Thoughts of Cats & Dogs on a Winter Day in Maine

It's Friday, I'm lazy as hell, the sky is a bright azure blue and cloudless... it's an absolutely gorgeous day in Maine! The temperature is just how I like it: great weather to layer on clothes, put on a heavy hoodie, throw a good scarf around my neck and go out and breath some brisk fresh air. I might take it with a chaser of salt... thinking of grabbing the bone hound and going for a walk along the ocean... Shadow's always game for that! Some bad weather looks like it's heading our way this weekend so today might be a good day to go out and play. The cats, of course, being cats and having the intelligence of the Ages, have found a sunny spot near a window and I know their feline little hearts are taking pity on me. They're yawning as I pull out my hiking boots but Shadow is already having a hissy fit; he can hardly contain himself!

"Hiking boots!" he slobbers and whines, "My God, that's almost as good as frickin' bacon!"

He's so excited he'd lace up my boots if he could; he's a whirlygig of pent of canine energy and as he slams into me with excitment I feel his raw power and remember how we rescued a worn-down depressed dog, suffering from heart worm and too many harsh hands. To see him now is such a joy: confident, strong, healthy and full of energy... usually all I have to do is say hello to him and he falls at my feet, submissive, his underbelly exposed and begging for my touch. He and I make sweet music together with this mutual adoration thing we have going... but now he just wants to be a dog; he's focused on the hiking boots with a laser like beam befitting a Scud missile and there's no going back now... returning them to the closet is NOT an option.

Shadow's running frenzied circles around me as I walk with the hiking boots to the front door, the last item of apparel I'll put on before we jump in the truck and head to the ocean to chase some gulls.

He whine more loudly; it's almost painful to hear: "Hiking boots! OMG! She has the HIKING BOOTS!!"

Suddenly it's all too much and totally overcome he sits in front of the door and throws back his beautiful head on his powerful neck and lets out a hair-raising howl, like a wolf baying at the moon. He's in canine ecstasy.

It's his song of primal joy!

The cats... well, as I said, they look on us with condescending pity and stretch; then they stand and look at one another, rearranging themselves into an embrace of sorts and then settle in for their snooze.

I love them all. I'm neither a dog person nor a cat person... I love them both...they're just different but equal.

Which reminds me of a great article I posted a while back... hmmmm.... where is it? It seems a perfect fit today: like great leftovers from a delicious meal... maybe even better the second time 'round. Yeah: a damn good article will stand the test of time.

OK, here it is; found it in the archives.

So, while Shadow and I are out walking along the ocean here is gorgeous southern coastal Maine and the cats snooze contentedly back home in the sunshine, here's my Friday gift to you... may you have a laugh and then find the time to be with someone who loves you as unconditionally as a dog and as wisely as a cat.... peace. ~m.

How to Give a Cat a Pill

1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby.

Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth.

Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa.

3. OK, let's do this again.

Retrieve cat, get new pill and repeat #2 above.

Remember, YOU are in charge.

4. Remove soggy pill from your hair and generously cleanse your multiple scratches. This might be a good time to put on a thick flannel shirt.

5. Take a deep breath and get a new pill. Retrieve cat from under bed. Cradle cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Remember: he's getting worn down and should be easier to handle.

Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

Now Get out of the Way!

6. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl



.... and cat from top of wardrobe...




Call spouse in from the garden.

7. You can do this. Breathe deeply.

Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Remember: You Are In Charge!

Retrieve cat.

Get spouse to hold cat firmly while you force open mouth with wooden ruler. Quickly let the pill slide down the ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously. Count to twenty.

Have spouse release cat and both of you JUMP OUT OF THE WAY.

8. Pick up table lamps and retrieve cat from curtain rail.

Make note to buy new wooden ruler and repair curtains.

Carefully sweep up shattered figurines and other glassware from the floor. Be careful to find all of the hundreds of very small shards of glass so the cat doesn't step on them and hurt his paws. You wouldn't want that to happen.

9. Remain calm. Let spouse retrieve the cat while you go grab another pill.

At this point, both of you might want to wear oven mitts or garden gloves.

Having a beer won't hurt either.

Wrap the cat in a heavy bath towel.

Have spouse lie on cat with the cat's head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Ignore cat's howls and hisses.



Put the pill in the end of a drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with wooden spoon, shove the straw in the cat's mouth and quickly slide the pill down the straw into the cat's throat.

10. Check label to make sure the pill is not harmful to humans and don't worry too much about the saliva; most cat spit won't kill a strong adult with a good immune system.

But as an added precaution, drink a beer. Maybe two.

Generously cleanse and apply band-aids to spouse's forearms and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

Your spouse should drink a few beers too.

11. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed.

Get another pill.

Have another beer and go to Plan B: 

Throw the cat into a dresser drawer and close the drawer partially, exposing only the little bastard's head and neck.

Force his mouth open with a screwdriver and then slingshot the pill down his throat with a rubber band. 

NOW RUN LIKE HELL!

12. Call the fire department to retrieve the damn cat from the top of the tree across the road.

Apologize to the neighbor who crashed into your fence while swerving to avoid the cat. You might want to forget the beer and go directly to the scotch. Offer some scotch to your neighbor and reassure him you have excellent homeowner's insurance and you understand the liability is all yours.

13. Let your neighbor worry about the tow truck and ask your spouse to drive you to the emergency room. Take the bottle of scotch with you. It will help you sit quietly while the doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye.

14. My final advice: If Mutant Ninja Cat from Hell is still alive when you get home -- get a new vet. There's not a damn thing wrong with that little sonofabitch. 

How To Give A Dog A Pill

1. Wrap it in bacon.

2. Toss it in the air.

'Nuff Said.

Some Ladies Sweat

Oh, baby, is it hot outside! We're in a scorcher here in the Kankakee River Valley south of Chicago. Of course, we're not alone. A killer heat wave is hovering over most of the contiguous U.S. like a suffocating death shroud. Yesterday I cooked an egg on my deck in 2 minutes.

A 2-minute egg: hardboiled. A Mickey Spillane kind of an egg.

Obviously, I'm getting bat-shit stir-crazy from being way too housebound but what can I do? Honest to God, I hate this kind of heat. There was a time when I was sixteen and could wear a bikini and practically lived at the Chicago beaches... and I don't remember hating severe heat too much back then... and there was the year I lived in Ft. Lauderdale when I was twenty (and also lived in a bikini or a halter top and jeans all the time) and I don't remember hating the heat too much then either ... but I think those years were flukes.

I was probably just too young to appreciate how miserable I was...

