Captain Coherence
K P McCarthy
I’m certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s
affections and the truth of imagination. -Keats
Available Sept 2023
After enduring the loss of his wife and surviving a near-fatal accident, story junkie Stanhope Ellis is ready for a change of scenery. Unfortunately, the new storytellers he meets are dropping like flies, and he might be the reason. As he struggles with whether he’s Death Man or a cosmic witness, he meets a wise nurse, Gayathri Das, who helps him navigate the emotional minefield. But will she die, like the others?
Humor
Guide Lions
Velcro Voices offers literary comfort. Contributors should be decorous. Nonthreatening. Familiar. Reassuring. Properly attired. Melodious. Lulling. Try the passive voice for a change. Beg pardon. Submit simultaneously. Continually. Send your second-best work. Hush.
Essays
The Ego Experiment – Part 1: Collective Trouble
The highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population of the world, he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. He is unjust … egotistic and monopolizing … He is a boundless liar. … all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed …
Travel
Blanc and Blue
Greetings from Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains, in the French Alps! Hope this message isn’t too gi-normous. Sorry about the tardy update. I’ve been hunkered down on a rewrite — mission accomplished on Monday. We did find some fun over the weekend, however. On Saturday we...
Poetry
Enough Sky
Enough Sky by KP McCarthy Not getting enough sky now thatit’s pindrop dusk and Venusflirts with a slabby moon Spalls of silver flush livid –I cannot flank desireand all this reaching for what must be, this needingto cultivate the verge,always it must be as lewd as...
Among other things, Kevin Patrick McCarthy has been a geothermal geologist, a technical writer, a critic, and a screenwriter. His humor, essays, poetry, and fiction have been widely recognized.