Memoirous

Waking late, staying up way past midnight, sometimes seeing the sun come up, meeting people for lunch, hanging out with friends, getting a phone call and stepping out, sitting on a lawn chair, swinging in a hammock, reading a book, listening to the radio. FM. ~ Nothing heavy on my mind, only thought is what kind of salad to order, or when to begin drinking, or texting because I forgot where we were meeting. No problem. ~ Catching the L train, strolling down sidewalks, smelling whatever it is that is coming out of the open door of shops: coffee, patchouli, pizza, cigarettes. Under the glow of moonlight, flashing neon, street lamps, the orange haze of breaking dawn, ~ I am in love with summer. ALSO new flash up at Em Dash Literary Magazine.Check it out!

A bold challenge, I know, but if you know of any others—please contact me and I will post here. This year in 2013 Jesus People USA Evangelical Covenant Church comprises more than half of the 73 runners committed to running to end homelessness for TEAM CCO . So far 36 church members are in marathon training. TEAMM CCO is an organized charity running group where participating runners run the Chicago Marathon and at the same time raise money for Cornerstone Community Outreach.  a third of the TEAM CCO runners gathered for National Running Day, June 5th  A few years ago CCO the shelter I am associated with (doing programming and creative writing workshops) began a program called Strive 4 More, based upon the principle that one person could, by asserting effort, make a change. Actually more than one person. Anybody could strive for more. The program worked well motivating school children to get up and get out and exercise and, in collaboration with Strive 4 More, collect...

Promotion: we've all heard about it, but in today's Internet world full of Twitters and Tweets and multiple Facebook personalities, many authors are having a hard time keeping their message on track. I belong to several professional writer groups and a current conversation at one of the listserves is about the real-life effect of using social media to promote an author's work. There's only so many people or "friends" we can reach and the questions revolve around how to cast a wider net. After publishing last month Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir I sat down to plot a strategy. One of which was to contact blogs and on-line sites dedicated to flash. That's how I stumbled upon Flash Fiction World . At the site are definitions and examples of flash--specifically fiction. I was particularly struck by the various definitions given for flash.  snip-- I once asked an avid FF reader friend of mine "what is flash fiction to you?" With a smi...

A lot of people have asked what my daughter is doing now that she’s graduated from college. Good question. The same thing she’s done every summer for the past 4 years: She’s at Yellowstone National Park working. These same people are equally fascinated by this information, imagining, no doubt, that she is leading Ranger talks, keeping the wolves at bay, recovering stolen pic-a-nic baskets from Yogi Bear and Bobo. They are a lot less thrilled when I explain that she’s doing seasonal work, for example changing beds, cleaning cabins, clearing hair out of drains. What I sometimes get around to telling them is that I did this same work when I worked in the Park over 30 years ago. My sister got a job at Yellowstone and then told me to come on out. I was in a bad space mentally and spiritually and was looking to find myself. Nature can do that. Except I was way too busy just working and doing the job I was hired to do. Don’t get me wrong, I did an awful lot of hiking too on ...

My latest piece is in The Golden Key who was looking for "something old." I sent them a flash memoir about when I was five or six years old and my mother threw a Tupperware Party. After every move we tried to lose Tupperware, but they seemed to have Tupperware babies.  Click here to finish reading Tupperware Forever or any of the other fine pieces included in The Golden Key.

There are many articles and books addressing the vanishing middle class, but this was the first book I’ve read that examines the vanishing creative class. Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier (a dreadful dude) writes not about the economics of the situation but about cyber future. This blog has commented in the past on compensation and how most of what I write ends up as simply a byline or publishing cred=FREE CONTENT. If I absolutely needed to support myself on my art then I would have to retrain and NOT write. Blame the Internet. Lanier as well as anybody understands. Even as he criticizes the digitization of information/entertainment/all that is holy—he is getting paid by what he calls Super Sirens—or is it Siren Servers? That which giveth, taketh away. The publishing industry will ultimately go the road of the music industry, the same road that flushed away the local bookstore and the superstore Borders that lays empty down the street from me. The blame just kee...