To live in a world meant for other people

To live in a world meant for other people     Here a bartender carves a block of ice into a near-perfect sphere with a sharp knife and his bare hand.  A geisha steps onto the elevator in the hotel, her hair brushed back with painstaking accuracy.  In the restaurant, food is prepared with care and served with even more care.  Ugly buildings and tangled wires overhead share space with small gardens and handmade signs and window displays and rows of idle bicycles.  Neon skeletons hang by day and become breathing beauties at nightfall.  Preschoolers line up like ducks in yellow uniforms on a train platform.  I hear one visitor refer to these children as the reason why “they are so militaristic.”  My introduction to Japan is a list of quips like this one from other westerners.  I hear them from strangers on the subway.  I hear them from my co-worker who has lived here for several years.  I hear them from the occasio...

Syncopated Rhythm  "... The language is so appropriately raw when needed and so fragile in other passages ... Writing of this apparent simplicity is true craftsmanship and James carries this creative flow throughout the book ... James' gifts as a writer are extraordinary. This may be new work and if so it holds promise of an author who will likely rise in the same realm as Jonathan Saffron Foer et al." - San Francisco Review of Books Clifford and Claudia  "... [the author] can interplay gay characters with aplomb and make his story so universally relevant that the reader can simply sit back and enjoy the entertainment. And in his novel there is entertainment aplenty! ... His ability to create stories that are refreshingly unexpected places him in line with some of most established authors. Highly recommended." - San Francisco Review of Books The Story of Teddy and Eddie  "... James’ elegant style of writing inserts italicized poetic pass...

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The landmark Chelsea Hotel was built in the 1880s as one of the city's first private co-ops. In 1905, it re-opened as a hotel. Over the years, the hotel has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists, and actors, including Dee Dee Ramone, Bob Dylan, Virgil Thomson, Sam Shepard, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Miller, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Patti Smith. In the 1970s, a New York landmark himself, Stanley Bard took over the management of the hotel, and his son David joined him later on. In the autumn of 1978, punk rocker Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in Room 100, a room that has joined the other ghosts that make up the Chelsea. View from the Balcony, Room 325 The year is 1995 or 1996. I enter the Chelsea Hotel, push through the heavy glass doors. The light in the lobby adjusts to my eyes. Art runs floor to ceiling around the room. Obscure paintings. Little known artists. A s...

My friends ignore me. Can't say that I blame them. I write books that they think nobody wants to read. And maybe they're right. Who wants to read about living in a world meant for other people? Are my friends right? To tell you the truth, most of my friends haven't read my stuff. Only a few have ventured in. Three, to be precise. And of the three, they all like what they have read and encourage me to keep writing. My other friends continue to ignore me. Not a word is spoken about my books. Why am I telling you this? Because, with so many books out there, it is a daunting task to find an audience for mine. Even among my friends. I need to stand out somehow just to get readers to see that I have actually written books. And that's where you come in. I know. "You're gay. I'm not sure that I could be interested in or connect with what you write," you say.  And to that I say, "It doesn't matter. My books are ava...

Clifford and Claudia AnnLoretta’s Review 5 Star Review on Goodreads Dec 31, 2015 I dearly love to be knocked out of my expectations! I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this constantly moving, unrelentingly challenging, bemusing, amusing, hurtful, charming novel as a special offer for my Kindle, just when I needed a break. And what an enjoyable book it is. It deserves your full attention, it demands your full attention. It's not a lightweight bit of fluff, it's too human (?) to be that. Did Charles come from where he said he did? I don't know. Was the family he ended up with who they seemed to be? I don't know. But Charles is as convincing a character as I've met in a long time, there's never a moment when he's weakly portrayed, when the author wasn't living in his skin so that we could care about Charles, love with him, laugh with him, be in pain with him. When somebody else has read it, I'd love to talk about whether an...

Clifford and Claudia 5 out of 5 stars  "It takes my keen eye no time at all to discern that Clifford is prettier than Claudia."  By Grady Harp HALL OF FAME TOP 100 REVIEWER VINE VOICE on September 26, 2015. Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Author James Halat has experience from several locations of living. He was born in New Jersey, lived in New York City, and now lives in Tokyo Japan. To date he has published two books - SYNCOPATED RHYTHM and CLIFFORD AND CLAUDIA. Few authors can handle same sex stories as well as James as those who have had the pleasure of reading SYNCOPATED RHYTHM will witness. But fine as that story is, it is a novella. Now in a full-length novel he proves that he can interplay gay characters with aplomb and make his story so universally relevant that the reader can simply sit back and enjoy the entertainment. And in his novel there is entertainment aplenty! An example of his technique of placing italicized asides - a me...

Clifford and Claudia The Port Authority compares largely to the Bucky Ball Interlink, South Side, a hub for Woody Vine malcontents, freeloaders, hustlers, pimps, pickpockets, and philosophers. There, too, is a strong undercurrent of hope filtered through a comb of despair. Weary expressions come and go, some are idle, sniffing elixirs for their hunger, anxiety, boredom. I have a sense that the people who spend time here know something I will never know, knowledge, experience, preserved and locked away like the paved over history of the city streets. My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me