My other books....
Normal School
"Look at everything that happened after that day—look at the murders, the suicides, the ruined careers, the weird unexpected opportunities—look at it all this way: one day I was staring off into a corner, bummed, worried about what I might say to Devon, and then Tee stuck her head into my office and told me that Devon was missing. And after that everything changed...."
When rural and seemingly-placid Southeast Kansas State University is rocked by death of an English professor, Dr. Tom Holt begins asking questions--questions that uncover a loose conspiracy of embezzlement, sexual harassment, poor pedagogy, and murder. Normal School is an academic noir filled with the struggles and absurdities and horrors of American contemporary higher education--a world where what you learn (or don't learn) is a matter of life and death....
NORMAL SCHOOL
by Lowell Mick White
ISBN 978-1943306152
Available from AMAZON
Available from Barnes and Noble
Available from Powells
Available on Amazon Kindle
When rural and seemingly-placid Southeast Kansas State University is rocked by death of an English professor, Dr. Tom Holt begins asking questions--questions that uncover a loose conspiracy of embezzlement, sexual harassment, poor pedagogy, and murder. Normal School is an academic noir filled with the struggles and absurdities and horrors of American contemporary higher education--a world where what you learn (or don't learn) is a matter of life and death....
NORMAL SCHOOL
by Lowell Mick White
ISBN 978-1943306152
Available from AMAZON
Available from Barnes and Noble
Available from Powells
Available on Amazon Kindle
BURNT HOUSE
Following the divorce of her parents in the mid-1970s, teenager Jackie Stalnaker is sent away to live with her grandmother in the small town of Burnt House in central West Virginia. Not at all bored by the place, grateful to get away from her squabbling parents, and something of a snoop, Jackie is fascinated by the people she comes to know and is determined to discover--or at least imagine--all their stories and secrets. "Tragedies," Jackie reports. "Screw-ups. Cruelties. Bad, bad, sad things that nobody ever forgot, things people never talked about openly but only sometimes related in whispered hinting half-stories after dark." Burnt House is both the story of what Jackie learns about the town and of her own reaction to her increasing knowledge, a darkly comic, gothic exploration of a town and the people who live there--and an examination of the stories they tell and the histories they know.
"Burnt House is gritty, witty, irreverent, and seductively sexy, conjuring characters who flee the town where they were born or retreat to it to escape the reality of their damaged lives. Burnt House becomes a portrait of a broken family whose saga is told through a series of intimate, closely-linked stories, storytellers who share gossip, secrets, love, and loss."
--Kathryn Lane, author of Backyard Volcano, Coyote Zone, and Waking Up in Medellin
"History is always gossip in the town of Burnt House, and the past there is an old-fashioned crazy-quilt of off-kilter lives, sometimes criminal and often soul-crushing. This rollicking novel-in-stories constitutes a topographic map of the town's own secret truths. Lowell Mick White has given us characters who are lively, funny, memorable, deeply familiar, and always, always haunting."
--Patricia Bjorklund, author of US and Them: The Re-Enchantment of a Cold War Childhood
BURNT HOUSE
By Lowell Mick White
ISBN 978-1943306114
Available from AMAZON
Available from Barnes and Noble
Available from Powells
Available on Amazon Kindle
"Burnt House is gritty, witty, irreverent, and seductively sexy, conjuring characters who flee the town where they were born or retreat to it to escape the reality of their damaged lives. Burnt House becomes a portrait of a broken family whose saga is told through a series of intimate, closely-linked stories, storytellers who share gossip, secrets, love, and loss."
--Kathryn Lane, author of Backyard Volcano, Coyote Zone, and Waking Up in Medellin
"History is always gossip in the town of Burnt House, and the past there is an old-fashioned crazy-quilt of off-kilter lives, sometimes criminal and often soul-crushing. This rollicking novel-in-stories constitutes a topographic map of the town's own secret truths. Lowell Mick White has given us characters who are lively, funny, memorable, deeply familiar, and always, always haunting."