I think there's only one respectable place for a lady to sweat and that's in bed... but being a lady I won't elaborate further.

Which reminds me of one of the most truly obnoxious women I've ever known -- a woman who fancied herself a real lady.

In fact, she once took great pains to instruct me about ladies and perspiration… and a few other things too. Her name was Beverly.

I was living in a 2-bedroom apartment in Ft. Lauderdale with my girlfriend Pat and one night Pat brought this chick Beverly home. I was the baby at only twenty; Pat was twenty-two or twenty-three and Beverly was in her mid-to-late twenties. Beverly actually seemed old to me and the truth is I think I disliked her at first glance but Pat was very enamored with her; how they found one another eludes me but it doesn’t matter. Suffice to say, Pat seemed to think Beverly was pretty special.

Pat explained Beverly needed a temporary place to stay (having just been kicked out of her boyfriend's digs) but what Pat thought was really cool about the deal was that Beverly actually had some damn money. Pat and I were pretty much free spirits and although we both worked and were far from indigent we never had any REAL money -- not like Beverly anyway. Bev was loaded... or so it seemed from our vantage point.

She claimed to have been a Delta flight attendant (of course in 1971 she was called a “stewardess”) but decided she preferred to work as a cocktail waitress at one of Lauderdale's most high-falutin' tourist bars and restaurants, The Moonraker. It was a place where neither Pat nor I could afford to eat but it was a goldmine for Beverly who was pullin' down a staggering hundred+ big ones a night -- in 1971 dinero mind you – in tourist season.

So we agreed to provide temporary shelter for 1/3 the rent until she found her own place. Beverly was happy to pay her share of the rent and even though I never really liked her I appreciated that she loved to cook. She definitely had a thing for making big Southern breakfasts with biscuits and gravies and even steaks and ham and she liked to bake pies... which brings me to the part about her being a very Southern lady.

Beverly was a true Magnolia Blossom and when she spoke she was almost captivating... as I said: almost.

Although I was fascinated with her accent and her colloquialisms (and enjoyed her breakfasts) I always felt there was a thinly veiled condescension, a delicately hidden sense of superiority toward us. I'm not sure if it was borne of her geography or belief that she was a greater sophisticate than either of her younger Yankee roommates but it rubbed me the wrong way. Pat, however, blew it off and said I was too sensitive and too easily offended. Since I was the person who, in a moment of temporary insanity, had been talked into giving up my room to Beverly and was sleeping on the couch (I know, I know... I was an idiot) I don’t think being overly sensitive or easily offended was really my problem… know what I mean?

Anyway, as another measure of my insanity I decided our living room needed painting and cut a deal with the landlord who bought the paint and supplies. I went at it with relish, painting, painting, painting… until the A/C died... in the middle of August… in Florida. The apartment's heat and humidity soared to what we'd now call a Heat Index of about 457 degrees. It could boil lead. The Palmetto bugs vacated the premises.

The paint wouldn't dry and neither would I.

I've always had this horrible tendency to sweat like a man. It's true. Even at twenty when I weighed a trim and fit 105 pounds and was in perfect health I could sweat more than a couple of guys called Bubba roasting a pig at a 4th of July Picnic in a swamp. (You get the picture.) So, at sometime in the middle of this painting catastrophe I bitched I was “sweatin' like a pig."

To which Miss Magnolia Blossom sneered and corrected me: "Mah’reen dah’lin’,” Beverly cooed, “a lady nevah sweats. A hohse sweats and a man peh’spires but a lady gets slightly wa’hm.”

I should have killed her then.

Beverly had a passion for football – and football players. She heard about a lounge down in Miami where the Dolphins were said to gather. Beverly had a thing for Nick Buoniconti (I don’t think she ever met him so I’m not implying anything either; she just thought he was especially cool) and she heard he was often at this same watering hole. So, one evening Beverly blew off work and the three of us headed down to Miami.

Bev, who was the only one of us who owned a decent car, did the driving. Frankly, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in our cars. She drove a brand new convertible Corvette that was brilliant red with a cream interior. It was definitely tits. (Which makes me wonder in retrospect why she didn’t have her own place, since she had enough money for a great car and was really rolling in dough but I suppose she was saving her money to buy a resort or something in the Cayman’s and we were happy to oblige. There was a quid pro quo in our relationship somewhere.) Point being: Beverly drove.

We were young, we were pretty, and we were carefree and we were off to Miami.

And before you think too deeply about this – yes, I was underage but I had ID and in those days no one seemed to ask for proof of age… at least not unless it was Easter and you looked like you could tear up a hotel in a drunken psychosis -- and maybe not even then. (As an aside I find it curious as hell and a terrible testament to what’s happened to this country that when I was 20 and actually looked 16 no one gave a crap if I drank but now that I’m 60 and look every damn day of it I can’t buy wine coolers at my local grocery without showing ID because now everyone in this nation has no common sense, can’t make a discretionary call if their life depends on it, and all businesses have policies that come straight out of the Fascist Corporate Model for Morons… but that’s something for another post. )

So, where were we?  Oh yeah. The lounge in Miami.

I wasn’t in the lounge 15 minutes before I met an old friend, a guy named Joe, from Chicago. Actually, Joe was from Evanston. When I was in high school I worked as a checker at a local grocery story and Joe was a young butcher. He was a jovial guy with great jokes. Joe and his new wife were vacationing in Miami and it had been several years since we’d worked together at that grocery store on the northside of Chicago. It felt great to see a familiar face.
Joe and Mrs. Joe were sitting with a guy who was the size of a small whale whom they introduced as yet another Joe; Joe Greene to be exact.

Yes; Mr. “Mean” Joe Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Honestly, nothing seemed mean about him; in fact, I thought he was sort of a teddy bear. Pat and I squeezed alongside these two giant guys and the one wife (my friend Joe the butcher was a huge guy too) and the men were gentlemen and Mrs. Joe was quite lovely. The conversation was easy and very pleasant and I looked around the lounge for Beverly but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Where the hell’s Beverly?” I whispered to Pat but my friend hadn’t a clue.

So, the night wore on and Pat and I met more people who seemed to gravitate to our table and the men kept the drinks flowing and the waitress hovered obligingly nearby and the bartender sent over a few free rounds and it seemed everyone knew this guy Joe Greene… or wanted to know him. We found a few more Chicagoans in the crowd and an older guy who said he’d once played ball too… and there seemed to be an abundance of ball players or wannabees and the conversation was all about sports which, quite frankly, bores me to death… but I knew it was Beverly’s passion and so I kept asking Pat, “Where the hell’s Beverly?”

