THE TWO CHRISTMAS EVE BABIES
byIt was Christmas Eve—early afternoon, at least, on the day before Christmas. Morton Memorial Hospital was busy, but the staff was in a collectively…
fiction
THE LUCK OF THE DRAW, AND THE NIGHT TRAIN EXPRESS
byRecently a photograph slipped from the dusty dust jacket of a book that I hadn’t opened in years. It was a sepia-toned shot of…
CIRCUIT BREAKERS AND THE CHATEAU MARMONT
bySometimes writers worry that we’re losing our creative mojo, abandoned by our best friend: the power of imagination. It all starts with dreams…or doesn’t….
NIGHT TRAIN EXPRESS
bySpring, 1989. Jack Harrington—actor, Vietnam veteran, business associate of Los Angeles underworld figures–finds himself in a precarious position: at least two people are trying…
STORY TIME, AND THE GHOST OF JOHANN BRILL
byWhen I was small I used to go for walks with my father. My favorite destination was the old J.G. Brill Company factory adjacent…
FRIENDLY GHOSTS, AND THE EDGE OF FOREVER
byWhile looking through some old boxes in a storage locker recently I found a short story I wrote when I was nineteen: “Friendly Ghosts,…
SATAN’S LAGOON
by“Satan’s Lagoon” was the prologue that opened earlier versions of WILDWOOD. The novel ultimately took another direction, but a detour back to The Lagoon…
RANCID
byThe published version of THE BLUE ROUTE opens with an attempted hit and run in Los Angeles. Earlier drafts of the novel, however, began…
THE LONELY COOL BEFORE DAWN
by‘The lonely cool before dawn’ is of course a great, evocative line from one of the best songs ever written: Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”. It’s…
NIGHT TRAIN EXPRESS
byThe unmarked Air America cargo plane descended from cloud cover like an ungainly bird of prey, a seventy-five foot long silver Frisbee skimming the…