April 7, 2018

Bonnie and Clyde Files 47 (Book Launch Week!)

(Friends: this week marks the launch for the sale of my forthcoming book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Saved a Middle Aged Man. Only 300 copies will be sold and it won’t be available in book stores. For more information and how to order, got to nestuccaspitpress.com or order here from the blog. Half of the profits are earmarked for the Angels for Sara Sanctuary to continue their excellent work. Please support me in this new editorial endeavor as I get back in the game of life, literature and service. Below is an excerpt from the book.)

I stood at the edge of the river on a Tuesday morning. Bonnie and Clyde stood beside me. Showers showered. Heavy rain had fallen all night and the current was swift and the water cloudy.

Cloudy. That wasn’t the right scientific word for it. Murky? No, that was too mysterious, too noir. What was the word?

Does one need a jargon to understand a river or a person’s life? Scientists and therapists do. I don’t.

Turbidity! The word returned to me from my former life as a watershed council coordinator and water quality monitoring volunteer.

The river was turbid. It dawned upon me that right now, everything about my life is turbid. My future is turbid. Many people view me as turbidity in their lives.

When will my life become clear? Perhaps never after this. Perpetual turbidity?

If someone jumps into the river of this life with me, would that create more turbidity.? According to science, it would. I think not, however. I think it would stir up crystal clear waters.

I looked at Bonnie and Clyde’s old eyes. They were turbid. They reminded me of Sonny’s dying eyes. I looked at the river for a reflection. Nothing was there.

There’s actually a rating system for turbidity in the water. It measures particles or something. I had a little hand held machine that gave me a reading when I was testing the waters.

Testing the waters is an interesting phrase. It moves in many metaphorical directions.

I don’t have the ability to test any waters. I don’t have a machine to read my level of turbidity.

It stopped showering. I stroked the wet heads of Bonnie and Clyde and watched the river.

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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.