“I loved, loved, loved it! Beatitude has some sad moments that brought me to tears but it also had some very touching moments that made me smile. It’s definitely bittersweet, at the same time it’s a heartwarming story of what real friendship and love can be. Larry Closs has written a wonderful story that is multi-layered but he effortlessly interweaves those layers into something that is special… I found myself never wanting this story to end.”

You can read the full review here.

But as I reflected on the impact that Beatitude has had, and continues to have, on my life, I realized that there was so much more to the story and, most importantly, how much I had to be thankful for. After writing notes to myself on my iPhone for several weeks, mostly in between sets at the gym, I finally decided to put it all together in an article, which the awesome Lori Hettler offered to publish on her awesome literary site, The Next Best Book Blog. Lori was one of the first and biggest supporters of Beatitude, not only publishing a wonderful review but organizing a week-long blog tour. She is the kind of friend that every author wishes for and so influential in the book world that she was the subject of a recent New York Times article.

You can read the article, Gratitude for Beatitude: A First-Time Author’s First Year, here.

Kirsten Alana and Larry Closs at The W Hotel | Photo: Johnny Manhattan

Thanks to my Instagram feed (@larrycloss), I’ve been invited to participate in 1197, the annual conference devoted to mobile and iPhone photography.

Named for the date when the first photo was snapped with a cell phone—June 11, 1997—the conference features a week of juried exhibits, workshops, photo walks, panels and prizes and takes place this year at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art, 138 Sullivan Street, New York, February 17-23.

On a panel titled “Whistle While You Snap: Instagrammers Getting Paid” (Friday, February 22, 2 p.m.), I’ll join Brian DeFeo of The Mobile Media Lab, Tim Young of Tim Young Studio, and Adrian Salamunovic of CanvasPop in conversation with iPhoneographer, Instagrammer and travel blogger extraordinaire Kirsten Alana.

For my part, I am thrilled to be grilled by Kirsten on how my 15K following on Instagram helped to sell a few copies of my award-winning debut novel, Beatitude.

Photos to follow, of course! In the meantime, be sure to follow Kirsten on Instagram, @kirstenalana, and the awesome Johnny Manhattan, @artboy11211, who generously provided the photo of Kirsten and me at The W Hotel from his fantastic IG feed.

Have you ever fallen for a fictional character? Author Anthony R. Cardno has, and in an article titled “My Literary Crushes,” he reveals that Beatitude’s narrator, Harry Charity, is one of his latest fixations:

Harry is completely, totally, in every way, shape and form, average. And yet I still finished the book having the hugest crush on him and wishing I could do something to make him feel better. (That’s a tribute to Closs’ writing, by the way.) There are always those one or two guys we crush on who don’t fit our “usual pattern.” This Harry isn’t a redhead, isn’t overly athletic, isn’t a bad boy or boyish, he doesn’t star in a series of books or plays. But he is openly and contentedly gay (with a penchant for being attracted to the wrong guys)… he’s the exception that proves the rule, so to speak.

You can read Cardno’s complete Top 10 list of literary crushes here. Who’s yours? Respond in the comments.

Elise McMullen, The Galavant Girl

Elise McMullen is one of the most beautiful and insightful writers I’ve had the pleasure to publish as editor of TrekWorld. Read no further than her articles “The Young Woman and the Sea” and “Thanking the Animals We Eat” and you will instantly know what I mean.

But before Elise ever contributed to TrekWorld, she established herself as The Galavant Girl, an extraordinary journalist and photographer devoted to illuminating food, travel and the arts. Elise recently completed a draft manuscript of her own first book, about the lives of those she’s met in the course of her adventures and the meals she’s shared with them, and I was surprised and humbled to discover that my own journey as an author helped inspire her own.

Elise included me in a series of posts thanking “those people who show up out of nowhere and change our lives,” not only echoing one of the central themes of Beatitude but writing what just may be one of the nicest and most inspiring things anyone has ever written about me. As I said to Elise, however, it’s a two-way street.

With that in mind, visit The Galavant Girl on Facebook to see what Elise wrote and “Like” the page while you’re there. Trust me, there’s a whole lot more to like—including her upcoming book!

A tip of the cup to composer, conductor, author, mentor and Beat legend David Amram on his 82nd birthday! Amram generously provided incredible support for Beatitude early on with an awesome testimonial.

