Jesus in the Ghost Room Reviewed & Other Incidentals

Hi all. Zvi Ses­ling wrote a short review of Jesus in the Ghost Room over on Doug Holder's Boston Area Small Press and Poet­ry Scene. I'm pleased to say he found it worth read­ing, and I hope you do too.

If you're still on the fence about it after Zvi's word, here's what Bill Sol­dan had to say about it in a recent Ama­zon review:

As Barnes grap­ples with what it’s like to be an indi­vid­ual, to feel lone­ly in a world of dif­fer­ence and con­tention and uncer­tain­ty, to rec­on­cile one’s roots to one’s present cir­cum­stance, and to process the immi­nent death of our loved ones, among oth­er uni­ver­sal crises of the heart, he leaves in each honed line a piece of him­self, and we’re damn lucky to have him.

You can pur­chase a copy through Nix­es Mate Books, via Ama­zon, or your local indie book­seller. In oth­er poet­ry news, I'll have a rhyming poem com­ing up in the Five-Two, your week­ly dose of crime poet­ry, and I'll blast the link on social media when the time comes.

My recent Kraj nov­el has shuf­fled off its mor­tal coil. I just can't do the sec­tions set in the past jus­tice to my sat­is­fac­tion, nor afford to trav­el to Croa­t­ia to research fur­ther, and I'm not even entire­ly sure it's my sto­ry to tell any­more. I've writ­ten a lot of Kraj sto­ries set in the present, but writ­ing the events of his for­ma­tive years, dur­ing the very com­plex wars in the region, despite all my research, is beyond my capa­bil­i­ty right now. It may not always be so. I'm still read­ing about the time peri­od, still seek­ing out oth­er nov­els, all in all still very much inter­est­ed. But the writ­ing has ground to a not unwel­come halt. I bitched on Face­book about it already, so no need to com­mis­er­ate; besides, I've anoth­er nov­el in progress already, it's just too ear­ly to talk about it.

Hav­ing said that, I'm con­cen­trat­ing on poet­ry for the time being, draft­ing three or four poems a day and hop­ing one of them will end up a keep­er, and research­ing new mar­kets for the stuff. I also have some short sto­ries in the works, and anoth­er one avail­able in the recent Switch­blade. If dark and nasty trips your trig­ger, this one may be for you. As one Ama­zon review­er put it, "Rusty Barnes nailed it with an unex­pect­ed tale of bad guys who did bad­der things–things I couldn't believe. And the skank in that story…wow." You can find Switch­blade Sixx on Ama­zon in print or Kin­dle form.