasn't been completed yet, and is apparently a few years late! Hurry, Patrick! We want more Kvothe! Don't leave us hanging.

Review: The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a terrific fantasy novel. After a somewhat pokey opening frame, we get into the history and childhood -- the influences -- of the hero Kvothe hiding in plain sight as an innkeeper in a small town. What I love most about this book is its sense of being unhurried. Rothfuss takes his time, drawing us into lovingly delineated and described worlds, letting us live there, showing how Kvothe gathers his experiences step by step, building the man he becomes.

Kvothe is a fascinating and funny individual, vastly and multidimensionally talented but subject to a brashness and temper that often gets him into trouble. Nothing is entirely easy, and even though he's given more gifts than most, he's also dealt some truly difficult blows by fate.

I love a training narrative. We follow Kvothe as he learns on the mean streets far from his wandering clan, pulls himself to his next goal, and starts his perilous magical, practical, and musical education at an academy. It's all rendered in meticulous detail, showing us all the fun parts of learning, and all the frustrations, too. I was spellbound.

The language only helps. Lovely metaphors abound, and Rothfuss's writing is as good in a thoughtful moment as it is at an exciting fever pitch.

It's one of those long, sprawling bildungsroman in which you keep checking how much is left of the book because you don't want it to end.

Thankfully, the next book, The Wise Man's Fear, is available!

Early AM Yearning

Nothing remains to believe

except the possibility of belief—

lessening the definition of hope

into nothing more substantial

than bones and skin and

the terror of daybreak.

In the silence of the overnight,

the refrigerator's sudden buzzing

in a muted alarm, a warning cry

of omen and portent as I leap

from futon to coffee table to loveseat,

afraid of the ravenous piranhas

lurking beneath the surface

of the gray industrial carpeting.

I am tired

of proclamations of doom.

The damp cold is an uninvited guest

boring me with oft-repeated tales

of miseries more dire than my own.

My constant self-imposed solitude

has bewildered the boundaries

of the real and the actual,

like this snowy mountain peak

I hold in the palm of my hand.

While rainwater rushes down the slope

of my urban street transformed into falls,

the city lists, slumping alarmingly to the left,

jittering in a woozy double take.

Beautiful, glorious—I love you, Rosie—

the weather rolls in over the hills

like the foam frothed on a winter sea.

The true amazement:

that any madness intersects

with the obsessions of another,

that a common ground may

ever be reached. Yes,

I expect to be special,

but no preparation was possible

for the awestruck gape, the unique moment

of honest interpersonal surprise.

What do you believe in?

Don't leave me alone

adrift on this dinky dinghy,

riddling with constant curious inquiry,

believing there’s always more to believe.

The names of inks and archaic typefaces,

the word for the new feathers

on a molting mallard, progress

of geographical boundaries and canals

stretching the width of home states

into dead celebrities who may still be

kicking, details of unconsciously memorized

minutia must be taken on faith.

Gaps of knowledge demanding

specialized expertise—not only

can everything not be known,

there are always endless realms

of experiential information

to which I will never be exposed.

Inventing data in the trenches,

Canyons of hypothesized grout

flaking in the sunshine

like the sloughing amberized surface

of early miracle polymers.

I cannot ford these crevasses

with the achy stiff length of my body,

or devote my life's passions to creating

Gothic suspensions of stone or steel.

Creating a virtual analogue

to hypnotize the psyche into believing

in the level surface of the walking path

is derangement, an ignorance

of the possibility of scattered palm frond

underbrush and dusted branches

disguising a dug pit, footfalls

plunging onto befouled bungee sticks.

And yet the carpet is composed

of unnamable woven petroleum fibers

spun in a process I cannot describe.

Whispered answers suggest themselves,

wapiti, grafted seedless grapes, Marisa Tomei,

snippets of skimmed trivia

longing for an enzyme-protein connection

triggering a synthetic catalytic reaction

of what might momentarily stand as fact.

Another day has shimmered past

as today blurs to become tomorrow.

The collective scope of our project

is as generational as a cathedral.

Honest Abe

Sometimes it trips me out how strange and unique looking Abraham Lincoln was. He accentuated it. That posture. The attenuated great coat. That hat.

