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

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.

Offering a Bundle of M. G. Turner’s Three Chapbooks

On sale now, a three-book set of M.G. Turner’s Riverside Press chapbooks. Thanks to our friend James Fisher, Editor of The Seaboard Review of Books, and his colleagues there, who’ve suggested this idea, we are pleased to offer readers in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere Dreams of the Romantics, a story cycle inspired by the Romantic Poets; Roman Visions, a story cycle inspired by Virgil and The Aeneid; and 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, in an elegant 3-book package that can be enjoyed all at once 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 so that the books can be enjoyed without constraint. The books range in page count from 96 to 116 pages, and the suggested list price of each is between $18-$20. However, the special price, including shipping, for the 3-book bundle will be $30 USD. For ordering information, please contact us at ptbookproductions[@]gmail[.]com.

We invite you to read about M. G. Turner and his work at this link, while reviews of his work can be found here and here.

For Halloween, “Reader Faustus: A Novella in Verse” by M. G. Turner

My dad and I share an affinity for the legendary literary character Faust, who in various retellings over the centuries has been depicted as selling his soul to the devil in exchange for a number of enticing rewards, including immortal life, admiration from the public, endless amounts of money, and much more. For Philip, this interest goes back to his student days, when with a professor named Donald Sheehan he took a course at Franconia College called “Faust,” and wrote a paper on the topic. Then a few years ago, I undertook the writing of what I call a “novella in verse” which retells the Faust legend for our modern times. With these materials in hand we decided to publish another in the series of chapbooks I’ve brought out this year under our Riverside Press imprint (preceded by Dreams of the Romantics and Roman Visions), using my pen name M. G. Turner. Collected with the narrative poem are two other devilish tales I’ve written, “The Tale of Hanns Drumpf” and “Johann Fust: Patron of Gutenberg,” plus Philip’s essay from 1974, “Faust: Man and Myth.” We believe all this writing goes well together and are now happy to announce publication of Reader Faustus: A Novella in Verse for Halloween. For those who would like to buy a copy from us directly before we begin distributing it online, we are selling them for 13 dollars plus 5 dollars shipping.

To learn a little more about our new title, here is the back cover copy:

The “Faust” legend is as old as time, as is the proverbial “deal with the devil.” In M. G. Turner’s Reader Faustus this idea is brought into a modern context, as a young poet chooses to sell his soul in exchange for the power to read every book ever written. While Turner’s “novella in verse” hearkens back to Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1601), Goethe’s Faust (1808), and Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947)—Reader Faustus zeroes in on today’s zeitgeist, in which people feel burdened to consume endless content, and who see Faustian bargains all around them, in politics, technology, science, and the arts. Readers of the macabre will surely enjoy this new offering, a veritable museum of Faust, from the author of Dreams of the Romantics.

I’m honored to have received two endorsements in advance of publication:

“The Faust legend is ever regenerative and ever redefined, as seen in M. G. Turner’s beguiling new verse tale Reader Faustus. In elegant, Augustan rhyming couplets, Turner tells the story of the devil’s bargain anew, but with a focus on the wages of modernity, when those who create are cursed by having to consume ever more content. Clever, thoughtful, and fun, Reader Faustus uses classical language to speak to very contemporary problems.”—Ed Simon, author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, and Editor of Belt Magazine

“M. G. Turner’s richly imaginative Reader Faustus offers a new twist on the devil’s bargain. In verse both erudite and playful, Turner asks us to reflect on what we might offer in exchange for our pursuit of both knowledge and enjoyment. While Turner takes glee in the use of antique language and form, the poem is also uncannily modern, as it proposes a complex relationship between the ability to consume content and the ability to create content—a relationship that is always under negotiation, and which has become particularly fraught in our digital age. As Turner’s work recognizes, the stakes for this bargain have never been higher.”—Brandon Grafius, author of Scared by the Bible: The Roots of Horror in Scripture 

We hope you find the Faust legend as compelling as we do, and will be interested in visiting, and reading, our “veritable museum of Faust.” Please let us know!

