Russell Hasan's Blog

This month I published two new books, both of which feature new content not contained in any prior book: A Fish Out of Water. This is based on material in my book "To Be Loved, Love; To Be Liked, Be Nice to People; To Be an Adult, Forgive People," it's based on the examples I gave about alcohol and negative behavior and self-forgiveness, but I rewrote the material, so the actual text itself is new and unique. The premise of the book is, there is a longstanding phrase "men of a certain age," and this collection of short stories isn't about them, but it is about "men of a certain blood alcohol content." The book is a set of short stories and flash fiction (they're really short stories but they're only 5 to 7 pages each, the entire book is 50 pages) all (well, mostly) focused on the topic of alcoholics who attempt to quit drinking alcohol. As a recovering alcoholic myself (100% sober for 13 years and yet I still think about alcohol at least on...

So, now that I've stopped writing, I spend a lot of time writing.... Anyway, I wrote a new novel. It kind of just happened spontaneously, and it only took me five days to write it (it's 75 pages long). It's a novel at the intersection of literary fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and thriller, and LGBTQ literature, with an extreme focus on vampires. It does not fit neatly into any one genre. It's called Bloodthirsty Spiritualist. It's definitely the best work of fiction I ever wrote, although an argument can be made that I have written nonfiction books that might be better. I've been spending some time writing poetry at a writer's workshop recently (I do not intend to ever publish my poetry), and I think that writing poetry and getting a feel for how to write a poem has improved my quality of prose fiction, which is on display in my new novel. But I don't know, see what you think, you might like it, or you might dislike it.