Sold: “City of Dark Dreams: Tales from Another New York” by M. G. Turner

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Postcard showing what New Yorkers in the past imagined the future metropolis would look like.

Great news about my adult son M. G. Turner and his writing! As his literary agent, I’ve sold what will be his first full-length commercially published book, City of Dark Dreams: Tales from Another New York, to be published in January 2027 by DarkWinter Press.

Incorporating the mysterious and the macabre, the 25 tales—selected from a larger body of work the author has dubbed the Neighborhood Legendarium—explore life and death, ask whether mortality can be circumvented, imagine dreams impinging on reality, and find the uncanny in the everyday. Melding the collection into a unified whole is the setting, the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a fictional college, Hudson University, which introduces a dark academia motif. The characters populating this world intersect and influence each other’s lives, akin to the storytelling in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” We’ll have more information about the book in the future, including how to pre-order copies.

And, while we have your attention, if you’re starting to think about books you may want to give as presents to friends and family for the holidays this year, here’s something to consider:

We are pleased to offer a bundle of three small chapbooks M. G. Turner’s published this year under our Riverside Press imprint. They are 1) Dreams of the Romantics, a story cycle inspired by the Romantic Poets, Lord Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley, etc.; 2) Roman Visions, a story cycle inspired by Virgil and The Aeneid; and 3) Reader Faustus, a novella-in-verse in which a young man—possessed by the desire to read every book ever written—makes a pact with a demon. These three books, each between 96-116 pages, may be enjoyed in single sittings, or savored over time. To relieve what would be the cost of shipping three separate books we’ve decided to package them as a bundle. The suggested list price of each is between $18-$20. However, the special price including shipping for the 3-book bundle is $30. If you’d like to know more about the three chapbooks, we invite you to read reviews of them, including in The Seaboard Review of Books, where editor of the publication James Fisher wrote, “Dreams of the Romantics was a beautiful read. Turner’s use of language reflects the period, and I read through the book several times, picking up on different metaphors from the lives of all those in attendance at Lord Byron’s dinner party. I also found it educational, as I had only a passing knowledge of the Shelleys, little of Byron and none of Doctor John Polidori. Invariably, I was sent scrambling to the Internet for answers to my questions, as well as the biographies of the participants.” You may read more here and here. For ordering information for the bundle, please contact us at ptbookproductions[@]gmail[.]com.

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Remembering that Time Garth Hudson Sat in with The Sadies

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Back around 2010 I went to hear the fantastic Canadian rock band The Sadies at Bowery Ballroom on the lower east side of Manhattan. They were playing a great raucous live show—in their singular vein of old-timey mind-blown electric country folk featuring two colliding electric guitars in the hands of brothers Dallas and Travis Good plus a hard-driving rhythm section including a stand-up bass—when they suddenly introduced Garth Hudson and his wife Maud to the audience and invited the couple to join them on stage. I recall Garth was in a wheelchair, but he got wheeled in front of a keyboard, and played a few songs with them while Maude struck a tambourine. What a thrill it was! I had seen Garth play with The Band at Watkins Glen in July 1973, in a famous weekend-long extravaganza which also featured The Allman Bros. and the Grateful Dead.

I had a very primitive cell phone in those days, but got this pic, which I was able to put my hand on today when I heard dear old Garth had died, age 87. #RIPGarth #TheBand #TheSadies #CanRock

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Favorite Maxims, Some of them Mine

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With the long reign of Covid and periodic lockdowns, I’ve found myself browsing through my own home library more than ever, and came up on an old favorite today, W. H. Auden’s A Certain World. Please see something from it below.

“If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a comfortable living.”—A Yiddish proverb quoted by W.H. Auden in A Certain World: A Commonplace Book * (A William Cole Book, Viking Press, 1970)

“It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re on the ground with the turkeys.”–Seen above the bar at Cleveland’s Euclid Tavern, circa 1970s-80s, source unknown

Three of my own coinage:

“Stay neutral, lean positive.”

“Being an editor allows me to express my latent religiosity, since I spend so much time praying for my books.”

“Publishing companies have long been known as ‘houses’ because they (are supposed to) offer hospitality to writers.”