After all it was Beverly’s bright idea to drive down to Miami and scope out the scene at this particular lounge and, in fact, it seemed to be producing what I thought she hoped to find… God knows we were up to our cute mini-skirted butts in macho males who knew a thing or two about yard lines and pig skins.

“Where the hell’s Beverly?”

The party began to wind down and the bar crowd was seriously thinned out and it was now near closing -- which means we were staring at 2 AM -- and I was still wondering “Where the hell’s Beverly?”

Pat and I had a hundred opportunities to leave with any number of men but we didn’t; believe it or not we weren’t big players. Honestly, I’d had all the sports talk I needed for a lifetime and I think Pat felt the same and we wanted to call it a night.

But neither of us knew where the hell Beverly was and so finally Pat went into the parking lot and I swear to God when she came back to our table she was wearing one of the most genuinely dumbfounded looks I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face.

“Beverly’s car is gone.” 
Say what? Come again? Huh?


Pat and I were stranded in Miami which is one helluva long poke down the road from Ft. Lauderdale at 2 in the morning.

My friend Joe and his wife insisted on driving us home -- which I was very grateful for -- but I was also mortified that this had happened and thought about ways to strangle the woman all the way home. Pat was genuinely worried sick; she was afraid that Beverly had been abducted by a serial killer but I knew better: I figured the poor bastard would return her once he got to know her.

Nonetheless we agreed we’d call the police if she wasn’t home at a “reasonable hour” which seems absurd now but at the time we were willing to set that time at Noon the next day. Beverly had been known to be a pick-up and we figured that’s what had happened – but it still seemed hard to believe that she’d strand us in Miami.

Even for Beverly that seemed hard to imagine.

So anyway my friend Joe and his wife, who had flown into Miami early that morning, spent the day running around town, and had now been partying into the wee hours, graciously drove us home in their rented airport car. Those folks must have been totally exhausted. Naturally, we invited them in for coffee and also breakfast and even offered them Pat’s room so they could get some sleep but they declined; they wanted to do an immediate turnaround and get back to their hotel in Miami.

Imagine our surprise when Pat and I walked into our apartment and found Beverly waiting for us… imagine our surprise when we found a furious, frenzied, insane Beverly waiting for us. We weren’t in the door two seconds before she pounced with the rage and fury of a woman possessed. She screamed at the top of her lungs that we “humiliated her” by “fraternizing” with black people (only she didn’t call them “black people”). And maybe I need to mention here that she was right in the use of the plural because my friend Joe and his wife were black people. (I think I forgot to mention that.)

Pat looked even more dumbfounded than when she first reported Beverly’s car was missing from the parking lot. She stood slack jawed staring at Beverly spinning around the living room doing her version of the St. Vitus Day Dance for Klukkers and spewing a venomous screed of racist hate. I have to admit I was as stunned as Pat and shared her initial speechlessness. 

Beverly waived one of her Pepto Bismal pink nails in our faces and hissed malevolently: “The next thing ah know, ya’ll gonna’ be bringin’ Cath-oh-licks and damn Jews fuh dinnah!”

Which when you think about it is the comical high note in this story. Neither Pat nor I wore rosaries around our necks and we weren’t exactly dutiful daughters of the Catholic Church but c’mon already – what’s there to miss about names like Patricia Kelly and Maureen McDermott? Do they sound very Baptist to you?

We had a wonderful and hilarious Jewish lady in our building, a Mrs. Friedman, and she could do better schtick than Lainie Kazan playing Lainie Kazan. Pat and I loved her. She looked after us and always bitched we were much too thin – and nothing is more melodious to a young woman ear's than hearing she’s way too thin. Remarkably, Beverly didn't notice Mrs. Friedman’s obvious Jewishness, the mezuzah on her door frame or that her son, who visited quite dutifully, wore a Yarmulka. I thought her Yiddish was a dead giveaway but maybe not if, like Beverly, you grew up near Memphis. It would have been an obvious surprise to Beverly that she was already living with Catholics and Jews.

I don’t remember what actually happened next but shortly thereafter (read: in < 5 minutes) everything Beverly owned – including her damn Magnolia Blossom Ass – was tossed out onto the wet dewy Florida lawn.

We said nothing as we walked back into the apartment after tossing the last vestige of that damn woman’s crap onto the grass. Pat locked the door in silence, careful to also use the dead bolt.

The weirdest thing about this wasn’t that Beverly fled terrified in the night (she did) or that we never saw her again (this was no surprise because she said we were both “totally insane” which was reasonably accurate) but that Pat and I never discussed it – ever. I’m not really sure why we never spoke of it but I think there was just something about that night that was too painful, too shocking. We had exorcised a beast from our midst and maybe we thought talking about it would bring her back. Whatever it was, a part of  our innocence was lost; Pat and I had looked into the eyes of the kind of person we'd only heard about but had never personally known. I've often thought about how different my life would have been if I'd been raised to think like Beverly. I've also often thought about how it would be to have a person like Beverly in control.

Something in Kelly and McDermott died that hot night in Ft. Lauderdale back in 1971... but clearly something stronger had been born in both of us.
________________
This is dedicated to the young kid who wrote me an earnest and lengthy email asking me to tell him how a writer can become “inspired” to write great stories. Wow; what a question.

The truth is: I have no idea.

But I have a hunch that it's life itself that inspires all writers.

So, my advice is this: live a life -- and there will always be stories enough.

Good luck.

SAMPLE SUNDAY

The following is Chapter Two in January Moon.

Enjoy!! 

Two

Urbana police responded to an emergency call from an hysterical female about blood in the ladies washroom over at the Gas City near I-57.

“Blood is everywhere!” she yelled, “All over the place!”

Cops found a pair of blood soaked underpants and two bloodied bath towels and the washroom floor, toilet and sink were smeared with bloody hand prints. They also retrieved a pink backpack with clean underwear and knee socks, a tube of Neosporin, a mirror and tweezers, and a box of straws – but no ID.

They quickly theorized a baby might have been born in the john and other reasonable possibilities included a miscarriage or botched abortion. The theories gained credence when security cameras confirmed the last female to use the john was a young girl who left the premises under unusual circumstances.

Ms. Waynelle Penney, the Gas City night employee who placed the 911 call, described a white female, twelve to fourteen, fifteen tops, who was forcefully dragged from the premises.

When Ms. Penney admitted the kid didn’t scream, ask for help, or fight the big trucker who snatched her, the cops figured she probably knew the guy.

