(Three printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) THE RHYTHMIC RAPPING OF STEEL on wood filled Prosatio Silban’s cozy galleywagon with the sharp tang of garlic, and he marveled – not for…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those writing-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pencil. He is unafraid of adverbs, and lives with an animal companion and eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
20 Observations on Newspaper Reporting
ALTHOUGH THEY RELY ON THEM, few people say they actually trust the news media. (I call it “Ross’ Paradox.”) Everybody has a story. And many want to share it. Newswriting is a form of reality-creation, wherein readers trust you to…
Prosatio Silban and the Final Kindness
(Two printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) OF THE NUMBERLESS CREATURES INHABITING the Exilic Lands, none are perhaps so quaint as the lumbering buopoth – and though no two descriptions agree…
Words To Bring Back: “Cryptic”
– Definition: adj. Having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure – Used in a sentence: The president’s* speeches are somewhat cryptic to those who don’t share his gestalt, and altogether not for those who do. – Why: What with…
Soul Food (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Seven printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.) PROSATIO SILBAN’S FACE WAS THE picture of dispassionate interest, but his heart gave a familiar tug of weary resignation. This is what comes of…
The road to a friend’s house is never long.”
— Dave Chavoya
Prosatio Silban and the Iron Dray-Beast
(Five-and-a-half printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) ALTHOUGH PROSATIO SILBAN’S COUNTRYMEN WERE were wary of most forms of magik – spells, illusions, conjurations, astral mucking-about – their phobia didn’t quite extend to…
First Graf: Torah
(BE HONEST — YOU MUST HAVE known I’d get around to this one eventually, right?) I make no rigid claims of authenticity, accuracy, or authorship for this work. As far as I’m concerned, this is “simply” a collection of ancient…
Love Famine (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Five-and-a-half printed pages, and a bit ribald. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) THE KEEP’S NAME WAS “CASTLE Cautroffs,” after an ancestor of its then-current occupant. But Prosatio Silban was to remember it as…
Chopped Roots (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
(Eight printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.) WHETHER IT WAS THROUGH A dream or a vision, Prosatio Silban knew one thing with absolute certitude – his beloved mentor was dead. He arose…
Why I Love: My Dad
IT’S HIS CONTAGIOUS JOIE DE vivre. It’s his insistence that I watched Sgt. Bilko, Jack Benny and Ernie Kovacs reruns with him when I was a kid. It’s the skiing memories. (It’s also the memories of the Plymouth, New Hampshire…
Hatch ’em, match ’em, dispatch ’em.”
— My friend, the Rev. JT, deconstructing pastors’ duty toward their flock