The Project I Couldn’t Say No to
Celebrating 100 years of Zeno’s Conscience with a new translation No novel captures the sprit of the city of Trieste like Italo Svevo’s masterpiece, La Coscienza di Zeno. I grew up in the city, and walked through the very streets Svevo mentions, sat down to have coffee in the cafes where he sat and discussed literature…
Harmless Beasts
a short story by Peter Palmieri (This story was previously published in The Starship Logs Volume 2: Creatures by Telltale Press – 2020) “Don’t eat too fast,” Mrs. Miller said as she popped the lid off the chicken-and-gravy jar, one of those with a wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked infant on its label. “You’ll get a tummy ache…
A Long Stretch of Highway – a short story
by Peter Palmieri This was the Grand Prize winning entry at the 2015 Dallas Medicine+Literature writing contest. The highest praise I received as a doctor came from a steely-eyed, reticent cowboy near the start of my career. He sat in the mommy chair of my exam room, his three-year old daughter squirming on his steady…
PARKLAND – a short story
Leroy Abellard meets interesting people on the graveyard shift at Parkland Hospital. Previously published in Beyond the Levee, an anthology of short stories (copyright 2020) If it had an engine, Leroy Abellard could fix it — it didn’t matter if it was a lawnmower or a 25-ton industrial AC unit. By the time he was…
Write the first line last
It’s hard to get started. Maybe you’re a plotter. You’ve spent the last six months researching your novel, drafting a detailed outline, writing comprehensive profiles for all your characters. Or maybe you’re a pantser, someone who writes a story by the seat of their pants. It doesn’t matter. That first line can be intimidating. You…
A good story can save your life
There is a psychological reward that readers of novels seek that is seldom discussed. What is it? The answer may surprise you. When you need cold information– technical facts, historical details, expert analysis–there is no better source to turn to than non-fiction books. But when you want to learn about human nature, novels are an…
The book every lover of novels should read
A conversation about IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER by ITALO CALVINO
The greatest invention ever
Story is both the fuel and the lubricant for the human cortex.
Bio
Welcome to my blog. I think it’s only fair if I tell you a little bit about me. The most important thing, as far as this blog is concerned, is that I am an avid reader and a full-time student of the writing craft. Maybe that’s all you need to know and you’ll skip the…
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Peter Palmieri 