Douglas Glenn Clark says …

Simple values guide my work as a writer. My father was a musician. Music was the language of my formative years. I found my song in words.

“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”
Walter Pater

The mix of plain and lyrical prose in The Lake That Stole Children is the result of applying the craft of song lyrics, spoken-word performance and literary fiction to narrative. Just as melody can move from a single-note sequence to a symphonic sweep, narrative can begin quiet and spare and then swell to express emotional and intellectual depth, crisis or revelation.

Word clusters in rhythmic sequence constitute song structure.

I began playing guitar at a young age. My father would have preferred that I stay with trumpet. But you can’t simultaneously sing or speak when playing the trumpet. Guitar became an all-encompassing sensual experience: the chords resonated through my fingers to my body. I soon discovered that well-chosen clusters of words that appeared at the nib of my pencil or pen had the same power to move me.

My stories aspire to the emotional accessibility and fluidity of song.

Journalism — including my work as a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News — taught me the utter need for discipline. A reporter doesn’t wait for stories, he unearths them.

Newspapers showed me that reportage is the songbook of an evolving people: voices, conflicts, even the calendar of events sing of celebration and sorrow –

The major and minor keys of life.

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I’ve also taught as a guest artist in the upstate New York public schools (Albany and Rochester) and I have written for the theater. My plays have been produced at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, as well as the Chester Theatre Company in the Berkshires.

I have received writing awards from the Connecticut, Massachusetts and Michigan arts councils. My journalism has been published in daily newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Daily News, and various print and online publications

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The Cancer Assassin  The need to make things right inspires this story collection. A cancer patient fights for more than his life; a mom offers cash to help her abandoned child; a fake online sex ad sets up revenge.  now available at www.Harvard.com and www.Amazon.com

“I particularly liked  **little R-E-D*!! dress*** which was poetic, beautifully written and just about perfect.”

– Joseph Aragon., author

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The Lake That Stole Children and its companion Start a Conversation with Story provide a unique method  for engaging and expanding life, love, career and spirituality.  Please join the conversation.

“A beautifully written fable that’s also a beautifully designed book.”
– Aram Saroyan, international poet, novelist, memoirist and playwright

“I loved your book and am reading it to my 8th grade creative writing class to get them thinking about the genre.”
— Carol Begian-McGuire, teacher, Alcona Michigan Public Schools