Author Bret Hoveskeland

  • Fall 2026 Creative Writing MFA Comes to a Close

    This autumn has been my second semester in my low-residency MFA program, and it was a productive one! At this semester’s close, I am now just over 40,000 words into the novel that will be my thesis work. I have been given wonderful encouragement on this project all semester, and I feel like it’s really starting to come together into writing that feels very true to what I want to write, and who I am as a writer/human being. This may be the most fun I’ve ever had in my own writing, and I want to really hold on to that. I have been surprised by many of the turns the story has taken this semester, and part of why I’m enjoying it so much is because I truly feel like I’m riding the wave and not sure where it will land yet. I am happy with the road traveled thus far.

    In addition to the thesis project work, a bunch of us MFA students are kicking off an MFA literary journal, in print later this month or by early December. The first issue is going to be titled “Elsewhere.” I have three new poems included in this one, and am really excited to see how the printing looks and to see my friends’ work in there too. More on that to come!

    Last for now, I have a new short story going out for submission. And I’m a bit surprised that it’s a horror story! Very excited about this because it’s been ages since I’ve done short fiction work. I am currently calling it “Signs of Life,” and we’ll see what happens next with that one.

    I get to be a “teach-in” reader at my daughters’ school later this month, and get to read to the kids from my picture book, and one of my middle grade novels on submission, so lots of fun creative times in the current pipeline.

    Next residency starts December 5th at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach. Ready to keep going and see where the wave takes me. Onward!

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  • Writing Life Info I Failed to Share Way Earlier (back in December 2025!)

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  • Writing Life Info I Failed to Share Way Earlier (back in December 2025!)

    Life has been so frenetic since December that I failed to update my own page here…

    Anyway, I am now a grad student going for my MFA at Stetson University!

    I just recently finished my last class of the first term and am awaiting final grades to come in this week, but I started working on a new novel for the course, a type of work for adult fiction I’ve never tried before; it’s a sort of blend of literary fantasy, psychological realism, and maybe with a tiny dose of magical realism.

    Aside from other miscellaneous written work and workshop material, I’m ending this first semester with strong revisions to 20,000 words/approx. 80 pages of this new novel. I’ll continue that story’s work in the next semester too.

    Second semester and Stetson residency begins June 6th. More writing and exploring to come!

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  • Annual Reminders to Re-Read Your Copy of George Orwell’s 1984

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  • Annual Reminders to Re-Read Your Copy of George Orwell’s 1984

    Reminder to the U.S. Government:

    George Orwell meant for 1984 to be a warning, not an instruction manual or playbook for ideal leadership.

    Reminder to Americans:

    When the Party tells you that 2 + 2 = 5 (and there’s a lot of really bad math teachers out there right now), please choose to enroll in an online math course to refresh your skills before you say “Yes, it does.”

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  • “Remember, Remember”

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  • “Remember, Remember”

    November 5th used to make me think of this old rhyme inspired by Guy Fawkes Day (the V for Vendetta mask is based on Guy Fawkes), which was the whole failed attempt to blow up Parliament and assassinate the king thing: “Remember, remember, the 5th of November.”

    But now it will always remind me of my dad.

    This is the 1st anniversary of his passing on November 5th last year and I could keep it political, like the above Guy Fawkes reference, and say he blasted out of here on Election Day 2024 in his own version of Guy Fawkes before seeing how atrocious and sad things could get, but I’d instead rather share three of my favorite memories of him here today to remember him on this day.

    In some ways, my dad gets a lot of credit for how I learned to read. I always think of it as rare now because Dad was not a big reader, though he was always mechanically gifted and could make things with his hands that he never ever even made blueprints for. He just apparently saw it in his brain and put it together on the fly. But he must have known I really wanted to read from me staring at comic books all day pre-k or kindergarten, but not knowing how to read the words. So, he started to read with me through an old read-along-to-the-audio Star Wars book and underlined words I’d have a hard time with. We spent quite a lot of time on that battered old leather armchair of his doing this. As some time went by, not only did I know the story by heart, but all the underlined words too, and the underlines started disappearing once I knew what they meant. I like to say now I learned to read from Dick and Jane and C-3PO.

    A second favorite memory:

    Sometimes as a kid, when I needed a bath or got dirty from playing outside, he’d do the classic Dad thing of throwing me up onto his shoulders and hauling me into the bathroom. He’d face the mirror and say something like, “Hey, I wish I knew where Bret went to. Where’d he go?” He’d take a swipe or two at my face with a small damp towel. “Oh, wait! I think that’s his nose! Where’d the rest of him go?” I’d laugh like crazy. I don’t always realize it but find myself doing a similar thing with my girls too. And they laugh just the same.

    Third favorite memory:

    When I was helping him at the start of his landscaping company after he retired from farming, he once said to me, “I believe you’re going to get to wherever you want to go… even if it takes you a long time to get there.” I think this was one of the nicest things he’d ever said to me. And you know, I’m not fast at most things, and I may not entirely be there yet… but I do believe him.

    Bonus memory:

    My dad and I were often very different people with very different tastes in life. But one thing we could agree on always was, of all things… Creedence Clearwater Revival.

