I’d heard rumors about “Wild Rick” Mizell for years. He was the hottest guitarist in the region, and considered one of the local musicians most likely to make it big. He’d been playing in jammed nightclubs for years, and when he opened for Johnny Winter at the university, Winter asked him to come up and [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Nonfiction’
June 3, 2010
Fortunes, For What They’re Worth
I’m tired of the faulty predictions I’ve been getting lately from Fortune Cookies. Quite simply, they’re wrong—I’m not the woman they perceive me to be. In the last two months I’ve had these wise words bestowed upon me: Cookie #1: You are not bitter, petty, or dishonest. Cookie #2: You will soon witness a miracle. [...]
April 1, 2010
Making A Home Out West
I am an easterner. I was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, raised in Plattsburgh, New York, and grew up in New Hampshire. At 30, I moved to Colorado to become the westerner I’ve always wanted to be. There is so much about my personality seems western: a need for independence, an affinity for rural living, [...]
February 4, 2010
The Pretenders
The Christmas tree looked as green as the day we put it up. It always would. Every year we pulled the box from the rafters and matched the color-coded branches to their correct positions on the metal trunk. Leftover tinsel from previous years only made our job easier. I was eight that year, so it [...]
October 1, 2009
Grace
It began simply enough – as most things do. I said hello and smiled. She looked at me from under her ink–colored lashes and gave me a crescent shaped grin. It showed off her dimples, the color of fresh peaches. I told her I liked her shoes – yellow ballet flats with satin bows trimmed [...]
June 19, 2009
Open letter to the Parker resort in Palm Springs, where I am spending the next 10 days for a conference.
Dear Parker resort, You call yourself a five-star luxury resort, a veritable desert oasis, but your hotel rooms don’t even have HBO? No HBO?! Really? You are aware that HBO only costs an extra $10 per month, Parker? You already charge more than $500 per night for most of your hotel rooms, so couldn’t you [...]
February 25, 2009
Black Sheep Sings (Excerpt)
My trip to the bathroom was a ginger, creaky shuffle. I made it halfway across the room before my uterus clenched and I felt a pop, and a hot torrent of blood gushed out of me, splatting on the floor like a wet mop. All I could do for a few moments was stare at it, Lamaze-ing.
He- he-, hooo. He- he-, hooooo.