--Patricia Bjorklund, author of US and Them: The Re-Enchantment of a Cold War Childhood
BURNT HOUSE
By Lowell Mick White
ISBN 978-1943306114
Available from AMAZON
Available from Barnes and Noble
Available from Powells
Available on Amazon Kindle
Professed
Professed is a novel filled with the struggles and rivalries and oddities and weirdnesses of contemporary American higher education—favor-dodging, ex-girlfriend avoiding, grade-dreading, plagiarist-busting, dissertation-reading, office-mate annoying, litter-box spilling, book-stealing, unprofessional forbidden lusting, unprofessional forbidden lusting-fulfilling, cat-chasing, wrist-breaking, inopportune body-betraying, boyfriend-dumping planning, dead-professor missing, committee meeting texting, bureaucratic student misfiling, classroom failing, hidden Confederate-history uncovering, book-writing, online teaching-demanding, student-advising failing, professional dysphoria-feeling, drunk-tank loitering, book discussion leading, unwise nasal-behaving, paper researching, academic schooling, sink-fouling, New Years’ kissing, celebratory pool-playing, stranger-disemboweling, paper-writing, paper-writing failing, drinking-game playing, incomplete-taking…Yet, as the characters strive to fit into a rapidly changing institution, medicating themselves as best they can with sex and drugs and literature, learning actually happens. Somehow.
"Professed in not a screed; it is not a manifesto; nor is it a sappy recount of the personal discontentedness a singular character feels in navigating the university’s hallowed halls. Professed is an empathetic story that captures the interpersonal politics of the English department and the characters who inhabit them. Professed captures each character’s desire to be included into the greater whole. Professed is a must read, not only for the English major, but for anyone who has wanted desperately to belong."
—Brandon Schuler, Press 51 Magazine
Professed
Published by Buffalo Time Press, October 2016
ISBN 978-1943306039
Available from AMAZON
Available from BARNES & NOBLE
Available from POWELL'S
Available on Amazon Kindle
"Professed in not a screed; it is not a manifesto; nor is it a sappy recount of the personal discontentedness a singular character feels in navigating the university’s hallowed halls. Professed is an empathetic story that captures the interpersonal politics of the English department and the characters who inhabit them. Professed captures each character’s desire to be included into the greater whole. Professed is a must read, not only for the English major, but for anyone who has wanted desperately to belong."
—Brandon Schuler, Press 51 Magazine
Professed
Published by Buffalo Time Press, October 2016
ISBN 978-1943306039
Available from AMAZON
Available from BARNES & NOBLE
Available from POWELL'S
Available on Amazon Kindle
That Demon Life
new edition coming in October 2024!
Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award, Lowell Mick White's That Demon Life is a comic tale of lust and laziness, of crime and competence—and incompetence. It's the story of Linda Smallwood, a sometimes depressed, always difficult, Austin criminal defense lawyer, who finds that her life mirrors what the Rolling Stones call "that demon life." In the course of a grueling week, Linda encounters a parade of slackers, thugs, and eccentrics—hookers, cab drivers, and political fixers of various stripes—a world with echoes of A Confederacy of Dunces. She loses her job, falls back into a “romance” with her presently married ex-fiancé, and persuades her best friend to seduce and blackmail the judge she holds responsible for her misfortunes. Linda’s absurd, dislocated, and outlandish life reflects the rhythms and the culture of the confusing, ever-changing city around her. Ultimately, when Linda confronts her nemesis, whom she then attempts to rescue, she discovers that the joys of love and revenge are not all they’re alleged to be. As the Stones famously say, “It’s just that demon life has got you in its sway….”
Praise for That Demon Life:
“The slacker blonde has found her muse! In the hilariously disinclined attorney Linda, a no-account Austinite whose idea of legal research is a rerun of Law & Order, White has given us a transgendered update of the madcap A Confederacy of Dunces. Indeed, you could say Dunces is done one better in That Demon Life, because this swift-moving new picaresque of work-avoidance takes us into the realm of sex. Amid the complications that flower so colorfully out of the death of Linda’s pet bird—you’ll scent a fresh and nutty bloom every few pages—we are treated to the kind of lust-besotted escapades that leave a county judge stumbling naked through the urban sprawl, poking up tabloid writers rather than Lone Star rattlesnakes. Amid all the unhinged carrying on, I’ll be darned if our Linda’s take-it-or-leave-it blasé doesn’t prove a moral center, and deliver a riotous epiphany.”
