JD Rule

It took four high schools and eight colleges before Lubec’s Resident Novelist achieved his MBA, but that is simply how it happened. Life is not always linear. The path led through the art-school experience at San Francisco State, studying fine art photography, creating in medium and large format, and exhibiting internationally.

“Above all,” said Artaud, “the artist must reveal the truth.” Through the experience of the Cold War as lived by the son of a Naval Officer, coming of age in the tumultuous Sixties, living life on both coasts, the Montana prairie, and the burgeoning New York metropolis, things began to take on a multi-hued aspect. This alternative view is not granted those who have not traveled, lived in different parts of the grand American experiment, and experienced the hopes and fears of diverse segments of our culture.

“My friend Fred, as my Father lay dying, said ‘life looks different when you start losing your parents.’ It was the loss of one, then the other that inspired my current writing, by forcing the question: What is the essence of a relationship?”

Rule has called Downeast Maine home for many years, living on a windswept farm in the easternmost town of the United States, and observing life at the local level as a reporter.

One reader described Rule’s works as “not for the faint of heart.” Relationship conflicts form the core of his works, which he confesses appeal to a discerning audience. “If you write for everyone,” he says, “you write for no one.”

The novels Neap Tide and Monument Lot both shine a light on the insularity of small-town life, as lived by individuals on a remote peninsula. His most recent release, Orion’s Belt and Alnilam: Two Novellas, explores generational POV differences, largely in an isolated community. His early life and travels are brutally detailed in the memoir Mowry Beach, where the isolation is of a different kind.

As of early 2016, Rule has eight titles in print with two more bubbling all over the stove top. He also conducts a popular Creative Writing workshop as part of the SummerKeys music education program.