"The Fact That We Have To Say It.."

The grand jury in New York decided today to not indict the cop who choked Eric Garner to death on a Staten Island sidewalk.  This comes a week after a grand jury decided to not indict the police officer in Ferguson, MO for shooting an unarmed Michael Brown.  This has led to the not-unexpected and not-unfounded outrage in minority communities about their treatment at the hands of police, how people of color are viewed as "problems before people."  Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has come out and said publicly that "Black Lives Matter."

Here's a little background for those of you that don't know me: my two oldest brothers are now-retired NYPD.  My ex-roommate from about 10 years ago is my oldest brother's former patrol partner and a former member of a community affairs division.  I have no illusions as to how difficult it is to be a police officer, especially in a large city.  But there has to be some kind of way to deal with us that doesn't involve a dead body, especially if there's no threat of physical harm.  I'm willing to concede that the officer in Ferguson testified to there being some kind of immediate threat to his person; not saying I believe it per se, but it's what he said under oath.  Eric Garner posed a threat to no one.  At no point during the video of his chokehold nor the moments leading up to it was he in an aggressive posture, nor was he at all at an advantage.  He was on the ground in seconds gasping that he couldn't breathe.  Did the cop know that Mr. Garner was an asthmatic? Likely not, but should it have mattered?  Why did it escalate so quickly to "choke out?"

Mayor de Blasio had good intentions when he stated that Black lives matter.  His wife is a Black woman with whom he has two children.  But the President's response to that about an hour later is much more on point: The fact that we have to say that says we haven't come as far as we think we have.  So now what we have is a climate in which being "threatening" is enough for a Black man to die, without any concrete definition of what "threatening" is.  The way one dresses?  Walks?  Talks?  The kind of music one listens to?
Size and physique?  The way that the establishment interacts with us has to change, it has to.  We're Americans, and we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty as opposed to threatening until dead.  The way we interact with the police has to change, because they aren't supposed to be our enemies.  Equal protection under the law, that's what we're promised.

I shouldn't be scared to be Black.  Someone shouldn't have to say my life matters in order to legitimize it in the eyes of law enforcement.  And we should have overcome this 50 years ago.

Ferguson.

In line with my new directive to actually speak my mind...

The police officer didn't get charged with a crime by the grand jury.  I'm not entirely surprised.  Putting aside my personal feelings on the subject, without incontrovertible video proof, there was no way that grand jury was going to charge a cop for shooting a black kid.    And as Ferguson, MO burns in rage and goes to war with itself, the narrative now changes to the media head-shaking about the violent and uncivilized citizens of this broken-hearted city, all while subtly implying that somehow, he deserved it.  That, like Trayvon Martin, if he just decided to be Black somewhere else, none of this would have happened.

Okay, maybe that was a little more personal feeling than I intended.

The problem for me is that the narrative should be concern about the increasing militarization of our police force.  The fact that police seem to seek confrontation more than ever.  That there is shockingly little psych evaluation of police officers before they fire a shot, instead of after the fact.  That racial profiling, that many men and women of color-- including myself--  have had to endure, is still the go-to method of determining likely criminals.  But we will likely hear none of this.

We instead hear the garbage spewed forth by people like Rudy Giuliani, stating that police brutality or overreaction isn't the issue, black-on-black crime is the issue.  This is somehow our fault.

I'm going to sidestep the racial issue.  I'm going to table the police brutality issue.  A city burns tonight.  We should all be concerned as to why.

Something to Talk About

I haven't written in my blog in a while.

There are comfortable reasons why.  I've been busy at work, I've been on vacation, I've been working on other writing projects.  I've been busy finding a new apartment and preparing to move there.  I've been busy living.

All of these things are true.  None of them are the real reason.  I haven't written in my blog of late because I haven't had anything to say.

In January, while anticipating my novel's release, I made what could only be called a business decision when I decided that I would not write about politics or race or religion or my opinion on any of the controversy of the day.  I didn't want to offend and alienate potential customers.  I was afraid.  Consequently, I haven't had much to talk about because politics, race, and religion seem to be the top three conversation pieces in this country.  So, in my effort to not offend anyone, I've essentially silenced myself.

It's a messed up commentary on the world we live in today.  But we'll put that aside for now.

It is a thought process that has bled over into my personal life, and I find myself silent more often than not when a situation demands to be called out.  I've let things pass because I've felt it was inappropriate to comment on it, or unwise to alienate certain people.  Jeez, I'm strategizing my personal life!

When you're young and you have nothing to lose, you tend to speak your mind more; after all what difference does it make if some random person doesn't like you.  But as you get older, an you acquire stuff -- possessions, careers, respectability -- you get less likely to risk the trappings of comfort and adulthood by speaking your mind.  So in holding on to your stuff, you kind of lose your compass.