* For those curious about what a commonplace book is, please see my pictures of the front and back flaps, and back cover, from my treasured copy of A Certain World. I recall from my years as a bookseller that E.M. Forster also assembled, or perhaps I should say, he collected materials for a commonplace book of his own. I love Auden’s contribution to this overlooked literary form.

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A Surprising Symbol of Scottish Sovereignty

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Fascinating, and timely obit of Ian Hamilton, 97, who in 1950 was part of a crew that broke into Westminster Abbey and absconded with an ancient 336-pound stone, a symbol of Scottish sovereignty, later conveying it back to Scotland from whence it had been taken to England in 1296. Hamilton and his cohorts broke into the Abbey with just a crowbar, and located the heavy relic under the Coronation Chair where kings were crowned. Moving it, the stone split into two pieces, but they somehow got it out of the building and into a car.

This was of course long before the current popular movement agitating for Scotland’s independence from the UK. Ever since Brexit was imposed on the UK in 2016, I’ve been lamenting its impact on the country, and in particular on Scotland. With the third British Prime Minister of the past seven weeks now taking office, the chaos Brexit has engendered is clearer all the time.

As a lover of Scotland, my hope is that the country will become independent in coming years and re-join the EU as an independent nation. Hop-skipping along the map from the Republic of Ireland to Scotland and then onto the European Continent, the EU could in the future become a strong economic and political bulwark as the chaotic 21st Century advances toward what kind of future we know not.

I must add this: I love Great Britain, and England, too, but, the UK is not apt to rejoin the EU—even the Labor party, which I hope to see win a majority in Britain’s next general election, is not yet advocating a re-do on Brexit—so I hope to see Scotland independent one day soon. I know Mr Ian Hamilton, RIP, would have approved.

A tip of the cap to NY Times reporter Richard Sandomir, who wrote the obit of Ian Hamilton.


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Remembering My Dad, Earl I. Turner, on Father’s Day 2022

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My father, Earl I. Turner (Feb 7, 1918-July 8, 1992), was a dear man who showed me so much about being a kind and decent person. Here’s a letter he wrote for his three children on May 8, 1978, four days after we’d opened Undercover Books, our bookstore in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Jewish tradition embraces the idea that a parent may offer to their children what’s termed an “ethical will,” which is pretty much what he gave us here, with its discussion of ethics in business, while standing up for one’s self. The photograph was taken on a visit he made to the Canadian Rockies in 1982, a sightseeing journey that he gloried in. My own enjoyment of gorgeous scenic views was no doubt inspired by him. His handwriting and signature were very distinctive, and I’m always comforted when I see his script on something, as here. Thank you, Dad, gone thirty years, love for you always.

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Remembering David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” an Every(Wronged)Man Hero

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My favorite male TV star from childhood was David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” playing the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimball. The sympathetic protagonist endures the loss of his murdered wife, then gets collared and condemned for the killing until a train wreck en route to the “death house*” frees him from the clutches of the implacable Lt. Inspector Philip Gerard. Played by the sober Canadian actor Barry Morse, Gerard, like Javert in Les Miserables, tracks the escaped man from one end of the land to the next. Floating from town-to-town, job-to-job, Kimball relies on the anonymity a loner could still have in the 1960s—no one ever asks him for so much as a Social Security number. I don’t think the program could be made today. The show was inspired, in part, by the real-life murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Cleveland, with her doctor husband Sam the accused, which I also paid attention to in the mid-60s. As the fugitive who could never set down roots anywhere, in each teleplay forced to abandon newly forged friendships, Janssen’s Kimball somehow maintained a grim good humor, which I’ve always admired. The show still looks good nowadays.

I have no doubt that my enjoyment of “The Fugitive” is part of the reason why I have always been drawn to publishing books about the unjustly accused, such as Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America. by William F. Burke and Joe Jackson, Introduction by William Styron. One of the first posts I published on the blog was the story of how I came to work with Styron in championing Dead Run.

#TVShows #1960s #exonerations
*The pulse-pounding Intro, with its line about “the death house” was voiced by the baritone actor William Conrad.

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