Have you ever driven up the California coast from San Luis Obispo to Monterey, knuckles white on the steering wheel as you fight for control of the car through hairpin curves? Have you ever dreamed that you had murdered someone and, upon waking, been unable to shake the conviction that it was true? Have you ever sung onstage to a packed audience, been robbed at gunpoint by a ten-year-old, laughed when it seemed— for a moment—that a famous author had stolen your mojo, wondered why we don’t drive steam-powered automobiles, or confronted your guardian angel at high tide on a gay beach once claimed by Pilgrims ? In What I Say Instead of Nothing, James Brega invites you to explore his real, imagined, and re-imagined experiences through his collected essays and short stories—a journey that will feed your nostalgia for life at the end of the twentieth century and remind you how desperately you wish that a great deal of it had never happened.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, my story “Little Red Bird”–which first appeared in the online journal Foliate Oak in December, 2011–was selected as one of the journal’s best stories of the year. I received the handsome soft-cover book in the mail today. [9/8/2013 update: a PDF of the 2012 print journal is no longer available online. Read my story here.]
James Brega: What I Write Instead of Nothing 