The Granite Notebook is the personal website of writer Cameron Lambright. It is his public journal, his primary place of residence on the Internet, and the central clearinghouse for all of his work and ideas.

Since it’s just me (Cameron) writing this, let me shift into the first person.

I am a novelist and independent intellectual who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and currently reside in the state of Oregon. I write literary fiction and science fiction, and many other things. I am the proprietor of a small publishing company, Incandescence Press, which I operate with my wife, Erica. Incandescence Press is intended to become a boutique literary press that will give voice to the most interesting emerging voices in American literature in the first half of the 21st Century. I almost never find contemporary fiction that satisfies my literary thirst, which is what originally led me to start writing myself. I believe there are voices, who are not being heard, who are both more interesting and more intelligent than those that have been promoted by the mainstream publishing industry for the past 20+ years. As of right now, Incandescence Press has only published my own books [ I trust, therefore, you will surmise that I arrogantly consider myself to be one of the most interesting emerging voices in American literature ], although we are preparing to publish our first book by another author. Although, that other author is dead… Baby steps!

Aside from writing, my educational background includes a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, with a special concentration in intellectual property and information law. [ But I should probably mention that I have never been a lawyer (or even sat for the bar), and in that regard am a kind of ‘conscientious objector’ to the American legal system. ] I also hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oregon, where I majored in English and graduated from the Robert D. Clark Honors College.

I don’t want to paint over this point: I am a starving artist. In a way, I think literary starving artists are the most pathetic kind. A painter or a sculptor can quickly show anyone their work, a musician can even inflict their music unwillingly upon the people around them, but writers require from their audience a significant investment of faith and time.

I should write some humanizing text here about what kind of regular person I am, like all my pets (actually, I have none), grandpa’s farm (actually, fuck Grandpa), and a select medley of other personal tidbits. But that’s really so trite, isn’t it?

No, in earnest, I loved my Grandpa. And you can find all that other kind of stuff in my social media links at the right.

Ahhhhh, I find it so hard to write about myself in this sort of way without lapsing into humor or some idiom even stupider and more concealing than humor. Not that humor is stupid, per se. I wrote the following in an earlier draft of the text on this page:

Writing about yourself is difficult, or at least I find it so. Where do you begin? Almost anything you say can become a mischaracterization if it is not followed by further elaboration. You want to do justice to yourself, you don’t want to be mischaracterized. It is easier to say nothing, or to say cleverly irrelevant things. I find it hard, for example, to compose author blurbs about myself without retreating into jokes or stylish irony. As a writer, you hope that some day you will be significant enough for other people to look over your life and work, and write the blurbs for you. It seems disingenuous, and even unfair, to write them about yourself. But that is what you do.

I can write about personal experiences, or emotions — that’s easy. But writing some quasi-objective definition of myself is difficult. Ok, I tried!

[ yes, I write ‘ok’ with lowercase, it’s the new thing ]

Please check out all the great content on this blog, and if you are in any way intrigued be sure to read my books! 

~ Cameron