Tag: My Writing

The Writing Life, 18 January 2025: Reaching the finish line

brown and white track field

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my writing nook, so to speak.

There’s some big news having to do with a project I’ve been calling The Yank Striker 2. How about we talk about it? Also, I might discuss a few other things.

The Home Front

Fort Madison, Iowa, Dusk, 17 January 2024. Photo by Laura Liegois.

I got started on the second semester of the school year this week. It’s still amazing to me how fast the second half of last year sped along considering how long the first half of the year dragged along because of all the time spent on the road, out of my old home but not yet in my new one, just waiting for the school year to be over and to finish with all contractual obligations to my old district. It inspired some good poetry, but it was a bit of a slog especially at the end.

When we were having dinner together this past Sunday, my wife pointed out to me by the end of the current school year, I will have worked for five different school districts during the past ten years – an average of two years per district. I hadn’t thought it had been so many in such a short period of time, but the math worked out.

My wife has lived in five different residences in this time (one more than myself because she moved early to Chariton when she got the job of city manager there and I was wrapping up another teaching contract). Then there’s the fact my kids have moved a combined ten times during this time, counting moving them out of or into our homes, dorms in the case of our daughter, and apartments.

That’s a lot of moving in an out, a lot of time on the road. To be honest, both Laura and I would be happy not to be going anywhere different for a while. In another decade, she and even I will be within sight of retirement from our respective professions. Our house is nice, and work is going well. Even with all the uncertainty in the world, I try to appreciate what I do have. All things considered, my life is going well.

What I’ve Been Writing

Hey, remember that book I put out a year and a half ago? You might have heard of it if you’ve been hanging around my blog for a while?

Remember how I’ve kept saying it was going to be the first in a series? Well, this theoretical series is now coming closer to becoming a reality.

Ta-Daah.aah

Subscribers, passers-by, and humans alike, I am delighted to announce I have completed the rough draft to the second book in The Yank Striker series, which I have referred to as The Yank Striker 2. I have an idea for the final title of this book, but I am not revealing it until later when the time is right.

I had hoped I would have finished the rough draft before the end of 2024, but I only overshot my target by a mere half month. I now have a 80,345-word first draft on my hands. Oopsy.

It is now in my cloud and various hard drives for future use, safe and sound, and ready for what I consider to be the true work of writing, the revising process.

Since I officially finished it mid-week this week, my plan is to let the manuscript sit and simmer in the computer and in my head for three and a half weeks. This would mean I’m going to start tackling the second draft of the book by 8 February 2025.

My ultimate goal would be to release the book with my publisher by 1 June of this year. This would mean:

  1. Second draft – begun by 8 February and completed by the end of the month at the latest.
  2. Beta reads – begun at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  3. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  4. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

This might be the most ambitious release date for any book I’ve ever done. However, I managed to self-publish my own chapbook of poetry before 2024 ran out, so you never know.

Since I officially finished it mid-week this week, my plan is to let the manuscript sit and simmer in the computer and in my head for three and a half weeks. This would mean I’m going to start tackling the second draft of the book by 8 February 2025.

My ultimate goal would be to release the book with my publisher by 1 June of this year. This would mean:

  1. Second draft – begun by 8 February and completed by the end of the month at the latest.
  2. Beta reads – begun at the start of March and completed by the end of March.
  3. Two more rounds of revisions in April.
  4. Final editing and proofreading in May and concluding by the end of May.

This might be the most ambitious release date for any book I’ve ever done. However, I managed to self-publish my own chapbook of poetry before 2024 ran out, so you never know.

What I’m Doing Having to do With Writing

Starting this week, I’m planning on kickstarting my other preparations for getting The Yank Striker 2 to market. This is going to be more of an effort than just the revising and editing process.

Unlike my first two novels, I’m interested in going to an outside source to design the cover art for The Yank Striker 2. I’m also hoping to find some beta readers for my book once I finish the first revision.

And no offense to all of my great readers online, but I’m not soliciting such help here.

After some time online and having to deal with a massive amount of scammers and grifters trying to separate me from my money for different reasons, I am about done with working with any online book business operations, or at least done with people I don’t have recommendations for from my IRL friends, such as my fellow writers in places like Des Moines, Muscatine, Burlington, and points beyond. Online life might be cool, but it’s no replacement for human connection1.

Also, I’m going to spend this weekend trying to email organizers of Iowa book fairs. I want to get some updates about upcoming dates and whether I can get on the road to be part of those events. When I confirm some of those dates, you’ll be the first to hear from me.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

Not sure if I’ve featured T.S. Eliot in this space, so I decided to go with this one. Seems he had a sense of humor for sure.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

  • T.S. Eliot

Here’s another statement I would cosign, although I often get distracted during my writing. 😅

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

  • Gloria Steinem

Finally, here’s the great Margaret Atwood with the wolves theory of storytelling.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

All of them?

Sure, he says. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist2.

How to support me😊.

Go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile to check out some of my other links. For example, in those places, you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.

If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. Again, if you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.

If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:

  • [NEWEST LOCATION] Green Point Mercantile, 214 Chestnut St., Muscatine.
  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St., in my new hometown of Fort Madison.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines.
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is available at the first two bookstores above (and hopefully more down the road), but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook on my WordPress site, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the button below.

The Flow and the Journey

The Flow and the Journey

The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.

$6.00
Shop now

On the subject of Substack, it’s fantastic if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.

Now, if you want to support me but can’t quite afford a full subscription, I am now on Venmo. You can just send whatever you can afford. Just click the button below; anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Go ahead and buy me a cup of coffee, why don’t you? 😊

Final Thoughts

Wow, a lot happening this week. Hope your week went well, and for you writers, I hope you got something down on paper or on screen.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. I am very much tempted to spend the next Prose Night post detailing one of the most elaborate grifts someone tried to pull on me. It’s a cool story, trust me. Might be more interesting than some of my fiction excerpts. 😅 ↩︎
  2. The Yank Striker 2, I believe, would best fit being thrown to the wolves and also running with the wolf pack. ↩︎

The Writing Life, 4 January 2025: Reviewing 2024 (and 2025’s) goals

Well, I hope everyone is getting off on the right foot for the upcoming year 2025. As for me, I decided to use the first newsletter of the year to look back on my old goals for the year just passed.

