dave o'leary - author

I'm a writer and musician living in Seattle. My second novel, The Music Book, was published by Booktrope Editions in the fall of 2014. I've also had a short story, Condoms on Christmas, published in the Monarch Review and an essay, I Was a Mean Boy, on Slate.com. My first novel, Horse Bite (Infinitum), was published in 2011. The Music Book can be found in Seattle-area Barnes & Noble stores and all the usual online outlets. I also write about music for Northwest Music Scene When not writing or playing music, I'm apt to be found at The George and Dragon pub cheering for Arsenal, Swansea, and the Seahawks or at home on the sofa cheering for Tyrion, Arya, and the dragons. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-32906585-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); .gr_container { font-family:arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; width: 250px; } .gr_book_container { border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7; padding: 5px 0px; } .gr_book_image { float: left; padding-right: 20px; } .gr_book_title {} .gr_review_stats {} Dave O'Leary's books on Goodreads Horse Bite reviews: 6 ratings: 13 (avg rating 3.69) The Music Book reviews: 3 ratings: 6 (avg rating 4.67)

[daveolearyauthor]

Writing about Writing

My favorite passages in literature that speak to what it means to write, what it means to attempt to create this thing called a story.

No 10: 51 Sentences, Elephant, Graham Swift

No. 9: Melancholy, Evening Street, Kindred Minds, James Joyce

No. 8: Memory, Fiction, Remember, Haruki Murakami

No. 7: Atonement, Imaginary beings, Come back, Ian McEwan

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No. 7: Atonement, Imaginary beings, Come back

It's something I've tried to capture in my books, the idea of what writing means to the writer, the struggle, the joy, the doubt inherent in the process, and so this week's entry, number seven in my top ten, comes from Ian McEwan's Atonement, a book which I only recently discovered. It was through the movie, actually. I enjoyed the film, so naturally I wanted to check out the book, and well, as always, the book was far better. It's such a beautifully written piece of literature that I'm amazed it was only shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001. It lost to Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang, which is now on my list of must reads as I have to read the book that beat Atonement. I have to find what majesty it contains. Or I might be setting myself up for disappointment. I read Atonement first. It already has a place in my heart, and besides, the winner of such awards is not always the better work.

But back to Atonement.

Here's the passage I want to reference.

"Once she has begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self-exposure was inevitable the moment she described a character's weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have? Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in this one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune."

So true, so true. I've shown unfinished drafts of my books to people, and it never works because they can't see the conclusion, the resolution, the happiness or sadness of it all. They can't see where it ends up so they inevitably get confused about where it's going or even if it's going anywhere at all. And there's also the bit about wondering how much of the writer is in the work. Admittedly, the main characters in both of my books and the published short stories are drawn heavily from me. That's where I started in writing, in my blog and in the music writing, it was me, my perspective. But my next book will be different. There will be multiple perspectives, both male and female. I'll be stepping into the third person and thus into "the emotions of an imaginary being." It does feel a little weird at times, feels like I'm a kid again and pretending, playing with my toys and creating imaginary worlds and events and relationships. When I was a kid, the events of such pretending always revolved around sports or battles or monsters, specifically King Kong or Godzilla. I didn't know anything else. In my adult life, it's love, the passion for another human being that drives us to joy, to happiness, madness, despair. What else is there really in life than to try to win and keep the heart of another?

There are plenty of things to do along the way, of course, but in the end, that's what it all comes down to, that's where all effort leads, the pursuit of love and dealing with its absence or loss. Atonement is the same. I won't ruin the ending for you, but I will end with another quote from the book.

"Their love. Neither Briony nor the war had destroyed it. This was what soothed her as she sank deeper under the city. How Cecelia had drawn him to her with her eyes. That tenderness in her voice when she called him back from his memories, from Dunkirk, or from the roads that led to it…Come back."

And that's what all of us want. Those two words, another calling to us from afar, beckoning for a moment, for a lifetime: Come back.

[daveolearyauthor]

In honor or record store day, my old 45s:

I was cleaning up the man cave last night in an effort to finally get my things organized, but it was a slow process. It always is. Rather than pulling things from boxes and putting them where they should be, I looked through things, paused with each...

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Top 10 Passages: Number 8, Memory, Fiction, Remember

After a brief hiatus, we’re back for number eight in my series about my favorite passages in literature that speak to what it means to write and play at creating this thing called a novel. Today, I give you Haruki Murakami from a short story in The Elephant Vanishes. The story is "The Last Lawn of the Afternoon," and the main character is remembering the events of a summer in his past.

8. "Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. This really came home to me once I started writing fiction...no matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn't even there anymore. You're left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with life, hopelessly unstable."

That's how I often feel, especially when writing in a semi-autobiographical manner as both The Music Book and Horse Bite have been. Some things I've written about have been pretty close to the actual mark. Others have only been inspired by some event or detail. The thing is that when writing there is the first draft, the initial moment of getting something down and making the deliberate decision to change a few things, or a lot of things, and it's in that moment when the doubts might first creep in. How did that happen? What did I say?

But then I get on with writing about those changed details, thinking about them, tweaking them to make them better fit. And there's editing and more editing and reworking bits and rewriting others so that when the manuscript is done those changed bits are the ones that seem real, are the ones that come to mind when trying to remember the original event. And it's because the changes added something. They've rounded out the shape and given meaning to what was just an event in my life or a moment that stuck in my memory. The written version is bigger. It becomes what everyone knows, what everyone reads, what everyone, sometimes even the writer, remembers.

[daveolearyauthor]

My History of Football: Nose, Crotch, Touchdown, Black Sabbath, Seahawks

1. What I remember of my first experience in organized football was in third grade. My dad was one of the assistant coaches for our team, the Jets, and after our very first practice, my dad and the other coaches wanted to stay for a bit to talk about the players so he gave me one of the footballs and told me to throw it around with Greg. Greg was a friend who lived on our street, and we were giving him a ride home. He was a little guy, almost too little for football, but he was quick and aggressive, had a sharp instinct for where the ball would be so he would later earn himself the nickname of Mean Greg Green after Joe Green of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As the coaches talked, Greg and I threw the ball around. He had good hands and caught just about everything I threw to him. Not so much the case for me. I was a little big for my grade and not too quick or graceful, but I didn't quite know that yet. After I dropped a few passes from Greg, I got the bright idea to kick one if it was thrown low, and sure enough, the next one was. I should have just let it bounce. Or I could have dived for it. But no, I had to try to kick it.

I remember the ball sinking toward the green grass. My cleats were white. The sun was setting. There were the sounds of other kids throwing footballs while their coaches talked. I stepped in toward the ball thinking I would kick it a mile, thinking that maybe kicking was my thing. If I couldn't play tight end and catch some touchdowns, maybe I could kick field goals and score points that way, save games in the last seconds with nicely placed sixty-three yarders like Tom Dempsey had done for the New Orleans Saints to set the NFL record. As the ball got to me, I stepped forward. I planted my left foot and swung my right toward the ball. I made contact. And then I fell down.

"OUCH!"

The ball did travel, but only a few feet, and not forward. It instead went off the top of my foot and right to my face, specifically my nose. I was on the ground with my hands to my face. Greg came running. My dad and all the coaches had seen it. They came running too. "Are you okay, David?" my dad asked.

"Yeah." I sat up. My nose hurt, but I was mostly embarrassed.

"Don't try that again."

I never did try that again, but as all of the coaches saw my astounding display of grace, that might have been the moment when they decided my position. I was not to be a tight end or a kicker. I was to be a center. The only time I was to touch the ball was when I'd hand it between my legs to another kid who'd stuck his hands in my crotch.

2. I did score one touchdown in my football career though. In sixth grade, I was playing on a team called the Bears, and we were awful. I was the center, of course, and mid-season we had no wins so the coach got the bright idea to make a switch. Quarterback to center, center to quarterback. I have no idea why he did that. It would have made more sense to switch a running back to the QB position, or maybe the kicker. Perhaps it was a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. I don't know. All I knew was that for the last three games of the season, I would be QB.

I still wasn't very graceful, but I could place my hands in the crotch of the former quarterback and tack a snap and hand it to the running back. I had an okay arm too after a few years of playing an outfielder in baseball so I could make a decent pass from time to time. And I did those things. There were some completions. Our teams scored some points, but we still lost the first two games in which I was at the helm. We weren't any better than we had been, and one might think that the coach would have reconsidered, would have gone back to the original way of things, but he didn't. There was one more game, one more chance for a win. And he stuck with me.

And in the fourth quarter of that last game, we were driving. There were some sweeps and some runs off tackle. I made one pass completion to the tight end in the middle of the field. He ran for a first down. I threw a screen pass to the running back. He ran for a first down. And we got the ball all the way down to the one yard line. Time was running out. We needed to score. Our coach sent in the play, a quarterback sneak. I got everyone to the line quickly because I didn't want him to rethink it and call something else. And I didn't want the other team to call timeout and give the coach time to reconsider. We got to the line. I put my hands in the crotch of the former quarterback.

"Down. Set. Hut. Hut."

