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September 6, 2008
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September 5, 2008 Tuesday
September 2, 2008 Monday
September 1, 2008 Sunday
August 31, 2008 Wednesday
August 27, 2008
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WHO IS THIS GUY, AND WHY DOES HE WRITE ALL THIS STUFF?
Riley Royce-Smith is a writer. He didn’t plan to be a writer. He, like many in his generation, planned to burn the candle at both ends for a few years, and then die before he hit thirty. Again, like many in his generation, he discovered that the much anticipated death did not pan out, so he moved into a cultural program that he wasn’t even aware of at the time. He became a member of the groveling American masses.
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The fourth of six sons, Mr. Royce-Smith spent his childhood traveling the American Southwest with his vagabond family, absorbing the common sense and language of the people and cultures that he passed through. Readers are often surprised when meeting him, because he really does say, “Howdy, Pardner!”.
As a young man, Mr. Royce-Smith hitchhiked his way into the 60’s and 70’s world of drugs, sex, and rock & roll, and eventually (“I was hungry”) into the US military during the closing months of the Viet Nam war. Here, he excelled at gambling, loansharking, pimping, drug-peddling, and trading in the black markets of Southeast Asia. Upon his return home, he got with the cultural program. He married, fathered two children, and obtained a position in the Corporation. It was in his early years in the Corporation that he began to author an underground newsletter called "The Mourning Mail". With the advent of email, he began distributing his newsletter via this amazing new technology, and within a few months had a worldwide readership.
For over twenty years, Mr. Royce-Smith has spent his energy attempting to reconcile the dark, greedy, sexual, and violent world of his youth, with the dark, greedy, sexual, and violent world of normalized American culture (“It’s the same basic rules, but you get to wear nicer clothes.”). The Mourning Mail is the ever-evolving result of that reconciliation.
Sliding gently into his golden years, Mr. Royce-Smith and his wife Diane currently live on the Central Coast of California, where he spends his time writing, making art, playing African drums, and preparing for the yearly bacchanal known as Burning Man. In short, Mr. Royce-Smith has become an Old Hippie.
Future plans include compiling the Mourning Mail into a book, co-writing (with Diane) a sexual education book for couples called “Mr. & Mrs. Bob”, and presenting lectures (again, with Diane) on sexual fetish and communication for couples.
Diane & Riley can be contacted at toadyriley@yahoo.com
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