Waynelle thought the girl was Amish because she wore an old-fashioned black dress. She conceded, however, she didn’t see her wearing the traditional white cap most Amish women wore. Waynelle explained she was “something of an expert on the Amish” because she had a cousin who lived near Arcola and “there’s lots of them there.”

The cop taking her statement said he didn’t know much about the Amish but “never heard of no Amish kid having a baby in a gas station john.”

Waynelle weighed his comment carefully. “I never looked at it that way,” she admitted.

According to Ms. Penney, the kid was in the john about two hours and then bought chocolate milk and Ding Dongs. Waynelle overheard her trying to hitch a ride to Wisconsin with three local guys who were “bad news” when all of a sudden “this big trucker guy just kinda’ come right outta’ nowhere.” She clarified “nowhere” as being over in the area near the Wiener Ferris Wheel and said “and then damn if he don’t grab her little fanny and haul her outta’ here.”

Urbana was expecting a major winter storm blowing down from up north so police were at full court press to find a baby, if in fact there was one. Snow was already falling as they searched the dumpsters, garbage cans, and empty boxes behind the premises and a canine team was brought in to search a grassy knoll behind the gas station.

A state trooper pulled into the Gas City for his usual coffee and a piss and saw local cops up to their necks in something big. He called his district’s headquarters to see what he could learn to help the local cops and that’s how Urbana police learned a Jane Doe was found in a truck more than a hundred miles north, near Matteson, way up in Cook County just south of Chicago.

Obviously, state and local police needed to know if Jane was the same kid who left the bloody mess in the john. Urbana police downloaded security pictures from multiple video cameras covering the Gas City premises and sent them to the state police; they expected an answer shortly.

**

Three Illinois State Police cars responded to Mack’s call and troopers found him understandably agitated but fully cooperative. He was sober, coherent and articulate and his CDL, registration and title, as well as insurance and truck log were in order. They let Mack cool his heels in the rear of one of their cars while they inspected his truck.

Jane Doe was found in the passenger seat of the truck, secured in place by a seat belt and sitting upright in a small puddle of her own blood. A blanket was tucked around her. One of her coat pockets contained a few coins, a $5 bill, and a dirty Ace bandage, the type used to wrap a sprained ankle or wrist. The other held a 200-count bottle of Ibuprofen; only four pills remained. Just as in Urbana, the troopers further north found no ID.

An initial inspection of the truck and body failed to show evidence of a shooting or stabbing and Ms. Doe didn’t appear to have died from strangulation. There was no evidence of blood on Mack, his clothes, or anywhere in the truck other than the immediate space where the body was found. Troopers found no weapons, drugs, or anything other than what was legitimately on Mack’s manifest or what personally belonged to him.

The weather was worsening so dispatch instructed troopers to take Mack to the nearest municipal police department which happened to be over in Matteson, rather than to district headquarters in Des Plaines, which was a good poke down the road.

“Anyway, Wiley’s already there,” the dispatcher said, “we’ll call and tell him you’re coming in.”

The troopers wondered why Wiley was in Matteson and one of them might have asked if Mack didn’t interrupt. Mack asked if he could call his wife to tell her where they were taking him and they agreed.

**

Fred Wiley was a tough talking, chain smoking, ’Nam-era ex-Marine who’d been with the Illinois State Police almost four decades. He could have pensioned out ten years earlier but hoped to die on the job because the idea of retirement was one of the few things that terrified him. His ruggedly handsome leathery face, square jaw, steel blue eyes, old fashioned crew cut and whiskey voice made him look like a stereotypical grunt-eating, fire spitting by-the-book USMC Drill Instructor which is exactly the image he wanted to project.

Wiley was killing time, waiting for the troopers to bring Mack Carter into Matteson, when he decided to ride his partner about his ridiculously pompous name.

“What are you, a pope or something? What the hell kind of name is Aloysius anyway? And Benedict; Jesus: Aloysius Benedict? Don’t know if I should puke or genuflect.”

Benedict tried to explain his friends called him Aloe. “You know, like the aloe plant. The one for burns.”

“Christ, say it ain’t so. Aloe? Like A-hole? You actually let people call you Aloe? What, ’cuz you burn my ass?”

Benedict didn’t know what the problem was or why Wiley insisted on ragging his sorry ass but several bored cops enjoyed the exchange immensely. Everyone knew Wiley was as big of a hoot as he could be horse’s ass but if you weren’t the poor bastard withering under one of his verbal assaults it was damn good fun to be an observer.

“OK, listen up,” Wiley snapped, “I’m calling you Eggs. From now on, you’re Eggs.”

“Eggs? Why eggs? I don’t get it.” Benedict’s cluelessness was possibly even funnier than Wiley. “I don’t even like eggs,” Benedict whined, “and I’m allergic to egg products.”

Wiley threw his hands up in disgust. “You believe this guy? He’s allergic.”

“Wha… what am I missing about this? You don’t think allergic is serious?”

One of the Matteson cops felt compelled to come to his aid. “Eggs Benedict, you get it now?”

Benedict didn’t get anything. His deer-in-the-headlights look said it all.

Wiley snarled, “Hey maybe we should call him Allergic, whaddya’ think?”

One of the other cops tried another tack. “Listen up Aloe, it’s like this man: Aloe just don’t work, you understand? A cop can’t have no partner people call Aloe. It ain’t possible.”

A third cop added, “Hey Aloe, Wiley don’t mean nothing by it. He gives almost everyone a nickname, especially if he likes ’em.”

It was all too much for Wiley and he exploded.

“Like him? You think I like this poor bastard? Hell, I don’t like him. This isn’t love, you assholes. It’s a damn mercy mission.”

**

It was 6:30 AM when Wiley and Eggs finally walked into the small drab interview room where Mack was held. Eggs was brooding about the meaning of his new name and sat sullenly beside Wiley while he interviewed Mack.

Mack explained how he found the girl at the Gas City down in Urbana, thought she was afraid someone was following her, and seemed willing to hitch a ride with three guys Mack described as “dangerous creeps.” Mack told Wiley and Eggs he only realized how sick she was after he got her into his truck and then he called his wife to see what Marge thought he should do next.

He also tried very hard to tell Wiley everything the girl said to him and the men agreed her words made little sense, most likely because of her delirium. However, she probably had a grandmother since she repeatedly called Carter “Gram.” Wiley made a number of notes, including “grandmother?” and “poss. drug use?” which he circled for emphasis. He figured there was a chance the kid was hopped up on something that made her loony.

Mack also explained he was an independent trucker driving a refrigerated rig and he hauled one kind of shit south and was hauling another kind on the flip-flop north when he stopped in Urbana to take a leak, stretch his legs, and get some fresh Joe. Then a goddamn house fell on him. It was one of the most godawful things that ever happened to him.