The snap came. I grabbed it and pushed forward. The running backs came and pushed me from behind. The former quarterback bulldozed the nose guard, and the line surged, and then there I was on the ground in the end zone. Our team had done it. We'd put together a great fourth-quarter drive, and I'd scored the touchdown. I got up and jumped up and down, threw my hands in the air. To say it felt good would be understatement. If I'd been aware of such gestures at the time, I would have done a Marshawn Lynch and grabs my balls while diving to the ground again. Instead, I just looked up at the scoreboard.

28 - 6.

We were losing, of course. But I'd finally scored.

3. After that season was when I got bit by the guitar bug, and later the writing bug. My interest in sports waned a little and then a lot. I no linger had the drive to play. I'd been a good center, you see. I could block well and eventually learned how to better control the movements of my body. I'd liked being center in a way because it all started with me. I was happy to play quarterback for those three games, of course, but in the following years I went back to center and then to over to defense, to linebacker, but I no longer had the necessary drive. I no longer really wanted it. My mother saw it first, and as was her way, she realized before I did.

"You're too nice," she once told me. "You're not aggressive out there like you used to be."

She was right. During football practices, I'd have music on my mind. I'd be there on the sidelines talking with a friend. He played guitar too. And he was very good at it. He'd say, "What's this? Dah, dah, dah, daaaah. Dah. Dah. Dah, dah dah dahdahdah dah."

"That's easy, 'Heaven and Hell.' " We were both Black Sabbath fans.

"Okay. How about this. Na nananah nananana nah, Na nananah nananana nah, Na nananah nananana nah, NAH na na na na."

" 'Mob Rules.' "

And then he'd go in for some practice reps as he was a starting linebacker, and I'd stay there on the sidelines thinking about Black Sabbath. On my walks home, I might think about J.R.R. Tolkien. I didn't think about touchdowns anymore. Perhaps, I should have quit, but I didn't. I kept on playing through the end of high school. I remember my older sister came to watch my high school team play our rival. We won, but it was a close game so I didn't get on the field at all. Afterward my family went out for dinner, and she said, "Dave, I came to see play, but you never got in the game."

All I could do was shrug my shoulders, "Yeah, sorry." The conversation went on a little about football, about how nice I was, about how I played guitar all the time and wasn't really focused on football as much as I once was. And then my sister gave me what was probably the best advice anyone has ever given me.

"You should start a band."

4. I pretty much got away from football after high school. I started bands. I finished college and moved to different cities. I spent a few years in Korea where I caught the occasional game on the U.S. Armed Forces Korea Network, but it was without interest. I'd watch a quarter or two and then turn it off and go on about other things. I came back to Seattle in 2007 and continued in very much the same way, even went a few years with no TV service at all. I didn't miss it either. I actually thought I was done with it. I was just going to write and play music and watch a few DVDs late at night, but I was done with television and shows and sports programs.

But then I wound up at the George and Dragon on a Monday night in 2013. The Seahawks were on the TV playing the St. Louis Rams in a terrible game, a game the Seahawks probably should have lost, but they managed to eek out a 14 - 9 win. Richard Sherman was interviewed afterward and said something like, "Sometimes you win big, and sometimes you win ugly." And for some reason that snapped something in me. I remembered my one touchdown. I remembered Mean Greg Green and the ball to my nose. I remembered my high school years of being on the team but not really playing as I thought about music and writing and the life I would have after football and high school.

I'd thought for years that I was done with football, but that wasn't it. I just needed to rediscover it as a fan. And on that day, with a Blue Moon in hand, I became a fan of the Seattle Seahawks, and like I said, it was a terrible game. It was a game that gave absolutely no hints of the greatness to come for them: A Super Bowl win last year. Another trip to the Super Bowl this year. It was just a Monday night ugly win, but it was a win. And it reminded me that even though I'll never score another touchdown, even though I'll never put my hands into the crotch of another guy, I do like football. It's just that these days I like it while drinking beer and high-fiving others who are doing the same when the Seahawks score. My football blood, just like my favorite beer, runs blue.

Go Hawks!

[daveolearyauthor]

Top 10 Passages: Number 9, Melancholy, Evening Street, Kindred Minds

For number nine in my series of passages in literature that have affected me, that have stuck with me through the years, I give you James Joyce from a short story in Dubliners. The story is "A Little Cloud," and the main character is thinking about his desire to write, to capture in verse something that wells up inside him. 9. "There were so many different moods and impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simply joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd but he might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds."

Perhaps every writer has felt the way at some point before they truly started writing. I know I did. I remember in ninth grade walking home from school one day. I walked past Evening Street Elementary School (for those of you who might know) and down Evening Street where I took a left on Highgate and then followed that all the way down to Masefield and home. For the duration of the walk, I had Tolkien in my brain, and I just kept thinking how awesome it would be to write for a living, to live on creativity and the telling of stories, to write something that lasted beyond my years. I felt I had all that within me, and even though I had not yet read any Joyce, I thought in terms of the exact same phrase, the melancholy temperament. I just needed to get it down. When I read Dubliners just after college, that walk in ninth grade, forgotten for many years, came back to me, and I've been left to wonder ever since if I would never have remembered that walk without the book, without that passage and that melancholy temperament, the idea to capture it all in verse. It goes the other way too. If I hadn't had that walk, if I hadn't been so struck on that particular day by the idea of writing that I thought of nothing else the whole way home, would the Joyce passage have meant anything to me? Would I have thought it nice but then moved on to other things, to other non-writing things? I suppose it's impossible to know, but it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that eventually I did write. I've had a few things published, and there are more on the way. I haven't written a best seller, but I've sold a few books. I've received emails from people I know and people I don't know saying how much they loved the books, the stories, the writing. People have quoted phrases from my books to me, have told me how much it's meant to them, have thanked me for the effort. So it's true so far. Just like the Joyce passage, I am not popular, but I have appealed to a little circle of kindred minds.

[daveolearyauthor]

It's a Rough Life.

Thursday night, I opened Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and leaned back on the sofa to read. "Ouch! Baby, the pillow just poked me." It was a feather-stuffed pillow, and sometimes the feather tips stuck out a little. And they're pointy little buggers. Allison smiled, but didn't look up from her laptop. "Careful over there." It was a common complaint of mine, this thing about the pillows.

After reading a few pages, I got up to make a cup of coffee. I fished a K-cup from the pantry and placed it in the Keurig, hit the brew button for the large size. The machine gurgled and hissed a little. The liquid started dripping. It smelled great. Sometimes the smell of brewing coffee is simply the best of things. I wanted to read for a while and dig into the Bryson book so I was going for coffee rather than beer. And man I could already taste it. But then the machine sputtered and choked. It spat out a last burst of coffee and then went quiet. I looked in the cup. It wasn't even a quarter full. I tapped the top of the machine. "Hello, McFly, is anybody home? Is that all I'm gonna get?" As if to answer, the Keurig made one last hiss and then the error light started flashing. "Damn." I tapped the machine a couple more times. Nothing. "Guess I'll have to brew a pot." I turned to ask Allison if she wanted some, but she'd gone to the bedroom. I opened the freezer to get the coffee grounds. On the rack inside the door, there were frozen peas and some hot dog buns and a plastic bag that contained some brown thing but no coffee. I looked behind the frozen pizza and lasagna, looked under the empty ice cube trays and next to the leftover white bread from the Christmas morning soufflé. I had a Homer Simpson moment. "Mmm…soufflé." I looked inside the box of Trader Joe's Mahi Mahi burgers. Sadly, there was no coffee to be found. "Damn." The light on the Keurig were still flashing. I considered cleaning it and trying to fix the problem, but that'd be a lot of work so I decided to wait until the morning as I just wanted to read. I went back and sat on the sofa. "Ouch." I turned around and pulled a feather out of the pillow. Holding it in my right hand, I poked my left thumb a few times then dropped the little feather on the floor. Watching it fall made me think about Galileo. I wondered if his pillows poked him. Maybe that's where he got his idea for the speed of falling objects and gravity. I fluffed the pillow a bit checking for more sharp things. I looked at the cats. "Harry, Dora, the pillow poked me." They just stared for a moment. Dora, the female, went to join Allison in the bedroom meowing as she went. Harry jumped up next to me and purred. He put his paws on my thigh and started doing that kneading thing cats do. It was cute. He's become quite my special little friend. He'll always sit next to me on the couch. He'll lie next to me in bed. He'll come running when I get home. He'll wait outside the bathroom for me. He'll come downstairs and sit in front of the door to my writing room. I'll hear him purr out there. When I'm done writing, I'll open the door, and he'll meow and then he'll follow me to the couch where he'll nudge me with his head to let me know it's time to pet him. Sometimes, he'll…

"Ouch!" There was a shooting pain in my thigh, and I kicked my leg out. My foot hit the corner of the glass coffee table. "Ouch!" I twisted around and fell off the sofa dropping the Bryson book. I looked around, but by this time Harry had scampered off. While kneading on my leg one of his claws had gotten me. It hurt, but that pain was eclipsed by the throbbing in my foot. That table is going to be the death of me someday for how often I seem to kick its corners or bump my shins into them. Allison came out of the bedroom to see me on the floor holding my foot. "What happened? Did you kick the table again?" "Yes." "Silly boy. I thought you were going to make some coffee." "The machine isn't working." She walked over to the kitchen. I sat up and grabbed the book. The bookmark had fallen out so I'd lost my page. All I knew was that I was somewhere in the middle where Bryson was talking about earthquakes, which is what the inside of my foot was experiencing.  I started flipping through the pages but stopped when the Keurig started making sounds. "The machine seems fine so I decided to make myself a cup." I stood up with the book and limped over. "What the? It was just…" "Seems fine now. Try it again." She smiled at me and went back to the bedroom. Harry followed her. I looked at the machine, thought about trying it again. "So what's it gonna be?" The machine did not respond. I set the book on the counter and poured out the little bit of coffee from my previous attempt. I put another K-cup in and hit the button. And it worked. There was that smell again. Mmm…coffee. When it was done, I picked up the cup but pulled it up rather than out and so bumped the machine. This made me lose my grip. The cup fell onto the counter and spilled right into the book. "Ah!" I grabbed the book as quickly as I could, but it bumped the cup, and the cup fell onto my foot, the same foot that had kicked the coffee table. "Ouch!" I kneeled in pain. "You okay out there?" "Having a rough night, baby." "Don't hurt yourself."

