June 21.

Father's Day is upon us again.

I give a shout out to all the dads I know, the good ones, the bad ones, and mine.

First off, to the good ones I know, like my brothers.  Keep on keepin' on.  I want to be just like you when i grow up.

To the bad ones: Try harder.  Keep your daughters off the pole and your sons out of prison.

To my dad: I miss you.  You were hilariously funny, and your children still recount your stories when we get together.  You were strong willed, and stubborn to a fault, but you believed what you believed without apology.  You were proud of your children, and we did you proud.  I miss talking to you about things like the Yankees and the Knicks, which you loved passionately.  When we couldn't talk about much else, we always had that.  You did the best you could with what you had, and it's taken me nearly two years after you've departed to understand that, to accept that.

 

To my father, I hope to continue to do you proud.  Rest well.

Out With The Old, In With The New/Cool As The Other Side Of The Pillow

Happy 2015, y'all!

Yeah, I know, I'm about two weeks late.  Couldn't be helped.  My December was kind of epic.  I watched my best friend get married, moved into a new apartment, worked like a psychopath, had Christmas Eve Dinner, made Christmas Morning French Toast, had Christmas dinner, unpacked my last box just a couple of hours before getting trashed on New Year's Eve.  I needed a break.

But here we are, on the other side in 2015.  This is the year that we're supposed to have our hoverboards and the Chicago Cubs win the World Series (I'd bet on the hoverboard coming first).  It's a year full of promise, of expectation, of ambition.  Or of the same old resolutions.  Whatever.

I'm sure we've all made the promise to be better off financially, to be better with our significant others, and the promise that this will finally be the year we get healthy.  I know I did.  I think I made those promises last year, too.  Oops.

To be fair though, last year was awesome, for me at least.  I got to knock some items off my personal bucket list.  I did a small book tour for my novel The Favorite (shameless plug).  I did three book signings and a reading.  I got to see something I wrote on the shelves in a bookstore.  And it won an award.  I'm almost sad to see 2014 go in that sense.

2015 though, that's going to be a monster.  I'm going to finish the manuscript I've been working on for the last three-plus years (thanks NaNoWriMo).  I'm going to master this tricky marketing thing.  I'm going to bust my hump to do a quarter-million words of fiction this year (down from last year's million because, well, damn).  I'm going to read and review one book per month.  And I'm going to interview independent writers, artists and musicians as often as I can.  And I'm going to use this blog.  A lot.

Happy New Year.

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I'd like to take this moment to give a shout out to the late ESPN anchor Stuart Scott who died last week of a particularly persistent cancer.  Mr. Scott, besides being a beacon of professionalism and having a style that is often imitated and never duplicated, was by all accounts a badass in the face of his diagnosis, training in MMA fighting while working and doing chemotherapy right up until the end of his life.  He is a legend in his own time and an inspiration to this writer.  After all, if a man facing terminal cancer can not only be at the top of his profession AND train his body in combat, then there is no reason why a healthy person like myself can't do anything they set their mind to.

"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.