May 3, 2019

Book Number 22: The Bonnie and Clyde Files

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out.

I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com

Below are some thoughts about it:

The other day, I picked up the print run for the Bonnie and Clyde book from the printer in McMinnville. It’s my 22^nd published book since the first one came out in 2003 and my fourth with Oregon Litho Print, a family owned business with deep Oregon roots. They were again incredible to work with and I may have hit on something unique with the printing format of this book.

The Bonnie and Clyde Files is far and away my most important book and I hope many of you reading this will support me and my publishing company, Nestucca Spit Press, by purchasing a copy. I printed only 300 copies with the idea of selling those directly to readers and then trying to find a national publisher to bring out an edition that can reach a larger audience. I believe this book deserves one, but I’ll need some help to make that happen. I will have to ask for it from writers, some prominent ones.

I have absolutely no expectations I will land a national publisher, or even a larger regional one. I simply wrote the book as an act of survival when men and women were dying around me, an act of reinvention, and act of bearing witness to the shocking and debasing things I witnessed first hand, an act of love inspired by two senior dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. They rescued me from stasis and oblivion.

The book comes with a bonus tale and a special bookmark that channels the magical spirit of my dearly departed husky, Sonny.

Thank you for supporting Nestucca Spit Press and our ethos of sustainable literature. We liken ourselves to a farmer’s market. The product might cost a bit more, but it is made locally, from the writing, to the production, to the distribution. And it tastes different, richer, unique.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.