He shook his head in genuine puzzlement. “God Almighty,” he asked Wiley, “why do you suppose that kid died?”

Wiley couldn’t say. He explained the body was on its way to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. Unfortunately, the place was usually backlogged and even if they were lucky it could take days to get a preliminary post-mortem report and much longer if they weren’t.

Wiley gave Mack a cup of strong coffee. He looked like he could use something stronger but Wiley didn’t offer it.

Wiley saw Mack’s simple gold wedding ring and asked how long he’d been married. Mack said “forty years this June” and Wiley whistled to show he was impressed.

Wiley knew marriage was no guarantor of anything, let alone an inability to murder, but when he formed his opinions about people he liked to say he “added up all the little things.” If it was true the man was married to the same babe for forty years then it told Wiley several things: first, the man hadn’t murdered at least one woman and, second, he was probably a damn saint.

Wiley was married and divorced four times and figured most wives at one time or another deserved killing. He said he never had a wife who didn’t give him at least one good reason to murder her. In fact, he joked, he considered his failure to murder at least two of his wives to be his two greatest achievements.

“Unfortunately,” he’d deadpan, “no one hands out medals for not killing wives.”

A clerk knocked on the door, entered, and handed Wiley security camera pictures from the Gas City. They showed Jane Doe walked in the door three hours before Mack drove onto the premises. The cameras caught her speaking to the three guys Mack described as creeps, as well as Mack propelling her out the door to his rig. The hostile exchange between Mack and one of the creeps in the parking lot was also captured on video.

Mack also looked at the pictures and gave a statement that she was definitely the same girl he picked up in Urbana who died in his truck.

There was another knock on the door and Wiley barked an order to come in. A trooper handed him two reports; one said Carter was clean as a whistle, which came as no surprise to Wiley, and the other indicated there were no recent Amber Alerts or other reports about missing girls fitting Jane Doe’s description. Wiley found that vaguely disconcerting; he always wondered how people could lose their kids and not know it.

Wiley studied Mack carefully and made up his mind. Mack’s story checked out and the quicker he could wrap it up with Carter the quicker he could get on with the real business of investigating Jane Doe’s death.

As far as he was concerned, Mack Carter could go home.

Wiley and Eggs left the room and Wiley asked the desk clerk to get Carter more coffee and let him go to the can. Eggs could see Wiley was done with Mack but didn’t grasp why.

“So, you’re just gonna’ let him walk out the door? That’s it? That’s our investigation?”

“No. I’m going to call Eliot Ness and discuss it with her and then I’m gonna’ let him walk out the door.”

**

Wiley nicknamed Ms. Elnora Calista Ness “Eliot” the day he met her and it stuck. Assistant State’s Attorney Ness was that rare breed of attorney content to spend an entire career as a prosecutor. At one time when the office had very few minority lawyers, not to mention even fewer female ones, it was rumored her color and sex made her a double token. Those rumors died quickly as Eliot chalked up an impressive prosecutorial record.

Eliot was brilliant, aggressive, and strikingly beautiful. She currently looked as stunning in short cropped silver streaked hair as she did when she showed up right out of law school. Neither three kids nor middle age screwed up her fine figure or legendary energy. She liked to wear bright colors, short skirts, sexy shoes and insanely large earrings and pulled it off with a panache that kept her from looking cheap.

Eliot’s first criminal prosecution was Wiley’s first homicide case. He didn’t know shit about being a credible professional witness and she knew even less about being an aggressive, sharp prosecutor. Their combined inexperience gave the case to the defense and the perp walked but he showed up later, as most perps will, after he kidnapped, tortured, and murdered another little boy.

Wiley and Eliot believed it was their incompetence that gave the bastard a second chance to kill. The shared pain of that first trial loss would never go away but it became the catalyst that transformed them into a strong prosecutorial team and they successfully nailed him the second time around.

The day they got his evil ass convicted was also the first night they slept together. That night turned into three more days and nights holed up in Eliot’s tiny apartment in some dump of a building in some shit hole part of the city not far from the courthouse. They periodically came up for air long enough to order pizzas and Chinese and then they went down like submarines again.

It was a torrid, wonderful affair but Eliot always told Wiley it couldn’t last. He assured her it could and would and he meant it with all his heart. She knew differently.

She insisted the affair be kept a secret, something that really pissed him off.

“Why is this necessary?” he’d storm. He said “I want to go out to dinner with you and my friends” or “I want you to meet my family” and badgered her with questions like “why won’t you introduce me to your family or friends?” But she never talked about her family and she claimed she hadn’t been in Chicago long enough to make many close friends so he had to be content with bringing her into his world.

Then one night at the Parthenon in Greek Town Wiley asked her to become his wife. It was just after waiters ignited their order of saganaki and the entire restaurant erupted with joyous shouts of “Oooopa!” Wiley waited for the luscious cheese to cool and poured her another glass of Greek wine. Then he raised a toast to the “Most beautiful, brilliant, and sexy woman in the world, the woman I love and want to marry,” and she froze. She refused to even look at the stunning 2-carat emerald cut diamond he had carefully chosen.

Wiley was stunned when she explained marriage was not an option. “Blacks should marry blacks and whites should marry whites.”

“What are you, nuts?” he fumed. “We’ve been humping the eyes out of each other for two goddamn years and I love you to death. I don’t want to live without you. We can screw but we can’t marry? Where’s the logic in that?”

Eliot was adamant: she wasn’t going to marry a white man. The argument went on for days.

“But this is 1978 for God’s sakes, and this is Illinois,” he argued. “Damnit, El, this is ridiculous.” He accused her of being a bigot in her own convoluted way.

“So, it’s OK to screw me,” he heard himself ask, “but not marry me? Did you lie to me when you told me you loved me?”

No, she loved him very much but she would not marry him.

Finally, under his relentless pressure, she explained she wasn’t strong enough to be a trail blazer.

“I’ve already gone further than I ever dreamed possible and I don’t want the strain of a mixed-race marriage for the rest of my life or the stress it’ll put on my kids.”

Wiley was stupefied. “That’s crazy,” he said, “please, listen to me baby. We can make this work. There are neighborhoods we can live in. Screw those assholes who don’t like us.”

He had a house in mind in a great neighborhood in Evanston, close to Northwestern University. It was a safe and beautiful town for an interracial couple. Barring that, if she didn’t want to leave the city, there were several other excellent neighborhoods, including Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, and East Rogers Park, all places anchored by world class universities that gave haven to liberally minded folks. Wiley did his homework.