I was indeed having a rough night. All I wanted was to read on the couch with a cup of coffee, but the coffee was spilled and the book soaked, its pages turning brown. I dried it as best I could, cleaned up the coffee, turned off the machine. I decided to just watch TV for a little so I walked over and grabbed the remote. I flipped through the channels and found an old episode of Friends and thought that would be good. I set the remote on the coffee table and carefully stepped around it, foot still hurting, and sat on the sofa. "Ouch." "You okay out there?" "No." I know, I know. First world problems. Some people don't have electric coffee machines or freezers with mysterious brown items in plastic bags or glass coffee tables with sharp corners or even dangerous feather-stuffed pillows. Harry poked his head around the corner of the sofa. "Meow." He jumped up. "It's a rough life, Harry." I patted his head and leaned back to watch Friends, the feathers poking through and stabbing me in the back, poking me in multiple places, reminding me how lucky I am.

[daveolearyauthor]

51 Sentences, Top Ten Passages, Number 10, Graham Swift

Last month, I came across a link to an article on Buzzfeed that was a collection of reader-submitted suggestions for what are the best sentences in literature, and what can I say, curiosity got the better of me so I clicked through knowing all the while that I'd be disappointed. It's inevitable from such lists. I figured there'd be a few great lines, a few good ones, and a few that I could take or leave because when I see that phrase, "51 best sentences" I'm looking not just for meaning, but for beauty, phrasing, style. I want the sentences in such a list to scream with passion and drip with goodness. I want them to shine a light on something I hadn't seen before or to remind me yet again of something I already knew in a way that is still fresh. Maybe I have unrealistic standards, but that's what I aim for in my own writing. There's the story of course, but every once in a while I want the reader to stop in their tracks and exclaim, "Wow!" before rereading a bit and maybe even folding over the corner of the page to mark its place, to find it again, to be wowed again. I don't know if I'll ever be successful in that regard, but I'll keep trying, and well, some reviews of The Music Book have quoted certain lines so maybe I have succeeded on a minor level. It's a nice thought, but to look at my bookshelf, there are a number of authors who have succeeded in a far greater way. I can pick a number of titles and find pages with the corners bent, and rereading the words on those pages never fails to move me. Time and again, I've done it, but with me it's more often the paragraph or at least a part of a paragraph that wows me because it has context. Some of the lines in the Buzzfeed article don't mean much on their own. Take number five for instance, a line from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Maybe it is, but I don't know what they're talking about. It's been too long since I read the book, and for all I remember the preceding moments of the story could have been talking about how matadors kill bulls and the way the animals bleed out a lovely shade of crimson right there in front of the cheering crowd. Isn't it pretty to think so? Oh, I know that isn't it, but what I'm getting at is that often those sentences that wow us do so because of what came before. There's the build up, a few details, maybe some repetition, and then BAM! The line comes with a force. It's a few body blows and little bit of footwork, and then the knockout punch and the seeing of stars. It's my thought then to share some passages that have moved me, excerpts from books I love, books that I have in all cases read more than once, books that will remain on my bookshelf for the remainder of my days. I'll share ten of these, and hopefully, they might inspire you to delve a little deeper into the books from whence they came. 10. We'll start things off with a bit from Graham Swift's Making an Elephant - Writing from Within. It's a non-fiction book, his account of a writer's life, something in the vein of Stephen King's On Writing. Swift is one of my favorite authors, and one of his books, Last Orders, is on my top ten list of books that have influenced me. The quote here is Swift talking about writing, the why of writing, the feel of it: "Often, on the bad days, I can think, 'Am I really loving this?'But I do love it and I hope that I write with love. And on the wonderful days, when it goes like it should go, when you know that what you've just written you will never have to change, it's more than that. It makes you feel that everything is worthwhile. The possibility on any day of having that feeling is by itself the perfect reason for doing it. It makes you feel in touch with life and the world; it makes you know why you are here." I so get that line about realizing you will not have to change something. All writers know that feeling. On some nights, when it's gone like that I'll stand up and strut around my writing room full of energy and belief and life. There'll be a few fist pumps, a few, "Hell, yeah's!" It feels like the heavens have parted and that there's a light shining down on all that is good in the world. On other nights, it's a little more subdued. I'll have written a line I love, a line I know will not change no matter how many edits the manuscript goes through, but rather than get up, I'll open a beer, take a sip, and then just luxuriate in the words, let them wash over me. I'll breathe easy and think that life is good and could not be any better. Swift is exactly right. "It makes you feel in touch with life and the world; it makes you know why you are here."

[daveolearyauthor]

Guest Author Post - Dreams of Music by Tess Thompson

We're going to do something a little different today. Earlier this week, I had a poem published on the blog of another author, Tess Thompson, so we're going to return the favor. She's published a number of books with Booktrope and has sold a far greater number than I have, one of them even over a 100,000. Suffice it to say then that she's doing something right with regards to her writing. I haven't read any of her books yet, but her most recent, Blue Midnight, starts with an interesting bit about finding a phone number written on an old piece of paper--a reciept from a bar--in the back of a drawer, which is, of course, like finding possibility, the number not called. My Valentine's story (out next month) also has a piece of paper from a bar, a napkin in my case, with a number written on it. It's a great way to start things, or to come back to them.

Anyway, I'll read Blue Midnight soon, but until then, here's Tess writing about her dreams of music and the realities that we're often forced to face when confronting our dreams.

.........

I have two passions: books and music. When I was a little girl I wished with all my heart to become a country singer. I had the perfect name for it. Tess Lucille Thompson- easily transformed into Tessielou. I knew the words to dozens of songs. I sang in the shower, to the record player, sitting on the swings in my parents’ yard. Fast forward to now. As an adult, I have a recurring dream in which I’m on stage holding a microphone, a full rock band behind me, sporting some big hair circa 1985 and wearing a fabulous sequined gown in place of my real-life writer uniform of soft jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts. In the dream, I look out to a vast, cheering audience. The ceiling of the venue, high and decorated with vintage architectural details like the inside of the Fifth Avenue Theatre in downtown Seattle, is blurred from the bright lights pointed right at me. I begin to sing. The crowd subdues with the sound of silent listening. My song is an original composition - melodic, with clever and poignant lyrics. My voice, somewhere between Linda Ronstadt and Carrie Underwood, is clear, centered, obviously well trained. There isn’t a note or nuance I cannot hit with perfect precision. Given this dream and my childhood yearnings, one might imagine I’m a musician or singer in my waking life. Sadly, no. Regardless that I love music more than almost anything else in this sweet world, I have no talent. My younger brother took all of those genes from a long line of talented musicians from both sides of the family. In real life I’m like one of those unfortunate individuals who thinks (wishes) they can sing and shows up at early American Idol auditions performing slightly off key akin to a cocker spaniel barking. In addition, I have no sense of rhythm, which as a side note, does not keep me from dancing frequently with wild abandon. It’s strange I dream so vividly of something I’ve never done in real life, given my lack of musical talent coupled with innate shyness. Although my exterior persona is extroverted, displayed by a quick wit and self-deprecating humor, inside I’m still the shy little girl that used to hide behind my father’s legs when strangers spoke to me at the grocery store. It’s a further irony that my actual formal education and training is in acting. After auditioning several times for choir in high school and getting rejected, I abandoned my early yearnings for a life as a singer, accepting with a slightly broken heart that I had no talent, and instead focused on acting. I was accepted into a prestigious theatre program at USC, and hoped to be an actress and director, which later morphed into playwriting and then narrative writing, which, as it turns out, is my true calling. All that said, I also have frequent dreams, or rather nightmares, of acting on stage. They are opposite of my rock star dreams. In them, I’m on stage in a play I have not rehearsed and do not know my lines for. And, my parents are in the audience. (This dream is a variation of the dream many of us have about discovering we have a college final for a class we didn’t know we had – mine is always a math class.) My recurring stage dreams are obviously on differing ends of the psychological spectrum. One I’m a winner, the other a loser. My guess is I dream one when I’m feeling confident and in control and the other when I’m not. It doesn’t take Freud to figure that one out. But perhaps, too, during sleep our subconscious allows us to dream of our passions. Maybe we’re allowed to explore areas of life we cannot experience in our real lives. If that is so, dreams are very much like writing fiction. In my work I can create whatever world I want. I can make my characters musicians and live whole lives through them, as I did in both Riversong and my novel coming out next month, Duet For Three Hands. The same is true for reading, of course. Growing up in a small town on my father’s modest teacher salary, we did not travel much, and there was little exposure to cultures other than my own. Except in books. From the moment I understood that I could go anywhere within the pages of a novel, my lifelong love affair with the all-in-can’t-hear-my-mother-call-me-for-supper kind of reading began.   My love of reading transformed into a need to write. Although music has and always will be an integral part of my life, giving me more pleasure and inspiration than I can express, I was destined to be an appreciator rather than a participant. But at the end of the day, both art forms are about story. When delivered well, they take us to new places. They make the world bearable and beautiful. They reflect, mirror, and illuminate our experiences. They make it known that we are not alone in a life often hard, sometimes perplexing, and forever changing. So regardless if I’m spectator or performer, I am grateful for both. I know you are too. Tess Thompson is a bestselling romantic suspense novelist and mother. She lives in a suburb of Seattle with two beautiful daughters and two naughty cats. Her iPod is loaded with music at all times but she still misses the days of record stores and vinyl’s. She has no plans to audition for American Idol.