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M. G. Turner: “‘False Memories & Eldritch Interludes’ is a spooky delight”

A review by Ewan “M. G.” Turner of a new horror-inflected book:

False Memories & Eldritch Interludes is a spooky delight! Part-memoir, part tall tale, author Joseph Citro takes a novel approach by making himself known to readers in among a series of stories, narratives, and as he calls them, “eldritch” interludes. If that word is familiar it’s because it was popularized by fellow New England writer H.P. Lovecraft, whom Citro acknowledges as a major influence, as he was on so many, acting as a model for all who preserve local history in that most gothic region. Citro’s writing itself is excellent—personal and touching, and as a fellow horror writer/enthusiast myself, it is special to meet him in these ingenious pages. Along the way you feel less like you’re reading a book and more like you’re in the presence of a great storyteller who is weaving narratives that at first seem opposed to each other but surprise you with their profound resonance.

It is also a joy to read stories and then have them commented upon by the omniscient writer’s voice in welcome “Behind the Scenes” sections which provide an excellent dichotomy between fright and fable, and give you an even deeper view into the author—something Lovecraft himself was never able to do, but Citro does remarkably well and without it feeling contrived or too self-referential. Also, I should add that it is very refreshing to read work like this, though I hesitate to describe it as “no-nonsense.” Instead what I mean is that you have the feeling of being given a chance to see the inner workings of a seasoned writer’s mind and with him as a guide we’ll live to tell the tale! (Also, it’s just nice to read something unpretentious in style and yet extremely deep in terms of content, a nearly impossible feat to pull off.)

Favorite pieces in the collection include: “Them Bald-Headed Snays”; “Soul-Keeper”; “Kirby”; and “The Last Fortune Cookie.” “False Memories” is a must-read for all horror enthusiasts and for people who enjoy the work of highly skilled writers who tell stories connected to their local communities and expand upon and ultimately craft their own urban legends. Last, evocative illustrations by Corey Forman round out the package nicely.  It’s available on Amazon.

The Vermonter publication has described Joe Citro as “Vermont’s most recognized authority on ghosts, haunting, and the state’s mysterious past. He’s written many fascinating books on the subject, including his bestselling work, Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors.” Citro really is a New England treasure, as is clear in this 2020 profile in Seven Days magazine.

Elaine Dewar (1948-2025), Stellar Writer and Dear Friend, RIP

I’m sharing with friends and readers of The Great Gray Bridge that a dear friend and talented author, Elaine Dewar, passed away yesterday—age 77, after a brief illness—in Toronto surrounded by her loving family, including her daughters Anna Dewar Gulley and Danielle Dewar Birch. Elaine was a very accomplished journalist and author who specialized in reporting on and writing about challenging subjects, especially cutting-edge science as it intersected with culture, business, and society. I had the privilege of working on four of her seven books. A Jewish funeral was held at a chapel in Toronto today, and I was able to sit in on it via youtube with my wife. We both benefited over the years from Elaine’s kindness and hospitality. I wish we could have been in Toronto to pay a shiva call at the family home.

Beyond our strong professional links, she was a tremendously steadfast friend—having us stay in a comfortable bedroom in her home numerous times when visiting Toronto, always reminding us that it was there for a getaway when needed. She also had my back after 2009, the year that I became an independent editorial provider in the book business, with me no longer holding an in-house publishing position. One manuscript of hers that I edited was Smarts: The Boundary-Busting Story of Intelligence, which I also covered on this blog in 2015. As I wrote then, just editing it had made me smarter (a bit, anyway :-). Her intellectual curiosity was prodigious. While working for Carroll & Graf Publishers, I’d published the US editions of two of her earlier books—Bones: Discovering the First Americans, on the ancient peopling of the Americas, and The Second Tree: Clones, Chimeras and Quests for Immortality, a kind of nonfiction version of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake. Those books had been edited and published in Canada, so having the chance to edit Smarts was a treat. The fact Elaine went out of her way to hire me for the well-paying freelance assignment of editing the manuscript, so lengthy that it became a nearly 600-page book, shows her loyalty.

