DIRTY SHEETS: 28 stories of passion, pathos and payback

Fiction. "Imagine a world where the people in it are the sum total of the big box stores they shop at, the products they buy there and whose warped world view is shaped by the televisions they watch, and you have some idea of the mental capacity of the characters in Spiel's DIRTY SHEETS. Theirs is not the quiet desperation that Thoreau speaks of, but desperation primed: highly vocal, expressive and willfully ignorant. Oddly, and these stories are extreme in their oddness, there is a real poetry to all this self-defining, manic speech that is so unique and particular, is so elemental, the reader cannot help but be swept along the absurd, surreal streams of consciousness. DIRTY SHEETS, simply put, is a unique, unforgettable reading experience."—Alan Catlin

The Poet Spiel focuses on everyday lives of common folk and how their actions are plugged with paradox. Some of the incidents in his stories become somewhat surreal or reflect delusions. As a creative maverick child, Spiel grew up in Colorado on a small town farm in the early 40's. He often believed no one heard, nor had time for, his words and perspicacious opinions so he painted pictures and shouted at the farm cows. When his attic bedroom felt lonely, he danced with himself in front of a mirror. Following a life threatening health trauma in 1996, Spiel became reticent; he chose not to express in any form. But in early 1999, he again picked up writing as medicine, and soon after, he resumed his lifelong pattern of making art. Spiel has never been easily bound by convention in either his writing or his various types of artwork. Possessing an uncommon point of view, his seven-plus decades on Earth have provided him with much experience and inspiration about human behavior. The quirks of being human are often his chosen subject matter. He's said that writing reveals certain parts of him he is otherwise unable to reveal. (But he admits that he still sneaks in a private mirror dance or two and imagines that he is young and facile).