[daveolearyauthor]

Holiday Blog Hop - Monster Mash, Christmas Songs, The Kinks, Thanks

Greetings. Today, I'm participating in, as the image above says, a Book Lovers Holiday Blog Hop in whoch there are gifts and prizes and hopefully for readers the discovery of a new writer they like. So let's begin...

I have a penchant for singing songs out of season. When I was in Chicago for a wedding in August, Allison and I were walking down the street to have cheeseburgers at the Billy Goat Tavern ("Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger…"), and it came to me. It was just there, out of the blue, somewhere near the Chicago Tribune building, or was it the Sun Times? Anyway, there it was, "Monster Mash". So as we held hands in the sweltering August heat, I started singing, "It was the mash…" "Dude, no. Wrong season." She was right to shut it down of course, and we laughed and walked on talking of other things. And then in late October of this year we were walking to the pub on a Saturday morning for an Arsenal game when it came to me again, only this time it was "Jingle Bell Rock." And I started singing, "Jungle bell, jungle bell, jingle bell rock…" "Dude, no. Wrong season." She was right again. She squeezed my hand and we smiled and continued on to the pub. I don't know why my brain picks up these ear worms out of season, but it does, and I know it's probably annoying so I need some help staying in season. What I ask then is this: What is your favorite non-traditional Christmas song, or non-standard version of a classic Christmas song? I don't want to hear about Bing Crosby and "White Christmas," but if there's another version of "White Christmas" that floats your boat, please share. Or if there's some odd or goofy or rocking or heavy or trippy or just out of the ordinary Christmas song that you think is cool, please provide a link.

Here's one of my favorites, the Kinks "Father Christmas." It's a campy late 70s/early 80s kind of video, but that gives it more charm.

Those who share a song will receive a copy (PDF) of a short story of mine that will be part of a collection next year so please leave an email address in your comment. Also note that the Kindle version of my second novel, The Music Book, is now on sale for only $0.99, and this, my friends, is the best thing I've ever written. It's all about the power of music in our lives and love and loss and a mutable past. The electronic version (Kindle, Nook, …) is what's on sale, but if print is more your thing, it's in Barnes & Noble stores in Seattle and maybe other cities.

Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading my stuff, and that of others.  Please say hello on Facebook and Twitter. And keep reading, and listening. So many good books. So much great music. Merry Christmas.

The comment form does not show on the main page of this blog (sorry), so please click through to this post's page. Thanks.

Thanks for stopping by for the Holiday Blog Hop. Visit the main Blog Hop page to find a list of other participating authors. Also, you can use the form below to enter to win a $100 Amazon Gift card.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

[daveolearyauthor]

Awards, Twitter Rants, There Goes That Guy

My biggest claim to fame so far as a writer is winning the Seattle Weekly's Readers Poll in the category of Best Blogger. It was cool to win. It gave me bragging rights in a small way, gave me something to celebrate at happy hour that evening other than simply the end of the work day. I was able to do the self-congratulatory pat on the back and a few days later at the pub on a Saturday morning for an Arsenal game I received a few handshakes and free drinks, some words of support, "Great job, man!" and "That's cool. Congrats." It made me feel almost slightly famous in a local sort of way for a few days, like if I was walking down the street someone might whisper to a friend, "Hey, look, there's the best blogger in Seattle. He's going into the pub again."

Of course, no one has ever said such a thing. Well, that first bit anyway. And the thing is, if I hadn't won, I wouldn't have cared. I believe in the writing on this blog, am confident that it has a certain quality, but I do it because I love it. I do it because I can't not do it, because writing is what I do. Writing is where I seek adventure, is where I live many lives in the course of one, is where I stare death in the face and say, "I know you're coming someday, buy you ain't ever going to get all of me." Don't let the amount of recent posts here fool you by the way. Writing books and short stories takes a lot of time so even when there's isn't much happening here, I'm still in my writing room playing with the word, trying as best I can to fill pages with words that might someday find themselves on a bookshelf somewhere. So yeah, the best blogger thing is a trifle, a small and simple thing without any real meaning. Maybe that makes me sound ungrateful. I guess it's better to say that it doesn't change anything. The sun still sets and rises. There is still no link between autism and vaccines. The Seahawks are still better than the 49ers. And best blogger or not, still I write. I would never complain for not winning some prize or other when I can still breathe, when I can still head downstairs and through the means of writing step into another world for a few hours. Not so for everyone. Case in point, Ayelet Waldman. She's sold a great number more books than I have, and I congratulate her on that, but it seems she isn't happy. There is this little thing called the New York Times, you see, an institution that gave her most recent novel, Love and Treasure, a good review, but when the Times released its list of 100 Notable Books of 2014, they excluded Waldman. Cue the sad violins. Or maybe some speed metal to capture her rage.

She had an expectation to make that list, a belief that her book was better than others included there, and given that, there was a shit storm, or rather, a Twitter rant, a hissy fit captured and archived and written about. And that's something I'll never understand, well two things. The expectation, of course, but also the Twitter rant. Waldman basically lost it, and judging from the comments I've seen on a few articles, she lost a number of possible readers and a fair amount of people who had read and liked her previous work. All for a Twitter rant about not being included on a meaningless list. All for expectation. I'm sure it'll blow over, sure that she'll be fine, that she'll continue to sell books, and while I don't understand the rant, I also don't understand the the reaction of some readers. It's a bit much to leave one-star reviews of her book just for that, one-star reviews that I'd bet in some cases are from people who have not read the book, or who maybe would have given it three or four stars but changed their minds. Rather than saying they'll never read her stuff or never read it again or saying nasty things about her and her writing, it'd be better to do something like cross Waldman off the list of writers they'd like to meet. And I say that for this reason. There's a quote from Charles Bukowski's The Captain Is Out To Lunch and The Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (a favorite of mine) that has stuck with me over the years, and it is pertinent now. It is this: A writer owes nothing except to his writing. He owes nothing to the reader except the availability of the printed page.

Don't misunderstand. These days writers do well to engage their readers in some way on social media or through local events, especially new writers, writers on the smaller presses, writers trying to navigate their way from the office cubicle to a place where writing pays the rent. It's a great way to build readership and reader loyalty, a great way to get the word out, and something that was not possible even ten or fifteen years ago. It gives a number a writers a way to step into the game and sell some books, and somehow, if things work in the right way, a few of those writers can step up and sell a few more books, and a few more, but in the end, the only thing that matters is the quality of the written word. That's it. That's the only thing we should use to determine if something should be read or not. I'm sure that some percentage of my favorite writers are/were assholes. And that's OK. Even though I may treasure their books, their words, they are not my friends. They never will be. In short, it's this. I don't care about hissy fits and Twitter rants. I care only about the word. So I'll read Waldman's book, and that will be the only thing I use to judge her writing and determine if I'll read another. And next year, I have no expectation to repeat as the winner for  Best Blogger in Seattle, and when I don't win, I won't say a word, but those people who see me walking down the street in Fremont may say a few words as I pass, "Hey, there's that guy. He's going into that pub again."

And I'll walk into the pub anonymously and without award or ceremony or recognition. And that will be just fine.

[daveolearyauthor]

Phil, The Generals, Flip , Shoes

A guy named Phil died in the summer of 1990.

He was a bass player in a popular Detroit band, the Generals, a band on the brink of something, and he died on a highway in Detroit on his way home after a gig. I didn't know him, but some friends of mine in a band called Watershed in Columbus, Ohio had played a few shows with his band, and so Watershed recommended I step in to play bass when the Generals decided to continue in Phil's honor. And I didn't hesitate. Beers were had with Watershed, songs listened to, CDs borrowed. And then after a couple phone calls, I went to Detroit for an audition. I rented a car and listened to the CD the whole way up, especially the first song.

