{"id":8288,"date":"2023-03-06T06:28:38","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T14:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=8288"},"modified":"2023-03-06T06:28:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T14:28:39","slug":"smoky-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/smoky-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoky Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

As regular readers of this blog might recall, I speculated a while back that I might have run out of ideas for literary projects. With the forthcoming publication of two of my books this spring, I had nothing pressing on the horizon, something that hadn’t occurred in over 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of that changed a couple weeks ago and it came to me in a dream and an unexpected email the next morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen years ago I struck up a friendship with a man named Smoky Epley. He had recently been released after serving 27 years in federal prison for a string of bank robberies in Oregon. We had connected after he read a review I wrote of a 1973 book called Men in Exile:<\/em> An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smoky had contributed 20 pieces to the review and knocked me out with his talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He emailed me after reading the review, published in the Oregonian<\/em> in 2008, and we struck up a friendship and I arranged for a gig together to reintroduce him to literary society. That event was truly incredible; Smoky turned in the most riveting literary performance I’ve ever witnessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lost touch for two years but then reconnected after Smoky was arrested for forging a check and sent to state prison for two years. Upon his release, we met up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I encouraged Smoky to write his memoirs and he sent me 19 installments of a book he called Auto<\/em>. They stopped after an operation for cancer. He died in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been sitting on Smoky’s manuscript and transcription of a lengthy interview I conducted with him for a decade. I had always wanted to publish it but things dramatically changed in my life seven years ago and I lost sight of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I had this dream and Smoky appeared. I remember nothing of the dream except he was there and wearing a fedora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next morning, a long lost friend of Smoky’s emailed me that she’d recently had a dream about Smoky and found my writing about him on the internet and wanted to know how he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an extraordinary coincidence and after responding to Smoky’s friend, I took a walk in bitter cold to contemplate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outline and substance of a book about Smoky came to me during that walk. Ten days later, I had written 20,000 words on Smoky and prepared his manuscript and other writing for publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expect the book out this fall. Working title: The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley by Smoky Epley and Matt Love.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am glad I pay attention to my dreams. More people should and follow up on the allusions and invitations dreams invariably offer. It was seem so foolish not to.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As regular readers of this blog might recall, I speculated a while back that I might have run out of ideas for literary projects. With the forthcoming publication of two of my books this spring, I had nothing pressing on the horizon, something that hadn’t occurred in over 20 years. All of that changed a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[777],"class_list":["post-8288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","tag-smoky-epley","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8291,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288\/revisions\/8291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}