And to that I say, f**k that.

I will speak my mind more. I will say what people may not like to hear, not to be controversial, or to be funny per se.  I won't do it to be crass or clever.  I'll do it because I want to be honest with myself, and honor the things I believe in.  I want to question the things that I don't understand, and expose the things that make no sense.

I want to have something to talk about.

Oh, yeah, coincidentally-but-not-really, there was a grand jury verdict today that caused a little hubbub.  Make no mistake I'll have something to say about that.

Review: Aerie by Anne Riley

I met Anne Riley at an author event at Jan's Paperbacks in Portland, Oregon this past summer.  We shared a table, talked writing and sold some books.  She's a very interesting and pleasant lady with roots in the area, and I have to say in the past year involving promotion of my own work, that one day in July was probably the best day possible.  At the end of the day we exchanged purchases of work.  Anne read and reviewed The Favorite, and I read Aerie with every intention of reviewing it.  I'm horribly late.  That introduction (and a hearty apology to Anne) aside, here's my review of Aerie.

Aerie by Anne Riley

Okay, I don't do romance novels.

I'm not normally for overtly sticky stories about longing and temptation, about the internal struggle between what you want and what's good for you, about the normally melodramatic reasons why a hero or heroine would deny themselves the right person that's standing right in front of them.  Nothing against the genre, but I always found those stories to be kind of hokey.  So, all things being honest and equal, it's hard to say that I opened the book with an open mind.

It didn't take long to convince me.

Aerie tosses aside the normal convention of impossibly many hero and damsel-in-distress, and instead plays a budding romance against a strong workplace drama and with legal and techno elements.  It's sounds like a weird recipe that shouldn't work when you say it out loud, but like a peanut-butter bacon cheeseburger the first bite is surprisingly satisfying of all tastes.

The story centers on high powered systems analyst Cara Larson, whose tech firm Pyramid is contracted by Liam Scofield, CEO of an outdoor-wear company, to help develop a computerized distribution and payment system for his company.  The year is 1991 and the system is quite literally ahead of it's pre-worldwide web time.  The potential of this system to revolutionize the way business is done is recognized by Cara's bosses at Pyramid as well as the lawyers working for Liam's company WindWear, so when they systematically try to cut Liam out of his potentially billion-dollar idea, Cara and Liam work frantically to save it.  In the midst of this is the love-at-first-sight drama between Cara and Liam, the potential romantic rival in Liam's lawyer Lauren Janelle, and even a heaping helping of corporate greed.

Anne Riley's mastery of the tech aspects of Aerie draw you into a realistic world of pre-Internet computer jargon that is easy enough to follow even if you don't have a degree in computer engineering.  She makes that part of the world she's created plausible and accessible, which is no easy feat, making us care about the product everyone is fighting over.  However that would mean nothing without good characters.  Ms. Riley's leads, Cara and Liam, are very well-developed and even if you are like me and not a romance buff, how and why they're into each other makes sense, even though for much of the book their organizations are pitted against each other.  It's very West Side Story.

Anne Riley has created a very appealing romantic story that, like the movie Jerry Maguire, slips the romance in under a Trojan Horse of typically guy stuff, like money and tech.  Even though the romantic part seemed a little hokey to me, I really enjoyed this book.

Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Captain Clutch (short post)

Okay. Wow.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the final season of Derek Jeter, shortstop and captain of the Yankees.  He's the all-time team leader in, well, most offensive categories not already topped by Babe Ruth.  This entire season has been a sort of tribute to the Captain, despite the lackluster performance of the team.  There have been commercials and gifts, fan tributes and the ever-present "De-rek Jee-ter" chants wherever he's gone.

Until tonight, though, there hasn't been a moment.  No flip play.  No Mr. November.

This hasn't been a banner year for the Yankees.  We're not making the playoffs.  Injuries have kicked the hell out of the team.  We score at Mets-like levels.  Our saving grace is that the Red Sox suck worse.  Jeter has had an especially lackluster season.  But -- and I've said this in conversation with friends -- you give me a list of players to have up in a make-or-break situation, if Jeter's name is on it, he's my guy.

Take today, for instance.  In his final game at Yankee Stadium, he came up in three key situations: first inning with the Yankees down 2-0, he bangs an RBI double off the left field wall, and scores one batter later, tying the game; fifth inning with the bases loaded, he slaps an RBI grounder that gets turned into a 2 run error, Yankees up 4-2.

And the big one.

