On boots and bars and motorbikes...

And then there was what might someday soon be my first all-original book. Working title at very least. Not sure I’m 100 percent sold yet. In its current form, it tells 21 stories over at least three generations and 260 pages in 80,500 words. I’m not entirely certain all of the them fit with the stories told throughout the collection or the precise order everything will fall just yet, so there’s plenty still left to do: Most notably in just making it less tome-like. But it is pretty cool to see it all printed and stacked there. On the plus side, it left alone near every existing piece I had working in the can and branched of into some previously uncharted territory. It was kind of exciting to see where the stories carried me and how they ultimately align to tell a much larger overall story. At least I hope. Tis the aim, anyhow. We’ll see, I suppose. So a question I’ve fielded a lot already: What’s it about? Well, it being a collection of linked but separate stories,

UN FATHER HOOD D addy Daddy I have a joke What is it little bit? OK OK It goes like this Why did the        cookie                                                                                     go to the hospital? I don’t know                                                                            Why? Ready Daddy? Ready? It goes like this because he felt crummy                    Get it? D addy Daddy I skinned my knee It’s alright, little bit    hold her    kiss her wipe her sad little eyes Don’t worry, little bit                         Daddy’s here                                                 There’s no need to cry D addy Daddy I got this new horn come w

Yesterday you met our good buddy Doug, who had a bit of a potty mouth, a bit of a problem with his neighbor, and a bit of a tussle in the yard. With a cop. A real cop, it turned out, not just one of those Rent-A-Cop wannabes like at the mall. Doug just assumed, you know, especially when the fellow showed up in one those annoying little carts and looked every bit of twelve. It was an assumption that ended with Doug chewing his own lawn, ruining his best Hawaiian shirt, and getting a free ride to the pokey. It couldn't possibly get any wor--   Wait a minute! Isn't that how all this started in the first place? “I always told you that temper of yours was gonna get you in trouble one of these days,” Maggie says, steering the Suburban like it was her first time behind the wheel. “I guess now you’ll listen.” After spending the night in a holding cell with two drunks and a drug dealer, one of them a puker, Doug didn’t have the energy to respond. “I had to sell your boat

Once again, as a courtesy to friends and family not particularly fond of my blue language from time to time, I must once again beg your forgiveness and rate this with R. For the rest of you, though (let's hum a few bars and give that first bunch a chance to log out: Hmmm, hmm HMMMM hmmm hmm ) . . . Alright. Is that all of them? Here we go then. One bad day can always get worse… It could have happened to anyone, anyplace, at any time. It happened to be a Tuesday for Doug, not long after he handed a raft of shit to his neighbor, Bob, that should've come with paddles. “What the hell do you mean, you called the law?” “I mean I called the police to report your dang dog,” Bob says. “That beast kept me up all hours barking last night. No one should have to put up with that kind of racket.” “He was barking at your damn car, which you drove through my fucking fence, you moron.” “Oh, we’re back to that are we?” “Hell yeah, I’m back to that,” Doug says, taking a c

I was one of several hundred volunteers from around San Marcos and what was then SOUTHWEST Texas State University who pitched in to help build the roughly half-acre children's play area in San Marcos that came to called, simply, Playscape. I hardly claim to know diddly about who did what to whom and for how much: I was blissfully content being invisible right about then. Just as soon stay buried, in fact, under about foot of soil, completely unnoticed. I remember a buddy telling me about it a couple days earlier. I sure wasn't planning on doing any actual work. I was just curious about I might've come. And with not much happening that particular morning (or what little was left of morning, anyway), I decided I'd swing by, check it out, maybe.  It was about noon by the time I got there. Folks were munching sandwiches, blankets spread on the grass like an old-fashioned picnic. Some dude had brought a guitar. He strummed, over under the tree, while this chick