It must have been so striking seeing him speak in front of a crowd. Tall people have this advantage as politicians, as leaders, because the loom above the rabble.

Idiosyncratic fashion and countenance can only help recognition. This man's appearance was famous before the Internet, before TV, before movies. To hear such intelligence, such reason, fountain out of such a striking man must have been awesome in person.

Not handsome. Rough-hewn, even simian, elongated alien. Rangy as the Wild West.

At his first inauguration, March 4, 1861:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

It will take stature, fortitude, and mythic singularity to keep us from being torn apart again.

Review: An Acceptable Time

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A solid time travel story, set in L'Engle's familiar world, which is always a pleasure to return to. (When did the older Murrays get so cranky, though?)

Polly O'Keefe, Meg and Calvin's daughter, jumps back 3,000 years and gets entangled in a water dispute between two tribes on opposite sides of a lake. It's basically a way for L'Engle to pare down her intriguing morality play by honing it to its primal core without the distractions of modern technology or overwhelming population. Sometimes it errs on the side of didacticism, but the emotions feel real and strong, and I was never less than fully engaged in this little fable of sharing, jealousy, love, loyalty, and community versus self-interest.

Of particular satisfaction was the separation of morality from modern religion, connecting it back to its primeval animist and collectivist roots.

Review: Prince Lestat

Prince Lestat by Anne Rice

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



A fun return to Anne Rice's familiar Savage Garden, which is entirely enjoyable as long as we're in Lestat's heightened, passionate voice. Unfortunately, we jump into the points-of-view of some of the other, older vampires, and these Children of the Millennia aren't nearly as interesting as Lestat.

The plot is cool: a Voice is cajoling some of the ancient revenant vampires to arise and burn the legions of fledglings abounding in the world's cities, and the older and more powerful vampires band together to see how they can counter these attacks. Except that the source of the Voice threatens all of them at their core.

As often happens with Rice's novels, the build-up is poky, with much frittering and reveling in lush but drowsy detail. And, as usual, I was fully engaged in the payoff, when suddenly the purple prose fits the tale. Everything is always luscious delirium with Rice, everything is adored or loathed, and that extrasensory indulgence feels tiresome unless the action matches the emotion.

I loved hanging out with brash, impulsive, ardent Lestat again, but still I long for a more subtle Louis book, or one of Rice's vividly realized historical outings. This was entirely contemporary, and while that had its own pleasures, the setting and actions weren't always up to the fervent language.

I would give Prince Lestat 3 1/2 stars if possible.

Review: The Journeyer

The Journeyer by Gary Jennings

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




I keep debating whether to knock my rating of this book down to four stars, but I've decided that it's an amazing, fascinating, and enlightening book on its own merits. The problem I have is one of comparison: I loved Jennings's novel Aztec so much, and enjoyed that subject so completely, that The Journeyer suffers in its shadow.

Still, it's a terrific historical novel, filled with the accurate detail, bawdy entertainment, ticklish humor, and curiosity of culture that made Jennings famous. Basically, it's the story of Marco Polo's life and travels, with his journey from Venice along the Silk Road through Persia and Asia as the main event, with much of the book bringing to life his missions for the Kublai Khan. That's all a blast, and really interesting culturally, historically, and anthropologically, with the only weird sour note Polo's intense distaste for the Hindus in India.

Jennings's writing is supple and beautiful throughout, with terrific set piece descriptions, titillating sexual encounters, and believable characters. The level of research he must have done is a staggering accomplishment. It's never boring, and usually deeply engaging and informative.

And yet . . . maybe it's my own cultural biases, but I found the ancient Aztecs much more fascinating than 13th Century Asia. Marco Polo himself was brash and clever, but perhaps too stuck in his own Christian preconceptions to make him as great a narrator as Jennings previously achieved in earlier books.

Review: A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Devoured this in one great gulp. OMG, it made me cry so hard. Meg. Calvin. Charles Wallace. Aunt Beast. Gorgeous and extremely effective.

Review: Bedknobs and Beanstalks

Bedknobs and Beanstalks by E.M. Lynley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most of these sexy little gay fairy tales are quite nicely written, actually.