Front Porch Republic

I recently accepted a contributing editor position at Front Porch Republic, a publication for whom I’ve written several times over the years. As their name suggests, a front porch is where you sit and talk with your neighbors, and a republic is ideally a form of government in which the power belongs to the people. In other words, the more neighbors talk to one another with the understanding that we belong to, serve, benefit from, and contribute to the same community, the more power we’ll actually have over the outcomes of those communities. The alternative is to send our attention and receive our talking points from talking heads in the metropoli, or the anonymous authors on clandestine news sites.

Their cultural interests overlap with mine here at In Solitude, For Company. For the next year or so, I’ll be sending FPR the kinds of essays you might expect from me at this newsletter. I’ll let you know when they publish, so you can read them over there. FPR is a free publication, so it will only require one extra click from you.

---

Meanwhile back at In Solitude, For Company

I’ve been hankering to write a Western novella I’m calling “Birth of a Ghost Town.” As I have the time, I’ll be posting chapters of that here. That is strictly a project I’m writing for fun. Strictly. Fun. I’ve been collecting pulp Westerns from my two local bookstores (shout out Burrowing Owl and Aunt Eek’s). You’ll see the fruits of those two endeavors beginning in the fall. For the month of August, I have a few poems to wrap up for the collection that Wiseblood Books is publishing in 2026. That collection, as of right now, is titled Call Out Coyote. Coyote, in the vernacular of my people, has only two syllables. You heard it here first folks! (And you’ll be hearing about it a lot more in the months to come.)

While you wait, why not recommend what’s going on here to a friend or enemy or neighbor over an iced tea on the front porch or by clicking this little button: