The moon is nearing full. I can see it outside my bedroom window. Clear sky. Cold. Back in Detroit. Back home. Who would believe that shit?

Look down upon me, Jesus. This city is in the toilet. Is that the way it should be?

Seen fire. Seen rain. Detroit in the toilet? Yeah, kind of saw that coming. Happy about it? Maybe once upon a time ago I might have given it a thirty second laugh. Now? Not so much.

Detroit is a grand old lady brought low by greed and avarice. There are great people here. People who stayed because they had to. People who stayed because they wanted to. And those of us few who returned because we love this dirty old town, this wheel-spoke layout of a city that refuses to die despite those who stab it at every turn.

My stories roam from town to town, state to state, country to country but all have their roots here. Danny Samsel, hero, thief, protagonist of Stealing the Marbles? An old, brief, friend in an old neighborhood that died and remains dark and forbidding as I write this. Strange as it may be, his house is one of the few still viable on that street, a street I spent my entire kidhood on. He died across the street from where I grew up.

Miss you, Danny. You’d get a kick out of this shit.

Teller? Protagonist of Meter Maids Eat Their Young? The story may well be, roughly, set in Mt. Clemens, but Cat was born and raised west of Burt Road, South of 5 mile.

Spike, a temporary name to be sure, protag of my current WIP, was born and raise there.

All writers have a well from which they dredge the flotsam they decorate their stories with. Detroit is my well, my deep deep well. All my pain is here. All my joy.

Gonna clear this shit up. Write it.

Have at it Detroit. I’m ready.

   

The silly season, and 2011 as a whole, is finally nearing its end. I have severely neglected this blog over the last few months. Actually, I’ve severely neglected my writing, my TBR pile and interactions with other humans as well. The house and my Detroit adventure have been a time suck of epic proportions.

Not that I mind all that much. Well, the writing part is a bit irritating. I tend to go a little batshit when I don’t write for long periods of time.

Work on the house has progressed well, though. About half the house is wired. Friends of my son gave me a refrigerator, a stove, a washer/dryer, a table, a couch and a chair for which I am eternally grateful. After a great deal of cursing, I have hot and cold running water upstairs in a temporary sink in the kitchen. Oh, and a flushable toilet. What a joy!. Despite the cold weather and my lack of a furnace, I’ve been keeping fairly warm, hunkered down in a small back bedroom.

All in all it’s been fun. Many an idea surfaced over these last few months. Ideas for stories, ideas for a non-fiction book, thoughts about the next novel. I did manage to finish the update to Secrets of the Golden Gate Bridge and get it uploaded to Amazon. Hit a hangup with the upload to Smashwords. They want me to dumb-down the look of the book to fit their silly restrictions for distribution. More on that, and many other things, later.

Happy 2012, everyone. And, if the Mayans are right, we won’t have to worry about a 2013.