Later, she undertook tenacious investigative reporting to chronicle a hidden history that combined business and culture. This story, of a secret corporate consolidation in the Canadian book publishing industry mingled with improper obeisance to the interests of a particular multinational publisher, became her book The Handover: How Bigwigs and Bureaucrats Transferred Canada’s Best Publisher and the Best Part of Our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational (Biblioasis, 2017), which was nominated for the Governor’s General in Nonfiction. She asked me to read early chapters of that book, which I did happily, and with great interest. Prior to her death, Elaine completed a final book, which will be published next year, Growing up Oblivious: Residential Schools, Segregated Indian Hospitals, and the Use of Indigenous People as Slaves of Race Science, another Canadian exposé, which Biblioasis describes thus: “An investigative journalist reckons with the cost of settler privilege in this gripping exposé of racism and unethical science.” Speaking during the funeral today, her daughter Danielle described the forthcoming book as a memoir of sorts, one of which Elaine had never written.

There have already been other tributes to Elaine, along with this one chronicling important and interesting parts of Elaine’s life and work I didn’t know about. One is by her lifelong friend, Marci Macdonald, and is available on the website of Benjamin’s Funeral Home, which also hosted the video of the service today. Significantly, her current editor, Dan Wells of Bibliosasis, writes movingly on his site The Bibliophile of editing Growing up Oblivious in person with Elaine in her last days. He also has a valuable perspective on the writing and editing of “researched nonfiction,” which I realize now can correctly be said to have been Elaine’s true metiér.

I will always think fondly of Elaine, and her husband Stephen Dewar (d. 2019), seated at the breakfast table in their cozy kitchen, CBC Radio program Metro Morning on the dial, newspapers open, when I came down for a morning meal, and they each greeted us with humor and charm.
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Powerful Endorsements for “Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life” by Todd Goddard

September 15, 2025 update:

Along with all the terrific endorsements the author and publisher have received for Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by our agency client Todd Goddard (shown below), we now also have an enthusiastic Publishers Weekly review (“A perceptive account of a prolific and celebrated artist.”), which was quickly shared by the proprietor of the popular Jim Harrison Author Page on Facebook**, where it’s generating more enthusiasm and pre-orders ahead of the book’s launch on November 4.
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As announced previously on this website, Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by our agency client Todd Goddard, the first biography of the notable American author, will be published on November 4, 2025, in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook by Blackstone Publishing. The book has garnered powerful endorsements so far, from writers Gretel Ehrlich, Rebecca Solnit, Colum McCann, Carl Hiassen, John Matteson, William Souder, and Jim Fergus, as shown below.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering the book, here are links for doing so:

Bookshop.org (Bookshop is an online bookseller whose sales support  independent bookstores), 2) Barnes & Noble, 3) Books-A-Million, and 4) Amazon.

Advance Praise for Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by Todd Goddard

Devouring Time is a massive achievement, a deep plunge into the life of Jim Harrison whose 40 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry line our shelves. Atavistic, inspired, despairing, gluttonous, turbo-charged, and broken-hearted, the gut strings of what drove Harrison are plucked, page by page until his high-wire obsessions, his “beggar’s banquets” of eating, drinking, traveling, and writing finally recede. What lasts are the words.”—Gretel Ehrlich, author of The Solace of Open Spaces and Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is

“Jim Harrison was a mustang that never got corralled, or at least broke out of all the paddocks he found himself in, and Todd Goddard tells the story of this bon vivant, outdoorsman, hellion, and great poet from his ancestors to his end with grace, momentum, generosity, and insight. I was more than glad to go on the journey that was Harrison’s life in Devouring Time’s narrative, and what a great American life it was, wreckage, glory, gifts, and all.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell’s Roses

