Blog

  • Starting Things Off Wrong

    So… I didn’t blog yesterday.

    In fact, all I did was write in my journal at 6am. (I’m trying that out, seeing how it goes.) I’m still gun’na stick to the idea that I will blog five days a week, with a minimum of 250 words per post but there can be exceptions, and also keeping a daily schedule of creative writing as well. Simple plan, not too complicated. And things started off great on Tuesday.

    And then Wednesday arrived, and I was cursed with the advantage of additional free time during the day that I was not expecting. Like an additional hour. When I made this discovery of time, my first thought was to take a portion of it, and do something a little mindless and have fun.

    My mindless fun took up two and a half hours, and ruined the rest of my day.

    And I can admit that what destroyed my yesterday is a thing that I have very little power over:

    Axis & Allies 1942 Online

    I got the game over the Christmas/New Year’s Break. I thought I had it under control. I mean, the whole family was on vacation, and everyone had their video games to play. A&A was my game, and with nothing going other than relaxing and eating, I spent some quality hours playing.

    I thought I had it under control.

    See, if you don’t know, there was the original board game back in the 80’s that my brothers and I played often. Then I went away to college and took the game with me, and on many evenings me and my friends would play the game late into the night, often a little drunk. I wouldn’t call myself a great player, but I was competent, and I won more often than I lost. To be very honest, if I played the UK or Japan, I can rule the whole world in 9 turns.

    Just saying.

    But yesterday, when my computer player Allies choked and didn’t take the Caucuses back, nor did they invade Wester Europe fast enough, I was placed in a situation as the UK where I had to go and save everyone’s butt. And it’s not easy to invade Southern Europe while simultaneously building up a Pacific Fleet.

    The point here people, is that I failed on day two.

    Now I have to set a time limit on the game…

  • Starting Things Off Right

    You know, the first thing I have to do when I start writing at the beginning of the year is create a new folder to save my documents in. Hello file, 2024.

    This is also my last day of Winter Vacation. The kid goes back to school tomorrow, and though the wife started back at work today, we didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, so it felt like we got to sleep in a little. Wednesday, we will all hit the road running; Making breakfast for the family, making the kid’s lunch, getting everyone dressed and out the door. Back to the grind.

    Speaking of grind; I gotta figure out what I want to do for this year. I have the standard stuff like cutting down on alcohol, working out more, more sleep, more reading, getting published in two journals this year. I do have some around the home projects that I need to take care of, and I would like to get better at the family budget and get our collective ass out of the final bit of our debt. (HA! We’ll never be out of debt…)

    I can say that I need to work on taking more time for the things I want to accomplish. I got a bit frustrated in the last three months of the year as I stopped working on my stuff. My writing production fell off sharply, and I know that I was to blame for it. But, I’m starting a new year, and it’s a new chance to correct old problems.

    Optimism can be a nice thing to have around.

  • Happy New Year

    Happy New Year, Everyone! Here’s to a good and prosperous 2024!

    I’ll write something funny tomorrow. Maybe about Steamboat Willie going into the public domain…

  • Best of 2023 – Short Story Review: “Long Island” by Nicole Krauss

    (The short story “Long Island” by Nicole Krauss appeared in the May 22nd, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I’m gun’na try not to, but beware of SPOILERS!)

    Illustration by Javi Aznarez

    There are no rules to writing. None. Whoever told you that you had to write in a certain way was lying to you. You can write whatever you want, about anything you want… provided you are good at it.

    Such as, you can’t start a story with a huge run-on sentence, and then spend the next couple of paragraphs just describing things with no narrative direction.

    Sure you can. Nicole Krauss did it in her story “Long Island.”

    Maybe it was supposed to be a “memory” story, because it’s not like this was stream of consciousness, but the story had the feeling of a memoir, what life was like out on Long Island in the late 70’s. This is a story of memory, experience, and all stirred up with a healthy bit of reflection and comparison.

    I enjoyed this piece of fictional nostalgia; of a time and a place that will not exist anymore. An upper middle-class family that lived in Sutton Place, who bought and renovated an estate on a hill, and then moved into this suburban world. There is nothing normal or average about this family – they are privileged due to their money, but are presented here as normal, mainstream and as average as anyone else. But when you are a kid, you just assume the way you live is that – normal, and like everyone else. Krauss doesn’t labor this point, but only on reflection of this story, did it dawn on me. This story lulled me, and I enjoyed that aspect.

