No Loitering: Musings • Rants • Explorations is a collection of nonfiction and fiction by Stuart Balcomb. As he says in the Prologue: “Many of the essays in No Loitering are what I do to warm up my creative juices. They are for me what stretching is for runners, sketching is for artists, and pre-performance arpeggios are for singers. They flex my ‘mental muscle’ and help clear the mind for the day to come, even if that day will involve nothing more than household chores and writing some bills. I love to pick the first topic that comes to mind and go with it. As you will see, there’s no loitering here. I pick on anything and everyone from loggers, politicians, three-year-olds, slackers, composers, and western civilization, to gardeners, the wealthy, young lovers, cigars, bigotry, Russians, those who can’t express themselves, and those who like, can’t talk good.” The three sections are:
Musings contains such titles as “The Power of Silence,” “Artists and the Rest of the World,” “The Collective Experience,” “Heartbeats,” “No Pain, No Gain,” “The End of Creativity,” and “The Point,” the most amazing tale of synchronicity you will ever hear.
In Rants are pieces titled, “Walls, “Instant Gratification,” “Hummers and Cigars,” “The Star Mangled Banner,” “Outsourcing the Future,” and “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better.”
And Explorations features creative observations, a bit of poetry, a couple of palindromic works, and some short fiction.
Click here to read “The Power of Silence.” Some pieces were previously published in the TheScreamOnline, a popular zine featuring art, photography, literature, music, and film.
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$14.00 USD.
177 pages, paperback
Printed in the U.S.A.
Published Feb. 1, 2026
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