Bottom of the 9th, game tied at 5.  Jeter comes up with a runner on second and his a walk-off RBI single.  In his final at-bat at Yankee Stadium.  With the sold-out crowd expecting magic.  The perfect capper to a charmed career.

That, my friends, is what it means to be clutch.

It is totally en vogue to hate the Yankees; ask any Met fan, and you will hear -- at length -- why the Yankees are an abomination, about how the fans are douchebags, about how we bought all of our championships, and mostly, how Derek Jeter is probably the most overrated player since Yogi Berea or Joe DiMaggio. But I would like to think even the most ardent of haters have to give props to what can only be described as a "Field of Dreams" moment from a guy who seems to have made a Hall of Fame career of big moments.

So I take this time to join in the "Thank You Derek" chant, and raise a glass to salute Derek Jeter for the finest 20 years of my baseball fandom.

Remember, Remember

I haven't forgotten.

Usually on September 11, I'll post my favorite picture of Lower Manhattan post terrorist attack, one taken from Jersey and depicting the Tribute in Light, where high-intensity lamps are shone skyward from the footprints of the World Trade Center.  The lamps are aimed and positioned in such a way that it looks like two towers of light standing watch over the city, a haunting afterimage of what was once there.  The picture I have of that has the lights hitting cloud cover and stopping.  It's quite pretty.

I didn't do that this year.

Every year on September 11, I wax poetic about the loss of life we endured that day, about how my city came together and for a few weeks.  The city was more humane, more human.

I didn't do that either.

It's not because I forgot.  I could never forget.  Neither could anyone who was cognitively alive that day.  Or anyone who has any kind of documentary channel.  I remember the before, and that memory pains me for the after.  I didn't do my usual thing because somewhere along the line thirteen years later, as I relocated 3,000 miles away, September 11 became just another day.

I don't mean that to disrespect the families who lost loved ones in that attack, as this will never be just another day for them.  However these days I'm living in an area where, beyond a passing mention about the terror attack, it's been just business as usual.  They didn't show on TV or play on the radio the reading of the names of the lost.  September 11 birthdays aren't some tragic cosmic joke.  The people I know here only ask me about it when they find out I'm from New York.  And in the course of day-to-day interaction without the shawl of grief and mourning, it's just another day.

The site has been built over.  One World Trade is now complete.  The 9/11 museum immortalizes the event and the aftermath.  Lower Manhattan looks like this now:

And the world keeps spinning.

One Year Later

I had every intention of posting last week.

I was going to post a review of a novel a friend of mine wrote.  I was going to post what this actually is: musings about the anniversary of my Dad's death.  But I couldn't do it.  My Dad's death in particular, I couldn't write about last week.  It's so much deeper than just his passing.

That event kicked in motion what's been the most interesting year of my life.

My dad died and I had to take out a loan on the car I had just paid off.  I needed the money for a last minute flight to , New York.  I used the remainder to publish The Favorite.  I started learning valuable skills which I can and will use throughout my writing career (marketing skills, speaking skills, etc.). And ultimately, I fulfilled a dream my dad had for me.

I remember a car ride when I was in my early teens with my dad and my brother.  I forget what started it, but I do remember, vividly, him talking about picking something and being good at it.  "Even if it's a bank robber," he said, "find something you love and keep doing it.". I'll be honest, when he said those words, even for years after, I can't say I was applying them on purpose.  They didn't inspire me to do what I wanted to.  Lately though, I've been thinking about him, a lot.  I suppose it's natural, his passing is still relatively fresh.  And I don't know why, but those words in particular, from a random day in New York more than 20 years ago bubbled up to the surface.

I'm doing what I love.  And I won't stop.

My Dad's last great gift to me was the means to accomplish a dream, and the means to take a very wild ride.

"Protect Everyone Smaller Than You"

Robin Williams passed away yesterday at 63 from an apparent suicide.

I was initially not going to comment on this, to write about it, because I didn't want to be seen as jumping on the bandwagon.  How silly of me.  Expression of grief and loss as a community and a species is not bandwagon jumping.

It goes without saying I was, and remain, a huge fan of Robin Williams' work.  He was a great comic, a great comedian, and an even better character actor.  I watched reruns of Mork & Mindy as a kid.  It was very far ahead of its time.  He's remembered for the roles that made us feel good (Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets' Society, Good Will Hunting), but there are two of his movies in particular that are appointment viewing.

Hook was amazing in updating the Peter Pan story, to the point where in my mind, Peter Pan and Robin Williams are one and the same.  It's the kind of casting that is a complete no-brainer, and left an indelible mark on my life.  I have made an effort, actually, to live my life according to one line he delivers toward the end of the movie, where he tells the Lost Boys to "protect everyone smaller than you."  (The smallest Lost Boy then asks him "Who do I protect?" and he says "Neverbugs.  Little ones.")

