Homestretch

I began my UK submissions today, two newspapers. If there's no response, I'll try two more.

And then, that's that. This blog is fun, but its primary purpose is to follow my attempts to publication, and to provide writing samples to potential but wary agents.

We'll have fun, moving forward to either a final post, or an open door.

- PJ

Limbo, or just living?

I’m thinking about my next submissions, which will be to UK newspapers, after the Olympics are over. I’m thinking about leaving for France, on 18 Sept. I’m thinking how I enjoy writing, and that this will probably go nowhere.

Outside, shadows stretch over my little Tuscany, on the hill that separates the San Fernando Valley from the LA Basin. 

- PJ

???

 It’s been hot. Before noon, today, it was already 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Someone told me the forecast called for 109 degrees today, and 110 tomorrow.

How do the homeless manage? How’s that elderly man, the one I pass most mornings, as I drive around a corner? His life seems to be contained in a shopping cart, and in his gaze, which meets mine, now and then. Walking past him last Sunday, still glowing from my cousin’s birthday party the day before, I heard, “Hey, man! What th’ fuck you think you doin’!?” A homeless kid was confronting the man. His eyes locked with mine, for a split second. Then, he kicked the man in the chest, then, twice in the abdomen, six feet or so, from me and my grocery bags. The man was bent over. The kid was fast, and dangerous. Then, I heard what sounded like the man’s shopping cart being pushed over, glass shattering. I had no cell phone with me, but I saw a lady across the street, on hers, seeming to report the incident.

The homeless are my first thought, when it’s hot, cold, rainy, and when I contribute. I watch for that man, on the corner, but I haven’t seen him, since Sunday. 

- PJ

Happy Birthday, cousin

One story that prompted me to put Half Italian into writing was the homemade electric chair. My cousin, whose dad made the homemade electric chair, celebrated her seventieth birthday, yesterday. He’s gone, but she continues to sparkle.

Wouldn’t have missed her party for anything! 

- PJ