Eliot was emphatic. “Don’t ask me to explain it any more than I already have. It’s over.”

She swooped down on Truman White, marrying him with lightning speed in a historically important black Methodist church on the south side of Chicago less than five weeks later. Tru was an easy going, salt-of-the-earth, church-going black man who wanted nothing more radical than a steady job teaching high school and a few kids of his own. Eliot was the most extraordinary, beautiful, and talented woman he ever met and he adored her. They enjoyed a stable marriage and were the proud parents of three kids but after a lifetime sharing the same bed with Truman, it was still Wiley who came to Eliot in all of her most vivid sexual dreams.

She could live with that; in fact, it was exactly how she wanted it: Tru in her house and Wiley in her head.

“You’ll get over me,” she assured him but it wasn’t true. No matter how many other women agreed to marry him, the truth was the only woman Wiley really wanted at his side declined the offer.

He wished he’d been able to hate her for rejecting him but that was impossible: Fred Wiley knew he was still very much in love with Eliot Ness.

**

Wiley returned his thoughts to Carter. He wasn’t going to let Mack walk until he spoke to an ASA and he intended the ASA to be Eliot. He didn’t want to think too much about why his heart still skipped a beat or why he felt like a chump just thinking about her. He’d go with the fact she was the best ASA in the county and he was the best dick in the state and it was OK for him to run important issues past her. They had a long history turning his busts into successful prosecutions and if that was the only way he could have Eliot in his life he’d rather take it than leave it.

He never knew what she thought about their working relationship and he always hunted for the faintest glimmer of regret on her part, the merest suggestion that she still cared deeply but those hints and suggestions never came. Her only deliberate effort to maintain social contact with him outside of work was an odd faithfulness about sending an annual Christmas card, something she’d done every holiday since they broke up. She also always remembered to include whatever his wife’s name was at the time, a thoughtful gesture that both amused and puzzled him. He kept every single card, including all the pictures of her kids as they grew up over the years. Their names were branded into his memory: Kenny, Adele and Denise.

Pictures of Eliot and her husband Tru were never included.

**

Wiley looked at his watch; it was still too early to call Eliot. He almost always called her on her cell but tried to respect sensible business hours unless it was a dire emergency.

He didn’t consider Mack Carter a dire emergency. Be cool, he told himself; relax.

Wiley told Eggs to run out and bring back breakfast. Eggs groused that it was still snowing heavily.

“So what? You don’t eat in winter or something? Cops don’t fight crime in bad weather? You think I should starve ’cuz it’s snowing?”

Eggs wisely bit his tongue and grabbed his parka.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t care, just make sure it’s pancakes, three eggs, sausage, make it links, hash browns, Greek toast and get me a large OJ.”

He tossed Eggs a double saw-buck, adding “Ask that guy Carter if he’s hungry. Tell him I’m buying.”

He didn’t offer to buy anything for Eggs.

_____________________________________________________________________

Note from Maureen: I know it appears that I've been slackin' off all week since I haven't posted anything since last Monday. Truthfully, I've been on a mini-vacation... I didn't plan it though (if I had I would have told you) but it's sort of evolved like this: I've been waking up every morning lately and saying "screw it; I'm going to do nothing but chill today...."

Honestly, I think it began when I was hit with Maximum Blog Burnout because I'm less than happy with Google (as already noted). I'm thinking about moving my blog to Word Press but I'm just too lazy to bother with that now...

In any event, as I said, almost every day this week I woke and said "screw it..." but you know what? It feels pretty damn good so, obviously, it was time.

I've taken a few short road trips, tackled a few gardening projects, wrote a review about an art exhibit for my local paper, but mainly have been greatly absorbed in thoughts about March Storm, the sequel to January Moon. I'm not at an impasse and I don't have writer's block; I'm just letting the Muse speak and I'm trying to listen. March Storm is already written in my head and much is already typed and I love it; this is just a break in the action so that I can return to the mss fresh and ready to hit it out of the park!

Enjoy your Sunday!! 

Beats the hell out of ordinary sunbathing, doesn't it?



Another Sample Sunday

JANUARY MOON

Excerpt from Chapter Nine

There was nothing Tommy Lee Lattimore enjoyed more than masturbating while watching a woman on the toilet. Obviously, that wasn’t always easy to do. But his apartment met his needs nicely because its bathroom shared an inner wall with the bathroom in the apartment next door. The arrangement was all the more wonderful because his neighbor was a very pretty woman. He tried to make her acquaintance several times but she rebuffed his efforts. It didn’t matter; his peepholes made up for it.

Tommy Lee liked the routine he established for himself in Chicago. He found a job at a nearby video store and the perks were primo. He could take home all the pornography he wanted for free and sometimes he was able to steal microwave popcorn and Kit Kats. The apartment was actually far nicer than he could afford but he didn’t worry about money. His uncle Nelson covered most of his expenses so all Tommy Lee had to do was make a little pocket change and provide a nice place to stay for the occasional missionary his uncle’s church sent to Chicago. 

“It’s important that you have a job, son,” his uncle said. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

His uncle raised Tommy Lee since his lousy whore of a niece, Tommy Lee’s seventeen year old mother, dropped him off on Nelson on her way to Vegas twenty years earlier. The Reverend Nelson B. Wilbur was a widower and lived alone on 1600 acres in Montana just outside of Billings.

“You’re a man of God,” Roberta Ann said, “how come you can’t help us? It’ll just be ’til Ricky and me get on our feet in Vegas. Then we’ll come for the kid. And anyway, you ain’t got no kids and all this property is just perfect for little boys. He’ll even be able to help you some. Little kids can do a lot more than you think, you know.”

And so she deposited Tommy Lee on her uncle’s ranch and never returned.

Tommy Lee was only three and his uncle Nelson was still a relatively young man at thirty-six. Nelson actually became fond of the boy although it soon became obvious he was about as smart as a bag of hammers. Nelson never held it against him.

Nelson inherited his spread but never did any serious ranching. His passion was preaching and politics and in his mind they were one and the same. Like his daddy before him he studied at a Southern Baptist Bible College and returned to Montana to minister to the two hundred families between Otter Creek and Buffalo Falls which was halfway between Billings and Smokey Forge. Everyone in the area called him Pastor Nelson and whenever possible they attended his Arm of God Bible Church which was situated on the main road just north of his property. It was a pretty little church and its congregation and pastor were very determined to preserve its fundamentalist bent which, everyone fervently believed, was exactly why the Constitution of the United State was written.

