David G. Pace's Blog

[This review originally appeared in 15 Bytes Magazine, May 2015]
A Song for Issy Bradley
Carys Bray
Ballantine Books (2014)
330 pp.
There’s a moment in A Song for Issy Bradley, Carys Bray’s luminous first novel (and 15 Bytes Book Award finalist this year), when a teenage Mormon girl named Zippy is asked at a party she’s not supposed to be at, “[I]f you weren’t already a member, would you join the Church?”This is not only the question being asked of Latter-day Saint youth of the “millennial” set to...

At the last stages of editing the manuscript to Dream House on Golan Drive. Working with a professional editor who is doing this kind of close reading is an incredible gift. It really makes you ask the hard questions about what your book is about, and how one can best tell the story. My thanks to the staff at Signature Books, especially right now, Editor Ron Priddis, for making this project so much better. The Advanced Reading Copies (ARC), for reviewers, should be available in about a week.

T...

I'm happy to report that the editing process for DREAM HOUSE ON GOLAN DRIVE with Signature Books is moving right along.

The release date may be slightly delayed from the original schedule (August 15, 2015), but . . . it should be shortly after that.

I've already been tapped by the Utah Humanities Book Festival for a reading in September (more on that later) and hopefully there will be a book launch in Salt Lake City which is famous for it's scrappy independent bookstores dedicated to local writ...

Announcing my first book: Dream House on Golan Drive , forthcoming from Signature Books (Salt Lake City) August 2015.


It is the year 1972, and Riley Harley finds that he, his family, community, and his faith are entirely indistinguishable from each other. He is eleven. A young woman named Lucy claims God has revealed to her that she is to love with Riley's family. Her quirks are strangely disarming, her relentless questioning of their life incendiary and sometimes comical. Her way of taking rel...

This is my new personal mantra--the advice I would give everyone, especially our national government right now.

How did we get into the intractable place we have arrived as a country, as the human race?1) We have not stood our ground, or even known what our values (as opposed to our "doctrine") are.2) We have not acknowledged or negotiated the fundamentalism by which each of is gripped (that means me and you...all of us.)3) We have not had the good sense or humanity to know that in public disc...

What does a writer and editor do who needs more cash and is a cracker jack at events?

He gets ordained. That's right, gang. If you need a wedding officiant I am currently available. I do traditional weddings (with or without mention of deity), unusual weddings in unusual places, and I also am honored to marry same-sex partners.

I'm located in Salt Lake City but am willing to travel within reason. My first two ceremonies will be free. (If you're happy with my services, I'll ask you to recommend...

I hope you're enjoying my "Little House" blog. I've recently joined Thumbtack offering my professional services as an editor and writer.

Thumbtack is a new way to find professional services, including help with editing and writing your copy, stories, books, blogs and other written material.

Thanks for considering Dave's Editing & Writing Services on Thumbtack.

This review originally appeared in 15 Bytes Magazine in December. "House Under the Moon" was a finalist for the 2013 15 Bytes Book Awards in poetry. I liked this book partly because I've met Michael personally in Logan where he and his family live, and partly because he's a practitioner of Buddhist meditation, something I've been dabbling in for a couple of years. "Dabbling" is perhaps the wrong word for it. It's become a discipline for me, this Zen thing, and one that I would recommend. My i...

In the fall of 2013 the winners of the first annual 15 Bytes Book Awards were announced. As the literary editor of this online arts magazine, I had the privilege of working with other magazine staff and the editor, Shawn Rossiter, to determine all the particulars of launching a new statewide program of this type. In part, the 15 Bytes Book Awards was in response to the fact that the Utah Book Award went on hiatus. (Whether it returns is still in question.) But, being an art magazine for adul...

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[This review was first posted in 15 Bytes Magazine October 2013]

In poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s debut collection But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), the diction is daring, the voice muscular. In “Why I Want To Be A Tow Truck Driver,” she writes,

See the snowclouds
thrusting over the range
like a cough,
a hard-packed fist? This is how
I come. Free of disguise.
Because life is hard but also crisp and literary…

In “Circles in the Sky” the throat is “my throat zone/ of av...