I knew somehow that we'd start the audition with that, and that if I nailed it, the gig would be mine. And I did. I stayed the whole weekend and went back the following weekend. I was positive. I was sure I had it. After the second weekend, I went back to Columbus, back to college where I  waited impatiently. I couldn't take notes in class, couldn't understand a word the professors said. Monday went by, and then Tuesday. Thankfully they called on Wednesday. It was John, the lead guitar player. After a few pleasantries, he said, "Uh, look, we dug hanging out with you and jamming, but we decided to go with someone else. Just thought we should let you know." I didn't know what to say. I'd done nothing but daydream about the opportunity since it came up, and now it was gone. Now, it was nothing more than a couple fun weekends I might be able to write about sometime in the future. I'd be able to look back and think, "Well, I had my shot, but somehow I fucked it up. Somehow I let it slip away." I thought about Phil in that moment. I wondered who would replace him, who would step into his shoes, and if the shoes would fit. "I'm just fucking with you, man," John said. "We'd love to have you join the band." And so at least in part, I had my answer. It would be me. Two weeks later, I said goodbye to college and moved to Detroit. I was going to be a musician. I was going to play music for the rest of my life, and it would start with songs that Phil had played, songs like "One More Night," songs that I would honor and play them much as he had.

But it wasn't easy replacing a dead man. By all accounts given to me, Phil was a great guy, friendly, soft-spoken, intelligent, humorous. Everybody liked him. After his death, fifty or so people had "FLIP" tattooed on their arms. That was his nickname. I guess only his parents called him Phil. It was a touching gesture, and I heard many stories of the line at the band house--they lived and rehearsed together--of people waiting to get those letters etched into their arms by John. He was also a tattoo artist. People drank and smoked and reminisced about Flip, were  eager to honor him like that. When I die, I don't imagine anyone will mark their skin in such a way for me, so it was obvious. He was loved, and I heard more than once that people had a hard time watching the band without him in it, that it seemed like there was a big hole on the stage, a hole that could never adequately be filled. I was there playing Flip's bass lines, and though the music was good, great even, though I had some musicians tell me the band had never been tighter, Flip was missed. He always would be. After I'd been in the Generals for a few months, I was in the living room of the band house with my then girlfriend of a few weeks. She'd known the band for some time. She'd known Flip. That night we were drinking beer and fumbling awkwardly on the couch as no one else was around. We had a CD in the stereo, but the music had ended so it was quiet for a moment. I sat up and grabbed my beer from the coffee table and took a drink trying to decide what to put on next, Smashing Pumpkins or Soundgarden or maybe Pink Floyd? When I was about to set the bottle down, I looked over for some reason toward the coat closet and froze. My girlfriend said, "What the…" My mouth opened, but I said nothing. I dropped the beer on the carpet and felt the goose bumps crawling over my skin, my back and arms and chest, even my scalp. I held my breath, and I'm fairly certain my girlfriend did the same. Flip was there. He was standing in the corner looking at us. He was smiling as my beer emptied itself onto the carpet. And then he was gone. "What the fuck?" She stood. I stood. I shouted, "Shit. Did that just…? Did you see that?" The goose bumps did not abate, and we walked all about the room expressing our disbelief, but we did not venture toward the closet. We looked at it, wondered. Had we both seen it? Yes, we had. That meant it had to be real. We'd seen Flip. Was he in the closet? After five or ten minutes, I got my nerve up with the help of another beer and slowly walked over. My girlfriend stood by the stereo as if it offered some sort of protection.

On the closet door, there was a poster of Geronimo, that famous picture where he's kneeling and holding a gun. I stood in front of it for a second looking Geronimo in the eye and listing, trying to hear any noise that might be coming from the closet. Nothing. I took a deep breath, but that made me colder, seemed to increase the size and intensity of the goose bumps. I grabbed the handle, turned, opened the closet. My girlfriend gasped. There was nothing. We left the closet door open and the music off after that. We kept drinking, kept looking at the closet, kept reconfirming that the other had seen it. "Did you really …  see him? I mean…" "Yeah. You?" "Yeah, but, that's fucked up." We'd pause, shake our heads, look at the coats hanging in the closet, "You want another beer?" "Definitely." The band eventually broke up. All bands do. But this I know. This is true. Flip smiled at me. He was happy wherever he was, wherever he existed, and the band was just as good as it had ever been, just as good as it would ever be.

Note about "Crawling" - There's a great lyric in this song, classic rock and roll, and so very typical of the Generals, "Late last night, I came crawling in. Early this morning, I'm still crawling."

----------

I never got to meet Flip, but I did step into his shoes. And they fit. So here's to you Flip. My life improved because yours ended. Keep the bass in tune, and I'll buy you a beer on the other side. And then I'll return your shoes, and the smile.

[daveolearyauthor]

PNWA, Condoms on Christmas, More Beer, Virginia Woolf, Radiohead

I was recently tagged by a fellow Booktrope author named Nicole Persun to participate in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Four Question Blog Tour. I'm not a member of the PNWA, but they seem like a good resource for writers, and they do a lot to support the writing community so I'm happy to participate.

The idea for this is pretty simple. Writers post something about writing and the process of writing by answering four questions and then tag/select/ask other writers to continue the same. Here's Nicole's post wherein she tagged me: Nicole Persun Four Questions As for my answers, here goes: 1) What am I working on?

The Music Book just came out so I've been a bit overwhelmed by that, but I am getting started already on my next project. My original thought was that it would be a collection of short stories all centered around holidays, and it still might be that, but the story that sparked the idea, my first holiday story, Condoms on Christmas (originally published in a short version in the Monarch Review in May of 2012), has now grown to almost 25,000 words. it could easily become a novella, maybe a whole novel. The other short stories might have to wait. Or perhaps I'll finish one of them to publish in the meantime. As for Condoms on Christmas, it isn't a Christmas story. It happens on Christmas though, and is about people finding and losing the things they want and think they need, and the reasons we let people into and out of our lives. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

On Christmas, I woke up on my half of the bed and reached across the empty half to grab my phone and check the time. 6:42. I hated mornings. I could handle the quiet solitude of late nights playing with the word over a few drinks, of pacing back and forth in my apartment as I fished for the right phrase, sipping and turning and sipping and turning and then running to the laptop when inspiration came. I’d dropped beers doing such. I’d fallen down, banged my knee on the corner of the futon, cursed at the top of my lungs, “Son of a bitch!” but those were good nights, wild nights. Things got done, were felt, expressed. The mornings were just quiet and dark. And it didn’t help that the guy who lived upstairs—it was a converted house. I had the bottom half—and his girlfriend liked to have sex in the morning, and quite often at that. She was a loud one, too, and one time, I heard him leave his apartment, heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then there was a knock on my door just after 6:00. When I opened it, he got right to the point, “Hey man, you got any condoms?” I didn’t. Another time, it sounded like there were two women up there. Lucky him.

2) How does my work differ from others in its genre? The short answer: It has more beer. The long answer: My "genre" would be literary fiction, which can mean different things to different people. For me, one thing it means is that the language is every bit as important as the story. They compliment each other, lift each other. When I read a book, I want passages and phrases that I can sink into, that will bring me back to the book again and again, that will force me to dog-ear pages so I can find them easily again. My favorite books have such. Great stories, beautiful language. I'm currently rereading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and I just get so taken up by the language in some parts. For example, this bit about Lily Briscoe's struggle to create: She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see."

So I guess that tells you more of what I try to do than how my writing differs. The answer then is perspective, style, voice. I write like myself, and thankfully, there's only one of me. 3) Why do I write what I do? It's the only stuff I can write. I want to look at bits of life and ruminate on them, turn them over, glance at them sideways. I'm not much interested in writing fantasy or anything that involves creating wholly new worlds, though I do admire the creativity that goes into such books. I admired Tolkien for that, and Lord of the Rings is one of the things that made me want to write, that implanted the desire. But for my own writing, it's simple:

There's enough magic and terror and love in this world for me to write about. 4) How does my writing process work? I just write whatever story is in my head. I don't outline or anything, and the time and situation can vary. Sometimes it's in the morning, sometimes at night. Sometimes I drink a beer, sometimes coffee. Sometimes it's in my basement, sometimes at Starbucks. Hell, the first draft of Horse Bite was written while sitting at the bar of JJ Mahoney's in Redmond (Dublin in the book) drinking a Pyramid Hefeweizen, no lemon of course. The bartenders called me Heff Guy until they got to now me by name. And they did get to know me by such for I went there a lot.

For The Music Book, I'd go down to the basement, and to get into the music writing mood I'd often listen to a song or two. Sometimes those songs were from the Seattle bands featured in the book, but most often it was Radiohead's "Myxamatosis." I'd put it on and as it says in the book, "revel in its excellent fuzz." It wasn't the CD though. It was Live from the Basement on YouTube because as I so often say, "Live is the thing." And so I'll do that now. I'l listen. I'll end things here with Radiohead and imagine driving south on 99 past downtown at 4:30 in the morning with nothing in the rearview, and nothing up ahead.

