Earl L Carlson

From my first literary efforts, I have tried to emulate the brightest stars in the galaxy of my heroes: Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Saki, Lafcadio Hearn, Steinbeck, and Saroyan among the many others who demonstrated in their every published utterance that well-written prose, whether read silently or aloud, has melodic as well as rhythmic structure. So, if you find my phraseology pretentious, don’t blame me. The fault is in my stars.

— from the preface to The Swing Time Soda Emporium

I will not deign to confine my writing to any specific genre. I orient my literary fiction toward mature and thoughtful adults. But I hasten to add that I write the sort of literature I wish I’d had access to in my teens.

In Diverging Streams, I explore a world in which time is multi-dimensional with alternate realities existing side by side and all around our own—a multi-world universe in which anything that can possibly happen can’t possibly not happen—in which, some-where in time, our fondest dreams, as well as our most fearsome nightmares, will be realized.

My dark comedy, Conniption Creek lampoons the pompous religious, political, and societal leaders, whose vanity, greed, and grandiose ambitions blind them to the imminent peril that threatens their community.

The short stories and brief essays found in Blasphemies and Bloviation and Snoose Boulevard and Points North, are calculated to arouse the curiosity of the reader and question unquestionable beliefs.

Finally, my forthcoming novel, The Swing Time Soda Emporium—tentatively scheduled for release early in 2027—is a coming-of-age story set in 1940s small town America. Though a murder has been committed by a person or persons unknown, it is not a whodunnit mystery. And though the victim returns as a ghost, it is not a spine tingling chiller-diller.

Search as you will, you will find no shootouts, no car chases, or gravity-defying martial arts in any of my writings.

Author Earl L Carlson writes with a confident, old-fashioned story-teller’s rhythm, the kind that is unafraid to linger. He pauses to philosophize, to explain, to wander off briefly and then return. The prose is rich but not showy. He trusts long scenes and detailed observation, especially when he is writing about adolescence, embarrassment, longing, and those fragile moments when everything feels charged and irreversible. Some passages are genuinely funny, others almost uncomfortably intimate, and that contrast feels intentional.

Carlson writes like someone leaning across the table, half amused and half appalled by human behavior, and I found that mix hard to resist. The jokes are broad sometimes, filthy some-times, and then suddenly sharp.

He isn’t polishing every edge smooth. He’s poking at the reader, sometimes with a finger and sometimes with a stick. Readers who appreciate Mark Twain-style irreverence, Vonnegut-like curiosity about big questions, and a narrator who isn’t afraid to sound opinionated will find a lot to chew on here.

— Thomas Anderson, Editor in Chief, Literary Titan