Jason Denaro is an Australian born artist who migrated to the USA in 1990 and is now a US citizen residing in Hawaii. In 1996, the artist took a sabbatical from painting and has spent the past years writing novels. Artwork shown on this site covers the period 1990 through 1996. He restricted his creations to one or two paintings per year through '96, concentrating on quality large canvases and the occasional mega mural. The artist has turned his back on the world of art reproduction following many years of his originals being distributed worldwide as prints, posters, greeting cards, puzzles, murals and the list goes on. In fact, between 1975 and 1996, Jason had over 200 works licensed for publication.
as·sort·ed (as'sôrtid), Adjective: Of various sorts put together; miscellaneous
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Jason Denaro: Author
To date I have written six novels. The Stone Killers, Fiddler, Vatican FileSS, Shades of Gray, Mindpower, & Black Sabbath. My works are heavily researched and in the most part, steeped in history. I introduce a fictional story line to provide flow to the factual background of each adventure. I've found that this is a great way to get readers thinking about what the heck is going on in this insane world. It hands me the reigns. I can steer the reader's mind through a labyrinth of world events, a much wider freeway than the narrow alley of an artist's canvas.
I thank you for visiting my website, and hope you'll travel along with myself and Drew Blake through many future adventures. I promise, it will always be a great ride.
Website: jasondenaro.com
His earlier works can be found in print and poster shops and can be researched on any search engine. Many private collections feature Denaro originals, including golfer Greg Norman, actor Buddy Ebsen and radio personality Rush Limbaugh. Since moving from Australia, Jason Denaro's works have become more realistic, more refined, and his genre far more selective.
Jason Denaro was chosen as one of the world's top 100 living wildlife artists by Wildlife Art Magazine, yet even with this accolade, the artist refused to enter into a painting frenzy and capitalize on his rating by churning out works, as so many artists unfortunately do. By limiting his works to one or two originals annually, he has wisely tightened the supply /demand market and has successfully been slotted into the ranks of highly collectible artists.
Jason has always been open to supporting worthy charitable causes. His involvement with major wildlife and environmental movements is well known. In the mid-seventies and early eighties, he led the move to ban all French products from entering into Australia as a prelude to stopping French atmospheric testing off the east coast of Australia. His television and press interviews resulted in massive trade union black bans of all French goods. Ships laid anchored off shore unable to enter Australian ports and unload their French goods. This was truly a case of the brush being mightier than the sword. When baby harp seals were being butchered for their white pelts by Canadian sealers, Jason Denaro again took up the cause and instigated a thoroughly successful ban of all Canadian products in Australia.
The artist's final "one-man-show" held in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, the artist's home state, resulted in a sellout exhibition, raising sufficient funds for The Koala Sanctuary to assist with the building of the sanctuary's Koala Quarantine ward for the treatment of conjunctivitis and Chlamydia among the koala population.
This artist is unaffected by recognition and has no ego aspirations, yet his presence is felt when he appears at selected charity functions, where he supports many causes including Wildlife Rescue, Greenpeace, and Save the Children to name a few. As a speaker, he has a magnetic charm that has held him in high esteem for public seminars and charitable events. He is traveled, worldly, yet sensitive to the needs and emotions of those around him, a standout personality, sensitive, feeling and imaginative. It has been said by those who follow his works, that his most creative years are the now, the present, yet each year that passes produces new work that continue to leave one wondering, just how great can this artist's work become.
Jason relocated to Kailua Kona, Hawai'i in early 2011 where his work has become influenced by his surroundings as can be seen by the canvases illustrated in this article, all works completed during his Hawaiian period - tropical parrots, lava flows, and pacific waves. He is simultaneously editing his latest manuscript in between creating large canvases. Jason is available for book signings, "meet the artist" events, and public speaking engagements. His originals are available as hand embellished giclees and are shipped worldwide.
Website: jasondenaro.com
What I Seen by Derek Frazier
Preview:
Transcript of a conversation between Baxter DeJean and Michael Hero; May 26, 1996 (Sunday):
BD: (slams a can of beer and crushes the can) Goddamn, that beer tastes like shit. (eats from a box of Cheez-Its) Hey man, (burps) I want to tell you about something we got going on out here.
MH: What's that?
BD: Out here on County Road 3414 we ain't necessarily living in the swamp, but we can smell it from here. You know what I mean?
MH: Mm-hmm.
BD: Huh?
