I won Honorable Mention! Here's Writer's Digest Review of my novel, CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN

I paid $99 to enter my e-book into the Writer's Digest Self Published Book Competition. I would say that I got my money's worth.  I received Honorable Mention.  It wasn't the DREAM PRIZE, $5,000 and an agency contract, plus a lot of major attention.  The review tells me that the reviewer understood the book's basic theme.  The only thing he missed is how often the book is very funny. So.. Here it is.

Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 5

Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 5

Production Quality and Cover Design: 5

Plot and Story Appeal: 5

Character Appeal and Development: 5

Voice and Writing Style: 5

Judge’s Commentary*: 

 Confessions Of An Honest Man by Arthur Rosch brings the reader a story of conflict, abuse of different sorts, family dysfunction and eventual triumph over obstacles. This novel is skillfully written to give insight into some dark places of life without overwhelming the reader. The protagonist, Aaron Kantro, carries an awesome burden on his shoulders from first page to last.  As we follow his story and his commitment to his musical calling we are given glimpses of others who are part of Aaron's life. The story spans several decades from Aaron's boyhood to becoming a parent.A highly dysfunctional family sets the tone for all of Aaron's woes.  An abusive mother who suffers mental illness takes a toll on the lives of her children and spouse. As Aaron discovers the call of his muse to music, his mother thwarts his every effort to success.  Despite her obstruction, Aaron climbs his way to success in the face of his own and others' abuse of drugs.  The author gives an excellent insight to the effects of parental abuse on the other members of Aaron's familly.  This book is  an excellent read if more than a bit dark at times.  The ultimate triumph is worth the agonizing stops along the way with Aaron, Zoot and the rest.  Rosch has carefully constructed good characterizations, good dialogue and good descriptive passages.  This is likely a book I would not have picked up on my own but I am better for having read it.  It is one that I will carry with me for a long time.  Confessions Of An Honest Man should achieve wide readership and success.

A Review of My Soon-to-be Published Novel

John Coltrane

I began writing CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN thirty years ago.  I acquired a high profile literary agent named Scott Meredith, thanks to the sale of a short story to Playboy Magazine.  The story won Playboy's Best Story Award for the year.  It seemed that I was shot out of a rocket; my career was launched and I had editors at Meredith's agency helping me with CONFESSIONS etc. In spite of this stroke of amazing fortune, that was not my best year.  It was almost my worst.  I had big problems, personal problems.  The editor helped me with the book, but I was not yet mature as a writer.  The book required that I trace the lives of characters across fifty years.  I was barely over twenty years old. Then Scott Meredith passed away and so did my opportunity.

I continued writing and finished CONFESSIONS and other projects.  When I started passing CONFESSIONS around to literary agents the landscape of publishing had changed.  The era of vampires and tycoon-erotica had taken hold.  I heard this phrase hundreds of times: "While your writing is excellent, I find that I haven't fallen in love with your book and I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

There are so many people writing so many books these days that it's difficult to get ANYONE to read my manuscript.  I don't blame people for giving me the swish n' pass treatment.  In spite of so many obstacles, I'm stubborn and I believe in what I'm doing.  Now, thanks to my "excellent writing", there are people willing to read me, and not only read me but fall in love with my work.

Lin Ross is an email acquaintance.  I don't know the gentleman; he's  a fine novelist and we have a good online rapport. I decided to send him the manuscript of CONFESSIONS.  Yesterday I received this review of CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN, written by novelist/poet/musician/artist Lin Ross. I thank Lin from the depths of my heart.  He is nurturing and unselfish, a rare bird indeed.  To read the first two chapters, click this link:Confessions Of An Honest Man

"Confessions of An Honest Man"  a Novel by Art Rosch

 Reviewed by Lin Ross

What happens when the desires we think we want for the majority of our lives dangle there, within our grasp?   What happens when those special almost golden people who loomed as heroes prove to be not gods, but flawed and human?   "Confessions of an Honest Man," by Art Rosch , answers those intriguing questions, and sheds new light upon an era, a cultural explosion and an art-form too often romanticized, but rarely given the life, breath, and rhythms it truly deserves.  I speak here of the world of jazz and its players.  

Author Art Rosch masterfully takes our hand and leads us through the life of  his protagonist, Aaron Kantro from the  age of nine into adulthood where he meets his idol, the jazz legend "Zoot Prestige." In Rosch's world there is black and white (in the complexion of his characters, in society, and in metaphor), but there are also sweeping portions and broad strokes of gray. That gray is far more fascinating for it is there that the realities of these often harsh and sometimes painfully beautiful dualities exist.  

