D.S. started to make his own wooden books after a disagreement with his publisher, Dry Bones Press. He decided that he'd rather have complete control over the contents of his books from the words to the binding. He began to craft books out of wood and acid free paper. Each book was unique. The University of Louisville has collected a number of these books.

​Once Removed, a novel published in 2011. Written by D.S. Poorman. Edited by Kent Fielding. 

     Dwin Doolittle, 27 and established in his routines, wanders off into a forest near his home as if pulled by unseen forces hidden in the shade of the crowded woods. There he establishes a more lively and engaged existence and befriends the harmless local loon, Intelligent Jim. What begins for Dwin as a cryptic diversion in the valley of his fate, turns into a suddenly substantial and viable life among the verdant and rolling backwoods hills of Kentucky. Taken up residence in a dilapidated abode, taken under wing by a fatherly customer and gifted a bike, of sorts, the earnest and faithful Dwin is all but settled in but for a giant red dog he’s spotted in the woods and hopes to capture. Intelligent Jim is game to help Dwin but he’s got his own demons to hunt.

      In the meantime, Dwin composes and sends these heartfelt letters to someone in the bucolic world of Elizabethtown Kentucky, 50 miles to the south, and who we know only as “Pam.” Within these tiny epistles he divulges the secret inner workings of his realizations and understandings concerning the pull of his newly forming life. His naïve happiness intact along the way, change is thrust upon the vibrant narrator in midstride and what had become his new life is peeled away yet again by forces pushing ever deeper into his fate.

     All this and then a breath-stealing ending that has left readers drained, empty and longing for more.

Macky Dunn's Got Nothing to Lose, a novel published by Dry Bones Press of San Francisco in 1999.
     
​Macky likes having "nothing to lose". In general, you would say Macky likes his life, which gives readers a little peek into the covert complexity of an orphan turned criminal turned ex-con turned cook at Louisville's Brown Hotel. But when he's wanted for murder, Macky realizes that, without a doubt, he is one step ahead of the police. He knows he's not the killer.

​Read Paul McDonald's review here.