Rodent Prognostication Day
Happy Groundhog Day! The day when gobs of otherwise reasonable people, gather in the cold, awaiting that magical moment when a quaintly garbed gentleman pulls a bleary eyed rodent from its burrow in order to prognosticate if there will be an early spring or not. I first discovered this quirky day back in high school […]
Secret Ingredient
I’ve written many times about my lack of cooking skills. I can heat up water for tea. I’ve gotten pretty good at making a seasonal loaf of bread, which—for me—are more like glorified cakes than real kneaded, shaped and risen creations. But, that’s about it. My journey to semi-literacy in the kitchen didn’t come easy. […]
Holidays of Cratersville
The last Jolly Zings of the season are flittering about my head. They’re dropping their remaining bits of glitter and tinsel upon me as I’m writing these words. Once their magic reservoirs are empty they’ll be gone. The Jolly Zings appear along with the rest of their festive compatriots on the day after Turkey Day—also […]
Bring Your Dreams to Life
My father had a book. The book was quite large and to untrained eyes it would appear as nothing more than an ancient grimoire. My father kept this disguised book hidden beneath a velvet-draped table. My sister and I discovered it the summer before third grade. Whenever we visited his theater, we would steal into […]
Here Be Love
I keep a small, parchment* map tacked to the wall of my room. It’s a map of Earth that was created by my sister Poppy while we were teenagers in Cratersville. I had used this beautifully illuminated map to fulfill one of her dearest wishes on the day of the Winter Solstice shortly after I […]
Negotiations
It was mid January. And, according to my calendar it was only a few days away from National Hugging Day. Of course, we didn’t have an official hugging day in Cratersville, but that didn’t stop me from inserting one into my Calendar of Extraordinary Days after I learned of its existence on that great cloudy […]
Negotiations
Before I begin, I should let you know that I don’t have no truck with magic of any kind—at least not if I can help it. I’m not saying that magic isn’t real. Hanging with Jel, I know better than to say that. But, just because something’s real, doesn’t mean that I want to go […]
Midnight Flowers
In the depths of winter, I conjure flowers. It’s a perk of being a Creator. For those of you familiar with my world, you know that I live in a realm of techno-magical construct. You might think, because of this fact, that planetary seasons would be of little consequence to life where I live. You’d […]
Sleight of Hand
After the fire, everything changed. Jellybean didn’t return to school. Their old man fled town taking his pretty assistant with him. He went to the City. The big ritzy place where his other theater was. Jelly’s dad always bugged me. He was a mind-fucker. A nod was the most he usually got from me. Heck, […]
Prelude
It was January. The weather was warm—eerily so. My father and I were standing on the roof of his theater. It was not the one in Cratersville. This was his other home. The one that suited his style best. Why we didn’t end up here in this big city of lights instead of the sleepy […]