Is this the story a lost boy seeking a father figure? Yes... to a degree, perhaps. Between the pages, lurking there inside the lines, this is so much more. This is about life and how, in a moment, it can show us its most dazzlingly wonderful face, and then in the blink of an eye, its most hideous, ass-ugly underside.

There is a certain genius in the storytelling and when young Aaron makes it to 1960s New York City, the sound, fury and poignancy of jazz embraces you like a cool cerulean blue spot of neon. You are lost and found inside the grooves of these talented musicians: you are a blues traveler walking beside the cool bop of their struts and frets.  

Any young person reading this impressively inclusive novel might want to leave the warm yet stifling cocoon of home to venture out into the vast unknown, join a band, be hungry, and then be fed by the art of of creation. However, be forewarned, there are cautionary tales around almost every bend, and sometimes getting what we THINK we want might end up breaking our hearts in the process.  

This is one of those rare books filled with the liveliness of characters, dialogue, lessons, and such lushly vivid storytelling that the reader is haunted long after the final page is closed. Such is the poignancy and the precision of Rosch's pen.  

I look forward to more work from this author, because Art Rosch is a singular and deeply unique presence in the writing world: a truth-teller, an intrepid reporter of the streets and a chronicler of the human heart. This is an Artist who truly understands The Blues Condition and it is reflected so intriguingly here. 

BRAVO, Mr. Rosch! BRAVO!

Predators In The Crowd-funding World

            Two weeks ago I launched my second crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo.  I've been taken by surprise by the number of new businesses that have sprung up in the wake of the crowd-funding phenomena.  Most of these are Public Relations firms who promise to manage my campaign, disseminate press releases, boost my Facebook "Likes" and bring my project such great success that I'll double and triple my fundraising goals.  My first campaign went through Fundly.  It was pretty successful.  I got my e-book published on Smashwords.  The funds paid for formatting a long book.  All the hyperlinks are in place, the Table Of Contents can be clicked to beam the reader to the chapter of choice.  The Fundly campaign and subsequent e-publishing with Smashwords was a great experience.

            Yesterday I got the first of several offers that carry an obvious stink.  It was said by Barnum that a sucker is born every minute.  He left out the corollary.  Also born every minute is an opportunist or a predator who will wring that sucker dry of his last dime.  This is what I was offered: "Pay me five dollars," said the emailer, "and I will donate one dollar to your campaign and mention you on a Facebook page and leave a link to your fundraiser."

            I read it two or three times.  Oh.  How clever.  I followed the link back to the website.  It was hosted by Fiverr.com.  If you don't know, Fiverr is an internet marketplace specializing in Five Dollar "gigs", as they're called.  Services or performances are offered, such as "For five dollars I will make a video for your child's birthday featuring my puppet, 'Adam Baumtester'. On-time delivery guaranteed." I have no problem with funny puppets or any kind of low-cost service. There's something mildly sleazoid about exploiting a struggling artist, taking five dollars and charging me four of those dollars to get my name onto a Facebook page whose address I don't know.  Since yesterday I've gotten yet more offers.  The next one wanted two dollars for mention of my fundraiser on his unspecified Facebook and Twitter accounts.  How fast do I have to bail my boat to keep it from sinking?  How much water is leaking into the boat in proportion to how much water I've dumped over the side with my little old tablespoon?

            I've been solicited by companies with higher profiles and higher fees.  Crowdzilla.com has several "packages" that run from two to five hundred dollars and offer comprehensive PR deals that involve mainstream press releases, targeted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and other Social Media.  I have marveled for twenty years at the way new jobs have been created by technology, jobs whose descriptions would have been incomprehensible in the sixties of seventies.  When i wonder what kind of work my grandchildren may be doing when they grow up I accept that the job descriptions may not yet exist and will emerge in time.

            When we were young hippies and yuppies, did we have a clue?  Did we expect to become webmasters, software developers, internet marketers?  When my seven year old grandson comes of age, he may be going to a school that lies yet unborn in some East Bay park,  a place doomed to a bulldozer mauling and the crush of concrete as it becomes The Saul Stoofner School of Nano-Cellular Osmosis.

            It's possible.  Everything is possible in  this fairyland of a planet gripped by climate change and overpopulated to the extent that a mass die-off of homo sapiens may become a necessity if we are to survive at all.

            I am convinced that we will survive.  The species of man is evolving, quickly.  The young ones are different, their bodies are more flexible, their brains more accessible to nature's innovations.  Human life will continue.  After the darkness comes the change.  I just wish nature had a mechanism for culling the assholes among us and sparing those with kind hearts and willing minds.

