matt love books

New Nestucca Spit Press Projects

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Friends of Nestucca Spit Press

I want to update you on NSP’s latest creative projects and invite your support to assist an independent Oregon publisher during these challenging times for small businesses. Some of these are free to enjoy while others can be purchased directly through the website. Thanks for supporting Nestucca Spit Press.

Matt Love

Pioneer Pride

Pioneer Pride: An Oregon City Memoir is a 20,000-word book published in 500-800-word installments on my Nestucca Spit Press Meditations blog. It chronicles my growing up in Oregon City in the 70s and early 80s and features stories about hackey sack, calligraphy, football, tennis, the Promenade, the mill, journalism, teachers, coaches, text from my journals of in high school, and a personal account of observing and interacting with a unique Christian sect, the Oregon City Followers of Christ Church, or the Kissers.

The book is free to read but I hope readers will consider “purchasing” it through the web site and support a writer at work. To read Pioneer Pride go to:

http://www.nestuccaspitpress.com/blog/category/oregon-city/

Vortex e-book

Published in 2004, The Far Out Story of Vortex I, sold out its 2000-copy press run a couple years later. To commemorate Vortex I’s 50th anniversary in 2020, Nestucca Spit Press has produced an E-book version of the book. This E-book version does not include the hundreds of photographs from the original because of their incompatibility with reading on devices and securing permission from the photographers to reprint them in digital form. The book cost $3.99 and the link to it is here:

Nestucca Spit Press Presents

Psychedelic Chipmunk

A limited edition, handcrafted children’s book for adults about a magic mushroom-eating chipmunk named Jimmy who teaches a would-be writer how to help struggling people all around him and find a voice and purpose for his writing. (Based on a true story.) Cost is $10

Nestucca Spit Press Presents

Oregon Tavern Age

Oregon Tavern Age (OTA) is a 64-page tabloid size book-with-in-a-magazine featuring original illustrations that culminates 22 years of writing about the crazy and poignant life that unfolds in Oregon Coast’s dive taverns and bars. Cost varies by number of issues purchased.

Nestucca Spit Press Presents

Secret Coast Radio podcast

Enjoy 20 episodes featuring my observations, stories, poems, musings and original music from the show’s producer. Each show is around 20 minutes long and offers a welcome dose of humor, idealism, wordplay and meditation for these trying times. Totally free! And ad free! To listen to the show go to:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Nestucca Spit Press Writing Curriculum

The Nestucca Spit Press Writing Curriculum features 30 lessons that I developed over the course of my long teaching career and used with great success. They are primarily in nonfiction writing, but also in fiction. Most are thematic in nature. They can be used by secondary classroom teachers, aspiring writers and online writing educators. The subjects are:

Zen Buddhism

Walking

Rain

Oceans

Food

Music

Stars

Kindness and Gratitude

Sartre Writing (for beginning or experienced writers)

Trips and Journeys

Connections

Dreams

Bikes and Bicycling

Running

Love

Gardening

Murder Mystery Prompts

Time

Forts

Golden Openers (how to begin a piece of writing)

Truth

Faces

Last Words (about capital punishment)

Creative Writing Questionnaire (for beginning writers)

Writing Inspiration (for beginning writers)

Personal narrative/mini memoir

Creating a detective character

Creating a superhero character

Childhood

To read more about each lesson and purchase, go to:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Nestucca-Spit-Press-Writing-Curriculum

The Bonnie and Clyde Files…another excerpt

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , , , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out and I have a few copies left of this limited edition (300) run. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

The book features 10 poetic interludes, where I channel Walt Whitman to make sense of the madness and inhumanity I witnessed, scenes I will never forget:

Below is an excerpt:

I lean against the wall

inside the probation office.

Joint is packed.

Reprobates are jacked.

I read Walt Whitman

at random

waiting for a form

to set me free.

It’s come to that:

a form for freedom

in a democracy.

Can you believe

they want it in longhand?

To my right

two couples

make out

before their

meetings and drug tests.

Nothing surprises in here

not the sparkled jeans

nor the man reading Macbeth,

not the dog food coupons

to feed human beings

nor the reek of fish.

Okay, this making out does

these two couples!

It’s like that poem

“Kissing” by Dorianne Laux.

A stanza reads:

They are kissing
to begin the world again. Nothing
can stop them…

they are doing what they have to do
to survive the worst

It’s the one human act

the State can’t take from us.

Even in here:

fluorescent lights

plastic chairs

gray carpet.

It’s an act of secret rebellion

smack dab in the open

face to face

in our faceless times

not a reckoning

but a puckering.

I read another line from Walt.

He writes a lot about kissing

but never uses the word.

I watch the couples,

the two women

angled toward me,

their eyes closed.

One has slipped her feet

out of flip flops.

She is barefoot

and kissing

in the probation office.

The Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (1)

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , , ,

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out.

This is book launch week and in the following days I will share some excerpts from the book and other writing related to it.

I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

Only 300 copies of the book were printed. It is not available in bookstores (yet). Your purchase of this special edition will help keep me in the writing and publishing game. I have a lot more stories to tell.

About the book:

“In 2017, at the age of 53, I experienced an extinction of self. For the first time in my life, I could not get a job, I was nearly broke, and I had no freedom of movement or conscience. I was an American outcast trapped in a labyrinth known as probation, desperately engaged in the ultimate struggle to stave off marginalization. There I was, lying on the couch, talking to my dead husky, words echoing through the house that was empty because I had performed terrible hospice care on myself and given away almost everything.

Then I found two senior dogs named Bonnie and Clyde, residents of a senior dog sanctuary along a river. There, walking two dogs, I resurrected as a human being. I read the river, tracked elk, watched birds, slayed blackberries, skipped rocks, cursed clearcuts, walked in rain and went deep into heretofore unknown areas of my creative mind. With Bonnie and Clyde at my side, I learned important lessons of faith, friendship, family, face-to-face encounters and the timeless remedy of nature, lessons I intuit can enlighten others who experience a cataclysmic personal event.

In The Bonnie and Clyde Files, I merge essay, cultural criticism, memoir, streams of consciousness and poetry to create a hybrid of a genre that is unlike any dog book I have ever read. I wrote on instinct, channeled Walt Whitman, and became a dog to better explore humanity, my country and the treatment of men and women at the hands of the state’s criminal justice system. I wrote to understand all the terrible, bizarre and wonderful things that were happening to me.”

Dear Friend of the Meditations Blog:

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In March 2017, in the midst of a deep and life-altering personal crisis, I started the Meditations blog. When I began, I had no idea where the writing would go. It just felt imperative to publish, as if I was writing to save my life.

Recently, I passed the 500-post mark, well over 250,000 words, and have reconnected with old readers and been delighted to meet new ones.

The blog directly led to a new book about my experience as a volunteer at a senior dog sanctuary, the forthcoming Bonnie and Clyde Files. It energized my interest in fiction. It also turned on a poetry switch inside me that I didn’t know existed.

When I launched the blog, I asked readers to consider making a financial contribution to support the writing, as a sort of magazine subscription. Many readers did and I am eternally grateful.

Over 18 months later, I am asking readers to consider making another contribution to support my future publishing projects, which include this blog. This is the final time I will make such a solicitation. Consider any amount you donate a lifetime subscription to Meditations.

The blog will keep going forward and probably move in mysterious, unforeseen ways. And if a contribution isn’t in the cards, please keep reading and reaching out if a particular post connects with you.

You can donate via Paypal here (tab to the right) or contact me via email to arrange another form of payment.

Thank you. Your faith in me has meant everything.

Matt Love