Today, Lulu is proud to welcome John Edgar Wideman to Lulu and pleased to present a very special guest author blog. Mr. Wideman chose Lulu after a distinguished career of 40+ years in the traditional publishing industry for many reasons, among them his desire to connect more intimately with his readers and to embrace the opportunity our platform provides for creators to retain complete control over their work. For Mr. Wideman, who has never used a computer, venturing into online publishing and the blogoshpere is an intimidating but exciting event! He’s eager to kick off a conversation with the Lulu community by sharing an introduction to his new work, and asks for your patience as he learns to respond and engage in a brand new forum.
Briefly, since these remarks introduce a book titled Briefs, I’d like to share a few thoughts about why and how I’ve been working the past three years on a volume of very short stories. My first novel was published in 1967 and I’ve been in print since, so my writing career’s far from brief, but brief an accurate, merciful word to describe a parcel of time which has rushed past so swiftly, stealthily, brutally, it feels some days like I just got here and it’s nearly time to go already. The micro-fictions in my collection are about losing time, saving time, enduring time, fearing and escaping time.
About the ubiquitous, silent pulse of time and how people learn to dance to it or not, to stumble through or find themselves graced by time or ignored or get their asses kicked.