            

When Did Artists Drop To The Bottom Rung Of The Social Order?

When I'm at a social gathering, talking to an attractive young lady, I am better prepared conversationally than I was in my naive younger years.  Such encounters depend upon time-honored gambits: you exchange names, express musical preferences, and soon it's time for the inevitable question: so, what do you do?

          To think; To THINK! that once upon a time I would blithely answer with some honesty.  Oh, I said smoothly, I'm a writer.

          I might as well have said "I carry herpes samples in petri dishes to labs where they test for new medicines in the ongoing struggle against the Herpes Simplex virus and, yes, I have been exposed, it's an occupational hazard."

          I'm a writer, I used to say, thinking that was the cool thing.  I kept my other vocation in reserve.  I was already embarrassed about being a musician and seldom confessed that I was one of THOSE.  My tattoos had been removed and I never..ever..wore any kind of hat but if we trace further back into the days of my youth we would find that time, yes...THAT time...when I would tell a girl I was chatting up at a party that I am a musician.  Well, I play drums among other instruments, uhhuh uhhuh..a little keyboard, and I do some songwriting.

          It is testament to my burgeoning maturity that I am no longer such a moron as to tell the truth in early- stage flirting conversation.  A writer!  What was I thinking?  Does anything sound more like simpering self-delusion?  Should I reveal that I sit around for most of the day tapping at a keyboard and sending query emails into that immense yet oh so tiny void that existed before the Big Bang, that place where nothing exists, not even intention and certainly not rejection slips of digital brevity?  I make less money than a janitor.  In fact, janitor is my day job, the one I can't quit lest I starve.  I will be asked politely what I have written and I must respond either cutely or sorrowfully.  I haven't published anything important, no best sellers I'm afraid.  Or I'm the guy that wrote ECHOES OF BOILING LOBSTER SCREAMS or YOUR TITS ALMOST SHOW COMPLETELY BUT YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT.  Or I'm the guy who's gotten filthy rich on the Young Adult wizard series YOUR MOUTH IS OPEN YOUR MOUTH IS OPEN YOUR MOUTH IS ALWAYS OPEN.  When I get around to writing the last of the series, YOUR MOUTH IS FINALLY CLOSED AND NOW WE KNOW WHY BECAUSE ITS REALLY AN UGLY THIN-LIPPED LITTLE MOUTH I will sweep my winnings into a tidy pile and depart for casinos run by The Sultan Of Brunei.  When I've lost all my money I will open a little business sharpening vampires' teeth.  I took that six month course at the online University Of East Oakland,"Sharpening Vampire Teeth: a growing lucrative field of dental specialization."

          I have two questions.  Did the calling of Artist take a precipitous drop in prestige or has it always been this way and perceptive artists are only now realizing that the world could give a shit if they're artists (THE WORLD DOESN'T CARE)?!!  I think it's a little of both but when I was last indeed put on the spot for "what do I do?" I experienced icy fingers of apathy creeping along the paths of my nerves and it hit me forcefully: artists are at the bottom of the pecking order artists are laughable poseurs artists are as honored as public masturbators.  I'm talking about REAL artists with real talent, those with soul-crushing passion and experience of the lethal dangers of the psyche. They don't count they never have counted. If there has ever been a time when they counted less it's right now.  Creative people no longer have even the shelter of those little camps they set up for creative people, camps called Mental Hospitals::::there are no more mental hospitals there's no place you can go if you're creative or even if you think you're creative.

          Things are really bad for a society when this happens.  It's like when they decide to kick out all the Jews.  An empire suddenly takes a nose dive when it kicks out its Jews. It happens every time. Jews are like that healthy intestinal bacteria, Jews are the Acidophilus of a society and when the Jews go so does the digestion. The Spanish Armada was drowned shortly after Spain expelled the Jews.  Without Jews there sets in intellectual and moral diarrhea..HEY!  I'M A JEW. I CAN SAY THIS!

          Yow.  I got carried away there.  I'm just so upset.  I don't tell people I'm a writer any more.   I hide my creativity.  That's really scary, when I'm embarrassed to be like one of those people who are psychic but don't admit it because they don't want to be seen as some kind of nut.  I'm not a nut5 bllleeeeh bllleeeehhhh I'm not I'm not I see dead people.  Okay, I'm an artist, I've said it.  I'm the guy at the health club who makes the wrong adjustment and gets thrown backwards off the treadmill, thrown sprawling on top of a weight bench that is currently occupied by a red haired red bearded three  hundred pound Judo instructor. I'm that guy.  Yeah, I'm that guy.