And then there's the creepy store attendant he plays ingeniously in One Hour Photo.  If you haven't seen it, I won't ruin it for you.

Much will be made about the demons he faced, about depression as mental illness, and about suicide.  Perhaps that's something to write about later.  But today we light a candle for one of the best our species had to offer.  And wherever he is now, we can be sure he's entertaining the hell out of them.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Williams.  The world has lost an irreplaceable spark of madness.

And It's Almost Gone...

My girlfriend wrote a lovely essay about summer on her blog.  She mentioned awesome things like sunshine and your favorite ice cream (Peanut Butter Explosion from ColdStone Creamery, if you were wondering).  The point she was trying to make, in my opinion, that for some reason, be it the sunshine or the heat, or the fact that it was ingrained in us since we were all children to do so, is that summer is usually the time we take the foot off the gas and kind of coast.  We're more inspired to do things for ourselves that are geared toward pure joy.  For me, that's always been sports.

Growing up in New York, we may not have had as much access to greenery that my friends in the Northwest do.  We didn't go fishing or swimming in the creek (because honestly, that might kill you), we didn't go hiking through the woods, but what we did was make use of our environment.  Fire escape rungs became makeshift basketball hoops and one-way streets and alleys became makeshift football fields.  Before we were allowed to head to the further out parks where blacktop courts and open meadows became our arenas of play (and even after, on days when we lacked the funds or the time) we dominated our blocks, then took our talents to other blocks in the neighborhood.  And we enjoyed ourselves.

This summer, as I have for the last five summers since I moved out here, I played rec league softball with a team called the Shakrz.  It tends to be the high point of my summer these days, because it brings me back to when I was a teenager and played with my friends.  Am I particularly good?  Hell no!  But it's fun  And I enjoy these people.  We wrapped up our season this past weekend in a tournament where our best moment was a thrilling 14-13 win in extra innings.

Fun moment with the team.  Photo by Amy Hill.

And just like that, we look up and the summer is almost over.  God, that sucks.  You look up and smile as you realize the roses smelled sweet, the heat that licked your skin left its indelible mark, and that there was never enough sunblock.  You think of the sand between your toes and the picnic blanket you have in your trunk and you smile wistfully as fall approaches.  You keep in mind one thing that will get you through the cold dark months ahead.

Summer is coming.

Retrospective on The Fab 5

I have a confession to make.

Over the last three or four years I've been distancing myself from my first novel, The Fab 5.  I had what I thought was a good reason.  My grandmother, 84 years old at the time, read it.

The Fab 5.  Available on Amazon and B&N.

I never intended for her to read it.  I didn't write it for her.  And it never occurred to me for even a half a second that she would.  It's a street-flavored basketball story following five lifelong friends from Flatbush.  So when I wrote about some of the realities of living in a neighborhood not too dissimilar from the one in which I grew up, there was a heavy dose of, shall we say, colorful language.

                         Castillo’s face went purple, and I swear I saw steam come out of his ears. “Yo,

                   f*** you, you b****-a** monkey n****!”

                          Shiver stood up straight, shocked by the comment. He got right in between

                   Jay and Castillo, getting nearly nose-to-nose with him. “What did you say?”

                   Shiver said, as angry as I had ever seen him.

                          Jay forced his way back in between Shiver and Castillo, and forced them both

                    back. He held Shiver back, and turned to face the Puerto Rican kid. “F*** it,” he

                    said with a heavy sigh. “Get your squad together, Miguel.” Shiver stopped resisting,

                    and joined the four of us in a shocked look at Jay. “If it’s gonna shut his little

                    punk a** up, then fine, let’s beat him again.”

                         Castillo smiled as he walked past Jay. “Don’t go nowhere,” he said as he

                   walked toward the other side of the park. As he walked past Shiver, he said under

                   his breath, “B**** n****.”

And so on.  That is from page 18.  While some people were able to relate to and even appreciate the authenticity of the language -- if you grew up in a rougher neighborhood in New York, I suppose you would too -- I had some friends tell me they created the first literary drinking game in history for every time I swore in that book.  

Up until that point, the only book my grandmother had ever read was the Bible.  Sure, she read newspapers and magazines and such, but The Bible was all she read that came in a hardcover or paperback.  For the record, she still has both.  She had never read a novel.  

Until her youngest grandson gave her a signed copy of The Fab 5.