I finally met him in September when Amram’s Quartet performed at the Cornelia Street Café in the West Village. Of course I asked him to sign a copy of Beatitude, which, of course, he did: “With joy to meet you and read your wonderful book. More, more,more!! Author, Author. David Amram.” Needless to say, that copy of Beatitude is now “the” copy of Beatitude for me.

That alone was reason enough to visit his site but I was taken aback by what else I found there. In addition to Kerouac, Kantor has produced woodcuts of Neo Beats Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits, a litany of outriders such as Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, Hollywood iconoclasts Bogart, Bacall and Brando and iconic images from celluloid classics (Metropolis, Manhattan, Dr. Strangelove). They all added up to evidence of a shared sensibility.

I asked Kantor what inspired him to create the woodcut of Kerouac.

“I’ve always been a fan of the Beat Generation writers,” he said. “I first came across Kerouac as a 16-year old. I was camping in Big Sur, a bit drunk and high, and a guy in a nearby tent was reading aloud from Dharma Bums. The passage was about Kerouac running down a mountain at full speed and in my elevated state, the words summoned visuals of the mountain, the cool foggy air, the distant views and glorious trees. The moment was transcendent and when I reached San Francisco a few days later, I bought a dozen books by Beat writers which I devoured in a few months.”

And how did he become a woodcutter in the first place?

“Many years after my revelation at Big Sur, my wife bought me a woodcutting set for my birthday. I love classic movies and I began to carve woodcuts inspired by vintage movie personalities. Recently, I thought it would be fun and challenging to carve images of my favorite Beat Generation writers. So far I’ve only carved Kerouac and Bukowski but I plan on carving images of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Richard Brautigan. While working on the Kerouac image, I opened my dog-eared copy of On the Road for the first time in 10 years. The writing is as fresh as ever. And once again I was transported to that Big Sur campsite that introduced me to the Beat Generation and all their wonderful works.”

Prints of Kantor’s woodcuts are available through his site, Woodcuttingfool. He also does custom woodcut portraits by request.

[View with PicLens]

David Amram signs Beatitude

Last night, at the Cornelia Street Café in the West Village, I finally got to meet David Amram, the composer, conductor, author and Beat legend who was not only one of the first to read Beatitude but provided a testimonial for the cover as well. “A daring, honest writer with a gritty urban flair,” wrote Amram, who added that he hoped Beatitude would not be “categorized (or imprisoned) by being considered a ‘Beat’ book. It stands on its own. And it transcends Beat.”

Playing to a near fire-hazardous crowd in the Cornelia’s cramped basement, Amram’s Quartet (featuring Kevin Twigg on drums and glockenspiel, John DeWitt on bass, Adam Amram on congas) burned through an incredible two-hour set, with Amram singing, scatting and switching between piano, flute, French horn, tin whistle, talking drum and tambourine. Standouts included the theme from his jazzy score for Splendor in the Grass and an anecdote-infused version of Pull My Daisy, the song he co-wrote with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady for the iconic half-hour 1959 film of the same name in which they all appeared.

Coming soon from Stephanie Nikolopoulos and Paul Maher Jr.

“Pull My Daisy was a lot of fun,” Amram told me, “and, surprisingly, more than 50 years later—due to Jack’s brilliant spontaneous narration, the filming of Robert Frank and, hopefully, my music—still has some value today to a new generation by encouraging them to make their own home movie (which is all it was) and do a much better one than we did. None of us—with the exception of Delphyne Serig—were actors, which we all proved by our non-performances.”

At the Cornelia, the ever-generous Amram and company also provided backup for readings by several poets and writers, including “Mets poet” Frank Messina and my literary friend Stephanie Nikolopoulos, who read from Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, co-authored with Paul Maher Jr. and due out this fall.

The Boatman's Call by Jonathan Collins

I also had the pleasure of meeting artist and fellow Beat aficionado Jonathan Collins, whose magnificent watercolors are imbued with a luminous realism that expresses, in his own words, “the beauty—and the sadness—of existence.”

After the show, Jonathan asked Amram to sign a rare first-edition of Kerouac’s Pull My Daisy script (still on the “get” list for my own collection) as I waited to say hello to Amram in person for the first time—we’d previously only communicated via email—and ask him to sign a copy of Beatitude.

It was a Beat evening in the truest sense of the word, whatever your definition of that word might be. “Everyone,” Amram told me, “has their own vision of what ‘Beat’ is, was and will be about.”