—John Domini, author of A Tomb on the Periphery and Earthquake I.D.
“That Demon Life has got Austin in its sway, or at least this novel's motley crew of characters. A horny judge, a defense attorney with an attitude, an entourage of petty criminals, a dating service maven, a self made internet porn star and a boy toy or two—they're all slouching toward Sixth Street and beyond. This is a fast-paced, hold-on-to-your-bar stool satire, a hilarious, stumbling romp through law and disorder, urban ennui and its after-hour antidotes, Texas-sized lust and doom.”
—Alison Moore, author of The Middle of Elsewhere and Synonym for Love, and winner of the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction
“Lowell White’s first novel, That Demon Life, is hootenanny of jurisprudence, internet sex, false teeth, and box wine—all under the big skies of Texas. White's mischievous prose makes the fabulous realistic and the absurd an afterthought. Through it all, the audacity of the narrative allows us ample opportunity to laugh, even when the joke is on us.”
—Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke and Mixology
“Here is the story of success in spite of oneself, rendered with a sly and witty and wry appreciation for the ordinary horrors of everyday life. That Demon Life is a hoot, a virtuoso tale by a master story teller. Mr. White, where have you been keeping yourself?”
--Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story, winner of the National Book Award
“Lowell Mick White takes readers places John Grisham’s novels overlook. With a keen eye for the absurd, White gives a glimpse into the lives of the hapless and dysfunctional attorneys and judges who inhabit the Capitol of Texas.”
—Christine Granados, author of Brides and Sinners in El Chuco
That Demon Life
Published by Gival Press, October 2009
ISBN-13: 9781928589471
Praise for That Demon Life:
“The slacker blonde has found her muse! In the hilariously disinclined attorney Linda, a no-account Austinite whose idea of legal research is a rerun of Law & Order, White has given us a transgendered update of the madcap A Confederacy of Dunces. Indeed, you could say Dunces is done one better in That Demon Life, because this swift-moving new picaresque of work-avoidance takes us into the realm of sex. Amid the complications that flower so colorfully out of the death of Linda’s pet bird—you’ll scent a fresh and nutty bloom every few pages—we are treated to the kind of lust-besotted escapades that leave a county judge stumbling naked through the urban sprawl, poking up tabloid writers rather than Lone Star rattlesnakes. Amid all the unhinged carrying on, I’ll be darned if our Linda’s take-it-or-leave-it blasé doesn’t prove a moral center, and deliver a riotous epiphany.”
—John Domini, author of A Tomb on the Periphery and Earthquake I.D.
“That Demon Life has got Austin in its sway, or at least this novel's motley crew of characters. A horny judge, a defense attorney with an attitude, an entourage of petty criminals, a dating service maven, a self made internet porn star and a boy toy or two—they're all slouching toward Sixth Street and beyond. This is a fast-paced, hold-on-to-your-bar stool satire, a hilarious, stumbling romp through law and disorder, urban ennui and its after-hour antidotes, Texas-sized lust and doom.”
—Alison Moore, author of The Middle of Elsewhere and Synonym for Love, and winner of the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction
“Lowell White’s first novel, That Demon Life, is hootenanny of jurisprudence, internet sex, false teeth, and box wine—all under the big skies of Texas. White's mischievous prose makes the fabulous realistic and the absurd an afterthought. Through it all, the audacity of the narrative allows us ample opportunity to laugh, even when the joke is on us.”
—Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke and Mixology
“Here is the story of success in spite of oneself, rendered with a sly and witty and wry appreciation for the ordinary horrors of everyday life. That Demon Life is a hoot, a virtuoso tale by a master story teller. Mr. White, where have you been keeping yourself?”