So several weeks later, when I did my good grandson thing and visited her after work, she looked at me sternly through her glasses like she always did and said in a thick Jamaican accent, "I read your book, Franklyn."  And suddenly every cuss word I wrote, every questionable situation I conceived flooded my head.  I mean, I referred to a certain female character in the five most unflattering ways you could in one line.  (I guess the fact that no word in that line was more than five letters can be considered impressive, if you squint one eye.)

My mouth hit the ground.   "You read it?!  Jeez, Mama, you weren't actually supposed to read the thing!"  I composed myself and cleared my throat.  "So what'd you think?"

She turned her attention to the word search puzzle she was doing and let the question hang for a while.  "I liked it," she said, I'm sure to be polite.  "Too many bad words though."

And just like that, my enthusiasm for promoting my first novel kind of tanked.  I was embarrassed that my grandmother read it.  There's no way there's a market for this thing, I thought.  And that was that.

Fast-forward to 2014.  I'm scrolling through Netflix and stumble across a documentary by Bobbito Garcia called Doin' It In the Park, which followed the streetball scene in the five boroughs, and suddenly I realize exactly how wrong I was.  Bobbito's respect for the sport that I played and loved was oozing from the film, and I saw elements of my book -- the gamesmanship, the competition, the trash-talking, the court culture and such-- played out in reality and motion.

I realized then that The Fab 5 did have value, and did have a market.  Was it perfect?  Not by any means. It's not even my best work; my second novel is leaps and bounds better, and all writers criticize their previous projects.  But it was an accurate depiction of what my world was like at 16, 17, and 18.  You had the park.  You had your crew.  You had a ball.

I may be more actively promoting my current novel, The Favorite, but my earlier work is (in my very humble and obviously biased opinion) very much worth the read.

And keep a bottle of Jack nearby in case you want to play the drinking game.

Jan's Paperbacks Event (7/26/2014)

This past weekend combined a road trip, an author event, and hanging out with some very cool people, old friends and new.  See why I love what I do?

After a 12-hour shift I was asked to do last minute, I made a solo drive to Beaverton, OR for an afternoon at Jan's Paperbacks.  The staff there was welcoming and fun (those ladies were actually incredibly awesome).  I was paired with an author much more local to the area than I was, one Anne Riley, author of Aerie.  I picked up a copy that day to check out.

Aside from the cookies and the charming customers that came in pretty steadily throughout the day, it was  also great to pick Anne's brain about writing and self-publishing, give our opinions about Amazon (short version, CreateSpace is awesome, but indie bookstores won't touch Amazon with a ten-foot pole).

I'm gonna take this very brief post to thank Shari, Debbie, Jody and Anne for a wonderful afternoon! I am going to definitely make them a part of my next project's promotional tour!

Progress Report (Short Post)

Hey all!

Here's an update on various writing projects and a plan for what's next!

This week, I finished Chapter 16 (24 planned) of the first draft of my next novel, which examines a married couple whose relationship has gone stale, and the bad decisions they make to try and reignite their interest.  The working title is Open, but I will likely find a new one.  I'm plotting the next eight chapters and I'm going to start writing Chapter 17 this week.  I'm on target for finishing the draft by October of this year!  Woo-hoo!

I finished the first draft of a short story called Father Figures, which serves as a sequel to my first novel, The Fab 5.  I will offer the story, gratis, on this site once I've edited it.  This is the second short story I've finished this year, but the first one I'll be sharing.

I'm starting character sketches and plot arcs for my next project, Urban Legend, today.  I'm not offering details on that publicly yet, only to say it's different than the stuff I've been writing the last few years.

As for my currently available novel, The Favorite...

I'll be at Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha, Oregon on July 26, sharing a signing table with Anne Riley.  She will be there signing and promoting her novel Aerie.

The Favorite is a finalist for a Readers' Favorite Book Award in Sports Fiction, along with Jacqueline Eubanks's well-received novel, The Last Time.  Winners are informed in early September, so good luck to us both!

And finally, later this summer I will be watching my nephew, Desmond Diaz, compete with the US National Martial Arts Team in the World Martial Arts Games in Vancouver.  And you can bet you will all hear about that!

Cheers!

Stay-cation Daze

I don't usually take vacations.

Don't get me wrong, I take time to go places.  I take time to be sick.  I go back to New York at least once a year.  But very rarely do I ever unplug, go off the grid like I have the last couple of weeks.  I mean, I was still connected at my father's funeral last year.

The last couple of weeks, I've been off.  No day job, no writing, very little in the way of shameless self-promotion.  I needed a break.  It's not even like I went anywhere of importance: I rediscovered my liver, and went on a local boat cruise; went to Pike Place Market with my girlfriend; sat on my butt and watched the All-Star Game.  There was a fun picnic and a beach day where I had an unfortunate skin reaction to lake water (itchy, itchy, itchy!!!).  And I have to say, there's definitely something to this whole vacation thing.