I had considered maybe doing a separate post about all those goals and the numbers I did (or didn’t reach) this year. However, the whole point – or, at least, one of the main points of this newsletter – is to discuss my writing experiences, projects, and related work. It wouldn’t make sense not to talk about goals here, even though I’ll try not to get to numbers-heavy here.

So, let’s talk writing goals past and present. I’m not a fan of the word “resolutions” when it comes to setting goals for the year, are you?

The Home Front

Not too much to discuss here. I got to see my family over the holidays, in some cases more than once. I think I did have time to relax, even though I’m going to be jumping into the teaching mess once again starting next week. However, depending on the drop in temperatures and the increase in precipitation, exactly when we get back off break might vary.

Writing Goals 2024

During the past few years, I’ve had a good handle on my writing goals for the upcoming year right from the beginning. This year was no different.

For those who didn’t want to bother clicking on the link, here were some of those goals.

  1. I wanted to write a minimum of 200,000 words for 2024. Since I’ve gotten at least that much written three out of the previous four years, I figured that was a good minimum quota, similar to how I want to write either at least 500 words per day or spend at least 30 minutes revising or planning my work. In addition, I wanted to meet my daily minimum writing goals at least 75 percent of the time.
    Later in the year, I also decided later I wanted to at least try to exceed my personal best yearly total, which was 215,152.
  2. I wanted to finish the rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 (working title of my second book in The Yank Striker series) this year. I had optimistically thought I might have it done by the summer of 2024, but I more realistically figured it might be more like the end of the year before it was completed. Later in the year, I decided to try and keep it somewhere around 75,000 words in its rough draft form.
  3. Finally, I thought it might be cool to not only write some more poetry, but eventually maybe collect it into a chapbook format or get it published somewhere.

So…, how did I do on them?

Better than I expected, actually.

  1. I reached 200,000 words by Black Friday of November. Shortly before I headed off to holiday break, I got past last year’s total. And by the end of 2024, I had written 224,606 words. It was 9,454 words above last year’s total and less than 400 words short of 225,000.
    I also ended up meeting my daily writing quotas 84 percent of the time, only one percent less than last year. Although I ended up spending several hundred minutes less revising and planning than I did before, I still think this was still overall the most productive writing year I ever had.
  2. I was so close to getting the rough draft of The Yank Striker 2, everyone. As of the end of 2024, I have a rough draft of 74,059 words. As far as word count goes, I fell just short. In my heart, I think I have maybe four or so scenes I’ve got to finish up before I feel secure in calling it a complete rough draft.
    Considering my first two books took (depending on how I look at the process), 4-5 years to complete, the fact I started last year with a manuscript of about 25,000 words and I’m nearly finished with the rough draft is at least a partial victory – a result, as the announcers call a draw in the English Premier League.
  3. Well, right at the end of 2024, I produced my first ever collection of poetry, The Flow and the Journey, a collection of 19 poems with river and travel themes. Check out my recent post on it for more information (and where you can find it).

Writing Goals 2025

With what has happened in 2024, I have decided to set out my goals for the upcoming year in this space. I recognize I might modify or add to these goals as I did last year, but such is life, so they say.

  1. Write a minimum 200,000 words, but I would love to crack the 225,000 mark this year if at all possible. And with my results during the past two years, I should be able to make my daily minimum writing goals at least 80 percent of the time.
    Whether I will manage to do this or not is an interesting question. I imagine I will be spending much more time with revisions this year than the previous year due to finishing revisions for The Yank Striker 2.
  2. I should be able to get the rough draft of The Yank Striker 2 done by the end of the month. However, this means a big turnaround of having a final draft ready for publication. If I was going to have my preference, I would want to have it ready for release either late May or early June, which means I should try and get a rough draft stitched together by mid-January. I’d like to let it sit for about four weeks, and then it would give me a solid three months to finish revisions. It would be a tight turnaround, but I don’t think it would be impossible.
  3. Currently, I have 24,004 words written on The Untitled Pro Wrestling Project, which I’ve mentioned her previously. I would like to make similar progress on this manuscript over the course of this year. It would be fantastic if I had a full rough draft on my hands, but I’m not quite committed to the idea – yet.
  4. As far as my poetry goes, I would like to continue to add to my collection of original work. Whether I want to put together another chapbook this year might be an open question. I would like to get my poems published in an outside publication, whether it be a poetry periodical or something regional. I have no acquaintance with this whole process, so I am sure this will be a full learning experience.

So for right now, I have two hard goals and two soft goals. I’m hoping I make progress on them throughout the year.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

I’ll start off with Toni Morrison explaining something important about writing and identity.

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don’t know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That’s what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say ‘people,’ that’s what I mean.

  • Toni Morrison

And for the first time ever, I am including a quote about writing suggested by one of my subscribers, Gesene Oaks, which I was happy to see.

Deadliest words to writers of poetry and short fiction: I don’t get it.

  • Gesene Oaks

What I’m Doing Having to Do With Writing

This week, I stopped by Green Point Mercantile, my old hometown of Muscatine’s newest independent bookstore. It’s located at 214 Chestnut St., right in the old downtown district.

I had the chance to meet with the owner, Candy Fuegen, an old classmate of mine, and we talked books and the new location. She now has copies of my books, including The Holy Fool, The Yank Striker, and my chapbook The Flow and the Journey.

It’s been way too long since Muscatine had an independent bookstore, so I was delighted to hear of Green Point’s opening just this fall. I would highly recommend checking them out if you are ever in Muscatine. Click on the button below to check them out on Instagram.

Check out Green Point Mercantile, it’s a cool little bookstore.

How to support me😊.