OK. We can't end there. Here's another one of my favorite Radiohead songs, "Videotape." It's so achingly beautiful. I mention this one in the book too: Radiohead comes over the speakers: “Videotape.” Katie puts the napkin in her apron, and heads in back, perhaps to do some stocking up. Greg goes to the bathroom, and I just sit rooted in the slow, mournful pulse of the piano in a song about an old man dying and saying his goodbyes via videotape in reds and blues and greens. I sip my beer, the pulse goes on, steady but tense, seeming to drag a little at times like it might end at any moment, just like the old man’s heart. The voice of the song goes on to say that he shouldn’t be afraid, but I am. A few chords on a piano have made me so, made me afraid of many things, or rather so quickly reminded me of fears I already had, and though I know there’s no answer to anything in my glass, I drain it in one big gulp thinking that maybe one will be there in the refill. The song fades into the ringing silence of my tinnitus, and I grab a napkin and the pen Katie left on the bar and write one line, “This just isn’t working.”

***

So who's next in this blog tour thing? That would be Terry Persun, Nicole's father, which is very cool. Both father and daughter are writers, and from what I gather, Terry is quite prolific. Here's a bit about him: Terry Persun holds a Bachelor’s of Science as well as an MA in Creative Writing. He has worked as an engineer, has been the Editor-in-Chief of several technology journals, and is now marketing consultant for technical and manufacturing companies. Over a dozen of his novels have been published. His science fiction novel “Cathedral of Dreams” won a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Finalist Award, and his historical novel, “Sweet Song” won a Silver IPPY Award. His latest science fiction space opera, “Hear No Evil” was a finalist in the International Book Awards this past year. His sci-fi and fantasy novels have been on the top 100 (sci-fi categories) on Amazon several times in the past year. Terry's Website: http://www.terrypersun.com/

[daveolearyauthor]

Top Ten Books, Footnote on a Diploma, Lowest Common Denominator of Lists

I was recently tagged on Facebook with the task of listing ten books that changed me or affected me or that were my favorites. Something like that. I've seen variations of this challenge go around, and so while wondering how I could possibly limit myself to ten books, I came across an article by Alexis Kleinman on Huffington Post that called out people for their lists, that argued most people were lying by including things like Ulysses and 100 Years of Solitude. I don't doubt that some of that is true. Some people just want to look smart and say, "Look, I read Ulysses!" while doing the Homer Simpson chant, "I am so smart. S M R T." For myself, I've read both of those books but remained unmoved by them. That was during my eight years of college, '87 - '95 where in various bits I worked and played in bands but still took enough classes here and there to eventually wind up with a degree in English Literature.

Life was simple in those days. I just wanted to read books and play music. And I did. I read much of what Kleinman offered in the list she called bullshit (see the image in her article), and I have to admit that I'd be lying to include those books in my list of ten, with the possible exception of The Things They Carried. Great book, but for me more like a top twenty or twenty five. I could (and can) certainly appreciate the art of the other books, but they didn't move anything in me. When I finished them, I put them on the bookshelf and carried them from apartment to apartment never feeling the need or urge to pick them up for another go round. The only book on the list that I haven't read, or attempted to read, is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and because of Kleinman's article, I've added it to my To Read list because it reminded me of Diaz. I loved This is How You Lose Her and would consider it for my top twenty five, maybe top thirty. I wonder if the tale of Oscar Wao is better. So what, then, is a realistic list for Kleinman? 1. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone 2. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets 3. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 4. The Phantom Tollbooth 5. The Hunger Games 6. Fifty Shades Of Grey 7. Gossip Girl 8. A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One 9. The Lord Of The Rings 10. Where The Sidewalk Ends Uh, no. That list is as unrealistic as the other one. Is there not one piece of serious literature that moved her more than any of those books? Not one book that contained language so beautiful that passages must be read again and again not for understanding but to simply float along on the majesty of the words? She says in her article that she studied English in college, but if that's true, it makes me wonder what she read in those classes. What English program was that and how do we direct students to other schools? My own English degree is from Ohio State, and while I doubt its English program is ranked anywhere near the top of anything, I still managed to find one book in my own top ten directly from one class and in another class was introduced to an author who would later pen one of my top ten, one of my top two actually. I also read Ulysses in college and that got me interested in more of Joyce's work, and thereby I found another top ten entry. Studying English in college has a way of doing that. And don't get me wrong. With the exception of numbers 5, 6, and 7, I've read all of the books on her list, and with the exception of Fifty Shades Of Grey, there's nothing inherently wrong with the titles themselves. One of them is even in my own top ten. I have to wonder though. Were those the books she read in those college English classes? I don't mean to put her down, but I question the simplicity of such a list, especially from a writer and from someone who says she studied English. I have to check, but I think there's a line at the bottom of my diploma that says the following. Notice: In order that we, the English Department of the Ohio State University, may maintain a serious academic reputation, inclusion of Fifty Shades Of Grey in your top ten favorite books, even in jest, or even to hint or suggest that it should be there, will render this diploma null and void and require you to wear a patch labeled "50" on the front and back of your clothing for the remainder of your days. Was Kleinman joking? I don't know. Maybe the article is just click bait. Maybe I should just ignore it, but I can't. Her list is the lowest common denominator of book lists, and I have faith in people to read and absorb books, at least sometimes, at a higher level. As for my own list, here goes. This is more of a chronological list rather than an ordered top ten, and I have read all of these books multiple times. 1. Old Yeller / Rascal - I read these in third grade I think, maybe fourth. I'm not sure. These two books implanted within me the desire to read.

2. Lord of the Rings - I marveled at these when I first encountered them in middle school and continued to do so all through high school. These books made me want to write, made me want to create whole worlds of my own.

3. No One Here Gets Out Alive - Like many, I went through the "I Want to Be Jim Morrison" phase. I wanted to live like that. The book enhanced my love of the Doors and also of music in general, and of music writing. I owe something to this for the style of my own music writing.

4. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - As I said, Tolkien made me want to write. This book made me want to write literature.

5. To the Lighthouse - I referred to this book twice above. First, it's something I was required to read for a college course, but even so, it stuck with me. Imagine that. One can study English in college and find some books that mean something, that settle somewhere deep inside you and reside there for years if not for a whole life. Also, it's one of those books that just has some beautiful writing. That middle section called "Time Passes" is a remarkable piece of writing. Woolf made me want to write beautifully, not just basic prose, but something more, almost poetic.

6. You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense / Love is a Dog From Hell - And speaking of poetic writing, I know Bukowski is a far cry in style from Woolf, but I love his poetry. It's narrative in a way, beautiful for its non-beauty. His writing reminds me that sometimes you have to remove the artifice and cut right to it.

7. Last Orders - I discovered Graham Swift in college when I had to read Waterland for a Contemporary British Literature class and immediately started reading more of his work, and then in 1997, two years after I graduated, he came out with this gem. It's such a beautiful book, so deserving of the Booker Prize that it won. It contains what in my mind is one of the most moving passages of literature I've ever read (a woman's goodbye to her grown daughter) and also a chapter that's only two words long, only two words, and yet, it still works completely, makes me laugh every time I read it. If I was ranking in order of my favorites, this book would be number one or number two.

8. The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship - Again, Bukowski, but here we have him keeping a journal very late in his life. It's honest, touching, funny. He never takes himself too seriously. I carried this book with me for a couple years during my time overseas, so much so that the cover came off.

9. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - My introduction to Murakami. I love the duality of the book. The real world is the "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" and the subconscious is the "End of the World." A few years after college, I gave up writing because I knew I wasn't ready. I needed more life experience, and I needed to read more great books, books worthy of a top ten list. When I read this at the age of 35, this and The Captain is Out to Lunch, that desire to write came back full force. That was a good year of reading for me.

10. The Road - I love the simplicity of the prose, the sparseness, and yet this book is anything but simple. It's deceptive that way. What a great piece of writing. With Last Orders, it's my number one or two.

UPDATE: One reader reminded me of a great quote from No One Here Gets Out Alive so I figured I'd share.

"To be a poet entailed more than writing poems. It demanded a commitment to live, and die, with great style and even greater sadness; to wake each morning with the fever raging and know it would never be extinguished except by death, yet to be convinced that this suffering carried a unique reward."

Honorable Mentions (in no particular order): Norwegian Wood The English Patient Unaccustomed Earth High Fidelity Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions The God of Small Things The Things They Carried Dubliners Devil in the White City James and the Giant Peach Curious George

[daveolearyauthor]

Rolling Stone, the Toll, Watershed, Scrawl

On August 29, Rolling Stone published an article in which they listed the top 25 college football teams (as ranked in the AP poll), and paired them with the best bands to come from those same college towns. There were obvious choices like The Flaming Lips (#4 Oklahoma), Alice Cooper (#19 Arizona State), R.E.M. (#12 Georgia), and Jimi Hendrix (#25 Washington). I suppose some people might not think that Jimi is the obvious choice for Washington given the number of great bands to emerge from this city, but I have to agree. There is no other like Jimi. The first few bands I was in played "Purple Haze" of course. Hell, every single hard rock band ever has probably played that song and thought, "Wow, man, we rock!" before realizing when the song was over that they weren't even close to the original. Anyway, I came across the Rolling Stone article because I saw someone post a link to it on Facebook, and specifically, the link went to the entry for number 5, Ohio State. I grew up in Columbus, was there when the city thought itself the next Seattle in the early and mid 90's, and even back to the late 80's before the whole grunge thing hit, Columbus seemed like it might be on the verge of something. I guess it's a city always on the verge, much like the Ohio State Buckeyes themselves, always on the brink of winning something, but more often than not falling short and failing in the big games. From my memory, the first Columbus band to almost make it was the Toll. They were great live, hand a penchant for songs that could go on for upwards of ten minutes with long bits of improved and rehearsed spoken bits by singer Brad Circone. When they got a big enough following, Geffen signed them and put out The Price of Progression in 1988. The first single was "Jonathan Toledo," a cool tune and a crowd favorite live, but at over ten minutes, it of course failed to bring the band into the national spotlight. It was too long for radio. I don't remember what the second single from the album was, but it failed get attention as well. They put out a second album with Geffen, but the label didn't promote it at all and even in the Columbus record stores it wasn't on prominent display. Geffen dropped them and the band broke up.