MH: Mm-hmm. (drinks beer)
BD: (opens another beer). The other day me and Seth Domangue was out in the swamp. (slams a beer, burps) Aww, fuck me naked. (burps) Fuck. (eats Cheez-Its) The other day we was out there in the swamp, kind of playing grab-ass and looking for a place to put our deer blind for next year, and we seen it, it was uh, it was the Bigfoot.
MH: Was a what?
BD: It was the Bigfoot. It was uh, nine, ten feet tall, covered with hair, kind of dark brownish hair, a little grizzle in there like a, more like a pole-cat than a grizzly bear. And uh, usually when you're out there in the swamp there's all kinds of sounds, you know, like birds and whatnot. Ever now and then a snake'll wiggle off of a branch and fall off down into the water, mostly them copperheads. We got a couple of them water moccasins, whatever they's called, mossacin, water moccasin, sockin, mossacin…. Anyway, uh, it was real quiet and we, uh, we looked up in the, kind of up in there on the levee, and, uh, (opens and slams a beer) oh, goddamn, (burps) and he was walking off in them trees (eats Cheez-Its) kind of up in that thicket, you know, where them briars live, where them briars grow. Now, (burps) we've had the Bigfoot out here quite a while, and, uh, the reason I know is, uh, my daddy's, let's see, my daddy's, my daddy's granddaddy, and my granddaddy's daddy… and my granddaddy's granddaddy, (burps) and my daddy's daddy, they all seen him.
MH: Yeah?
BD: You ever seen him?
MH: No.
BD: Huh?
MH: No.
BD: And uh, also I've seen a, I read me a book one time and it had a lot of pictures of the Bigfoot in it, and had a lot of talk about folks seeing them and shit, and uh, a lot of them was off up in another part of the country, that shit don't matter, but out here in the East Texas we got them, too. They was talking about that (burps) and uh, they seem to like the, they seem to like the thickets and woods and all, kind of like us out here. And uh, I guess you could say, uh, that (unintelligible) kind of like the Bigfoot, uh, we both kind of just stick to ourselves, uh, kind of live off the land you know, I don't know if he's eating 'possum, but I know I do, they pretty good, when you can't find enough squirrels you know, there's not much meat on a squirrel.
MH: Nope.
BD: You can get them both with a .22, though, and they's both pretty good eating but they's kind of hard to find, and uh…. (begins singing) My heroes have always been cowboys, and it still are it seems, sadly in search of (drinks beer) but one step in back of, themselves and their slow-moving dreams. (speaking) That was old Waylon, Waylon Jennings, and uh, he made that song with old Willie. (finishes beer) Fuck, what was I talking about?
MH: Bigfoot. (drinks beer)
BD: (pauses, eats Cheez-Its) Well, shit, it don't matter. Anyway, couple of days ago my buddy Lloyd, I call him Beaudroux because I got another buddy named Lloyd, and if you got two Lloyds, that's just one too many Lloyds. Anyway, Beaudroux fell off his four-wheeler, and uh, we uh, had to put one of them plasters on his back, hook him up with some, you know… (sound of dog barking) Get out of that. What you doing over there? We got dogs.
MH: Yeah.
BD: Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Beaudroux, we put one of them plasters on his back, and uh, I still had uh, I still had that box of plaster of Paris in the back of the truck, (drinks beer) and uh, me and Domangue made one of them, uh, (eats Cheez-Its) what do you call, uh, one of them footprint things? You know, when they make a footprint and you pour the plaster in there, and you make a footprint? A picture of it? (eats Cheez-Its)
Everyone has an opinion on humour, and think they have a sense of humour and say they like a good laugh. I recently read one of those modified research articles published by renowned university people saying that laughing is even more of a remedy to body's problems than we once thought. I can picture a bunch of legally obese SUV driving university researchers procuring a fat government grant along with two conferences trips before printing these findings. Now, my Irish Grandmother sitting around a turf fire once said the same thing. Shouldn't courses be given on humour?
