tlevs press: September 2025

Saturday, September 27, 2025

White Elephant

(my new one) White Elephant: A folktale retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Magical realism in a well-known story. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSXS741M

In paperback: $5.99 + shipping
On Kindle: $2.99
Free on kindle unlimited

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Welcome!

tlevspress, along with its proprietor (me), wife, three teens, and dogs and cats, is now in Galesburg, Illinois. The mountains depicted above are merely an apparition or a memory. I will soon come forth with better Illinois visuals (mostly trains, which are common here) but in the meantime, accept these old symbols and graphics. I have been writing for a while, and use my free time to write several things: short stories, a novel, haiku, family-related biography, and Quaker plays. You'll find most of it here. I am 100% indie; I do my own art, and my own proofreading (extremely difficult, proofreading your own) - but, with ten children, I can't take money from the family budget to get started. I'd rather write what I want and enjoy the freedom of whatever success will bring me. It's been an interesting journey - glad you're joining me for a while!.

About my work

I am part of the "self-publishing revolution," as my work is among millions that people publish themselves, mostly through Amazon and Createspace. But it's not because I dislike publishers. It's more because 1) I want to keep the rights to my own work, and 2) because, having ten children, I'm too busy to send things out and maintain relationships with publishers.

As an ESL teacher, I've always written my own material; it was more current than any textbook. I could also tailor it to my students' interests. I sometimes picked up news reports and rewrote them, so that we were in effect examining something that had just happened, or a change brought on by technology. It kept my classes interesting and it kept me in the habit of writing.

A greater source of my inspiration, however, was my travels, which spanned a couple of years in the early seventies, and covered a territory from Guatemala to Alaska. On that trip I was determined to really get to know the USA but also explore the different options for making a livelihood. I have been lucky to be basically happy teaching ESL; it has allowed my to develop my music and my writing without having to depend on it. Now I would like to see if I could make a career out of either writing or music or both; this is my feeble attempt to try the former. Enjoy!

If you have encountered an issue or something you would like to correct, or need to contact me for any reason, feel free. I cannot guarantee a response.