Go to the links on the side if you are reading this on a desktop/laptop or the links on my profile to check out some of my other links. For example, in those places, you can find out about my first book, the journalism thriller The Holy Fool: A Journalist’s Revolt, as well as the first book in my The Yank Striker series, The Yank Striker: a Footballer’s Beginning.

If you go follow the links above, you will be able to buy both the paperback and ebook versions of my books on Amazon. Again, if you just put “Jason Liegois” in Google you’ll probably find them on the first page of search results.

If you happen to visit these fine independent book stores in Iowa, you can find my books there:

  • [NEWEST LOCATION] Green Point Mercantile, 214 Chestnut St., Muscatine.
  • Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St, Burlington.
  • Bent Oak Books, 619 7th St., in my new hometown of Fort Madison.
  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave. # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books, so feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion.

My poetry book The Flow and the Journey is going to be available at the first two bookstores above (and hopefully more down the road), but it is also available online but not on Amazon. I’ve set up a new online store for copies of my chapbook here on, Liegois Media. If you want to get a physical copy, go ahead and click on the button below.

The Flow and the Journey

The Flow and the Journey

The first collection of poetry from author Jason Liegois.

$6.00
Shop now

On the subject of Substack, I’m grateful if you are signed up for my free subscription, but I would love it if you signed up for a paid one. The monthly rate is the lowest I can put it ($5 per month) but my yearly rate of $35 is a steal at less than three/fifths the monthly rate.

Now, if you are interested in supporting me but can’t quite afford a full subscription, I am now on Venmo. If you are interested in a donation of whatever you can provide, you can just send whatever you can afford. Just click the button below; anything you can provide helps me keep things going.

Hey pal, mind buying me a cup of coffee?

Final Thoughts

Not much more for this week. Hope the snow doesn’t muck things up for us too much in Iowa. Best wishes to everyone.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

The Flow and the Journey

As I’ve mentioned previously in this space, I came into writing poetry more or less under protest.

My mother reminded me recently that she had encouraged me to try and write poetry as a young kid, but I had never taken to it. I always pictured myself as a fiction writer rather than a poet. My evolution into considering myself a poet took place over an extended a period of time and I was well into adulthood when it started in earnest.

At the risk of repeating previous stories, the process towards writing poetry began during the late aughts. It was then I moved back to my hometown of Muscatine, Iowa, and rejoined a local group of writers calling themselves Writers on the Avenue (WOTA). It was a solid group of writers who were like me – writers who wanted to improve themselves and to grow in their craft. Everyone needs a similar group or two or three or more if they want to see growth.

I did get this from WOTA. Without them, I’m not sure I would have moved forward on the projects which became my first two books, The Holy Fool and The Yank Striker.

However, there was a lot of reading and a lot of critiques between people interested in my work. In all honesty, a good portion of my contributions to our group was listening to and critiquing poetry.

Many of the WOTA members wrote tons of poetry – poetry about the natural world, their feelings, their history, their faith – things attracting strong emotions and imagery, which are natural fodder for poems. I would sit in these workshopping/critique sessions, attempting to provide feedback, while not having something for them to read. What parental pressure failed to accomplish, adult peer pressure did.

I started off slower than a soccer-playing turtle goalkeeper trying to waste time at the end of a match. Fiction was (and is) my priority, so it was something I just played around with.

I kept finding myself return to the theme of the Mississippi River, the body of water I’d lived next to for about 40 years of my life. The imagry of living next to this watery highway, the source of life for everyone around it, attracted me like nearly nothing else.

This theme continued to attract me as I spent four years away from the Mississippi while living in Chariton, Iowa, in the middle of south central Iowa and well far away from any significant nearby body of water. It was a nice little town, but mentally and emotionally I was missing something.

I was further inspired by living on an actual highway (Iowa 14) for the first time in my life and only a block and a half away from railroad tracks. The theme of travel, the road and rails, also started to creep in to my verse.

Eventually, I decided if I wanted to call myself a poet, I needed to start publishing those poems, even if it was only on my own platform. That’s when Poetry Night was born.

Forcing myself to publish my poetry every month ended up being a good thing for me. Eventually, I started to run out of my old work, so it forced me to start creating new poems and new verse. I started to get out of the old prose writer habits of adding in more words when fewer, more descriptive words would do.

Early in 2024, I ended up spending a lot of time driving, traveling, and staying in unfamiliar places due to personal circumstances. I spent more than a bit of time in unfamiliar hotels and apartments due to this, and poems about being on the road started to spring from my laptop.

It was around this time I wanted to try and put together a physical collection of my work. I didn’t want it to be something just half-hearted and scattered. The poets I knew in real life (including those from the now-disbanded Iowa Writers’ Corner, of Des Moines, Iowa, and the Society of Great River Poets of Burlington, Iowa) said it made sense to base the collection around a particular theme.

It was then I took a look at the topics which had been dominating my verse for at least the past couple years and perhaps longer: River life and traveling life. Rivers and traveling became The Flow and the Journey.

This is a chapbook I put together with the assistance of Dodd Printing in my current home of Fort Madison, Iowa. It contains 19 poems touching on the Mississippi River and river life in general, as well as what you experience and encounter in life on the road. They run the gamut of the first poem I like to say I wrote with intent all the way back in 2010 to poems from 2024. All of them speak of either what river life has meant to me or what a traveling life is like.

If You’re Interested…

…in poetry, especially river and travel poetry, this might be the book for you.

Other than running into me at book fairs and events around Iowa, I’m trying to put together ways for you to purchase my first self-published work out to people. I’m hoping to make them available at independent bookstores here in Iowa, depending on their interest.

Until then, I’ve set up a new online bookstore for The Flow and the Journey here at Liegois Media. Currently, it’s just $6 for a copy, and I’m limiting it to one purchase at a time due to limited supplies. But go ahead and click on the button below. I’d love you to take a chance on my poetry.

Get a copy of The Flow and the Journey

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.

Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 28 December 2024: End-of-Year poems and my new poetry book

Welcome, everyone.

