I’d heard of them long before I saw one in the wild. Rare, elusive, they were things of power and legend. Sure, I saw them in movies, but I knew those were fakes; we all did.
The C-note. The Benjamin. One hundred smackeroos.
I was nine years old when I saw my first one.
We were at Tiburon Tommie’s, the Chinese restaurant of my youth, a place where the drinks menu was long and fixed, and the food menu was short and subject to change. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture, Writing | Tagged creative writing, currency, family, nostalgia, one hundred dollar bill | Leave a Comment »
Two weeks ago, I tried an experiment.
As some of you know, in addition to this blog I have a Facebook page for my writing, which feeds through to my Twitter account. (I don’t like Twitter, but I’m not convinced it’s useless.) Posts here also go to my LinkedIn profile, to Google+, and to Tumblr.
I don’t have too many readers here—hundreds, but not thousands—and membership on my Facebook page is . . . modest, if you catch my drift . . . but I figured that this situation was the perfect foundation for a small experiment.
In short, I ran an ad. Continue Reading »
Posted in Writing | Tagged boosting posts, creative writing, Facebook, indie authors, marketing, self-publishing | Leave a Comment »
Hallowe’en.
As stated, I’m not a fan.
Not that I’ve never participated. In decades past, I’ve donned costumes and showed up as Jacob Marley, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Max Klinger, but in general, the Hallowe’en festival leaves me annoyed and out of sorts. There’s little an introvert like me enjoys less than having to sit around on tenterhooks, waiting, while strange children continually pound on the door, begging for candy and costume appreciation, while their parents provide overwatch from the shadows.
Forced social interaction with a built-in judgment factor.
O Joy Unbounded. O Rapture Unexampled. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture | Tagged halloween, introverts, Seattle | 5 Comments »
The sheer number of women I know who have posted #MeToo is agonizing. Not intellectually. I’ve read the statistics know that, depending on the study, anywhere from 75% (EEOC) to 90% (Harvard) of women have suffered sexual harassment, or worse. I’ve heard many stories, too, from my wife, my sisters, my friends, so I know that it happens. A lot.
But until my newsfeed was filled with #MeToo posts, until so many of the women I know opened up and gave witness to their harassment, abuse, and assaults, I don’t think I truly felt it.
I do now. I sure as hell feel it now. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture | Tagged #MeToo, feminism, male attitudes, sexual assault, sexual harassment | 2 Comments »
Going back over early notes for this novel, I realized that this project has been rattling around in my head for over a decade.
The first outline I wrote up has a note on the top: Tabled Jan 2004.
Initially, this was very depressing. Continue Reading »
Posted in Writing | Tagged building believable characters, creative writing, indie authors, novel writing | 2 Comments »
I walk through the gloaming, the sky above me reddening toward night, through shade made deeper by dark, shaggy cedars and pale clad lindens shaking in the gentle breeze. It is a new place for me, but it is an ancient place, a storied place that still bears its ancient name:
Leyktud
Red Paint
The water of the spring seeps up from the ground, the source now collared by a ring of stone. Within the ring, the water is clear, but beneath the surface the stones are clad in the ochre velvet of accreted minerals. As the water gathers and flows quietly out the carved channel, the minerals oxidize, rusting, and paint the ground with a spill of red clay. The alluvial mud is slick to the touch, watery. For millennia, the People of the Inside and the People of the Large Lake came here to collect the wet, red earth, mix it with tallow, and make a bright, orange-red paint suitable for ceremonies and markings.
The springwater trickles down the slope to join the creek that used to run down to Green Lake but which now, sadly, has been capped and diverted to a less salubrious destination. But for a short distance, as I walk the paths beneath the trees, it is still wild (in its gentle way) and free.
I imagine it how it was, not so long ago, before the arrival of the Bostons (as the European-bred settlers were known). I can see thick-boled conifers, dark cathedral columns rising from the earth’s heart to hold up the red, sunset sky. Salal leaves, rough and leathery, grab at my shins, urging me to partake of their sweet, blue fruit. The breeze, wending its way past branch and fern, might taste of woodsmoke from a nearby camp. Frogs chorus in such numbers that, were I with a companion, we would not be able to hear each other speak.
But we would not speak, for this is a place where words are unnecessary, where the thoughts of men are unneeded, and where our hand only diminishes what already is. As the sun sets and the birds of daylight sing their last, I know I have found an immortal place.
This is Licton Spring.
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Posted in Seattle, Writing | Tagged Duwamish, Green Lake, Licton Spring, Seattle, Seattle history, Shilshole | 2 Comments »
Fish or cut bait. Poop or get off the pot. Split wood or lend someone the axe.
During the run-up to a novel project, there comes a time when I must put down the books and pick up the pen. My problem, though, has usually been knowing when I’ve reached that point, that moment of sufficiency when, though I certainly don’t know everything about the pertinent subjects, I know enough to get started.
Now is that time. Continue Reading »
Posted in Seattle, Writing | Tagged creative writing, novel writing, Seattle history, writing research | 4 Comments »
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 