Ever since I was a kid, something in Charles Schulz’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown has spoken to me. No kid cares to explore that kind of nuance. For Bob-Back-Then, “I like it because” was enough to pour Coca-Cola in my milk or rush to the TV in time for the piano soundtrack and…… Continue reading What’s Great About The Great Pumpkin
Category: This Whole Writing Thing
Behind: “Dark Days for the Professor”
Southern lit. Family conflict. Race and social issues. Push-pull of tradition. Sense of belonging to place, like it or not. I don’t write it. Or at least I hadn’t until earlier this year. So it’s a thrill that my “Dark Days for the Professor” has been included in NWMG’s Southern lit anthology Not So Fast. So…… Continue reading Behind: “Dark Days for the Professor”
The Fall and Rise of Draft One
Day One “We’re putting together an anthology,” they say. They have an email to prove it. Very few combinations of five words so excite The Short Story Guy. Maybe “short stories turn me on,” or “sure, we’re a paying market.” It is not a literary style I’ve written in. Despite that, perhaps because of it, I am intrigued.…… Continue reading The Fall and Rise of Draft One
Behind: “The Carcassonne Dream”
It is winter. Christmas Eve 2011, and Writer Guy rides the train to Arles. Second class. The South of France trundles by outside, salt flats and olive trees, the mountainside and harbor towns of the Mediterranean coast. I sip my Coca-Cola Lite and return to my laptop. For in France the writing flows, as fast as the sweeping…… Continue reading Behind: “The Carcassonne Dream”