The last time I took this much time off, I went to the Dominican Republic for a week or so and had a blast.  There's a story in there about how my brothers and I were mistaken for members of the 2012 Super Bowl Champion New York Giants, which I will happily recount another day.  I can't begin to tell you how relaxed I felt afterwards, except that I feel the same way now.

There is something to be said about recharging your batteries, putting yourself on airplane mode, so to speak.  A couple of weeks away and I'm ready to get back to the grind of the paying job and the fun of writing.  I'm ready to get the rest of this year going.

I'm back.

"It's... it's a cookbook!"

Ah, the Fourth of July.

Independence Day.  A where we celebrate our love for our country, where we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It is a day that is marked by time-honored celebration, where we indulge our love for the things that are so incredibly American.  Such as:

Recreational explosives.

Meat.

Apple pie.

Baseball.

And Twilight Zone Marathons.

Since I was a kid, I had a fascination for reruns of The Twilight Zone. Summer nights routinely had me staying up late to watch the episodes at 2 and 3 in the morning on WPIX.  That was back before the CW ran it, back before the WB ran it.  I could watch that show anytime, anywhere.  To date there isn't an episode of the original 1956 series that I haven't seen at least once.

Imagine my glee when, at 10 years old, WPIX announced the first 12-hour Twilight Zone marathon.  It's rare on a summer day when a kid wants to stay inside, especially in a New York City summer with no air conditioning.  But on that first 4th of July marathon, I wasn't going anywhere.  Up at 7 to watch "Time Enough at Last," done at 7 with "Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."  I became familiar with old actors unburdened from classic roles, like Burgess Meredith not playing Mick from Rocky, or William Shatner as someone other than James T. Kirk.  Jack Klugman was not Oscar Madison (The Odd Couple), and he was alongside Jonathan Winters.

Mostly though, the draw for me was the storytelling.  A lot of my early writing hinged heavily on slightly supernatural plots, science fiction and twist endings, and that is all stuff I attribute to watching this genius show.  It's creator, Rod Serling, was one of the master storytellers of his day.  His writing credit appears on such classic episodes as "I Shot An Arrow Into The Air," and his iconic deadpan delivery of the shows monologues are hallmarks of that show.  A lot of that found its way into my writing as a teenager and some still filters through today.

As a matter of fact, the title of this post, if you are uninitiated, is one of the series most quoted lines, from the episode "To Serve Man."

So, I leave you today, to visit a dimension not of sight or sound, but of mind. A dimension where the only limits we know are the limits of imagination.  A dimension called...

Summer in the City

It's no secret: I'm a big fan of summer.  All my favorite things are summer things.  All my favorite activities are summer activities.  And not just any summer, either.  City summer, the kind I haven't been a part of in half a decade.  Once the weather gets warm, everything about life I find worthwhile starts to happen.

Back home, summer meant kids.  After June 22, schools were out and all the kids in the city ran rampant around town.  To some that means playing in creeks and woods and what have you.  To me, it was no curfew, football in the streets (I had a mean arm once) until you couldn't see the ball.  It was basketball from noon 'til dusk, or later if the court was near a streetlamp.  It meant movie hopping from one summer flick to another, sneaking around ushers and cameras to turn a matinee ticket into an all-day film festival.

It meant the Mister Softer Ice Cream trucks, whose distinct jingle could be heard from blocks away like an approaching T-Rex.  On the hottest of those summer days, that jingle meant relief was coming and sprinkles were free.  It meant the Spanish dude selling Icees on the corner of Church and Flatbush Avenues, and how with a little hustle and the guts to stand the heat, you could turn a 20-pound block of ice and some syrups into shaved ice treats, happy kids, and money.

It meant baseball, and who didn't love baseball? It was the middle of the season and the pennant races were either really starting to get interesting, or really getting out of hand (I'm a Yankee fan, guess which end I usually saw?), and we waited in anticipation of the Home Run Derby.  It meant work for some, play for others.

As adolescence set in, summer meant exposed midriffs and cut-off shorts.  It meant teased hair and bikinis.  It meant sundresses.  It meant sweat making every inch of fabric, no matter how thin, stick strategically to bronzed skin.  It meant girls in their late teens and early 20's knowing full well they had me and my hormones in the palms of their hands.  As an adult summer meant late nights chasing women and thrills, fueled by drink and dance.  It meant that even if the temperature cooled slightly, the streets were just as hot as they were in the daytime.  It meant watching the transformation as women traded in their business wear for outfits that were less confining to their bodies and attitudes.

