Before . . .
Voice
Last April, after sending out around fifty queries for two novels, and probably twice that many short story submissions over the past three years, with no success, I decided to…
The Light in L.A.
Watch this video on The Scene. The New Yorker recently posted a video online (embedded above) taken from its show, which airs on Amazon. The video is based on one of…
A Riot Every Generation?
In my current WIP, California Incline, the story suggests that the Rodney King riots would never really end in the sense that its root causes were (are) still present:
But even though John had left town, he hadn’t escaped anything, because a riot isn’t an event with a beginning and an end. It’s in the air, like the ashes of the American Dream of immigrants like Yong Soo whose businesses lay in burned-out ruins. The Rodney King riot reached back to the Watts riot a generation earlier, to the Zoot Suit riot a generation before that, and even earlier. As soon as it was over, everyone knew it wasn’t the last riot L.A would have. For all the talk about change, the problems were still there. The hate and the fear, the unemployment, the anger, the repression, the drugs and the gangs . . .
The In Crowd
When I'm in a courtroom for jury duty, I feel comfortable. Which is strange because when I was practicing law back in the late-80s and 90s, I never felt comfortable.…
My seat at Peets
I’ve Become One of Those People
Sadly, I have become one of those people who have to have their seat at the local coffeehouse. It's embarrassing. Everyone I know in Davis knows they can find me…
A Joyless Existence
Lately, I have been reading background material “ books, blogs, news articles “ on the Korean American experience. I am working on a novel that involves the 1992 Rodney King…
Sometimes a Great Notion
I just finished reading this book. It took me 200 pages to realize Kesey wasn't just fucking with me. Well, 217 pages, actually. There was just something about the following…
The Convenient Corpse
I recently read two books that seemingly have little to do with each other: Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow and Atticus by Ron Hansen. What struck me about these two…
The Promise of the Book
The more I read first passages in books, the more I see this first part as œThe Promise of the Book. It™s really where the author needs to say, œHere™s…
Will Kill for Food is a Winner
Black Hill Press just announced the winners of the Summer Writing Project, and Will Kill for Food is one of the three. That means the novella will be published in…