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Story Excerpt: Chicken Hawk Down (Third & Final Part)...

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A flashback in time, if ever there was: My grandpa, cap backwards, as always, one of his many dogs always nearby (that one's Major), and a little light-haired boy, who, as regular as the dogs and the cap, were just part of who he was.  And Part III: Just to make sure we’re all still on the same page, we’re all following what's happened so far: Mom’s driving at warp speed (or twenty, it’s kind of hard to tell with it being bumpy as hell), and Grandpa just hollered up some new directions to her i a language I don't know. So, we're rolling along at a mighty good clip, and I’ve finally spotted what Grandpa's so all-fired excited about. It's barely a speck in the sky, and despite us now it trailing it at bone-rattling speeds in an old truck across cattle, that speck in the sky seems to be leaving us behind. Last but not least, Grandpa had me move from near the tailgate, where moments ago I was pitching hay to cows, to right beside him near the cab, which I h

Story Excerpt: Chicken Hawk Down (Part II)...

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Photo retrieved via Bing Images and credited to The Audubon Society. After a slight diversion yesterday--sorry, a lot of things all came together all at once that needed dealing with--we're back, as promised, to one of the stories from my book: Chicken Hawk Down (Part 2) If you remember from our last segment, Grandpa grabbed this old gun and hollered something at Mom that made her kick that old truck into gears not typically seen blazing across a gopher hole riddled cattle pasture. I missed all the details of what got said exactly, not because I wasn't paying attention, but because it got spoken in a language no one wanted me learning back then. Being from my part of Texas--namely South Texas--most people generally assume that such conversations would only involve one language, the one spoken a few miles south in Mexico. But, as you'll read today, that's not always the case. Not in an immigrant family like mine, anyway. In fact, there were probably lo

Junot Diaz on The Legacy of Childhood Trauma — Longreads, and bit of afterthought...

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Junot Diaz suffered for years after being raped by a trusted adult at age 8. via Junot Diaz on The Legacy of Childhood Trauma — Longreads It is perhaps destined I should find these words in my inbox, on this day, one day after--as it truly turns out--the following took place in my own life: I've bragged of late on these happy message boards about having finished a writing project of my own creation. Some of it, a few of you read on this very page. Much of what I've shared thus far I found at least darkly comical if nothing else, and from most reports I've heard from those of you who have commented back, the sentiment's been fairly mutual and, for the most part, appreciated. But one I have not shared--was in fact afraid to share, and fairly fucking sure I might not share altogether after attempts to share at least one version of them and gotten at least a dozen rejections letters from publishers on already (which is not the sort of shit one wants to

New story excerpt from: Chicken Hawk Down.... (Part 1)

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As I begin to flesh out that that mess of a book I  put together I'll be posting new stories (or at least parts of them, at least as I go. The truck shown above wasn't ours actually, but its awful close to what ours looked like. I so wanted to get bad boy beat back into shape and repainted. "Drive!” the old man yelled, reaching inside the pickup cab to grab his weather-beaten .22 from the back window gun rack. He prattles something urgent sounding in Czech, before leaping the side-rail of the truck bed, Duke-boy style, and taking his place hunkered over the cab. “Hang on,” the old man tells me, shoots me one of those great stiff-lipped smirks of his, his blue eyes glittering like diamonds. He and Mom both had the greatest eyes on the planet whenever they were up to no good. Most days you saw him out walking across the farm, he was hunched forward and limped when he walked. After all, he was pushing sixty about then, I do believe, and while they wer

Let there be stories...

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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,

Hard to believe it's been that long already...

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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