This week on Word [email protected], my recording technician Donnie “Turk” Schnars continues to discuss my work with previous guests—this time my two most recently published works of fiction “Symphonie Fantastique” (2009) and “Baldr and Beatrice” (2011). First we hear Dave Kress on “Symphonie Fantastique.” Dave is a professor of fiction writing, contemporary literature, and literary theory at the University of Maine in Orono and is the author himself of three stunning and unconventional works of fiction “Counting Zero,” “Martians,” and “Hush.” “Symphonie Fantastique” is a collection of four short novels each concerning a different haunted, obsessed individual presented under the banner of a single cover. The collection takes its title from the great five-movement symphony by Hector Berlioz. Paul West says of “Symphonie Fantastique”: “It is tumultuous, overpowering and yet meticulously planned. Few people have the oomph to rise to this for a second novel. A superbly literary feat.” It is interesting that West sees the book as a single novel and not a collection of four discrete tales. The Midwest Book Review” writes, “ ‘Symphonie Fantastique’ is an intriguing read that will please many a reader.” Next Turk talks to my very first guest on “Word Patriots” Edward Desautels about my most recent book, the Tolkeinesque fantasy “Baldr and Beatrice,” which came out in January 2011. A rich and subtle analysis of the psychology of friendship and love, “Baldr and Beatrice” revisits the old time-proven formula of girl and boy forever desiring but never fully achieving the culmination of their love. Here, it is a matter of their accidental disuniting as primal essences, depicted in grand Miltonic flourishes, through severing time warps and their reemergence in different times, places and cultures. Ed is the author of the novel “Flicker in the Porthole Glass,” which was published by Mammoth Books in 2002 and drew favorable notice in “The Review of Contemporary Fiction.” His fictive critical essay, “Totally Wired: Prepare Your Affidavits of Explanation,” appeared in the critical anthology “Retaking The Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization,” published by Pluto Press in 2004. Currently he is at work on a new novel “Housebreaking the Muse.” He also maintains his own blog, “Maximum Fiction: Writing up the Multiverse.” If you would like to know more about Mark Seinfelt’s books be sure to visit his website: www.markseinfelt.com. To learn more about Dave Kress visit his faculty page: http://www.umaine.edu/english/faculty/david-kress/. To find out more about Ed Desautels check out his blog: http://maximumfiction.wordpress.com/.