Nelson gravitated to the wonders of the internet; he immediately understood it was the most powerful communication tool in history. It motivated him to sell off 1500 prime acres and his small herd of cattle to his nearest neighbor. Nelson invested his considerable profits wisely. He also purchased the most powerful computer available and signed a contract with a satellite company specializing in internet service to rural areas.

Like all libraries of learning, cyberspace provides a world of brilliant ideas and intellectual opportunities and the Reverend Nelson B. Wilbur proved he was no different from other mortals when he chose to narrowly seek out only those ideas most compatible with his own religious beliefs and world views. The internet expanded on and reinforced his already flawed thinking as he hopped from one fulminating right wing web site to another. In due time, he was as knowledgeable about white supremacist, neo-Nazi, skinhead, KKK, and other lunatic fringe hate groups as the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, and the F.B.I. combined.

The difference was, however, that Pastor Nelson didn’t want to monitor these groups to control or prosecute them. He wanted to study them and take from each the best of what he believed they had to offer. His intention was to remake those ideas into his own ideology, his own true faith.

The Arm of God Bible Church served the pastoral needs of the community but didn’t effectively speak to the wider political needs of the entire United States which Nelson, of course, believed he fully understood. He met significant resistance when he began to preach to his congregation that the Arm of God Bible Church was called by God to fight the battle that would return America to its white Christian roots during The End Times.

Merwyn Bermer at the feed store put it best when he said “Your sermons, Nelson, are, well I don’t know any other way to put it so I’ll just spit it out, kinda’ scary to some of the folks around here. All this talk about the New World Order, the Antichrist, and the need to overthrow the godless, socialist U.S. government is just too radical for church talk. Stuff like that don’t belong in the pulpit.”

Nelson also heard grumblings from others folks. Some started speaking up after Sunday service and others took him aside at the barber shop and grocery store. But when Howard J. Ridley, president and sole owner of the Otter Creek State Bank spoke to Nelson he knew he had to listen. Ridley was a right wing extremist himself and a man to reckon with and Ridley thought Nelson was “way over the top.”

“Nelson,” he said, “your sermons are sounding downright loony. You tone them down a bit, ya’ hear? You’re scaring the hell out of people.”

Ridley added, “Hell man, you’re going to get the damn government snoopin’ up our asses around here. You understand?”

Nelson understood and wisely chose to listen to the voices of his community. He returned to preaching simple Bible lessons and his friends and congregants relaxed and were grateful.

Bermer explained it this way: “A man’s entitled to get a little crazy so long as he don’t stay that way.”

The locals agreed and took satisfaction in knowing they were able to help Pastor Nelson get his head screwed on straight.

Nelson decided to express his virulent views under cover of the internet, in the infinite and unregulated world of cyberspace. He created an extension of the Arm of God Bible Church, a very special ministry called the Fist of God, or F.O.G. Right from the beginning, Nelson conceived of Fist of God as a sophisticated cyber church. He established a PayPal account to accept donations which he called “tithes.” He created F.O.G.’s website himself which was crude but effective; it contained 287 pages of his own writings, most of which were convoluted screeds against blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Moslems, Catholics (especially Jesuits), immigrants of all kinds, labor unions, liberalism, feminism, socialism, occultism, homosexuality, abortion, as well as the U.N., Illuminati, Masons, Rockefellers, Bilderberg Group, and the Mark of the Beast. He had a particular hair up his ass for Jim Harte and his American Jerusalem All Faith Church whom he pegged as a False Prophet, the Antichrist, and the leader of a group of intergalactic travelers called the Sons of Zod.

Nelson wasn’t sure what to expect but after F.O.G. received $25,000 in tithes in its first three weeks he realized he hit a nerve deep inside America. Naturally, he understood it to mean only one thing: that God had chosen him to save America from itself.

One of the first true believers to accept Nelson’s call to action to save America was Anders Matheson, a twenty-six year old ex-Army sharpshooter. Anders was raised by parents who were proud and active members of a white supremacist hate group known as the American Christian Resistance Effort or ACRE. ACRE was a hybrid combination of the KKK and the White Aryan Resistance, or WAR as it was called, but it was too tame for Matheson. Anders was fed up with talk; he wanted to belong to a group that understood actions speak louder than words. F.O.G. seemed to meet that need.

When Anders arrived at Tommy Lee Lattimore’s 2^nd floor apartment in Wrigleyville just before midnight that miserably cold night in mid-December he didn’t need to say “Your uncle sent me” or anything else. Anders wasn’t the first F.O.G. missionary Tommy Lee’s Uncle Nelson sent to Chicago and he knew the drill.

Providing a place to stay for his uncle’s missionaries was the main reason Tommy Lee was in Chicago but if he could have a little fun while doing it, Tommy Lee didn’t mind.

Facebook: My View from the Edge

I was on Facebook several years and, to be honest, I didn’t like it. OK, maybe I didn’t “get it” and that was the problem but I really thought it was lame. Well, it was lame – at least for me and I understand that now. For the other people it was wonderful and a lot of fun and also obviously speaking to whatever their needs were at the time but for me it wasn’t a good fit.

See, they were into things I had no interest in, stuff that left me cold, things that did not speak to my heart.

There was nothing inherently wrong or even weird about what those folks were doing on Facebook; for the most part they were playing games and yakking it up about their families and friends and what they planned for the weekend. It was harmless and pleasant but it just wasn’t me (not that I’m not harmless and pleasant exactly; hmmm…. maybe I should rephrase that… oh the hell with it, this is a blog, not my literary opus -- deal with it). 

Ah! Nothin' like a big meaty bone!



I was talked into trying Facebook again about ten months ago and rather grudgingly I did, but this time I went in with an entirely different attitude. I was looking for meat. Stuff I could sink my teeth into, bones I could suck the marrow out of, grizzle I could masticate to death. In short: substance, not fluff.

I wasn’t particularly looking for friends, new or long-lost, and I wasn’t particularly looking for acquaintances. I really wanted to use Facebook to help me follow the news -- track and monitor the great political divide in this country. Oh, I could find the news by myself; that wasn’t my problem.  I wanted to follow opinions about the news and possibly share in those discussions.

I’ve never bought what the right wing conservatives in the country are selling so it was a natural fit for me to align with groups and individuals sharing news links and opinions from a liberal left perspective. They’re not always 100% on the money but at least they don’t give me hives. The other side does.

What is it about some people that gives me the hives?

I need to watch the right wing, of course, because it’s what they’re doing that I think warrants watching but reading about it through the filter of left leaning analyses buffers it for me. I still get infuriated but the sense that I’m not alone mitigates against my despair.