But Rolling Stone didn't pick the Toll as the representative Columbus band. There was also Watershed. They were signed by Epic in the mid-90's and seemed like they might be the ones. In 1995, Epic released Twister, which featured "How Do You Feel?", a single that made inroads in major markets like Chicago. I remember my band opening for them at the Newport (1700 capacity) to a packed house. That was probably the biggest crowd I ever played in front of, and when Watershed hit the stage, they tore it up, especially with my favorite, "Twister," a song about a tornado in the midwest. Great baseline and with Epic behind them it would have been perfect on the Twister soundtrack. Recording industry politics being what they are though, inclusion on the soundtrack didn't happen, and Epic soon dropped them in favor of Silverchair. A bad call in my opinion, Epic, but it is what is is.

Watershed is actually still going, not full-time mind you, but still playing shows, still putting out records. Bassist Joe Oestreich published a book about the band in 2013, and the subtitle says it all. Hitless Wonder. A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll. It's a good read, but as good as the band was/is, and as close to making it big as they were, Rolling Stone still didn't pick Watershed as its representative Columbus band. They picked instead my sister's band, Scrawl, a female trio that put out a few albums during the same time that the Toll and Watershed were doing their thing. The rumor in those days was that Seattle's Sub Pop was going to sign the band. It would have been a good fit, but again like all things in Columbus rock, it didn't quite work out. Maybe the time wasn't right. To listen to Scrawl's music these days, they'd be a great fit in the Seattle scene as it is now. I imagine them filling the Tractor with songs like this song and the audience singing along, "I can't relax."

Actually, my first time going to a bar to see a band was for a Scrawl gig at Stache's in what must have been 1986 when I was a senior in high school. My sister asked me if I wanted to come and help load equipment and videotape the show, said she'd be able to get me into the bar that way. It worked, and so I sat and had a few beers while they were setting up and sound checking. Before they went on, my sister gave me the video recorder and showed me where the record and zoom buttons were. "Cool. I got it." And I did, but for some reason when I took the recorder from her, I turned it sideways and held it that way for the length of the show. To watch the thing later, we had to turn the TV on it's side. She didn't let me live that down for a long time. The show was great though, and perhaps I should credit it, and thus Scrawl, for nudging me that last step toward actually starting a band and booking shows of my own. I played guitar then and had been to see Ozzy, Judas Priest, and Cheap Trick, but those big shows seemed so far away, the people on the stage tiny. That Stache's gig was my first time at a club, the first time I saw musicians walk from the bar to the stage, which only required one step up. The first time I heard a guitar player ask, "Does anyone here know how to string a guitar?" after breaking a string. It was awesome and intimate. I liked it better even than seeing Scrawl open for the Toll at the Newport shortly before the release of the Toll's doomed second album. Funny that as good as they were, I don't remember much of the Toll's set that night, but I do remember Scrawl, for my sister's drumming of course, but for the songs too. They were a great band, so maybe Rolling Stone got it right.

So here's to Scrawl, the Toll, Watershed, and all the other bands that perhaps should have made it big, but never did. And to the Buckeyes that they might win a championship sometime soon.

[daveolearyauthor]

Crows, Spider Webs, Weirdo

Sunday morning started out well enough. I mean, I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen without incident. I pulled up the blinds to let the sun in, opened a couple windows, said good morning to the cats. They responded in unison. "Meow." Coffee was the first order of business. I popped a K-cup in the Keurig machine and hit the tall brew button. It sputtered and made a churning sound and then dripped out about an eighth of a cup. It went silent. I waited a few minutes and then tapped the top of the machine. "Hello, McFly. Is anybody home? Is that all I'm gonna get?" The machine remained silent. I tried it again and got another eighth of a cup. I now had about a shot of espresso, but weaker. I figured the Keurig was on the fritz so I pulled a bag of coffee grounds from the freezer, but as soon as I picked it up, I knew it was too light, and yet I still looked in it. "Damn, who puts an empty bag of …" I stopped myself. It was me. I'd done it the day before and forgotten to get more. "Shit!" I decided to walk down the street to the corner store before Allison woke up, figured I'd surprise her with a freshly brewed pot and maybe a flower or something if there were any to pick between our place and the store. But then I heard some crows out front. They started cawing and making a general commotion so I looked out the window and saw four of them in the street. They were standing in a semi-circle, and the noise didn't stop, "Caw…caw…caw…caw!" It was call and response, one at a time, "Caw…caw…caw…caw!" After a few moments, they began to fan out, two went left, two right, and they started walking toward our place in a delicate waddle like they were sneaking up on us, carefully approaching so as not to cause alarm or give their intentions away. They strutted to the edge of the curb and stopped, looked at each other, glanced up at me in the window. Then they spread their wings and went back to making a general racket. "Caw…caw…caw…caw!"

It was menacing, foreboding, even a little frightening. "What they hell are they doing?" With the windows open, I thought I smelled something burning somewhere. It made me wonder if there was another group of crows approaching from the rear of the apartment, maybe setting fire to the footbridge that goes from our door to the parking lot. Ghostbusters came to mind so I said it to the cats, "Listen. Do you smell something?"

I sniffed again but didn't smell anything. There was only the sound of the crows, but then that stopped. I looked back out the window to see them all flying away, cawing as they went. Then it was quiet, very quiet. No cars or pedestrians came by for three of four minutes. I looked down at the cats, "That was weird. Where'd they go?" "Meow." "Yeah, I guess so." "Meow." The cats looked from me to their food bowls and back up to me. "Oh, OK. Sorry guys." I fed them and then peeked in the bedroom before leaving to make sure Allison was still asleep. She was. I grabbed my wallet, put my hat on, and tiptoed out the door trying not to wake her. I shut the door behind me and turned to walk across the footbridge that had not been burned by a mob of crows, but I walked straight into a spider web and did that crazy dance while swinging my arms and shouting. "OhmyfuckingGodwhatthehellisthatyouGoddamnedspiders!" I flailed and twisted about some more before sprinting for the parking lot where I brushed myself off. "Shit!" The spiders do that. They make webs right in front of our door. I simply forgot to check. Looking back, I could see in the bedroom window. Allison was looking at me and laughing. She opened the window. "You all right there?" "Yeah, just a spider web. I'm going to get coffee." "OK. I think I'll get up and read a little bit. Don't be long." "I won't." I shivered a little. I hate walking through spider webs, gives me the heebie jeebies. It made me wonder if our neighbors were watching. "Hey, look. That guy next door just freaked out again. He's kind of weird." I looked around, didn't see anyone. But that didn't mean they weren't there.

When I got to the store, I grabbed a pack of tortillas--It never hurts to have extra tortillas--and then went to the coffee section. There was Folgers, which is like the PBR of coffee, at least in quality, and there were two packs of Starbucks French Roast … DECAF, only decaf. In some states, that might be grounds for murder. Was Washington one? I didn't know, and though I didn't say it, I thought it. "OhmyfuckingGodwhatthehellisthatyouGoddamneddecafcoffee!" The day wasn't going well, and it was only 8:00. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Allison. She'll do that at random moments to say she loves me or that she misses me. I love those messages. I save them all. Smiling, I read the text. "Can you get me some tampons while you're at the store?" Sigh. It looked like I was going to be the guy who at 8:00 in the morning bought tortillas and tampons. I was in the t-shirt and shorts I'd slept in, hair disheveled, hadn't shaved in a almost a week. I could only imagine what the man working the register would have thought. "What the hell's this guy up to?" It was a fair question. What was I up to?  But then there was another text. "Just kidding." And then another. "<3" I responded with a heart of my own and bought the tortillas and also a bottle of cheap champagne for mimosas in the absence of coffee. When I got back to our building, I ducked through some trees that had overgrown the path and waved and swatted my arms, at times like a helicopter, at others in a kind of doggy paddle, trying to make sure I didn't walk through more spider webs. I imagined the neighbors still there, still looking out their window. "Hey, look. What the hell's he doing now? What a weirdo." I smiled to think that word always reminds me of Radiohead's "Creep." It's a testament to the song.

When I got to the footbridge, I heard a splat directly to my right. I looked down. Crow poop, a big one, and it missed me by only an inch or so. There was a rustle of leaves, maybe a crow landing in a tree. I looked around, squinted at one tree and then another. I couldn't spot the crow. But that didn't mean it wasn't there. I was ready, though. I had tortillas and champagne, and a woman who had just sent me her heart. I had a line from the song in my head, "I don't belong here." At one point in my life that might have been true, but not anymore. This is this only place I belong, a shelter, a stronghold against the crows and spider webs and spying neighbors. "Caw...caw," came the sound from the trees. "Caw...caw," I shouted back while shaking the bottle of champagne in my raised hand. "Hey, look. He's shouting at the trees," the neighbors said. "What a weirdo." Indeed.

