Soon Becomes Now

For the last two months I have been assiduously scribbling notes in a black basic journal for my new novel, intended for mainstream publishers, not the self-publication route. At the moment I write this, my sciatica is throbbing and an infected tooth is announcing its sinister intent so I have taken an extra prescription painkiller [...]

The New Fascism

“This is the sign we were waiting for—the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning the physical [...]

October

George Inness, October (1886), Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I sat on the shady side of the backyard, tugging a Camel filter, listening to the powder blue thunderstorm booming on the other side of the mountains, and reading some Greek lyric poetry. Time comes when the simple expertise demanded of lighting and inhaling a [...]

Katie Euphrat’s Mini-Doc Part Two

The second — and outstanding — installment of Katie Euphrat’s mini-doc on my Las Vegas Sun story, The New Homeless, is now up and running at the online version of the newspaper; I must admit that the first minute or so of the video is very difficult for me to watch.

Las Vegas Sun Changes Comment Policy

“It’s interesting, you know, in some walks of life the ordinary rules of decent conduct seem to have vanished altogether …” Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Wine Merchant (1970) I’m quite certain that frothing-at-the-mouth reader reactions to my August 29 story for the Las Vegas Sun, The New Homeless, played no small part in this [...]