Unchained Melody

Late last night I entered an empty church hidden on a hill above the Colosseum. I thought it was empty but then I heard voices and I followed them to a confessional.

The soft voice was yours and the listening ears were mine.

I heard your confession.

I knew what you needed and it wasn’t forgiveness.

The next thing I knew I was giving communion: "This is my heart, breaking for you …"

Just as suddenly I was alone in the dark, candles flickering, incense burning. Right in front of me were the chains that once held St. Peter. They were black and holy in an unholy way and I hated them. I picked them up and threw them, spinning, into the air.

They were still spinning as I ran through the door and into the moonlight. I can’t say whether they ever hit the marble floor. I was already running down the steps and down the street. For all I knew the chains continued to spin through the centuries and were still spinning now.

I ran through the tunnel where a saxophone player blew a soulful tune. Yes, yes, yesssss ... I stopped long enough to untie the rope around my waist and drop it into his hat. Then I ran back and added every coin I had.

“Play well for me,” I said and hurried on.

I caught up with you at the bottom of the hill. You turned and smiled, or was that the sun coming up?

Publishing History

My first story was published when I was in the fourth grade. (Mrs. Hughes ran it off on her mimeograph machine and gave a copy to everyone in the class.)

Encouraged, I decided I would become the best writer who ever lived.

I had never heard of Shakespeare.

In the years that have followed, I've toiled as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, copywriter, and ghostwriter.

Now, if enough of you buy my books—Sabrina's Window and Precarious—I promise to leave all that behind and focus on making stuff up for your entertainment.

One Saturday at Barnes & Noble in San Jose

A River So Long

I just spent the weekend with a woman who travels a lot. Her name is Veronica and I tagged along as she hopscotched between Phoenix, Boston, New York, Memphis, New Orleans, Birmingham, and Raleigh.

We visited Jamaica a couple of times, too, but that was before.

Along the way I met her husband, her cousin, her colleagues, a couple of old boyfriends, and various strangers and oddballs.

I never did learn what Veronica does for a living but I know her job requires her to be on the road a lot.

I could only guess what she was thinking.

Veronica is the protagonist of Vallie Lynn Watson's unconventional debut novel, A River So Long.

It's a trip.

Get on board.

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes' short novel, The Sense of an Ending, is a fascinating mediation on perception, memory, and the nature of history.

It looks at how history is told and why it is retold, even when the history is our own. It shows us, through the late-life reflections of its narrator, why we must continually re-examine our understanding of events in the light of new evidence and unexpected revelations.

We may be surprised to learn that things were not as we thought they were, and we are not who we think we are.

How I came to write Sabrina's Window

Sabrina's Window is still a mystery to me, even though I wrote it.

I wrote the first few pages years ago, set them aside, and forgot about them. I can't recall how I came across them again, but I picked up the story where I had left off.

I never knew where I was going with it, but scenes came to me one by one in random order. Often I'd wake up early in the morning with a bit of dialogue in my head. I'd play the lines over and over again because I didn't want to get out of bed and I didn't want to forget. Then more lines would come and I'd have to get up and write them down.

Later I decided the story was taking place in Taos, New Mexico, because I've always liked it there. I surrounded myself with postcards, brochures and magazines that my wife and I had collected on our trips there. And I had an evocative water color by Greg Moon, "La Loma II," hanging in the studio where I write.

My soundtrack was The Wheel, a deeply moving album by Rosanne Cash.

At first I thought I was writing a short story, but it just kept getting longer. It took me about a year to write the first draft, and two more years to flesh the whole thing out.

I have always been fascinated by the conflicts that come up between the sexes. The mystery of attraction. Gender roles. Power struggles. Trying to find the right balance. Those are the things I tend to come back to again and again in my writing.

Those are the obsessions I explore through Sabrina's Window.

Wrecking Ball

Too often we seem to confuse patriotism with a willingness to wage war.

In his new album, Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen shares a more nuanced vision.

Consider the first track, "We Take Care of Our Own." Fierce national pride is evident in the chorus, "Wherever this flag is flown/We take care of our own." Yet the rest of the song and the album add up to a stinging indictment of how far we are from that ideal.

Remember "Born in the U.S.A."? This one is a lot like that. Pride and bitterness in equal measures.

Make no mistake, the songs on Wrecking Ball have a lot of fight in them. A lot of fight and a lot of longing for what our country could be.

It's a sad and angry album for a sad and angry time.