Author at Large
My first Public Radio interview aired and I heard about it first from my good friend Craig. I’d been interviewed because my memoir, Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire, won the North American Book Award. Craig and I were rookies on the Krassel Heli-Rappellers together and the oldest two on the crew. …
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So the writing life. Work a full time job and a single dad to a teen and a tween girls. That’s an education. A guy learns more about girl problems from them than in all the former wives combined. No joke. A dad also learns the long game. I mean it’s easy to get caught …
Every writer who has kids knows the challenges of writing and caring for the needs and, dare I say, whims they need addressed IMMEDIATELY, DAD!!! Yeah me too. And for all you single parent/writers out there–solidarity my brothers and sisters. But there comes a special day when the kids reach a certain cognizance of what …
Oooo. A Tale of Two Cities. I’ve been meaning to read this since I saw the movie when I was a kid. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Dad can you make me a grilled cheese? Yeah. Clatter. Cook. Burn! Ouch! Clatter. Cook. Where was I? Oh yes… “It …
Powder Puff Football I sit at the top of the stands alone, watching high school girls play flag football. Teens walk across and up and down bleachers confident their youth holds promise. Weary parents sit out their Wednesday night no lonelier than at home. Seniors huddle before a long fourth down. Make it or turn …
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Fake grass in baskets. A rainbow’s assortment of colored eggs. Chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs and chocolate kisses. Lots of chocolate latent with fertility. Peeps in their crusted sugary goodness, but keep in mind as Maddie found out that roasting a peep over a fire can be hazardous, yet pretty as the sugar ignites and …
April 11, 2000 In the darkened hospital a baby cries fresh cut from her mother. I, new father, whisper over the girl’s fragile head. A blessing for her. “Oh me, Oh Life of the questions ever recurring.” Walt Whitman old man with butterfly eyes. Old man who gave me answers to questions I didn’t think …
A great crash from Sophia’s room. An avalanche like distant trees toppling in the shock wave ahead of a meteor. I know I should be more diligent or insistent or some other force implying word about the cluttered space known as her room. But I am not in a position to point fingers. In my …
I knock on the door. Rap a tapping tap like some musty raven to wake Sophia so she can get ready and go to school. “Ugggg…” like the not quite so dead discovering she is on the wrong side of the crypt door or sealed up behind a wall. Or worse yet the dead being …
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The incoming texts bleep both girls’ phones. Heads down, thumbs dashing off messages. They both look up and ask, “Can we have sleepovers?” At first I am leery. The last multi-girl sleepover entailed me losing at least two years off my life just due to casting spells to reassure youngsters that no witches could get …
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