At the moment, I'm sitting in 1F, a 1st-class aisle seat and I'm getting jostled and bumped in the arm and leg by elbows and the carry-on bags of the herd headed for the coach section, having passed me off as some rich alcoholic bastard (cognac 'n coffee at 5:10AM!) with more money than brains.

I'm enjoying that free ($8) libation before take-off, a hot breakfast ($15?) served on fine china once we power out,  and two mimosas (another $16 in coach section charges that don't apply),…

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I chose authors Lee Child for his 'Jack Reacher' character, and James Lee Burke for his 'Dave Robicheaux' series, finishing a book every 2-3 days, over 20 titles, recently. I was amazed these writers could carry their respective characters from book to book in different stories, and still sell millions of books.

I've got my main character, am developing her history and personality, researching and jotting details for the adventure, and thought Child and Burke might teach me how to…

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Never the Same After...Well... You Know

After she was raped, the initial reaction of family, friends and admirers was to soothe and comfort her but as time passed, there was a palpable distance, oh yeah, with pity and sympathy, but no one wanting to come really close if you know what I mean.



She wasn't shunned, exactly, it was just that everything seemed cordoned…

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1. This is my blog.
2. This site is an anthology of blogs. a word gallery of different and differing writers and writing.
3. One may categorize this site as flash fiction so I'm mindful any nonfiction 'tag' may be fiction even if proclaimed as Gospel-truth.
4. First Amendment law holds a publisher responsible for publishing every word, but does not protect or exonerate the writer from Uncle Sammy's bag of punative measures, and I applaud Rob…

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Zip-pit-y do blogs.
Zip-pit-y scrawl.
In my jammies, I purge my muse’s all
Plenty of coffee!
Marlboros, too.
In predawn hours, it’s what I do!

His "Hod Carrier" temp gig was the worst paid, lowliest job on any construction site.  He loaded and hauled every sort of material all over the site in the heat of each day, cleaning up debris in the same wheelbarrow between runs, with bouts of screamed, "HOD! Hurry your dead ass UP!"

A second DWI at the scene of a fender-bender sealed PJ's fate, forcing him to walk to work in darkness each morning, and back home in late afternoon for a…

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Bernard Gensle's bespectacled eyes were like brown M&Ms set into a large head with a big face with big features: half-cookie ears, curved knob of a nose, broad mouth and engorged lips. 

His double portioned features softened with his smile or the way his eyes danced when he sailed groan-inducing puns that would have you laughing if only at his animated expressions,  and no one but no…

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Marvin Skertnick was never late for work, stayed late when asked, and always went about his clerical and janitorial duties with diligence and care, carrying one of those simpleton-like personalities that--for his coworker-superiors--translated into "bo-RING.'

The door to the small realty's breakroom was painfully close to his desk, painful for the snippets of comments and snickers he often overheard the broker and eleven realtors making about his 'bumbling home-body…

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The long, sun-dulled blue, '50s panel truck sported that on the side, "Fresh Baked Goods" with Glenn Beard's name painted above that in neat, free-handed script.

Weekly, on a precisely scheduled route, his truck would deliver fresh bread to the Jacobsen's house across the street. We neighbors expected him, counted on him, and would line up at the open-swung doors above the rear bumper. 

There were long wooden drawers just wide enough to clear the doors, holding cinnamon rolls,…

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The back yard of the 1910 Victorian home consisted of a treacherously cracked composite stone and concrete walkway dividing two 12x24 rectangles. One side was grass and the other was a garden in the center of which was a 5x10 pit nearly two feet deep.

 Surrounding the pit were neat rows of flowers, fruit and vegetables, with small plasic labels sunk into the soil on miniature plastic pickets. Anything organic that came out the back door of that home was in a big pail, travelling down…

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If it's not the road or a curb or the car or truck that kills you, it would sure be inverse irony to perish by getting impaled by one's 'assistive device,' ...like my cane.

I haven't seen a cane on another motorcycle, lately. Okay, ever (and you don't see it here, silly, because it steadied me to take this picture).…

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From a good ole Catholic's 'examination of conscience,' the reality is that my words won't be the study of college students in a hundred years, because I've never had the urge or internal pressure to write the great, ala heralded and memorable, American novel.

Well into my aims to finish--not publish, necessarily--a novel, the notion started here with six sentences that inspired some readers to request a sequel, and then another and another just sort of leaked out like a spaghetti…

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If I could be a Billy Mays-like ‘infomercial’ for a product, I found it.



Degenerative bone disease causes pain and old fractures pair-up to cause pain and swelling in my ankles.

Eleven fractures of my right foot and five more of each of the toes gives me occasional discomfort and pain.



The… Continue

You'd could say he's my 'dad' but I have trouble with that word, and "Daddy," and...well...even calling her "Mom," feels like a cramp.

He's a merchant marine, out there, somewhere, who seldom called or came home but who sent the occasional post card or gift and always to me, not my mother. For him, she and I were just ports in the storm although his ship seldom seemed to find the harbor of our house when I lived there.  

For her, a lime-green plastic tumbler was...is the…

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The phrase hit me a couple of times, lately.



Last night, thinking about nothing in particular, the phrase came to me and I laughed about it. Abject fatigue was probably the reason it hit me, verbalized by the thought that I was 'dead tired' and "brain-dead" just attached itself onto the end of that like an automated caboose to a rail car.



Molding language into story form as a pasttime...using complicated software to compose a fugue, ballad or overture. Not exactly leisure-time… Continue

No, not a dog bath, ya doink.

No, not the clock like intense times when all you hear is the ticking echo inside, and you gotta throw it across the room an' maybe buy a new one.

Can't you see this lady's across from me in the waiting room and every couple seconds or so, her chin just kinda jerks her head, and jerks again, and then CLICK. It jerks twice, her dentures go like "CLICK," and this TICK TICK CLICK...TICK...TICK...CLICK goes on and on, yeah like some...like some…

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