Since I have an English accent, people tend to discuss soccer and English humour in my presence. I care little about soccer but I find the subject of humour intriguing. Just like sports, humour follows national boundaries. It is easy money to make fun of other nationalities and a revelation to discover that a nationality actually has a sense of humour. For example… well maybe I had better not go there! By eaves dropping in the European airport waiting areas, and exclusive airline lounges (the latter of which I am persona non grata due to policy a policy change in credit cards) I have come up with the following information bytes:
England believes its humour is the best in not only Europe but also the world. Most of the world outside Europe watches Faulty Towers reruns and says fine. When non English fortyish European business people meet in Brussels or anywhere in the EU except England and the subject of English humour comes up, they gesticulate with either one or two hands ' non', or 'Bitte müssen Sie scherzen', or 'amici dovete scherzare' or even ' es usted serio'. The only humour they find with England is its warm beer, cooking and spelling and on some rainy days, they do not find that funny and are lobbing for next year's meeting to be in the Canary Islands or Barcelona but not Manchester. These European business people that hold these tenets are quite serious and are not trying to be funny which I suppose makes them humorous in their own way. The Germans are delighted to be included in any discussion on humour and point out that the Swiss borrow German humour. The Swiss say," pardon me" Of course some of these Europeans don't know that 'pardon' is not said by posh people in Manchester!
I wonder if travel induces the cognition of humour? A year or so ago my Chicago bound flight was diverted to a small airport due to high winds. In the non-European airport waiting area (there was no exclusive airline there or even a place open to buy food) a Russian (he was a medical student and I am sure played chess) said that in Russia it helped to have a sense of humour, as there were so many daily problems. So what he was saying is humour helps alleviate daily problems.
Sometimes we witness send in the clown syndrome, when humour is used to cover up a mistake or mistakes. As we know, it does not always work. Did you ever go into the wrong office while looking for your dentist? Was there an embarrassing silence or did someone say something funny? Was that humour? The corporate world does not encourage humour but sometimes, use it as an icebreaker. Maybe the odd dry little chuckle, but no more. It makes sense that the workplace including the class room are in appropriate places for humour.
Humour is a funny thing. It even has its own memory since we gladly recall funny situations years later and are pleased to relive them. Telling a joke requires memory and was once considered an attribute but now is associated with the company's Christmas party when the owner's son tried again to enamour himself. Being witty and quick responding is an admirable trait and encourages a smile and frequently famous people are quoted if they quip anything funny
Do you receive many of those e-mail jokes? Do you like them? Are those funny get-well cards funny? Do you like them? What about April Fool's jokes? Do you like them?
"Humour is a universal language." Joel Goodman
"I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?" Andy Warhol
"Humour is a funny thing don't you think?" John Joyce
© 2012, John Joyce
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Humour Is A Funny Thing by John Joyce
These Pieces of Literature By Tyler W. Stinson
Synopsis: These Pieces of Literature creates and vividly paints a world completely consumed and devoured by misery and sin. Poems that are heart-breaking and breath-stealing and short stories that are disturbing and violent have birthed these pieces of literature. From the guilt-ridden and suicidal soldiers to the truly twisted and evil, These Pieces of Literature is the detailed description of the world that lives and breathes in my ever-waking head. The book is available on llumina.com
The Strangling Angel by Elizabeth Tyrrell
Synopsis: Elizabeth Tyrrell's gripping debut novel, THE STRANGLING ANGEL is now available to North American readers at Amazon.com. Set in Ireland during The Great Famine, it tells the story of a young girl's escape after she witnesses her mother's murder at the hands of her cruel father. She survives near starvation and suffers many hardships before she is able to escape for America, but she is robbed on the quayside in Liverpool and plunged into another series of nightmares...
My mother hides from me. I search everywhere but I can't find her.
I went through every room at the old house on Day Street. She wasn't there. I checked the back yard by the apple trees -- not there. I looked behind the garage where the clothesline stretched between two poles. But she wasn't out there hanging clothes so they would smell of fresh air and sun, clothes pins in her apron pockets and one or two in her mouth, her black hair shining in the sunlight.
I went all the way to Bakerton, Pennsylvania, to the old stone house that is now a stone cold shell, to the yard where clothes froze on the line, stiff long johns standing in a corner. I went to the large rock where my grandmother stopped to break open a watermelon celebrating my mother's graduation. There was nothing -- no traces, no tracks.
I went up into the hills, into the woods, looking for anything left of Thirteen, the row of houses named for the mine. I looked for the road where my father walked past the porch where my mother sat shaking a jar of cream into butter. There was no porch, no house, no road, no young woman making butter.
I went to Rossiter to find her in the deep Christmas snow at my grandmother's house, the house where Uncle John took a string of sleigh bells up onto the roof and stomped and shook the bells to prove there was a Santa Claus. But even the house and the wooden tipple where we rode the coal cars were gone and the road up to the mine was nearly invisible.
I went to that lovely lonely green-shaded clearing with the Catholic cemetery and my grandmother's grave. There where my mother screamed and tried to throw herself onto the lowering coffin. But she wasn't there - not even the lavender handkerchief she dropped.
