Up this week on Tell Your True Tale, my storytelling website, is a piece by Kansas writer Rachel Kimbrough.
Check out “How I Know” – a story about doubt, faith, a child and a mother.
Rachel’s a great writer. This is her fourth TYTT story.
Remember, I’m eager to look at all submissions. I don’t pay, but I do edit.
So get writin’.
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale, Writing
I’ve posted two new stories at Tell Your True Tale, my storytelling website.
David Chittenden chimes in with “Billy Joe, Where Are You?”
Monah Li gives us a story from her battles with bulimia in “Beauty and the Lonely Feast.”
These are the second stories for both authors to appear on the ether of TYTT.
As with most TYTT stories, these are not to be missed!
And as always, I’m eager to look at more submissions, so send em on in. You know you want to!
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
Hey all — Up this week on my storytelling page, Tell Your True Tale, is a story in a poem by Alexis Rhone Fancher, an LA writer and
poetry editor of culturalweekly.com.
Check out “Subterranean Lovesick Clues” — a great poem about an early sexual encounter.
Please share it with friends, but above all, write a story of your own and send it in. No time like the present to tell those tales.
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
Two new stories up this week on Tell Your True Tale. Both grew from a writing workshop I did with students this month at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA — a town where I was once a crime reporter for several years.
The stories were terrific and I’ll be posting several of them in coming weeks.
Perhaps reflecting some of the town’s grit, the tales themselves are rough, but really great, reads — confirming my faith in community colleges as story goldmines.
These are the first two:
–Christian Lockwood, a former cop, writes of the final day of his drunken homelessness, in The Last Day.
Check them out. Please share them on social media. I’m always interested in looking at new submissions, so take computer in hand and get writing.
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
I’ll be talking about storytelling and writing.
I’ll be telling some stories that I love and discussing students’ stories from their own lives — a little bit of my Tell Your True Tale workshops.
Hope to see you all there…
Thanks Library Club of Cerritos College!
A new story up this week on my storytelling page, Tell Your True Tale, is by convicted bank robber Jeffrey Scott Hunter.
Check out Wasn’t About the Money — Jeff’s story of the time he knew his bank robbing was getting out of hand.
Happy to read any story you might want to submit.
And please share it on any social media you might use….
Many thanks,
Sam
Filed under Culture, Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale, Writing
Last week, I was lucky enough to spend some time in Stockton, California, one of my favorite towns.
I was the crime reporter there for the Stockton Record from 1988-92.
This time, I met with students at San Joaquin Delta College, the area community college, in a class taught by poet/instructor Pedro Ramirez. We were talking about writing and how they could tell their own stories — part of my Tell Your True writing workshops.
I’ll be posting some of them soon on my TYTT storytelling page.
The town has taken a lot of hits, entering bankruptcy in the wake of the housing collapse — which seemed reflected in the tales the students wrote, most of which were pretty grim.
Cops have left for departments elsewhere — Oceanside is one, I understand — when they lose their houses due to their salaries being reduced. Crime is again on a track to break records. I did notice a lot of the parolee/addict/hooker kind of folks downtown.
One of Stockton’s problems is that, by design or not, it is within a hundred miles of something like half the prisons in the state: this includes Folsom, San Quentin, Deuel, and the new prisons down by Corcoran/Delano, as well as a women’s prison and a youth-authority prison. That’s a lot.
But there’s a backbone to the town that I always liked, and a down-to-earth quality to folks that I did not feel, for example, when I moved to Seattle for my next job. (Civil folks, those Seattlites, but not at all friendly. And then there’s the rain, or should I say the constant drizzle.)
In Stockton, I note still a lack of graffiti, which is good. When I was there, it was the graffiti that most seemed to drag down the town and give it a defeated/defeatist feel.
These photos suggest the town’s stiff upper lip remains.
Filed under California, Prison, Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
A great and touching piece is up this week on Tell Your True Tale, my storytelling page.
Check out “Emri’s Chest” by Rachel Kimbrough, a great young writer from Kansas, about the death of her toddler son.
http://www.samquinones.com/category/true-tales/
Please share it on FB, Twitter, etc….
Above all, write one of your own and send it in……Sam
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
New story up this week on Tell Your True Tale is by former tagger, now community college student, Hugo Garcia.
Check out “The Raid.”
Meanwhile, I’m always happy to look at new submission of true stories. So send ‘em in…..
Filed under Tell Your True Tale
This week on my storytelling website, Tell Your True Tale, a new story by Angelino writer Julian Segura Camacho.
Check out Being Saved – the story of how a young man from Inglewood was asked to convert to evangelical Christianity.
I’m very eager to read more submissions, so if you’ve got an inner writer, write a story of your own and send it in.
The Huffington Post crime page has posted another story that first appeared on my storytelling website, Tell Your True Tale.
The story is by Richard Gatica, a longtime Mexican Mafia tax collector, and drug runner inside various prisons.
Now 43 and a prison-gang dropout, he is writing his memoirs, and was just convicted of strangling his cellmate to death. His memoirs make for powerful reading as he’s a great storyteller.
Richard sent me the story of how he killed his crack dealer, included in those memoirs, more than a year ago. It was posted on TYTT last year.
Anyway, read “Killing Donald Evans” on the Huffington Post.
Please “like” it, share it on FB, tweet about it, and tell your friends.
Earlier this month, HP also posted a story by federal prison inmate Jeffrey Scott Hunter: My First Bank Robbery.
Also I hope you’ll all consider submitting your own stories to Tell Your True Tale. We’ve got about 40 or so up so far.
If you haven’t looked into TYTT, or it’s been a while, feel free to check it out. The stories are great (and deal with all kinds of topics; only a few are about crime). Don’t pay, but I do edit.
Filed under Culture, Gangs, Los Angeles, Prison, Tell Your True Tale
Hey folks –
There’s a new story up on Tell Your True Tale, my storytelling page.
Southern California writer David Chittenden contributes “Climbing the Mesa.” Cool piece.
You can also read the story Huffington Post recently used,which I posted to TYTT a few months ago.
My First Bank Robbery is by federal prison inmate Jeffrey Scott Hunter about his, you guessed it, first bank robbery.
Again, I’m always interested in submissions to the site. I do edit, don’t pay, and love good true stories. So get writing and send one in….
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale, Writing
The Huffington Post has re-posted one of the stories that I put up earlier this year on my storytelling site, Tell Your True Tale.
It’s by convicted bank robber, Jeffrey Scott Hunter. My First Bank Robbery is the title of the tale.
You can see more cool stories at Tell Your True Tale.
Read ‘em, share ‘em, send in one of your own. I’m always looking for good stories.
Filed under Prison, Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale, Writing
A new story is up now on my storytelling page, Tell Your True Tale.
Check out Help Needed by Kansas writer and poet Rachel Kimbrough. She’s a great writer.
And feel free to send in stories of your own. There’s usually a bit of a backlog, but I’m always eager to look at new submissions.
Filed under Storytelling, Tell Your True Tale
This week on Tell Your True Tale, my storytelling website, Florida writer Anthony Quinones contributes a story of what happened when the vice principal of his junior high tried to discipline him. Great story.
Check out “Last Day of School.”
Please share it on social media if you like it.
And write one of your own.
Filed under Tell Your True Tale
