Free Gratis: Al Swarengen and John Gardner
Recently, I came across some awkward language I had written. It wasn't Latin, per se, but it was stilted. It reminded me of John Gardner's dictum not to use Latinate…
Recently, I came across some awkward language I had written. It wasn't Latin, per se, but it was stilted. It reminded me of John Gardner's dictum not to use Latinate…
Why I Wrote the Story For some time, I have been planning to write a novel about the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (also known as the Rodney…
This morning my novella, Will Kill for Food, was accepted by JukePop for online publishing. The short story (no pun there) is that I'd like to ask anyone who's interested to…
A few months ago, I completed what I think is a version of my novel March Bicycle Madness worth circulating. Since then, I have been settling down to the far more…
My son and I have been reading classic boys adventure novels. You know, Treasure Island, King Solomon's Mines, Journey to the Centre of the Earth . . . It started…
I received an invitation from Paula Johnson of Rose City Sisters to include “Please Be Advised” in their upcoming flash fiction anthology. I think the anthology will be published by the end of the year. Knowing Paula, sooner. (more…)
So far, I’ve come across two sources that mentioned using the new state highways (circa 1910-20) as covenient roads for cattle drives. I think it’s an interesting overlapping period. I guess up into the 1920s cattle still needed to be driven to slaughter houses or railroad termini. Up to that point, motorists had to wait for the cattle. (more…)
Apparently, wild mustard made an impression in late-1800s Southern California . . .
The wild mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New Testament, in the branches of which the birds of the air may rest. Coming up out of the earth, so slender a stem that dozens can find starting-point in an inch, it darts up, a slender straight shoot, five, ten, twenty feet, with hundreds of fine feathery branches locking and interlocking with all the other hundreds around it, till it is an inextricable network like lace. (more…)
One of the books I picked up on the bookstore tour was Cattle on the Conejo, by J.H. Russell. It is a collection of reminiscences by a rancher who had…
A couple of weeks ago I drove to Southern California. The rest of the family was already there, at a campground, and I drove down to met them. This has…