Trust but Verify

  “These are the times that try men’s souls,” so said Thomas Paine in The American Crisis,” circa 1776. Now, we jump 244 years to another trying time, 2020, the year of the worldwide pandemic. But rather than “cry wolf,” or do a Chicken Little with “The sky is falling,” I opt to say “Change is not pleasant, but change is positive. Only when we change and grow, we’ll see a world we never know,” from the Wisdom of the Orange Woodpecker . And that is what we shall do – encounter change, grow, and be positive. Something I learned decades ago was to find a new world in books. Read. Then read some more. Whatever your genre of choice, a world awaits you in books. The genre in which I write is founded on my career in the criminal justice field. From the depths of street crime to the white-collar criminals found in the ivory towers, I worked and learned, always moving forward, and never bowing down to what could be perceived as a never-ending series of crooks and crimes. After a care...

  Yes, it’s that time of year—Halloween! It has been with us in one form or another since the time of the Celts. It was a festive time celebrating the end of summer, fields ready for the harvest, and the time when ghosts could cross the boundary between death and life. For us, though, Halloween 2020 is different…quite different. While the little ones may still have a subdued version of “Trick or Treat,” the adults are guiding their families on a trip without a roadmap—mask or no mask, how often do we have to sanitize our hands, go to the classroom or attend virtually, etc. Welcome to our road to perdition. The original road to perdition was like a Greek tragedy about quirks of fate and how they impacted people’s lives—or not! This year certainly has forced each of us to deal with our own version of a Greek tragedy, but the choices are ours to make. How we deal with a challenge can be an ordeal or an adventure. That is not to say 2020 has been a piece of cake. It hasn’t, but also...

Pandemics, Deserts, and Linguistically Challenged Narrators A writer should be satisfied when their months of research and labor reaches the peak with the words, “I’m published.” I certainly had to join that elite crew with my most recent novel, “We Were Young Once …,” a fact-based novel of human and drug trafficking. But I must admit that reaching the “You are published” era was a two-edged sword. Indeed, I am happy beyond description but also frustrated that the road to publication can also be the road to perdition. Unbeknownst to any of us, that unseen enemy we call Covid-19 was not on the horizon when my manuscript was sent to the publisher, but it was. Like any other business we take for granted, the COVID quarantines and the new term we had to grow accustomed to, “PPE,” had an impact on the publishing world. Editors, business managers, clerical staff, art departments, etc. were all impacted. Accordingly, their business and mine slowed down. What we originally thought would be...

June Blog  Cover Reveal   Does your mind do a flip-flop when you hear certain words or phrases? June Blog? My brain did a quick backtrack to elementary school, a time when the June Bug provided hours of fun and games…the idea of which was to catch June Bugs and chase each other and shove the bugs down the back of the unlucky soul’s shirt. As the runt of the litter, I can attest to the scratchy feeling of an unhappy June Bug scampering about looking for an exit from a smelly hot t-shirt. Now many years later and beyond my June Bug days, I still enjoy traipsing around memory lane, but with books and movies. Some of the scenes or the spoken words are timeless: “Go ahead, make my day,” Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Sudden Impact in 1983. “Here’s Johnny,” Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining in 1980. Montag, the fireman in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 novel Fahrenheit 451, racing the Salamander to douse a book owner’s home with kerosene and burn it down; ...

Corona or Not   We have been in quarantine for a month. There may be the twinkle of light ahead, and it isn’t a freight train barreling down on us. It’s the very slow beginning of the end which is still a long time and distance in the future. In the meantime, my wife, Gwen, and I remain fairly quarantined but certainly not prisoners in our house. Coronavirus or not, we have made adjustments to our ordinary lives and have reasonably settled into a quieter lifestyle. Among other things, it includes an ice-cold Corona and a few chips and dip to accompany it on a bright, sunny day in our courtyard or on the rear patio. In some ways, we have made good headway on our lifestyles: creative cooking with the Instapot; experimented with the Anova pan for meat, fish, and vegetables; and, we went overboard on the breakfast omelets which includes four eggs, boiled and chopped potatoes, green peppers, chopped red onions, mushrooms, and an unhealthy serving of shredded cheese. Served...

The Silver Lining My writing history began with a silver lining in a very large, dark cloud. I was a young child living with my parents and brothers and sister in Kansas City, Missouri. I was a sickly little guy. Even in second grade I was hardly bigger that a #2 lead pencil. I suffered severely with asthma, almost to the point of death. The summers with their heat, humidity, and heavy pollen counts kept me housebound, unable to run outside with my siblings and neighbor kids. Winter was no better. The wet, cold weather was the wedge that kept me confined to the house. There was no escape—summer or winter. Finally, my life was forever changed when two nuns showed up at my front door to offer a solution, and quite possibly save my life. This solution would take me several states away from my family to live in the arid pollen-free state of Arizona in an orphanage.   Bye, Mama I've written a short piece that will give you a snapshot of the heart breaking ...