Then I branched out and began to meet other writers, both of fiction and not, and also made a deliberate attempt to find people I could admire and learn from and this opened up even more doors. Before I’d friend request someone or accept their request I’d study their Info page on Facebook and/or their Wall and if we weren’t somehow compatible I’d move on. This could be a little problematic in cases where people block this information from people who aren’t yet their friends but I’d then consider who their other friends were; if we shared many in common I felt our relationship would work.

Today I really believe that I’ve found 1000 of the most absolutely fantastic human beings in the world on Facebook. How can you be friends with over 1000 people? I know it sounds absurd but you know what? You can. We all don’t communicate all the time about everything and some of us are far more connected than others but I have to tell you as a group I think those 1000-plus people could move mountains.

I know they’ve often moved me in the most unimaginable ways.

Facebook represents many things about where I am in life right now. For example, I’m not a gamer – in all the ways that is meant. I’ve never been a big game board or card player. I like chess but haven’t played it in years and given the chance to play it again I’d rather just sit and talk to my chess opponent.  If talk is not an option, then just give me a book or magazine.

See what I mean?

If you want to discuss politics I’m all in – but I don’t want to listen to the politics of hate and fear. Then I’m out. If you want to talk about your family and I already like you (because we don’t play games and we share a similar world view), then I’m all in. But you have to get to that point with me because I want reciprocity and if I don’t like you then there’s not much I’m going to share with you about my personal life and family (read that as: I will share nothing at all).

I don’t think I need to say I’m into kink or bungee jumping and I’m not looking for anyone to save me for the Lord on Facebook (and I resent anyone who tries).

I know that it’s absolutely mandatory that authors create a sophisticated social networking world; I’ve heard the mantra and I know how it works and when I waded into the Facebook waters this was certainly on my mind but it wasn’t at the top of my mind and that’s the truth. I thought that some day it could very well be a tool to promote myself as an author and my books but I wanted to become familiar with Facebook first and I definitely wanted a different way to collect and filter news and possibly connect with some like-minded people.

Let me explain something about my new life as a fiction writer. Writing fiction is very new to me. I mean really, really new – at least as an adult. I’ve been dreaming up stories since I could just about walk and that’s no joke… well, more truthfully, I was spinning tales before I could write them down but it worked out because I had the luxury of owning my very own scribe. His name was Roo and he was a man of color (ratty brown furry color to be exact – the kind that would cover the body of a stuffed kangaroo).



My Roo!



Family lore records I was about 2.5 years old when I started dictating my stories to Roo. My father was an attorney and my mother a legal secretary and sometimes she’d step in and help him (as when his secretary was on vacation). I was fascinated with my mother’s ability to take shorthand as she listened to my father. I mimicked this and began dictating to my beloved Roo. The thing was, as my astonished folks soon realized, I really was dictating a story, not just kiddy gibberish. My mother captured some of those stories but sadly they are now lost to me; I have no idea where they ended up although I know she kept them on a steno pad for years and years. She kept this pad with many of the things she cherished under the table pads in the 2^nd drawer of the dining room buffet (makes sense, right?). Roo is also no more. He fell apart in the washing machine (I still mourn his loss). 

Does this professor look like a guy who would appreciate
a good yarn? Not likely.
If you think so, just try explaining
how the boys at the frat party ate your thesis.



Life took me on various other trajectories and I ended up (among other things) as a historian. As you may well guess, one does not boast about an ability to draft good fiction while simultaneously trying to earn bona fides as a credible historian. At least this is how it was at the university I attended. The History Department at my alma mater frowns on flights of fancy and other inventions and I’m sure you can appreciate why (unless of course you’re Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck but let’s not go there now…).





(This man is NOT a historian.)

But I digress... so, anyway, yesterday an aspiring young author contacted me and asked how I used Facebook to promote myself as an author. The truth is, my friend, I don’t.

But what I think I’ve done – what I hope I’ve done – is promote myself as a person.

I look serious here don't I?

Maybe even find myself as a person.

I have not been able to separate myself as the historian and political commentarian (is that a word?) from the newer persona of the author of January Moon, the first book in the Del Carter Calendar Series. Many people would advise me that this is a mistake.

It may well be – for them; I think it’s not a mistake for me.

I know I could create a writer’s reader fan page on Facebook and I did begin to create a page for January Moon but haven’t completed it. My heart’s just not there; it’s really not. I don’t want to talk about my writing all the time or even my beloved books and I know that’s a problem, especially for an indie who needs to constantly hustle and promote.

How can I explain this? Sure, I use my Facebook Wall to promote this blog and other articles I write elsewhere (such as The Pragmatic Progressive Forum & Opednews) and I also discuss January Moon and my reviews and my upcoming books as well. The fact is, however, I love discussing history and politics and I love following the news and it’s very important for me to watch trends and try to understand the many conflicting currents that dance over the American landscape.

I think that will always be how I use Facebook and doing so is necessary for me as a writer of fiction because my fiction is heavily embedded with observations and critiques about the many hot-button issues permeating society. In January Moon I wrote about FGM and domestic terrorism, cults and religious extremism, racism and madness, as well as families and love and loss. In March Storm I’m carrying over many of those themes and also wandering into areas about animal abuse, human trafficking, gay rights, and even Mother Nature and climate change.

When I send out a request to my Facebook friends to keep their eyes open for news about dog fighting or sex trafficking or gay bashing or even alpaca farming, I will receive fantastic news items from all over the country, even the world, in hours.

In that way my Facebook friends contribute to my writing in a remarkable way and invest their time in my efforts and become a part of the process. I’ve been floating some cover designs for March Storm on my Facebook page and that’s been fun and created some helpful feedback. I cherish this connection and I suspect many of them do as well.

But the fiction is a sidebar to the larger picture which, and I think we’re getting back to that young author’s question, is all about defining me as a person and the joys of building relationships with others. There is absolutely no way I could interact with so many people on a daily basis were it not for Facebook. I find this amazing and I love it.

I can’t advise another writer how to mine the depths of social networking to help sell books but I’d like to suggest it’s possible to use social networking to help define yourself as a person.

BTW: This picture was taken August '09 and that's Trooper at 10.5 weeks. It's a lousy pic of both of us but it will have to do... it's the only one we took that day. I always take lousy pictures so for me this was nothing new but Trooper was gorgeous! He was naturally photogenic and liked to pose. Trooper came and had to leave so that Shadow could come and I could write about Wolf. Their story is at the top of this blog, titled "Trooper, Shadow & Wolf."

Take care.