David R. Aldridge
The Ink Starts Here....
Books & Short fiction
Dan Street, from the Baltimore-Washington Corridor, loses his wire sales job on Christmas Eve, then meets an intriguing stranger in a Los Angeles bar. Hours later, he wakes up hung over and on a one-way charter flight to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by a group of true believers on their journey to meet God.
Joined by a crew of two most unusual flight attendants, Dan approaches a destiny at thirty-five thousand feet that he could never have imagined... but one that is exactly what he'd hoped for all of his non-stop talking life.
In the early 90's, Caffeine magazine helped launch the coffee shop 'zine movement in Los Angeles. Rob Cohen and R. J. Comer gave life to creative flow with this collective spirit of art, photography, poetry and fiction.
"flecks" was published in Caffeine number 5, 1993. It was included in this 1998 anthology, and tells the warped vendetta tale of a father seeking vengeance for his wronged daughter. He solicits the help of an alien whose arch enemies are the assailants. Justice is served in no uncertain terms, but in no way how the father expected it to be done...
Some Things I've Done
My launch into published fiction began here, with Easyriders #240, June 1993. I'd been fired from a wretched office day job, and I took out my angst on the keyboard and wrote "One Eye," a story of biker vengeance and dog faithfulness that landed me the gig with my first shot. They chose it because it was over the top. They also said it had to be cut in half, and they gave me the option of doing exactly that. Two weeks later, I sent it in, and they ran it immediately because another writer was way behind on getting his story in. There's a lesson in there, somewhere... keep your editor happy, always.
I would go onto write steadily for Easyriders and the other Paisano Publication magazines (BIKER, VQ, Quick Throttle, In The Wind, Tattoo) until 2000.
Bio
Hey there. Well, here we are. I've been writing for decades, starting way back in the very early 90's. Short stories, a novella, hundreds of magazine articles, spec screenplays (TV and film), three non-fiction books, one uncredited book, video script voice-over dialog...
My commercial ink has been spilled in Easyriders, BIKER, In The Wind, Tattoo, VQ, Quick Throttle, DRUM!, Modern Drummer, DRUMhead, Jazziz, and Downbeat.
My fiction has appeared in Easyriders, BIKER, and texts' bones. First Cabin is my first novella, with two sequels in the works. Stretch will be next, my take on the loss of classic glamour on Hollywood with a little bit of a warped twist...
I'm getting back into the short story game for literary publications, so stay tuned to see where some of my stuff may be appearing...
About that same time frame, 1993, I discovered a very cool and groundbreaking coffee house publication in Los Angeles called Caffeine. I was a fan of Bukowski at the time (still am) and decided to go over the top again. Rob Cohen and R.J, Comer were putting out this little gem of a publication that Bukowski had contributed works to, and when the editorial staff did a group read of "flecks," they re-read it again that same day and just shook their heads, because they didn't know WHAT to make of my limit stretching. But, they all agreed that something was there, and that's when I became a legitimate Los Angeles fiction writer, with Caffeine number 5.
Rob Cohen hosted regular publishing meetings where authors could read their pieces out loud at coffee houses, and when I finished reading "flecks," there was dead silence. Rob took the mic and asked, "Any questions?" and it was classic. Linda Bukowski was in the audience that night and told Rob later that she liked it, and that was a compliment I've cherished for thirty years.
I was published in three additional issues of Caffeine, and "flecks" was included in the Caffeine anthology, Scream When You Burn (Incommunicado Press, 1998)
The next significant phase on my fiction came with the discovery of publisher in Wales by the unpronounceable name of Daithidh MacEochaidh, His company, Skrev Press, crafted a small but elegant journal of fiction that really spoke to my sense of "This guy really wants to do it right." We developed a mutual respect for each others' works, and I was quite honored when Daithidh offered to run to of my pieces, "flecks" and "Lawyers in Love," in the Spring 2003 issue of texts' bones.
Being able to say that I'd been published in Europe was pretty exciting, and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to be a part of such a determined effort to create something with ink meaning. Daithidh paid for each journal publication out of his own pocket, so it was an understatement to calls these little gems "works of love." Daithidh put his heart and soul into his publishing. He featured my works regularly from 2003-2009, but I lost touch with Daithidh about 10 years ago and can't find him anywhere. I hope this respectful walk down memory lane finds its way onto his browser wherever he may be...
I transitioned from freelance magazine writing to airplane flight instructing in 2004, and from that time forward, I've paid the bills being up in the air. One of the things aviation let me do was form my own publishing company, which I did in 2012. That's when I was finally able to complete two writing projects I'd spent decades pondering. Now I had the means to get them out into the world through Rollinson Publishing Co.
The Elements of Rhythm, Vols, I & II, are non-fiction, music/rhythm education texts. They introduce what I call "binary rhythm pattern theory," where I used 0s and 1s to present a highly structured and revealing look at the origin of all fundamental building block rhythm patterns. Every rhythm you can imagine comes from the building block in these pagaes, and I also developed a unique cataloging system that identifies each pattern in a manner similar to how elements are identified on the Periodic Table of the Elements. The two-volume series presents the patterns in a way unlike any other system out there, and I had the privilege of sharing them in 2013 at the 14th meeting of Rhythm Production and Perception workshop, held at the University of Birmingham, in Birmingham, England.
Rhythm researchers from all over the world attend these workshops, and I was given the opportunity to do a poster presentation of my books. It was really an honor to be invited, and I look forward to attending future events.
In 2014, I finished the second long-pondered project, my music autobiography: Tourette Syndrome and Music: Discovering Peace Through Rhythm and Tone. I had debated writing this for many years, because it mean really opening up publicly about living with a neurological disorder that had as many upsides and it did downsides. Ultimately, I decided that the benefits of playing music were a story worth telling, specifically about how doing so had helped me develop managing and coping skills for this lifelong disorder.
I was encouraged by numerous mentions of how music and drumming had helped me from Dr. Oliver Sacks, the esteemed neurologist and author of Musicophilia. His mention of me in that book gave me the confidence to move forward with telling my story, and I will always be grateful for his interest and discussion of how, in his words, a disability was turned into an ability. As a multi-instrumentalist (and primarily a drummer), Ive benefited greatly from the healing and expressive power of music. Drumming in particular has taught me much about energy flow and how it translates into writing flow.
Contact
Drop a line if you're so inclined. No bots on this end, strictly human: rollinsonpublishing@gmail.com
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