It meant thunderstorms.  It meant that just before one would hit, the air would be heavy with a certain energy, thick with humidity and heavy with expectation.  When it was over, the air was cool and light and if you were outside,  you were happily drenched and enjoyed a powerful lightshow full of sound and fury.

It meant Coney Island and the rides that, even though you had been on them a million times, you still once in a while ponied up that $5 for one more go at the Cyclone or the Zipper. 

It meant not having a backyard pool, but having a fire hydrant and a hollowed out tin can.  It meant skelly in the streets, and if you're from Brooklyn or the Bronx and I have to explain that to you, you need to put the video games down, son, and get out more.  (For my Canadian friends, think curling, only with bottlecaps on asphalt.)

Summertime was eight short weeks of wide open possibility, that always seemed to last forever until it was almost over.  And even though as a working man I never had summers off, there's still a conditioned mind-shift that you anticipate in late May, starts in earnest late June, winds down around Labor Day and ends around the first day of school.

I still love Summer.  Let the games begin.

I Believed That We Would Win

Okay, so a day after the US was eliminated from the World Cup, it's time to take a quick look back at what it did.

Despite what Ann Coulter said, it kind of reinforced the commonality of all Americans.  No matter our walk of life, political alignment, ethnic background, or religious slant, we all supported our team.  We all chanted.  We all watched. 

We all gave props to Tim Howard for his gutsy performance against Belgium.

The beauty of it all was that we did so without hesitation, without consideration of whether the person chanting next to us was pro-choice or not, without worrying about the confrontation between creationism and evolution.  We did so without the worry about whether or not climate change was real.

For the first time in a long time, it wasn't the 1% versus the 99%.  It was the USA against the World.

Maybe it was because we were such huge underdogs, and everyone loves underdogs.  Maybe it's because secretly, some part of our evolving national identity loves soccer as much as NFL or baseball.  But for some reason, we were all believers.  And it's even lasted after we've lost.

We need to hold on to this feeling of unity.  Moments like this, where even an embattled President and his supporters and rivals are all on the same page in support of our country, are too precious to allow to pass.  And they should happen much more often than every four years.

A Boy and His Tiger

I recently watched a documentary on Calvin and Hobbes.  Well, most of it.  It WAS five in the morning.

This documentary focused on the impact that little comic strip had, and inevitably, I thought about the impact it had on me.

When I was a kid, Calvin and Hobbes was one of the handful of reasons I ever touched the Sunday paper.  As I got older and developed an interest in the world around me (and sports), I developed a system for reading the New York Daily News on 15 minute subway ride to my high school: lead story on last night's Yankees or Knicks games, comic pages (Calvin and Hobbes, For Better or For Worse, Doonesbury), league standings.  Everything I needed to know about the world.

Calvin and Hobbes, for the uninitiated, is a strip about a six year-old boy and his stuffed tiger.  The tiger comes to life in when he and the boy are alone and they have adventures that range from the closeness of their backyard to the far reaches of time and space.  The boy's boundless imagination, as well as what would today be diagnosed as ADHD, lead him into hilarious situations with his parents and teachers, and he observes life with a simplicity and poignancy that only a child could.  It's one of the few things created in a decade of cheesy schlock that holds up years and years later.

I won't lie and say I saw myself in Calvin.  By the time I was reading that strip, I was old enough to know that stuffed tigers didn't come to life, that girls weren't so slimy and that a cardboard box was just a cardboard box.  I did get the messages in the story, that imagination is priceless an that life is best lived with a friend.  As I got older, a lot more of the jokes made sense, and a lot more of the subtle philosophy became clearer, but it was always about a boy's imagination to me.

Looking back at Calvin and Hobbes, I will say I found a degree of inspiration from that strip.  It's just way more fun to embrace your imagination than to suppress it, way more honest to think things like a child would.  Bill Watterson left behind something timeless, and that's something every writer or artist would want to do.

December 31, 1995 was a sad day for me.  It was the day that this strip ran: 

The last one.  One that suggested it was time to move on, to turn the page, to explore new possibilities, and (dare I say) to grow up.  I was 17 years old.  And I cried a little.

Summer Resolutions

The one thing about living where I live is that the summers are gorgeous.  The sun doesn't go down until unfathomably late and while I sometimes get sentimental about the stultifying heat and humidity in New York City, a mild summer day isn't so bad.  Being outside in the summer in the Pacific Northwest is natural and encouraged.  I've developed an affection for Disc Golf.

The problem with that however is that the time I'm spending outside is time I'm not spending writing.  It's time I'm not spending on skill development or research or world building.  And while that's awesome in small doses, I worry about too much of a good thing.  I still carry with me a bit of the person that was on the Public School calendar, where I did a whole lot of not much between mid-June and Labor Day.  Old habits are hard to break.