I went to the country outside Ravenna, to Peck Road, where we slept on the cement floor of an auto repair shop. I went down the road to find her in the house my dad built but the house was gone, burned down that January in 1951. I looked for her there in the fields where she raced the old Plymouth learning to drive. I walked through the old apple orchard where we picked the apples for her pies and apple sauce and apple butter, but the few trees left were bare.
I ran all along the road, brushing past the elderberry bushes, and down the path to the creek where we went swimming and picnicked and fished and my dad kept his beer cold in the quick stream. I searched along the railroad tracks, the tracks where she stood next to the wind-rush of the train but decided not to. I called her name but she didn't answer.
My mother still hides from me.
She's escaped into a flat black and white two-dimensional world where she stands next to my father's 38 Ford or in front of Uncle Steve's new Buick there in Boston in 1941 or in the high white grass by the railroad, standing there shading her eyes with her left hand.
© 2012, Steve Myers
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Lost & Found in Ohio by Steve Myers
Sagging Middles... Plot Outlines... by Milton Trachtenburg
Preview:
Starring in no particular order:
- Little Red Writing Hood as herself and
- The Big Bad Word Wolf as his usual nasty self.
Scene One: Sagging Middles
The office of LRW Hood, Literary Agent extraordinaire. The walls are lined with plaques and pictures of Little Red with only the top writers, editors and publishers.
The view through her skyscraper window is of bustling Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, the Mecca of publishing.
"Sagging Middles, Sagging Middles. That's all I hear about anymore. Look at me; I'm tough, I'm buff. Why do I have to worry about sagging middles?" said Big Bad Word Wolf.
"Biggie, you are forever complaining or explaining. That's why your writing isn't going anywhere," Little Red Writing Hood answered, giving Wolf her Killer Coquette smile. "Every time you start out strong and think you have a winner going, you always forget something and end up with another dead tree to show for all your writing, Hairy One."
Wolf snarled, "My plan is perfect but something always comes along to mess it up. I lose my concentration, and get careless. But I always get back on track and give the readers what they want at the end, painful as that is for me, Petite Rouge."
"Stop with that Petite Rouge stuff, too. I'm not impressed that you know two words of French. Some of the readers won't know that you just said my name. Your charm escapes me, you lupine word abuser."
"I don't know what you mean by your last remark, but if I did, I think I would be insulted!"
"See?" said Red, "That's exactly what I'm talking about. I did that intentionally to show you how you come off when you get pretentious."
"Maybe I get bored writing all those stories where I end up losing," said Wolf.
"That's still no excuse for sloppy writing. I admit, you have great beginnings and endings that the readers can identify with, but your middles . . . sloppy, careless and bor-ing!"
"Ok, OK," said Wolf, his irritation rising. "I admit that in the "Three Pigs" story, I slipped up because I was so busy thinking about eating all that bacon that I forgot about how to get to the beef and I guess I let down all my carnivorous readers. It sure didn't sell as many copies as 3rd-Pig's version of the same story.
"Maybe if you hadn't been so… redundant. You just had to blow away three houses instead of one! You would have given the readers more of a chill lying in wait for the Piggies. You could have brought incredible tension to the story to have them all show up at one house.
"Instead, you took them and the story all over the neighborhood and ended up ruining the read for those few animals you call your readers. You felt you had to show off your prowess as a big blowhard and take out half the neighborhood. That displays poor ideas combined with bad writing." Red smiled in triumph.
Wolf stared at the floor, dejected. In his devious head, he began creating nefarious plots in which he exacted revenge upon Little Red. When he returned from his reverie, the room was empty.
Where is she? Just like her to run out because I take a few minutes to think about myself.
At that moment, entering through a rear door, Red returned to the room. "See what I mean? she said. "You do that to your readers all the time. Just when you have a good plot going, you take off on some self-serving trip into the ozone and lose them. Who cares what you think? You have to write for your reader."
"OK, Little Red Know-It-All, since you're on a roll, why don't you tell me how to fix some of my mistakes? Are you afraid my writing will be better than yours?"
"Wolf, I'd be happy to give you some pointers on how to tighten up your sagging middles. Are you willing to listen?"
"I'm listening, I'm listening."
"For one," said Little Red, "You throw words around like there is an unlimited supply. It gets worse as your story progresses. I told you, you have great beginnings, but once you pull in the reader you tend to huff and puff and use more words than you need. The reader gets bored."
