On boots and bars and motorbikes...

I doubt it'll do much. Why waste your time? It's better left to the coming darkness. That's what voices resonating in my head tell me. You ever heard them? I do all the time... Sure, those prizes sure look good--$1,000 here, $3,000 there, and always, there's the ever-elusive and perfunctory word so cherished by the wannabe world of aspirants--Publication. With a capital P. So I try today, as I have for the last few days now, entering a few words in the contests those writer magazines all the time advertise. Of course, that ever-elusive "Publication" I so long for? Most of it's in crap even I've never heard of, much less any of my biker buddies. Won't even know if they run it, to be perfectly honest, not without them telling me they did, anyway. Not like I'll ever run across a couple browsing a newsstand someplace, that's for sure. Still, despite it all, something in me wants it still, desires it so. Publication. Capital P or otherwi...

You gotta love you some online classes, every once in a while. I banged this out over the weekend for one of mine, destined for a professor who specifically asked that we creative types showcase some our talents. Well, he asked for it: [In response to suffering through Between the Acts by English author and early feminist Virginia Woolf, a book written within a single day's timespan of a family and their home, just days before the outbreak of World War II.]  F irst off, I gotta apologize for my ramble. I’ve always been on the long-winded side to begin with, but this writing business with my thesis project is definitely bringing it to an all-new level of annoying, I’m sure. I’m trying to get down every detail possible right now in creation mode, sort it all out later. It’s hard to shut that switch off once you let it loose, so sorry if this gets even longer and windier than my usual. To those of you already familiar with my work, welcome back. The those of you not: I'm...

Everything had been daisies until about a month ago, when the kids turned up with all their ingrate little brats to celebrate his ninety-fourth. Mind you, Paul hadn’t seen any of his five children since they laid poor Annie to rest nine months earlier, yet here they all were without so much as a phone call. Before he spotted the first of them snaking down his drive, he was ready to grab a pole and spend the day snagging bass and catfish out of the creek. With a half-cup of coffee still to go, he figured he'd at least stay and see they wanted. After all, maybe one of them had died or something. He soon realized he should've snuck out the back while the getting was good. Not that he didn’t love his family. He did. He devoted most of his life to them, a fact he wished they'd remember every once in a while. Like those dark days after his wife died, or the previous eight years, when Paul slowly watched Annie shrivel to nothing after she caught the cancer. But Thanksgivin...

Paul knew Janice was pissed as soon as he rounded the corner. She crossed her arms over her fleshy breasts as her ample hips shifted her entire weight from one leg to the other, just so she’d have a better angle to glare at him from behind the reinforced glass, Paul figured. Her widow’s peak, accentuated by the tight bun she wore, gave her long nose a sharp, beaklike quality. Her glacial blue eyes glared at him like a half-starved falcon, and he, a frolicking field mouse, about to be devoured. They never wavered, those eyes of hers, not even when the skinny man beside her—a bail bondsman, most likely—spoke a few words and handed her a stack of papers every bit as thick as the Encyclopedia Britannica volume Paul kept in handy reach of his easy chair, back when Janice and the rest of the bunch were just kids.  It never failed: Nearly every afternoon back then, there’d be some loud THUMP! resonate through the wood floors of his house, followed by some muffled voices and half-h...

Consider yourself warned: Piquing the curiosity of a recovering journalist may lead to strange google searches, chain-smoked cigarettes, and lengthy random message chains from phone numbers you ever seen before that you probably won't find until much later in the day, long after you forgot you actually asked said question, but answer it thorough and complete by old radio show slogans... At least that's what happened to a poor fellow I met for the first time today, someone I've heard about for decades but never had the good fortune to meet. Until today, when me and my bride made the drive out to Gonzales--our old hometown, as it were (Come N Take It! Let's go Apaches! Class of 1990, the both of us)--where some of her closest kin had gathered to celebrate her father's 68th birthday. Among them was a fellow I'll henceforth refer to as Uncle Charlie. Why? Because that's what my bride calls him, and I probably should, too. Seems like polite thing to do anyway,...

“Writing is hard for every last one of us — straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Cheryl Strayed, author of the 2012 bestseller Wild , later made into a 2014 film starring Reece Witherspoon, wrote these words in her “Dear Sugar” advice column, published on the literary website The Rumpus (2010-12). This particular passage appeared in a piece she titled “The Art of Motherfuckitude,” to advise a frustrated young writer who had trouble finding her muse. On title alone, I just had to read that. And while I’m certain my younger days have come and gone, I do hear Strayed’s writing message loud and clear: Get to work! Quit whining, dammit! Dig! Her focus on work resonates with me, stemming from many hard days put in at the farm growing up, I suppose. Work was important to those I cared about most. So I worked hard, and admired those who d...

Off to the opening day of spring classes at my job. Finally. Thanks, Inga. Rather than bore you all with more ramblings, I thought I'd share a few lines from another story. I used this one for a reading I gave a couple years back. It's likely become a novel at some point. True crime thriller. It's on the darker side, but hopefully, you'll want to read more. Enjoy... - 1 - Misti comes to just long enough to realize something is horribly wrong. Her head throbs and she’s never known such thirst. She tries to look around, but something covers her eyes and face, making it hard to breathe. She feels her breath blow back against her face, the air hot and still tinged with the wine she’d had hours before. She tries to wipe away the covering, but her hands are bound. So she lies there, twisted and aching, all her weight somehow pressing down on her shoulder and hip. Moving is impossible. Her way-too-tight jeans seem to slice into her midriff, her legs folded uncomf...