Excerpts

Key West Story | A Novel

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 (The scene: Havana. The time: today. The characters: blocked and destitute Key West writer Con Martens; a young Ernest Hemingway, a.k.a. Nick Adams, sent from Writers Heaven to get Con back on track; Ricardo, a Cuban Navy scuba diver; his sister, Aurora.) When the rain stopped they left the bar and walked back down the [...]

Death in Mexico / Excerpt / Prologue

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Prologue Nicholas Petrov stood with hands clasped behind him looking out from his glass bubble. That’s how it seemed at times. Glass walls on two sides running floor to ceiling, no windows that would open, filtered air.  On the desk behind him glowing white words clung to a black screen and a telephone buzzed periodically. [...]

Christmas at Long Lake / Excerpt / The Lake

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  I come through the back door to the aroma of onions and bacon frying.  As I remove my coat I hear my father’s voice. “Maybe something closer will turn up.”  “It’s a good opportunity, Ed.”    “I’m not sure it’s right.  Besides, it won’t go away.”         “But it’s been two months now.”            “I know how [...]

Sleeping With Pancho Villa / Excerpt / “The Gift”

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The Gift He had just started across the zócalo, moving under the elms with white-painted trunks, where boat-tailed grackles were screeching noisily and settling in for the night, when he heard a voice calling through the din of the birds: “Amigo…Amigo…” Then another: “Hey, Jake!” A green-and-white cab circling the town square counter­clockwise pulled up [...]

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico | Excerpt | “De Efe”

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By Rick Skwiot Excerpted from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of a Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing Contact: publisher@antaeusbooks.com De Efe Mexicans call it, D.F., El Distrito Federal, or simply México. Licha was a chilanga, a native of the capital, a choking city of twelve million then, in 1983. I had agreed to accompany [...]