But here's where I try: I've got a commitment in my head to not only finish the first draft of the new novel I'm working on, but to also post two short stories -- at least -- on this blog, all by the end of the summer.  Lofty goals, I know.  I've been working on the first draft for three years already, and I'm only a little better than halfway done.  That's why I'm stating it here, on the blog.

I joined a couple of like-minded individuals in a writing group that was based on a simple concept: accountability.  Our stories are our assignments.  Not unlike school, where a teacher handed out homework (Every.  Damn.  Day.), only here there's no algebra.  We are accountable to the group, lest we provide the coffee.

I'm also going to use the summer to make my weight loss goals, once again made public for the sake of accountability.  I'm going to restart the "Chubby Me" posting I did a couple of years ago and work myself into being less "fluffy."

And, of course, I'm going to blog more.

Including The Sun/The Dream and The Reality

First of all, yes, this is the same blog.

I decided on a little facelift, within the confines of my web design ability.  Meaning I looked at the Settings tab to see what Google would let a novice like me do.  So the color palette has been brightened, and it looks kind of like a sunny day.  Because, you know, Under The Sun.

It was either that or change the name to "Through The Black."  Which some people might think to be racist.

***

When I decided that writing was what I was going to eventually do with my life, I had this vision in my head of it being not unlike the creative writing and journalism classes I took throughout high school and college.  Publishers, intellectuals, professors and high school English teachers alike would laud and praise my work, it would be consumed by the masses in quantities unheard of, and I would not only achieve fame and fortune but I would usher in a new era of world peace.  And I'd have groupies at coffee shop readings, because Sean Connery in Finding Forrester said so.

As an adult, the reality was a bit different.  My first novel was rejected out of hand by two dozen publishers, big and small, often without any word that they'd even opened the proposal.  The nerve of them, I thought, impeding my path to wealth and glory with their small-mindedness.  I chose to self-publish.

In the early 2000's, just before Kindle existed, conversations about publishing went like this:

"Oh, I published my novel?"

"Oh, really? Congratulations!"

"Yeah.  I self-published."

"Oh, really.  Congratulations?"

There were a lot of things that an arrogant 25 year-old tried to do.  First off, I decided that the traditional publishing model was broken.  After doing several hundred hours of very focused searching (the Internet is wonderful for giving you an unbiased base for your bias), I came to the conclusion that the only people making money anymore from publishing were the publishers and the very big name authors, the Dan Browns and Tom Clancys, and unknown writers like myself had little to no shot of breaking in.  The big publishers wouldn't look at you unless you had an agent, and an agent very likely avoided you unless and until you had a deal (I kept one of my agency rejection letters that actually said I should think of them when I secure a deal with a publisher).  I looked at self-publishing -- through iUniverse (as shady as they are, they are useful for what they're useful for)-- as the only way to unleash my genius upon the world.  And The Fab 5 was born.  I completed my book, had my name in print, and all I had to do was sit back and wait for my money to roll in.  My landlord at the time wasn't as fond of the idea and recommended I keep my day job.

With time and distance I realized The Fab 5 wasn't going to make me money.  I was an unknown who hadn't promoted my work at all and had no clue how to do so.  There are life reasons for that I won't get into right now, but anyway.  It was a slap in the face; how could all of those English teachers been wrong?

Fast forward some years, and I've adjusted my expectations.  The Favorite is enjoying a modicum of success, which for me now means more people dig it than not.  And one of the things I've realized is that I have to constantly promote, constantly remind, constantly pitch and sell.  And the truth is, as much of a hassle as it can be, I kind of enjoy it.

I was right about a few things.  The traditional publishing model is broken.  It is reliant on the idea that the big  publishers are the gatekeepers of inclusion into some sort of artsy-fartsy literary club, and the only way to have any sort of legitimacy is by begging for their approval  (I had an iUniverse employee refer to self-publishing as the "minor leagues").  Technology has made them the keyholders to a vacant, dilapidated and overpriced apartment building in a really crappy neighborhood.  Yeah, you could live there, but for the same amount of hassle you could live somewhere else and have more money. 

Vilage Books Event (4/19/2014)

A couple of weekends ago I had my first speaking event at Village Books in Fairhaven.

I gotta say, that was a cool experience.  For a guy that doesn't enjoy public speaking -- I go out of my way to avoid them, mostly -- it was a lot of fun!  Best part?  The Favorite was sold out! 

If you live in or near Bellingham, visit Village Books and pick up a copy.  If not, you can order it here. 

Also, take a look at the reading from the event!

Part 1
Part 2