--Larry Heinemann, author of Paco’s Story, winner of the National Book Award
“Lowell Mick White takes readers places John Grisham’s novels overlook. With a keen eye for the absurd, White gives a glimpse into the lives of the hapless and dysfunctional attorneys and judges who inhabit the Capitol of Texas.”
—Christine Granados, author of Brides and Sinners in El Chuco
That Demon Life
Published by Gival Press, October 2009
ISBN-13: 9781928589471
Long Time Ago Good
This story collection—a finalist for the annual first fiction award presented by the Texas Institute of Letters—explores Austin, Texas, a city famous for music, football, and drunken fun frolics—and famous too for traffic jams, anomie, and dislocation. In Long Time Ago Good, Lowell Mick White imaginatively recreates this city, this region. Here is a folksy reporter covering a chitlins cook-off, a ragged cab driver fighting for his life, a lonely jewelry-maker focusing too much on the past—a high tech worker losing her job, a bureaucrat looking for something more. These stories are populated by depressed men, angry women, frustrated dogs, and fearful cats—filled with heat waves and heartbreaks, thunderstorms and belly-laughs: with all that is modern Texas—and America….
Praise for Long Time Ago Good:
“Long Time Ago Good is an excellent read, and it deserves praise from a wide audience, including those beyond Texas’ borders….We can hope to see much more of his work in the years to come—and we can hope Austin will continue to receive the literary attention White has shined upon it.”
—Twister Marquiss, Texas Books in Review
“Long Time Ago Good, with its poignant individual stories and theme-building arrangement, is one of those initial works by a writer that makes the reader want to read the next one, and soon.”
—Chad Hammett, Southwestern American Literature
"I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but truthfully, many people do, and I am no different. On a recent trip to the Buda Library, I was browsing through their newly acquired books and a title grabbed my attention, “Long Time Ago Good: Sunset Dreams from Austin and Beyond” by Lowell Mick White. The picture on the front cover depicts a blurry, angry dog barking at an armadillo. I opened the book and discovered it was a collection of short stories. Based on what I saw on the cover, I had a feeling these stories might have some edge to them. I was right.."
--Hays Free Press
Long Time Ago Good
Published by Slough Press, June 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0941720045
Praise for Long Time Ago Good:
“Long Time Ago Good is an excellent read, and it deserves praise from a wide audience, including those beyond Texas’ borders….We can hope to see much more of his work in the years to come—and we can hope Austin will continue to receive the literary attention White has shined upon it.”
—Twister Marquiss, Texas Books in Review
“Long Time Ago Good, with its poignant individual stories and theme-building arrangement, is one of those initial works by a writer that makes the reader want to read the next one, and soon.”
—Chad Hammett, Southwestern American Literature
"I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but truthfully, many people do, and I am no different. On a recent trip to the Buda Library, I was browsing through their newly acquired books and a title grabbed my attention, “Long Time Ago Good: Sunset Dreams from Austin and Beyond” by Lowell Mick White. The picture on the front cover depicts a blurry, angry dog barking at an armadillo. I opened the book and discovered it was a collection of short stories. Based on what I saw on the cover, I had a feeling these stories might have some edge to them. I was right.."
--Hays Free Press
Long Time Ago Good
Published by Slough Press, June 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0941720045
ABWW13
An anthology of poetry and prose from participants and instructors at the 2013 Alamo Bay Writers’ Workshop. Edited by Lowell Mick White, the anthology contains work by Rebecca Byrd Bretz Arthur, Linda Caplin, Lee Edwards, Grace Fleming, Ken Fontenot, Lori Spence Galloway, Lee Meitzen Grue, Larry Heinemann, Diane Kramer, Kathryn Lane, Barbara Lewis, Kathryn Millan, Stephanie Moore, Daniel Peña, Tomás Salas, Reji Thomas, Javier VanWisse, Claudia Voyles, Hazel Ward, Lowell Mick White, and Diane Wilson
ABWW13
Published by Alamo Bay Press, March 2014
ISBN-13: 9780615950570
ABWW13
Published by Alamo Bay Press, March 2014
ISBN-13: 9780615950570
