The crown jewel of my handmade books or, as I like to call it, The Most Beautiful Book In The World (This is for sale for $10,000.)

Some handmade editions of my novel Once Removed (available here Once Removed e-book edition  on Amazon.com ) This is a bookmaking method original to me. I sold one of the first ones to the University of Louisville's rare book library and the curator said she had never seen a book like it before. (The top photo and the seventh photo are commissioned books of my poetry.)

One of my poems...

Upon Flatlining

It is certain that I am dying.

Not the normal kind of dying

that rises up like a bright wall

in an empty room, cold and well lit.

I have done that before,

the heart stopped,

my father leaned over

said, “I love you”, like he never had,

and frantic beings in cloud white and sky blue

took his place and leaned into me

and wrestled The Universe and won.

So, I have done that but

this dying of which I speak

is the ripping from my flesh-soft palm

some numinous beauty

I have clung to like a gun

against a ravenous mob

that spits when they want to speak

and means me great harm.

This dying is slow in coming,

to be sure (I’m 42 after all),

and what is dying, what is me,

is some internal plot which

has that peculiar essence

of being pervasive, real and glorious

-deep like caves with blind animals-

and all without

even knowing that it lives there.

It is something of the fool

who is only celebrated

when suddenly, for some reason is absent,

and the wake is a deep silence, revered

and noted by all. 

                                -D.S.

Some of my picture frames...

Some of my handmade canes with scrimshaw, inlay and leather work...

Some of my woodwork... (and my awesome cat Tom Bombadil)

Dungeon

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon.
I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into
the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand
lest a least hole should be left in this name;
and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being. 

Rabindranath Tagore