We’ll get to the actual poetry in a little bit. Before then… I typically don’t do much “business” or “promotion” when it comes to to these Poetry Nights (or Prose Nights, either), but I’m going to make a quick exception to this rule because it is attached to my interest in poetry. I’ll keep it short, however.

I announced in my last newsletter I had finally put together my first chapbook, The Flow and the Journey, a collection of 19 of my poems. One of them dates all the way back from 2010, five of them from 2019, and the remainder from 2023-2024, when I finally decided to take my poetry seriously by writing these Poetry Night entries1.

Since this was all a self-published thing2 (where I decided to just put it together and do it because there wasn’t a massive push for someone to publish my poetry just yet), I had to start thinking of a way for people to buy this chapbook other than trying to hunt me down either in my hometown or at my personal appearances. So, I decided to get something set up.

Since Substack doesn’t quite have the setup for this, I decided to put something together at my WordPress sister site, Liegois Media. I set up my own Internet storefront page where you can order my chapbook for $6 per copy. This is the link, as is the one below.

The Flow and the Journey

In all seriousness, I have to admit this is a beta rollout of this service. Pay the amount and make sure to include your address in the purchase, and I will do my darnedest to get the product to you. If for some reason, you haven’t gotten a delivery to me, email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media. Make sure to put in the subject line “You got my chapbook, boy?” I’m more likely to see it3.

All right, blatant capitalistic pitch over. Let’s talk new poetry.

I think I’m built a bit different from many of my fellow humans, especially my fellow Iowans. Most Iowans I run into can’t wait to get outdoors into the summer heat. The Iowa State Fair is our secular pilgrimage, even though I’ve lived here for longer than 40 years and never attended myself. Most of my fellow friends, neighbors, and co-workers love the sun and warmth of spring and summer.

When it gets around this time of the year, however… many of them get down. They wonder where the sun had gone, hidden behind the clouds bringing along rain, snow, a mix of the two, or maybe an ice storm. They wonder why everything is so gray, why it’s so cold, even though it’s nothing compared to those living at 45° North (say, Ottowa, Canada, or Maine) or even 50° North (The Maritimes in Canada)4. It seems to bring them down emotionally, drain them of their physical and mental energy. “I haven’t seen the sun in so long,” I hear sometimes.

I believe I am of different stock.

Both of my parents grew up in Wisconsin. I have German and Norwegian heritage from them, and neither of those countries are known to be tropical paradises. The last time I went to Florida was somewhere around a decade ago. It was at the invitation of my parents and it was a chance for my kids to experience Disney World, the Atlantic Ocean, and for me to to reunite with my aunt I hadn’t seen in maybe 20 years. And it was in December. Without this confluence of coincidences, I’m not sure I’m visiting Florida ever again.

Maybe you couldn’t tell from all those posts in October and November whining about how I was tired of seeing summer weather in Iowa around then, but I’m not a fan of tropical or desert climates. I don’t like to have to dodge the sun and humidity when it gets to be 100℉. Those places like Florida, Texas, and Arizona aren’t my idea of vacation getaways or retirement forever homes. When I think of places that feel like a relaxing place to be, my dream places, they look more like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Upper Michigan, Norway, the Scottish Highlands, the Faeroe and Shetland Islands, and Iceland. Like these places:

timber cottage standing at foot of mountain
Photo by Stijn Dijkstra on Pexels.com
red and white boats on water
Photo by Simon Hurry on Pexels.com
island surrounded by city
Photo by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels.com
aerial photography of river between cliffs
Photo by Wendelin Jacober on Pexels.com

Well, those might be adventures for another day. For now, the next two poems are the result of some seasonal inspiration. Hope you enjoy them.

Fort Madison, Iowa, December 2023

Misty Stroll

28 December 2024, Fort Madison, Iowa

The wet weight draping all over me and here

Would be a draining burden in Iowa July

With sweating corn, sweating animals, and

Sweating people wading through the wet air.

But now in the chill of December

Shielded from the sun by the mist and the low veils above

I can let it surround me, I can absorb it, let it refresh me

And my home is more like home.

Fort Madison, Iowa, 27 December 2024

Cozy Winter’s Eve Nook

Fort Madison, Iowa, 28 December 2024

Winter eve charcoal, parchment, gray, midnight,

Medium cool atmosphere, comfortable enough to lounge in without a coat

Until you lounge for more than a few minutes.

The winds persistent on level plains with not enough wood sentinels

Fortune for mariners but disaster for the unsheltered.

My nook is sealed from the worst of The Hibernal

Good wood, stone, metal, concrete, and sealant

The hearth providing the extra needed few calories of warmth

A crow’s nest view of my lovely winter abode

But as a submariner among the fathom-length depths

So am I among The Hibernal.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Subscribe to my Substack here.
  1. As I write all of this, I realize I need to make a post discussing this project specifically like I made specific posts about both of my books, The Holy Fooland The Yank Striker. Watch this space for the post coming soon. ↩︎
  2. Shoutout to my hometown biz Dodd Printing for their help in putting this together, by the way. ↩︎
  3. I get a lot of emails from the blogs I subscribe to. ↩︎
  4. I currently live just above 40°30’ North. For me, I have sworn to my wife Laura that 40° North is the farthest South I will ever live in my life. Anywhere between 45° or 60° degrees North would suit me just fine – in fact, I’d be good with 45° or 60° degrees South, as well. I’ve heard decent things about southern Argentina and New Zealand. ↩︎

A Writer’s Biography, Volume 2, Part 10: The Ghosts of Writing Projects Past

Prose Night at the Writing Life, 9 November 2024

[These are a lot of headlines lol]

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: For new visitors or subscribers to this Substack, this Prose Night entry is another in a continuing series I have been writing ever since beginning to blog on WordPress several years previously, which I’ve called A Writer’s Biography. These essays have been looks back at my life through the lens of writing and my experiences of writing. My original intent is to try and provide some advice or inspiration to writers in similar situations to myself, although I realize this project has turned into something resembling a memoir (which I haven’t started to tackle as an actual serious project).

