Its name taken before the draining of the fens, Ely offers a wonderful day of exploration.
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England Part I – London
The first of four installments from our recent visit to the U.K.
261 Extracted Words – The Tease – July 2017
July 2017
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a work in progress.
“Will I see you later?”
“I’ll be around.”
He followed her out the door and then watched through rose-colored sclera as her Tucson rolled down the steep asphalt driveway, dotted with pinecones and needles, to the canyon road below. He could hear her SUV accelerate as she rapidly attained highway speed and was gone.
He scratched the emerging stubble on his neck before sitting down on the front steps with his coffee cup. The mug had acquired a crack across the handle he hadn’t noticed before. He set his coffee on the wooden porch and leaned back, cradling his throbbing head in his palms. His gut, empty and jittery, gurgled in protest over the last remnants of tequila and salsa from the night before. He yawned and stretched, popping the cartilage in his elbows. The vibration from his shifting rump created concentric circles in his drink, like the rings on a stump that reveal its years. He felt as if his rings were amassing at an accelerated rate. Another year, another bevy of conquests. Another ring.
Trees retained scars in their rings. Fire, disease, infestation. His rings no longer displayed scars. His impassivity deflected such penetrating injuries.
He thought about the waitress, the one with the octopus tattoo, the one that had chided him about his car. He wondered if that was what he sacrificed, or even more deflating, who he sacrificed, by bagging a plenitude of Tucson-types over the years. Is that what maturing amounted to, finally seeking a meaningful relationship over a bottomless cistern of vapid encounters? Or did aging simply equate to regret toward the choices he had made?
Spokane River – 9 Mile to 7 Mile
July along the Spokane River.
234 Extracted Words – The Tease – June 2017
June 2017
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is a first for the feature. Someone close to me asked for assistance in creating her own blog. This inspired me to revisit my first post. An excerpt follows.
Blogging is like being in prison, although the stakes are much lower. If you make a mistake in prison, you get stabbed or set on fire. Erroneous blogging, if you’re lucky, will only lead to scoffing from lonely cubicles, by credit union interns surfing the web instead of inputting data. They won’t even share your idiocy with co-workers, lest they forfeit their stipend.
I suppose the biggest risk in exposing your electric underwear is hacking off another blogger … the biggest, baddest blogger. We’ll call him Mack (there’s a Mack in every prison movie ever made). If you hack Mack off, he has the perfect platform from which to blast you, his own blog. Say he happens to be very fond of Dalmatians (that alone is creepy). Being the dingo lover I am, I post my opinion that Dalmatians are overrated, the blogosphere equivalent of dropping the soap. Next thing I know, Mack and his gang are blasting me on links and feeds from New Jersey to Antarctica. The AKC arranges a tea party on my front lawn, only instead of bringing teabags and Sarah Palin, they tote pitchforks and choke collars.
168 Extracted Words – The Tease – May 2017
May 2017
I write flash fiction, non-fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from a work in progress.
So they were scum. That didn’t mean they weren’t doing something good. 
“Now, we requested a picture from each of our honorees, something showing what the marshes mean to them. What we didn’t tell them was … those pictures will be used as background for the informational kiosk at the entrance to the main trailhead. We have brought enlargements of the three pictures on stage here tonight.” She again utilizes her thin hands, directing the gathered eyes toward the edge of the stage where three easels stand, covered with canvases that might once have belonged to a dry walling firm, large white blotches, like vitiligo, blanching their forms. As she introduces the first honoree, the tainted canvas is pulled from her picture, revealing a moose with water and camas dropping from its jowls. The dark brown mass of fur is a blunted cigarette burn against the early morning sunrise igniting marsh mist and arrow pines. The crowd acknowledges the exemplary effort.
As she steps to the microphone, he straightens his beard with his hand and shouts, “Bravo!”
Saltese Uplands
Some snaps from the Saltese Uplands, where color and contrast seem to change by the minute.