    I like how the excuse to leave New York City for the suburbs was to escape the crime in the city. Yet, the neighborhood they moved into is filled with criminals. At least the socially acceptable gossipy kind of criminals who commit their crimes behind closed doors, and are dutifully punished. Yet, the narrator understands that this just the crime they know about.

    I was entertained by this story. This wasn’t life changing fiction, but it didn’t waste my time. I like how Krauss compared her disinterested parents parenting with her generations over parenting, and how neither system seems to be creating better children. Yet both generation of parents tried in their own ways to keep the evils of the world at bay. In the end, a form of evil always found its way in.

    Nicole Krauss crafted a story that didn’t follow the hero cycle, or a traditional plot/climax formula. What functioned as the rise in action/climax made sense with the story’s logic, which worked well to give the piece a release of tension that created the felling of resolution. Now, it did have a “Dead Chick in the Basket*” last paragraph, which I don’t want to say too much about as to not spoil the story, but I don’t think it added anything to the ending or point of the story. But that’s my only criticism here.

    In the end, “Long Island” played with form and story, and kept me engaged and on my toes. And it made me think about parents and how they tried their best. And it also reminded me that when you are a good writer, there are no rules if you can tell a good story.

    *  “Dead Chick in the Basket” refers to a clichéd writing device where the final paragraph of a short story contains new information about a character which is meant to make the reader view the actions, statements, or feelings of that character in a different light. The first known use of this device was in J.D. Salinger’s short story “Just Before the War with the Eskimos.”

  • Best of 2023 – Short Story Review: “The Soccer Balls of Mr. Kurz” by Michele Mari (Translated, from the Italian, by Brian Robert Moore.)

    (The short story “The Soccer Balls of Mr. Kurz” by Michele Mari appeared in the May 29th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (This story will be SPOILED, so beware!)

    Illustration by Guido Scarabottolo

    The old “losing your ball over the fence” story. It’s nice to know that boys in other countries have this issue as well. Seems like most kids grow up with this situation – the ball goes over the fence, and it is never seen again. Then the imagination takes over allowing wild stories to be created of the owner of the yard, and their dark evil soul, for only the vilest of humans would refuse to return a ball. I would say, “The Sandlot” comes to mind for most people when you talk about this situation. And it is a wonderful premise/structure/metaphor to address youth, nostalgia, coming of age, and a host of other ideas that writers have when they create stories about boys.

    Michele Mari’s story, “The Soccer Balls of Mr. Kurz,” in essence is no different. Here the boys are in a boarding school playing soccer, and one of their goals abuts against a wall that belongs to Mr. Kurz’s backyard. When a soccer ball goes over the wall, Mr. Kurz, though polite about it, does not return the ball. Out of complete frustration, the boys hatch a plan to send one of their own over the wall to retrieve the balls.

    Though a predictable plot, Mari’s story does rise above the cliché. This narrative exists in a world of nostalgia, and I wouldn’t say the narrator is unreliable, but he does take some liberties with the truth, and in a very funny speech given by one of the boys, acknowledges this liberty. What this creates is a very charming world that these boys exist in, where their desire to have a fair and regular soccer match becomes the most important concern in their lives.

    I did have two minor issues with the story. First was the delivery of backstory, especially the rules that govern how the boys acquire new soccer balls. Most of this story, information is given directly to the reader from the narrator, but in this one situation, the boys explain the rules to each other. It felt clunky, and didn’t fit with the overall flow of the story. The second, and this is very nit-picky, is that I don’t know a single European male who speaks English that calls “soccer” soccer; it’s football. In Italy, the term is “calcio” which means “kick.” This makes me believe that this was a translation decision. Soccer is an American used term, and in this setting, it left a taste in my mouth that the story was “Americanized.”

    Now, what drew me in with this story was the well-executed climax. One of the boys does go over the wall late at night/early morning only to discover what Mr. Kurz has been doing to the balls, as well as how he spends his time in that yard. I’m trying to not spoil this, so forgive my vagueness, but when this boy receives a new ball from his father, and does what he does with it, all of the threads of this story are tied nicely together. I appreciated that Mari used that final moment to show this boy’s new understanding of the world. How the boy was essentially still the same, but his viewpoint of the world had expanded. That this boy knows he is now part of a moment in time.