I’ve separated these into three “volumes:” Volume I, detailing my early childhood and first experiences with reading and writing; Volume II, detailing my experiences with writing as a young man and during the “quiet times” of my writing, and Volume III, where I discuss how things are in middle age and resuming my life as a writer. Since this story covers some projects and times when I was not an active of a writer, or at least a lot more inconsistent, I decided to make this a Volume II story. All you paid subscribers can check out all the Writer’s Biography posts in my archives.]

And if you can’t spare cash for a subscription, you might give this a shot if you want to support my site on an at-will basis.

Buy Me a Coffee – Venmo

I wonder what Stephen King’s morgue looks like.

This probably requires a bit of explanation, since I think just made up a term1. ut in the very perfunctory research I did on a small portion of the interwebs, my instinct is I’ve repurposed an old one.

The common word for what I’m thinking of is what are called trunk stories. As in, you stash them in a trunk, not likely ever to be looked at again2. However, I decided to use a term from my previous life as a journalist.

Of course, everyone has heard the term morgue used before to describe a place to store bodies. But in the old time newspaper business, a morgue is the place where a newspaper kept news clippings from old stories, usually from its own publication but sometimes from others, especially for important stories of nationwide, statewide, and especially local importance. These were usually organized in microfilm storage if a newspaper was very sophisticated, or it might have simply been a group of filing cabinets holding manila folders of cut-out newsprint stories, photocopies of the same, or some combination of the time. Some of them were organized according to their publication date, or more often by subject matter.

Usually, this area was used by reporters to gather background information on their stories. It was a fast way of finding this information, especially in the pre-Internet era when not every newspaper archive was digitized and itemized.

In some cases, there was such a thing as a digital morgue, a location where past stories could be indexed and referred to in new reporting. Sometimes, a morgue could also refer to a place where you put stories intended for future use. One important circumstance was when you composed a story to be run in the event someone famous dies, such as big time political leaders or entertainers.

From my perspective, I like the idea of an old morgue of half-started stories and ideas from my past experiences. For me, I have both a physical and digital morgue, or perhaps a hybrid one.

Most of the physical representations of my work are tucked into not a trunk or trunks but (appropriate for the 21st century) some plastic totes in my storage building. I haven’t had the chance to look at those yet. Those include some of my writing from even my high school years, stuff I haven’t seen in a decade or so.

My electronic morgue, however, has some writing of a somewhat more recent nature. This included several pieces of writing which I started and stopped over the course of at least one or two decades.

Those were the fallow years, when I plied my trade as first a journalist and then as a teacher but I went years without even sitting in front of a desktop or laptop on my own volition without being paid, without having anything to do with telling a community what happened at its latest city council meeting or teaching a kid how to write with some semblance of skill. Sure, I called myself a writer. But I went years in those days without writing a word.

However, over the course of several years, I’ve had the chance to write more nonfiction essays online and fiction. I got serious about my writing in 2010 or so when I started realizing I wasn’t getting any younger and I wasn’t interested in wasting more time on personal activities (gaming, distractions, etc.) that weren’t adding anything to my existence. Now, this was a long process, but within a few years I felt like I wasn’t fooling myself when I called myself a writer3.

This process was helped by finally having a book I had been contemplating for nearly a decade published around 2019 and then moving on to the first book in a series in 2023. But in the years in between thinking about being a writer and actually kicking myself in the tail to write… there was a lot of false starts and stillborn projects.

This week, with the recent unpleasantness, I was tempted to look back on some of my past work. Back years ago, I was of the opinion politics was a fun form of entertainment, and some (but not all) of my fiction experiments took place in the political world. By 2016, however, politics ceased being fun for me and merely became a duty whenever the elections came around.

Oh brothers, sisters, and all the good people in between, you would not believe the fairy tales I started and abandoned in the 20 years since I’m writing this blog today.

There was a novel about a third party candidate for president in the years before I realized our current presidential election process never let third party candidates win, just due to the structure of the American election system.

There was a story about a double agent for the Chinese government I wouldn’t even know what to do with.

There were two full novels I wrote in my twenties – one I tried to sell unsuccessfully and wouldn’t try to sell again (or would I say just screw it and publish it online for the heck of it?) and the other I wrote for National Novel Writers Month back in the days it was a reputable organization but I’m not sure there is a salvageable novel there.

Then there was a novel based… sort of based in the home of my youth, something of a murder mystery (a half-baked one) based around the idea of gradual regional environmental collapse. I have often joked about me not being much of an Iowa writer other than my poetry, but this story was set right in the heart of what was my home. I took a look at the synopsis I’d written and the dozen pages I’d put together… and it’s not horrific? It might be salvageable, whenever I get around to picking over what is there? Why not – I think the environmental theme might be especially prescient given the current status of my home state.

There are at least two or three attempts at a novel coming from my observations of the American political scene in recent years and re imagining a reaction to this scene from a very dark place from my subconsciousness. All this got abandoned over the past several years, in starts and stops, in some cases well before the recent unpleasantness. And I know I don’t want to tackle the issue in exactly the same way.

So, I took a look at those scraps of writings… and I thought of another novel, one I had read in college, Parable of the Sower, which made me a lifelong fan of Octavia Butler (one of the titans of 20th century sci-fi writers, right along with Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, and Herbert – and I’ll jump up on a table and argue it to anyone who doesn’t recognize her).

I thought of how one idea might change everything in society, and how it seemed unrealistic and relevant all at once, and it might be something true to how my mother Suzanne raised me to believe in humanity. And now I’m staring at the screen and looking at the name of a totally new project with a brand new title, and the ideas are starting to bubble up.

The moral of the story, people, is never throw away art. You never know what it will lead to.

On that note, I would love to take a look through Stephen King’s writing morgue. I bet he has a lot of great ideas I could use (crediting him, of course. He’s still the King, as always).