I went in and we had mimosas and breakfast burritos, and yes, Sunday morning was starting well.

[daveolearyauthor]

No Ice Bucket, Awareness and Remembrance, A New Challenge

I was going to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, really, but I waited too long. I was called out a little over a week ago to do it and given 48 hours to complete the task, and that seemed like plenty of time. With the weather hot, I was quite looking forward to getting drenched in ice water. It wouldn't have been any different than jumping in a cold pool. The initial shock is bad, makes one want to shout, "Holy mother effing hell!" but then it feels good. You relax. You think that the water "feels great" and even "exhilarating," so much so that it could become a kind of credo.

I could imagine myself after doing the challenge. I'd go out on the deck and with a Blue Moon in hand while dripping wet from head to toe watch the sun set over the Olympic Mountains. I'd be cool, relaxed, even in the heat of the sun at 6:00 when our westward facing apartment is its hottest. But then things came up. On the first night I was going to do the challenge, the cover designer for my next book backed out of the project so my publisher had to find a replacement. Frantic emails were traded, new designers considered, and the problem was solved, but the Ice Bucket was about the furthest thing from my mind until the next evening when I got home after work. I was ready then, had a six-pack of Blue Moon, an idea for the video, a few names in my head as to who I'd challenge, but then an idea was proposed, "Hey, we should go to the George and Dragon for a couple beers." It was my suggestion. I don't remember why. It just seemed a good thing to do at the time. I guess it always seems such. It didn't matter in the moment though, because I thought that maybe I'd get to the challenge later that evening or maybe even on the weekend. I wasn't worried about missing the deadline. I'd get to it. I'd douse myself and shiver and scream on camera. I was just going to have a few beers at the pub first. But then EVERYONE did it. And I mean EVERYONE. It was like that line from The Professional.

What can I possibly add to the whole thing after Duff McKagan, Tiger Woods, Lebron James, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder, the Today Show and so many others more famous than I have already done it? Nothing, absolutely nothing, so I've decided not to do it. The challenge is to raise awareness, but raising awareness only goes so far. At some point, people have to donate money or the awareness doesn't mean anything. Diseases aren't cured by the laughter and screams heard on those videos, and I fear that when all the thousands and thousands of folks who have done it dry off, they'll go on about their lives and forget all about ALS and all sorts of other diseases, that all their awareness will wane. So I've decided to give, to donate, but not to ALS. It's a worthy cause of course, but I have a different one. My mother died of pancreatic cancer a few years ago, and I miss her. I wish she was here to read my books and even chastise me on some of the content as she buys a hundred copies of the first one and pre-orders a hundred copies of the second. It is a simple thing, thus, the answer clear. Donate in her memory to the American Cancer Society.

I know it's only $100, but it's a start. I'll try to donate more regularly as I have the income to do so, and that's my challenge to anyone who reads this. Donate, but not just once. And don't just dump a bucket of ice water over your head and walk away and forget this happened. Awareness is about remembrance. Keep coming back. Keep on donating and urging others to do so. What matters is not the video, not the cold shock of ice water, but that people are sick and scientists need money to find a cure. I'll be donating the proceeds of the CD that will accompany my next book to charity (most likely the Wishlist Foundation), and I'll keep on donating to the American Cancer Society as often as I can. Research saves lives, the funding and support and volunteer work save lives, the donations save lives. And writing saves lives. Well, at least my own life. So rather than dump a bucket of ice water over my head, I'll share an old story. It's a chapter from my first book, Horse Bite, and it's about rushing back to see my mother for one last time before the cancer took her. It's about remembering that one last thing she said to me. And now, it's also about hoping that donations might prevent some people the pain I went through on a long flight wondering if my mother would be alive when I got home.

And I'll go one more step. From now until the end of the year, I'll donate any money I receive from sales of Horse Bite to the American Cancer Society.

December 12, 2009     Five years ago this month I boarded a plane at Inchon International Airport in Korea. My mother was dying of pancreatic cancer and had recently taken a turn for the worse. The previous day I'd received a call from my father saying, “You need to get back now.” So I booked a flight and on December 1, 2004 boarded a Continental airplane bound for Columbus, Ohio not sure exactly how bad my mother was but half-expecting her to pass away while I was somewhere over the Pacific sipping a beer and a coffee. As I got on the plane, I wondered if I would ever go back to Korea. My ticket was round trip, but I didn't know if I would want to go back, or if I'd even be able to go back. A mother's illness can do that. It can bring one home permanently.     The flight was endless. Thirteen hours. I could never in those days sleep on airplanes so I drank a lot. The problem I had was that since 9/11, the drinks on international flights were not free, and in between all the coffee I drank, there was beer, and I spent a good deal of money. I ran out of cash in fact. I hadn't planned well. One never does in those situations. One rushes. One jumps. One grabs bags and simply tries to get home, so we were still over the Pacific when I ran out of cash. I was going through the beers at a pretty good clip, and I said it out loud, “Shit!” I rummaged through my pockets and my wallet, but there was no cash. I had a few Korean coins and a few Japanese coins from the brief layover in Tokyo but no cash, no dollars, and the flight attendants wanted only dollars. My mother was dying, and I didn't have the money for a beer. I was still in a big metal tube somewhere over the Pacific, hours and hours from Houston where I had a five-hour layover before I would even board the plane for Columbus. Perhaps it was bad, but I wanted a drink. My mother was dying, and I just wanted a beer to sip along with my coffee and to somehow get through the flight with her still alive on the other end.     A flight attendant came by, and I got her attention. “Excuse me, could I ask a favor?” She stopped, looked down at me slouching in my seat, empty Kirin beer can and cold half-cup of coffee on my drink tray. “Sure, hon. What do you need?” She was an older woman, maybe 45 or so. And as far as flight attendants go, she was large. She took up the whole aisle in a way that made it uncomfortable for me with her standing there. She had a mole on her right cheek that pushed her face into a frown. Her hair was in tight brown curls. She leaned in all heavy and waited for me to speak. “Uh, I'm sorry, but I ran out of cash. I was hoping I could use a card or a check for a couple more drinks.” I didn't have any checks, but it just came out that way.     She tilted her head to her left and gave me a good look up and down whereupon her expression changed to one of pity. I figured I must have looked a wreck. I hadn't slept the previous night of course. I'd stayed up late drinking soju, and I also hadn't showered. I kept thinking I was going to receive another call about my mother's condition so I wanted to be available at all times. And the thing is, I hadn't showered the previous day either. I sometimes didn't in those days. I'd pull my hair back and go a day or two without shaving or showering. Throw in the fact that my mother was dying as I sat in that plane seat, and yes, I was pretty bad off mentally, emotionally and physically. And the flight attendant seemed to notice. She straightened her head. “No problem, hon. I'll be right back.” She grabbed the empty can and walked to the back of the plane.     While waiting for her return, I took out my wallet thinking she might bring a charge slip. I also finished the cold coffee and just as I was setting the cup down, she was back. I noticed her name tag, Gretchen. “Here you go, hon, on me.” She tapped my forearm and walked off as I thanked her. I didn't bother with the cup she'd also brought, I drank from the can. I had one sip, two, three. I noticed I, Robot was playing on my movie screen. Will Smith was battling an army of robots and trying to save the world. I just wanted to get back to see my mother once more. I had two more sips and watched the movie in silence. After a little bit, Gretchen came back and refilled my coffee. She nodded towards the beer, “You need another one?” Physically she wasn't attractive at all, but I began to think about her. The woman seemed to see me in that moment. “Yes, please, if it's no problem.” Gretchen touched my shoulder, “Be right back.”     She came back in a few minutes and set another beer down without saying a word. I finished the first one and started on the second. I lost track of Will and the robots and somewhere along the way decided to chug the last half of the second free beer. I felt strangely warm afterward and in what I consider a Christmas miracle, I fell asleep. Somewhere over the Pacific while Will Smith was still battling robots, I fell asleep, while Korea faded into my past, I fell asleep, while my mother temporarily improved when told of my imminent arrival, I fell asleep.     It was December 1st. My mother would die eleven days later while I slept in her bed in her house. But on the first, there in my seat with the gifted beers and Will Smith and the robots, I slept for the first time ever on a plane as we flew over the Pacific, over California, Arizona, and New Mexico into Texas. I saw Gretchen as I exited the plane. “Thanks a lot,” I said. She touched my shoulder, “You take care now, hon.”     The free beers certainly didn't make the difference in my mother's condition when I got back to Columbus, but they did improve my own. In Houston, I wasn't a tired wreck in need of more drinks and coffee. I was rested. I washed up in the restroom. I shaved. I pulled my hair back, even changed shirts. It had been six years since I'd seen my mother, and when she saw me, she noticed not just me but my condition, and in one of the last coherent things she ever verbalized, she said, “Oh, David, you look so nice.”     Wherever you are now, Gretchen, thank you, again, and though it's early, Merry Christmas.