One of the joys of blogging and creating is the opportunity to support my buddies’ work.  I’ve been blessed to be associated with quite a few prolific and ingenious individuals, and while I have spent many a Bandcamp Friday hawking my digital wares, I’m excited to take this Friday to showcase a friend’s work.

My real-life buddy Jeremy Miles (who also maintains a blog) has released his latest book of poetry, Hindsight: Poetry in 2020.  It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions, at (as of 8 June 2021) $15, $25, and $2.99, respectively.  I’ve ordered the paperback version and eagerly await its arrival.

According to Jeremy’s blog, the book is a bit shorter than his debut, the excellent A Year of Thursday Nights (now available in a more affordable black-and-white edition), due to “the lack of crowd feedback at the Open Mic nights.”  Jeremy and I both attended the same open mic night every Thursday evening at a local coffee shop, and Jeremy would often recite, perform, and workshop poetry there.  Indeed, he even wrote poetry during and about open mic, including the poem “Escape Velocity” (featured in Jeremy’s second volume, Book of the Unnamed Future), which I accidentally inspired when an empty coffee cup shot from my hands as I squeezed the heat slip.

Still, the paperback version is 140 pages—pretty thick for a poetry collection, if you ask me.  It’s nearly double the length of my own book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot (now just $12 in paperback!).  But I understand Jeremy’s insights into creativity:  my songwriting was at its height when I was composing and writing for a monthly, originals-only, open mic songwriting contest.  Having that structure—even as busy as The Before Times were to everyone’s schedules—increased creative output, rather than reduced it.  Ironically, I produced far less during the long months of The Age of The Virus than I thought I would, in part due to my own laziness, but also due to the lack of a deadline.

Regardless, I hope you will pick up Jeremy’s latest book.  The cover alone looks amazing.  If his last two collections are any indication, his third will be an enjoyable and lively read.