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  1. Or maybe I created a term and someone has already used it. If this is the case, feel free to tell me in the comments. ↩︎
  2. Do the younger people among you have an idea of what a trunk is other than the space in the back of a car you use to store stuff? The definition I was looking for came from Oxford Dictionaries: a large box with a hinged lid for storing or transporting clothes and other articles. ↩︎
  3. Man, these essays are becoming really self-referential lol. ↩︎

Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 28 September 2024: Autumn comes to Iowa

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On the Rails for the First Time

Hi, there. So, this isn’t going to be my typical writing about writing. This is going to be something of a bonus travelogue about my and my wife’s first experience with rail travel. So if railroads and travelogues aren’t your thing, feel free to tap out for this bit.

Images on the rails between Fort Madison, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, May 31 – June 2, 2024.

What I Knew About Trains

I’ve always had some interest in train travel. My grandfather Fred was a railroad employee back in Wisconsin years ago. When I was a kid, long after he’d retired from the railroad, I was fascinated by all of the train artwork and models he had whenever I visited. I also was interested in model trains, although I never got into building them myself. I’m not sure whether it was due to the expense of that hobby or not wanting to devote the time to setting them up, but it never really happened for me.

I was also interested in what it might be like to ride on a train. It looked like fun on all the old Hollywood films, with spacious sleeping and dining cars, just cruising along the rails without a care in the world.

As I got older, the idea of rail travel became more attractive to me, especially for long-distance trips. Driving was all right, but it was a hassle to have to drive and be aware of my surroundings for hours at a time. As for air travel, I always loved flying, but commercial air travel as it now exists just became one long hassle for me. The seats always are too small, there’s few good food options, and boarding and deboarding is a trial.

Unfortunately, for a long time I didn’t live anywhere near a passenger rail station. While Amtrak is still very active on the coasts and in the old Rust Belt, there were very few opportunities for mass transit in the middle of Iowa. I used to think we were lucky to have a passable bus service in Muscatine and Iowa City during the years I went to school there. I remember a few years back attending an exhibit at the Muscatine Art Center on the history of train travel in the city and being disappointed it had died out long before I first moved there.

Regular train travel was something for Chicagoland residents, not me. Even though some train stops were within a small drive for me, things never lined up to take a shot at it.

However, recently I settled into Fort Madison, which just happens to be a stop for Amtrak. In a quirk of geography, the southern half of Iowa happens to be better served by passenger rail than the center portion of Iowa, which could use the service given its greater population. Regardless, it provided me with an opportunity.

An Opportunity

I have to say my wife Laura is quite thoughtful when it comes to gifts, a talent I don’t necessarily have – I often have to ask my family and friends what to get them. So, when she suggested we take the train to Chicago and hang out there for the weekend, watch a Chicago Fire soccer match, and do a river tour, I was all for it.

Chicago went great – the Fire actually won a game, which was a rare instance this season, and the river tour was a great look at the architectural history of the city, despite the fact it was raining more or less the entire day. But it was the train ride I was interested in, because I wanted to see if the experience would measure up to what I had built up in my head.

Boarding

The historic Fort Madison railway station is a modest little building overlooking our riverfront. It’s not a massive hub of a rail network, but a station receiving two trains a day, one traveling east and one traveling west. It’s part of the Southwest Chief route running between Chicago and Los Angeles, and happens to be the only Iowa stop on the route. (Other Iowa stops a bit more north of us are on the California Zephyr running between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area.)

Tickets and baggage are relatively straightforward and somewhat simplified compared to airplanes. Electronic tickets are usually the way to go, although they also allow you to print them out. Once you get in the system, you can get updates on the status of your train, which wound up being pretty helpful when our train to Chicago got delayed by four hours due to mechanical issues. For me, it was something just as likely as if we had went by air, so it didn’t phase me.

The surprising thing when you see an Amtrak train is how short it is compared to the dozens and dozens of cars you see on commercial freight trains. For both our trains leaving and returning to Fort Madison, you have two engines at the front, followed by a baggage car, a sleeping car specifically for the crew, two sleeping cars for longer-term passengers, a dining car, an observation/cafe car, and finally two coach cars that just have seats for passengers and not their own cabins. It’s a pretty efficient setup, and once we got started it was a relatively simple business to walk between cars even during the trip.

Getting on the train is a relatively straighforward process, although I would absolutely advise travelers to use one of those wheeled, vertically oriented pieces of luggage as compared to a longer gym bag or something you need to always carry by hand. The latter are a bit difficult to carry as you are negotiating the relatively narrow stairways between the upper and lower levels of cars. However, I didn’t find any issue with storing my luggage in the overhead compartments, which don’t have doors you have to mess with like on planes.

With Chicago just a four-hour train ride (at least 20 minutes shorter than by automobile), we decided on coach seats rather than blowing unnecessary cash on a sleeper room. Even in coach, our seating arrangements were superior to an airline situation. While the width was slightly better than the airlines, we had all the leg room we needed and there were no issues with leaning our seats back. We had good-sized windows if we wanted to sightsee and curtains if we didn’t. There were even a couple plug-ins for when we needed to recharge our phones.

Unlike with the airlines, we also had the option of some different seating during the trip, which made for a more comfortable experience. We were able to enter the observation car or the dining car if we were interested in a meal. Although I had previously heard some good things about Amtrak cuisine, and we didn’t have any issue with the snacks available there, we decided against a meal and stuck to the observation car. These can get pretty crowded, especially if you’re in a particularly scenic area of the country, but we managed to find a spot to sit down. It’s a really great place to spread out and enjoy looking at the scenery. I’d love to see what the Rockies would look like from the observation deck.

Disembarking and Reboarding

We got off the train at Chicago’s Union Station, located near the Chicago Loop. I’ve been to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in years past, and that had some nice facilities, but I was impressed with the nearly 100-year-old station, which according to Wikipedia handles 140,000 passengers every weekday on 30 different platforms, as well as bus and other local commuter rail and Chicago Transit Authority connections.

We waited for a while in the Great Hall, which was all marble and a beautiful skylight. There were plenty of options for eating there if needed, and we had enough places to recharge electronics or rest on comfortable seating, which comes in useful if your train faces any delays. (Other than our train to Chicago, we were lucky on that front.) There were a lot more bells and whistles there, including the electronic billboards which listed where and when the various trains were arriving or departing.

With no car in Chicago, we had to improvise when we needed to get around. The CTA was convenient, although we had to get very knowledgeable about train routes and how they synced up with the street layouts. Eventually, we used Uber a bit, especially since we ended up getting a hotel well on the South Side because it was one of the more affordable options for us. (We learned later there was at least one large convention and a few other events going on in Chicago that same weekend, which drove up prices and lowered availability for hotel rooms. If we had the option, we would have chose to have a hotel at or near a CTA stop, because there were connections between Union Station and the CTA lines.

Conclusion

All things considered, I would definitely consider traveling by Amtrak in the future. It was a great experience even with our short trip, and all of the staff we encountered were friendly and professional. I’d be interested in taking a longer sleeper car trip in the future, even if it meant having to trek up to Burlington to catch the train up there. If you can manage it, I would recommend the experience to others.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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Poetry Night at the Writing Life, 27 April 2024: Tried a long poem and got four short ones

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The Start of the 2024 Book Tour

Trying out a new look – The Dude in Purple.

I knew I said I was going to take a weekend off due to today being my birthday (yea for making it to another one), but I decided to update everyone regarding where I’ll be appearing at some local book events over the next several months. This will likely change and hopefully grow over time as I continue to promote my current works, The Yank Strikerand The Holy Fool, when I’m not at work writing my new projects.

That said, let’s get to the appearances.

Current Schedule for 2024:

  • I am now confirmed to be at the Ankeny Book Fair at the Ankeny public library from 1-4 p.m. April 20. Several of my writer friends in Iowa have appeared at the event in years past, but this will be my first time appearing here. I’m really looking forward to it.
  • Pella Books is going to be part of the Pella Tulip Festival, and I’m looking forward to being part of its 4th Local Author/Illustrator Book Tent event. I’ll be at Pella Books, 824 Franklin St., Pella, at the following dates and times:
    • 12-2 p.m., April 27 (Saturday)
    • 6-8 p.m., May 2-3
    • 12-2 p.m., May 4
  • It will be my second time attending the Authors on the Riverwalk event, which will be from 12-4 p.m. May 25 at the Des Moines Marriot Downtown, 700 Grand Ave., Des Moines. It was a fantastic event last year, and I’m hoping for an even better experience this year.
  • I’ll be at the Valley West Mall, 1551 Valley West Drive, West Des Moines, for the 9th Annual Indie Author Book Expo. I’ll be there with many other area and regional authors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, June 7, and at the same time Saturday, June 8.
  • I’ll be there for the Windsor Heights Book Fair in Windsor Heights, Iowa, from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October. More information when I get it.
  • Finally, I’ll be part of the local author book fair sponsored by the Iowa City Book Festival. Not sure about the exact day or time, but it should occur sometime during this year’s festival, which will be 14-20 October in Iowa City.

I am very interested in appearing at other events and venues between now and Fall 2024. If you know of some events or are organizing one of those events, I would love to hear about them and show up. You can email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media or mention something in the comments.

Also, if you can’t make it out to one of my events, you can get my books at the links on the sidebar of this page or the “My Work” page. If you want to get some copies of my books in person, you can check out the following independent book stores in Iowa:

  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

I’m always looking for some new places to place my books (especially now in eastern Iowa), so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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The Writing Life, 16 March 2024: More life on the road and feeling stretched out

Hello, humanoids, as the great American philosopher and professional manager/announcer/wrestler Bobby “The Brain” Heenan once might have said1. It’s all in the game, yo2.

Today I talked to one of my work colleagues and said something to the effect of “if I knew what the game plan for me was on a day to day basis, much less a week to week one, I’d be less out of sorts.”

It’s been one of those weeks (or couple of weeks), but things are perhaps going better than I had hoped for, both on the personal and writing fronts. Anyway, let’s talk about the writing life and the other chaos happening around me at the moment.

The Home Front

My kid is now out of the ICU and in a regular hospital bed, but not for long, it appears.

Jacob (23), who had a fall at work two weeks previously, has been slowly making the road back to recovery. Right now, we are awaiting word on him getting into a rehab facility near his place in Des Moines. While he’s there, I might save some cash by spending some time at his apartment during the week.

I always thought it would be fun to live in the center of a city like Des Moines as my son has been doing for the past few years, but this was not the way I wanted it to happen. It will require me to have a two-hour round trip to work, which is not ideal, but it’s going to be for a couple months at the absolute most, I’ll save on hotels, and be closer to Jake while he continues to recover. I am thankful, however, we are facing this situation rather than something even more dire affecting his health or even life. We still have our kid.

Speaking of kids, I’m so excited for my daughter Maddie’s (22 this month) situation. She is two months away from graduating from the University of Iowa with her chemical engineering degree. She has a job waiting for her in our hometown of Muscatine this June with the same engineering firm her grandfather worked at for 40 or so years. She’s going to have plenty of professional adventures coming up, and I’ll be happy to hear all about them.

What I’ve Been Writing

It seems like I’ve been writing a lot of short odds and ends, short pieces, poetry, etc. I’m trying to finish a short story I’m contributing to a collection of dark fantasy romance (fantasy I’ve long been interested in, dark romance is new territory for me). Once this project is a bit further along, I’ll post the links for it.

I found out I didn’t get any honors at this year’s Iron Pen competition sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center. The concept of the short story I submitted for the competition was sound – essentially a fresh excerpt from the pro wrestling project I’ve discussed here previously.

However, the more I’ve read through it, the more I’m feeling a little uneasy with it. I struggled with the 2,000-word limitation on the short story, because (holding back spoilers), the scene I featured was a major part of the growth of my main character and his journey to understanding both his family and himself. My instinct right now is to let it sit for about a couple weeks and then make a brand new attempt at the scene. I think I can make it happen better the second time around. If I make it work, I’ll post the results here.