"You repeat yourself. That tells the reader that either you can't remember what you said previously, or you think your words are so important they bear repeating. Wrong and wrong again, Wolf.
"Maybe if you thought about cutting out some of the words, you'd have enough wind left to blow away that brick house."
"Now that was a low blow, Red!"
"If you learn from it, it was worth it. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but you're so defensive about your writing."
"Defensive? It's a tough world out there. Editors are always telling me things like, 'Your writing is turgid.' Of course, I'm defensive."
"Maybe you ought to listen to them," said Red.
"You're a writer, too, and you should be defending me against them," answered Wolf.
"'Editors are the defenders of the reader, not the enemy of the writer."
Wolf gave Red a baleful stare as she uttered these words. "There you go, Little Red On-Her-Soapbox again, telling everybody how to write."
"Now you listen Wolf. These ideas aren't original. I had to learn them the same as you do. How do you think I get editors to look so approvingly at my work?"
"I could answer that one, honey, but I'm too much of a gentleman!"
Dancing With The Pen: A Collection of Today's Best Youth Writing By Dallas Woodburn
Synopsis: Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing features stories, essays and poetry by more than 65 young writers from around the world. For every book purchased, a new book will be donated to Write On's Holiday Book Drive to benefit disadvantaged youth. Learn more at writeonbooks.org. The book is available on Amazon.com
Preview:
"Oh God of Israel! Why have you deserted us? What have we done to deserve such affliction and annihilation? Where is the Lord God of hosts who delivered us from Egypt, who gave us manna from heaven, who brought us through the wilderness to the walls of Jericho and in a single blast of horns destroyed them? Oh Lord God where is our Covenant now except in the surety of death at the hands of our enemies?
Is this your idea of cleansing? Are you trying to see how far you can go to break your people's faith? Or is it some terrible divine joke I cannot possibly fathom? Answer me Lord, damn you! Do not make me suffer in such utter silence; such despair!
After all these centuries of wandering in the Diaspora and faithfully observing your Laws and Commandments, you have kept rewarding us with pogroms and continuing exile from the land you promised us. And now your people have been harvested like so much wheat; scythed down as they waved goodbye to life, hope and you oh Lord. Now Abraham's fields are nothing but burnt stubble and ash! Is this what we were chosen for?
What more can you do to punish what is left of us? Is it even your punishment? Were you ever there to punish or even reward us? Was our belief that we were your especially chosen just a tribal conceit that has brought down the wrath of our neighbors upon us? Speak to me Lord! Tell me it isn't true."
One of the clearest memories I have of my youth is a 'Time' magazine article written shortly after the 1967 'Six Day War' between Egypt, Syria and Jordan on the one hand, and Israel on the other. The by-line was, 'The Shortest Day' which was a reference to the 1962 Normandy invasion WWII film, 'The Longest Day'. It was a gleeful account of the Arab's humiliating performance on the battlefield as opposed to the speedy brilliance of the Israeli forces and the outstanding generals who deployed them.
It was a high point for the Jewish settler-occupiers of Palestine; probably the all-time high point in the history of their control of the territory that they won by creeping migration, leveraging the British during a very critical time in World War 1, gaining a 'sympathy vote' UN mandate and winning a war in 1948.
In the process, they have become not only the most vehemently hated people in the Middle East, but the entire Muslim world; so much so, that the violence this has spawned is now spreading back to the people and institutions whose support makes possible Israel's continued existence as a state.
While they still dominate through overwhelming military power, the process of maintaining that dominance has turned into something much grimmer and more attritional, as asymmetrical warfare modeling has developed, and the specter of innovative new uses of weapons of mass destruction stalks them and their supporters.
The 'Jewish Problem' did not end in the holocaust and the very proper contrition that followed it. It was exported from Europe to the Middle East in a gesture that was as cynical, guilt ridden, spineless and ideologically indulgent as it was an honest attempt to 'do something' for a people who had been treated in ways too dark to come to ordinary grips with.
Shylock, Shakespeare's Jewish character from 'The Merchant of Venice', is no longer a helpless victim of abuse for being a 'Christ Hater' or having to suffer the contempt of hypocritical Christian borrowers who have excluded him from most occupations other than that of the despised money lender, or endure the impositions of legal systems that systematically discriminate against him.
Nor can anyone arbitrarily and at their whim deport him or murder him, his family, community and his people, en mass, even though there are now millions of the 'Other Semites' who would dearly love to have a go at the first opportunity, if not at Shylock, then his supporters.
Shylock in the Twenty-First Century by Christopher Nagle