“Jim Harrison is and always will be one of my great heroes. He emerges from Todd Goddard’s splendid Devouring Time in vivid technicolor, and indeed shadow, as if he could walk off the page at any moment, sounding out his American yawp. Gracefully rendered and impeccably researched, Goddard intimately charts the free-flowing river that was Harrison’s life, its headwaters and tributaries, the glistening shallows and eddies, and the dark charging currents that carved channels through the literary landscape. His timeless poetry and fiction, singular joie de vivre, boundless appetites and intellect, as well as his unerring commitment to wisdom and wildness, resound on every page. One of our most cherished writers, Jim Harrison has landed in the hands of a worthy biographer. An absolute pleasure to read, Devouring Time resonates with me still.”—Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin and Apeirogon

“My friend Jim Harrison always seemed a fiercely untameable subject for a biographer, but I think Devouring Time will stand as a complete and moving portrait. Jim was one of those rare writers whose private life was as adventurous as their works, but only a dogged journalist could have tracked down all the tales. Todd Goddard tells the whole story in a way that Jim would have admired – raw and revealing, yet with a sensitive eye for both the pain and the talent that made Jim one of modern America’s most intriguing poets and novelists.”—Carl Hiaasen, author of Bad Monkey and Fever Beach

[caption id="attachment_18927" align="alignright" width="202"] Jim Harrison, Paris, 1971. Credit: Dan Gerber[/caption]

“Jim Harrison lived a big life, and he has long deserved a gargantuan biography, both in size and spirit. And this is what Todd Goddard has given us. All by itself, the meticulously rendered story of how Harrison’s prose masterpiece Legends of the Fall came into being would be ample reward for the curious reader. But Goddard has given us immeasurably more. Impeccably researched, sensitively written, Devouring Time gives us a man — one who experienced the very depths of pain but found there the building blocks of enduring art. Cruelly battered by adversity, Harrison nevertheless infused his world with transcendent song. Read in conjunction with his own work, Devouring Time completes his testament.”—John Matteson, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father

“A feast of a biography that does full justice to a writer whose vast appetites…for books, food, sex, success, and a life in the wild…fueled a prodigious and prolific talent. Sweeping yet judicious, written with grace and restraint, Devouring Time deftly captures a life that veered between exhilaration and despair, impoverishment and acclaim. A keen-eyed and sensitive interpreter of Harrison’s writing, especially his poetry, Todd Goddard also grapples with his subject’s manifold excesses and insecurities. Harrison’s long marriage to his wife Linda, to whom he was serially unfaithful but never faithless, anchored his tempestuous personality. Their often-challenged devotion to each other is the beating heart of this moving portrayal of an artist who craved domesticity but could never live entirely within its boundaries. An exquisite, indelible book.”—William Souder, author of Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck

“Let me just say upfront that any other writers who are working on, and/or planning to write a biography about the life and times of poet/novelist Jim Harrison, I would suggest that you hang up your pens and pencils, fold up your laptops, and turn your literary attentions elsewhere. Todd Goddard here delivers the most definitive possible such work, a book brilliantly constructed, comprehensive and artfully written.

I was a close friend of Jim Harrison’s for thirty-seven years (among, of course, many others) right up until the evening of his death. I thought in that time (as many of us did) that I had heard virtually all of Jim’s stories, some more than once, for he was a consummate storyteller, frequently with alternate versions of his tales, and never too shy to talk about himself.

Herein are the rich details of the life and career of one of America’s sometimes overlooked literary geniuses, a man devoted to his art, who pushed his talents, and body, to the limit, from the rarefied world of poetry, to fiction and novels, to screenplays on the other end of the spectrum. Along the way, the reader will learn a great deal about the complicated and sometimes cutthroat literary and film businesses, as well as meet a vast array of friends, family members and colleagues who peopled Jim’s world.

There are no punches pulled here; like so many creative geniuses, Jim Harrison had his dark side, fueled by alcoholism of which he himself was more than well aware. This is a big book, and not just in size, that tells the story of an extraordinary character unlike any other, a man so totally out of the ordinary, that those of us who knew him personally, forgive him all his excesses, remember his humor and generosity, and will miss his presence on earth until the day we die.”—Jim Fergus, author of One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

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