There are times in people’s lives when a significant event occurs and they’re not aware of it—the last time you pick up a son before he’s too heavy, the final kiss of a marriage gone bad, the view of...
The desktop held a patina of hieroglyphs representing years of student boredom—names and initials gouged into the wood, blackened by grime and pencil, shellacked over, then cobwebbed again with anothe...
See there, he said. The ants are drawing up and closing their doors. A book ain’t the only thing there is to read. We best get going if we’re going to.
MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an independent son of a b...
Still writing tales? he said. I told him yes and he nodded once, returning his attention to the snake. Very few of the boys I grew up with had finished high school, but they accepted that I was a writ...
My car contained guns, bundles of cash I’d found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I’d probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn...
When the blade dulled, he sharpened it on the rock, an experience he admired-the surface that dulled it could refresh it as well.