About a brother

The photo spurs the memory,

the impression, of who he was

or who I thought he was.

Such errant boyhood innocence,

overlarge front teeth to be grown into.

His ears were handles, prepubescent

road signs of development,

of wait and see,

watch and wonder.

In my mind he is thin like Youth

because he was young.

Bookend to his family,

sprite of fun flitting from

one memory-in-making to another,

a tattoo inside of me,

ink in my brain of joyful prank,

of fruit-stained rocks and grid-iron screams.

Cross your legs

I am told that once upon a time there was a simple, straightforward way to get your name associated with a book on the NY Times' Best Sellers list.

The first thing to do was . . . drumroll . . . write a good book.Then, all you needed to do was get an editor interested in your stuff, or get an agent get an editor interested in your stuff, and then you'd get a big advance, which meant the publisher would push your book hard, and if the publisher pushed your book hard, you had a good chance of getting your name on that sexy NY list. All you had to do was write. That was the template for success once upon a time. Or so I've heard.

Reminds me of Route 66 and it's demise.

To Bay or not to Bay

Poor Michael Bay gets a bad rap for throwing lots of nonsensical explosions, gunfire, and hot women with nothing to say into just about every scene he shoots (no pun intended). For all his critics, Bay is frequently seen laughing in the deposit line at the local bank. And can you blame him? If you happened upon a golden goose that pooped 100 million dollar eggs so long as you fed it a specific diet, would you do any different?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I was thinking about this over the weekend while I was writing a scene where some of my characters were in a Starbucks talking over coffee. A little exposition time. I knew I would need to break this up with something strange or exciting and I couldn't think of a good reason to transition my characters to that new place.

Yes, I was searching for a way to add an explosion after the exposition.