    When I moved to Florida, he rode with me, driving down from North Dakota in my car, pulling his little trailer. At the time, I hated country music and my Dad hated rock music, so we never could agree on a damn thing on the radio or otherwise. But then he realized I had a “20 Greatest Hits” Creedence Clearwater Revival CD in my car, and put that in. It played the entire 2 or 3-day drive down and every time I tried to change it, he’d say, “Just play it again. Play it one more time.” Once more became 20 more “once mores.”

    Never underestimate the power of CCR. Thinking about him today, so my workday playlist may include a little “Lodi” and “Who Will Stop the Rain?” And maybe, just maybe, some of his beloved Patsy Cline.

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  • I Am a Ghost (But a Ghost with a Purpose!)

    I realize I have been ghosting my own webpage here since the beginning of June! Well, summer is busy with my little family and my girls, but I still have been writing that whole time! Much of it, however, has been practicing the book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, again, and lots and lots and lots of journal pages (Morning Pages, as she calls them) to revamp my creativity and hopefully bring it to a new level. Well, that, and it just feels good to do the exercises in that book. Highly recommended if you’re feeling blocked creatively in any endeavor. It really works if you practice it!

    In other news… I am applying for Creative Writing programs and am excited to see where that leads. More will be revealed!

    Blessings, all.

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  • “Another Ocean Poem,” “Coda,” and “Encore” (from The Oxytocin Opera)

    Three other personal favorites posted here in honor of May’s 12-year anniversary of The Oxytocin Opera (Click Here to Find It!) “Coda” and “Encore” are the last two poems in the collection. It really takes me back to writing them by posting some of these collection pieces this month. Until next time, enjoy!

    Another Ocean Poem

    The lull of the waves… it doesn’t say your name like it used to.
    But sometimes the moon, hanging like a rusting chandelier, sometimes it highlights the letters of your name on foaming crests of breaking waves.
    There are the ghosts of ancient heroes riding on the wind, and exhausted mythologies lie broken inside sea shells and within the bones of the sand.
    And I’m still not sure where the buried treasure lies.  I’ve never seen an Ex that clearly marked the spot.
    But if I lie on this shore and close my eyes, the shapes and names of all the people I’ve ever known light up behind lightless lids.  They will be safe in there and I’m happy to keep them.
    There are some words inside my head I’ve hushed so many times that maybe they won’t ever really speak anymore, even if I start to miss them.
    I wish some of our words would have sounded prettier.
    There are some thoughts I’m more afraid of than the feelings they build in me like sandcastles, knowing a wave is coming for them someday, they just don’t know when and how.
    There is a slapstick comedy buried somewhere in my right hand, yet its bones don’t always remember the words and lines.
    And far below the waves, there are bodies hiding within seaweed and secrets, too young and clinging to the ocean floor like barnacles on a boat.
    If you could find them and touch them, they would sting worse than a thousand jellyfish.
    If they decided to surface now from these Atlantic tombs, heads rising like miniature submarines to reach unbent light, maybe they would watch me watching the moon on the shore, waves licking my bare feet like a grateful dog’s tongue after its Master comes home for the evening.
    Maybe they would watch me with eyes that never saw, and maybe they would say in virgin tongues, “Well, where have you been?  The water’s perfect.  Come on in.”

    There is a select collection of unused names living under my tongue.  
    I’ve been happy to keep them safe there.
    I whisper the names, let them fall to be carried with the smells of the ocean air to other shorelines.
    To be laid to rest with those bodies of the sea.
    They wink, smile and sink and are glad to now hold my unused names like Blackbeard’s buried treasure.
    Because no one should go have to go through death without knowing a name to answer to.

    Coda

    Are all these notes nothing 
    more than a decision to live
    with a fuller love found
    inside a firewall of code?
    Despite what you have heard and seen,
    there was laughter streaking 
    down apartment and house walls,
    like fresh paint with not enough surface
    to hold on to.
    A crescendo of smiles and clutched hands
    powered these rooms
    like two matching solar panels 
    on the roof holding 
    all daylight.
    Just like you know
    that Styrofoam and Paper Mache 
    tombstones on dry, late October lawns
    symbolize much more than a post harvest holiday
    your children and friends love to play dress up for.
    How you know that behind these stones
    of such miniature deaths,
    there is always one more life to find.
    One more fine grain of sunlight
    to feel between index finger and thumb
    and examine
    under a set of hard squinting eyes.

    Encore

    The curtain falls.  
    The venue lights go on. 
    Smoke still coats the stage, 
    starting its gradual promotion to the ceiling 
    like a crowded bar at last call.  
    The final note curls up inside now warm eardrums,
    still ringing.  
    It is a distorted and jarring note
    we won’t soon forget.  
    Still, the last song is meant to make us 
    happy we even get to hear one more, 
    even if some of the chords sound sad.  
    Cause somewhere between all that sound 
    making a home inside our ears, we realize…

    The next show can sound even better.
    The next paycheck we get can mean much more than keeping the lights on.
    The next song we hear can inspire us to write more of our own.
    The next song we write can sound the best.
    The next book we read can make us laugh until we cough.
    The next love we live can be our happiest.
    The next person we meet we may say Good Morning to every day for the rest of time.
    The next anything can be the best everything we ever wanted.

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