Still struggling to get more progress done on The Yank Striker 2 with all the bopping around the state I’ve been doing. My concern is I’ve started to think of the project as “Work” writing rather than “Fun” writing, and I’ve just got to force myself out of this mindset. This world I’ve built, around one of the most fascinating main characters I’ve yet created – an aspiring American soccer superstar – is just too intriguing to just drop after one book. I’ve got to at least get this most recent scene in the book done this month, at least.

What I’ve Been Doing Having to do With Writing

I’ve been scouring some different locations to try and find opportunities to meet with writers and workshop some of my stuff ever since my last writing group ceased operations and I moved away from the area. I might try to sit in with the Midwest Writing Center, a group of poets up in Burlington, or maybe I could even consider getting back in touch with my old compatriots with Writers on the Avenue, in my hometown of Muscatine. Some of these I can start right away, while some others may have to wait until things with Jake and Maddie sort themselves out and I’m finished up with my contract at my current school district in South Central Iowa. I’ll have to see, and I’ll at least start putting in their regular meetings into my Google Calendar.

I’m also trying to update things on this page. I’ve been putting some of the articles I’ve written in years past behind a paywall, for only paid subscribers. Not all of them will be – I’ll make sure to keep my newsletters, writing journals, and some promotional posts open for everyone, always. During the next few months (lies, I got this done tonight), I’ll be updating and revising the status of some of those articles to reflect this. Just remember, if you have a paid subscription to my site, you have access to all of my writings, archived or otherwise.

Writing Advice

Again, I decided to take a look at someone else’s writing advice rather than try to come up with a piece of writing advice on my own3. As it turns out, I found something from John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, etc.) which caught my eye:

If you’re using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

To me, this is one of the few bits of writing advice I would unreservedly endorse in nearly any writing situation. You process information differently by reading words than you do by hearing them. If you are writing dialogue, you want it to be as realistic as possible, which means it needs to sound like naturally flowing conversations actual human beings would use.

My supplemental piece of writing advice related to this is, read everything written by Elmore Leonard you can get your hands on. He was an author who knew how dialogue truly worked and its storytelling potential.

Writing Quote(s) of the Week:

Two quotes on writing this week, one from ancient Greece, and another from 20th century America. Both of them are good advice for, respectively, reaching your audience as a writer and developing your voice.

To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.

  • Aristotle

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.

  • Allen Ginsberg

Where I’ll Be Appearing

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been checking in with different events and book fairs to see where I might be making some personal appearances and sell some books. So far, some of the dates, times, and locations are tentative, but I want to let you know about them as soon as possible if you want to meet me out there in person. Google Calendar has been my friend in this regard.

  • I possibly might be at the Ankeny Book Fair at the Ankeny public library from 1-4 p.m. April 20. I have applied to be at the event, but the organizers of the event should let us know by March 20 if we’ve made the cut. As soon as I know, you’ll know.
  • I am confirmed to be at the Authors on the Riverwalk event from 12-4 p.m. May 25 at the Des Moines Marriot Downtown, 700 Grand Ave., Des Moines. It was a fantastic event last year, and I’m hoping for an even better experience this year.
  • Things start picking up in June. I’ll be at the Valley West Mall, 1551 Valley West Drive, West Des Moines, for the 9th Annual Indie Author Book Expo. I’ll be there with many other area and regional authors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, June 7, and at the same time Saturday, June 8.
  • Two weeks later, I’ll be at another IABE event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 22 at the Peoria Civic Center, 201 SW Jefferson Ave, Peoria. This might be the first year for this event, but I do know it will be the first time I’ll be doing an event in Peoria. Sadly, this event has been cancelled due to the venue cancelling on the event organizers (IABE). However, they are hoping to do the event next year, at least.
  • I’m not sure I will be there both days, but I believe I am on the guest list for the Badger Book Fair at the public library in Badger, Iowa, running Saturday and Sunday, 14-15 September. I’ll add more details when I get them.
  • I’ll be there for the Windsor Heights Book Fair in Windsor Heights, Iowa, from 12-6 p.m. Sunday, 6 October. More information when I get it.
  • Finally, I’ll be part of the local author book fair sponsored by the Iowa City Book Festival. Not sure about the exact day or time, but it should occur sometime during this year’s festival, which will be 14-20 October in Iowa City.

I am actively looking for other events and venues to appear between now and Fall 2024. If you’d like to invite me to a book event, just hit me up in the comments, by direct message (you can find that in Substack Chat or at the button below). You can also email me at jasonliegois@liegois.media, but with the influx of emails I’m getting from my subscriptions to Substack sites, it will be more likely I see the DM’s or comments.

Where You Can Find my Books

For direct links to purchase my books in paperback and ebook form, including The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning and The Holy Fool, click on the links in the Substack sidebar or the links on my Substack author page. Or, you can go to this page on my WordPress site, Liegois Media.

You can also get them in person at these fine Iowa bookstores:

  • Beaverdale Books, 2629 Beaver Ave # S1, Des Moines
  • Pella Books, 824 Franklin St, Pella.
  • The Book Vault, 105 S Market St, Oskaloosa.

All these are great independent bookstores, but I’m always looking for some new places to place my books (especially now in eastern Iowa), so feel free to hit me up in the comments if anyone has a suggestion.

Final Thoughts

That’ll be it for now. I’ll have Poetry Night at the Writing Life posted next weekend, and I’m planning to have some brand new material for you. However, the last weekend of March 2024 will also coincide with my birthday, so I’ll be taking it off from writing (for this site, at least). See you around the Interwebs.

-30-

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

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  1. If you follow my page, you’re just going to have to get used to some pro wrestling terms and terminology. ↩︎
  2. All right, that was a reference from The Wire. Better get used to those references, as well. ↩︎
  3. Being creative with writing advice is hard, if you didn’t know. ↩︎