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.

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.

Detroit has a bad rap. From Motor City to Murder City, an urban landscape of burned out and abandoned houses, empty, trash strewn lots, crime and crack-heads. But there is another side to her, a side not often acknowledged in the if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality this country seems so enamored of.

There was a time when I took the Dudes everywhere I went. Alas, they are barky little critters and show their disapproval of my absence in the most vocal of ways. Thus, I have begun to leave them home if I plan to be somewhere for longer than it takes to run into the grocery store and back.

The other day, my son called and invited me to go pumpkin picking. This was a chance to meet the granddaughter I’ve never met and see the grandson I haven’t seen since he could fit in the palm of my hand. We spent the day at Blake’s Farm picking out pumpkins, drinking cider and stuffing ourselves with donuts. Afterward, I spent an hour or so watching Monster House with my granddaughter curled up at my side while my grandson watched warily from across the room (I’m not sure he quite knows what to make of this longhaired, bearded grandfather he’s suddenly acquired), then a fine dinner and I headed home.

It was well past dark and I was worried about the critters. I’ve never left the Dudes for this long a time and one of my Cats, Eudora, had gone outside the night before and hadn’t returned by the time I headed over to my son’s house. When I pulled up in front of the house, I could hear barking. Not unusual. The Dudes sit in the window and watch for me and when I appear, they go ballistic.

Problem was, the barking was too loud, too close and too singular.

I looked out the window and there was Horton, racing across the yard toward me. I freaked, thinking all kinds of horrible things and praying that Tennessee was in the house. As I scooped Horton up, my next-door and across-the-street neighbors stepped outside. Lafayette, my across the street neighbor, mentioned that the Dudes been out and about all day and then said I should come over and meet a friend of his. Seemed an odd thing to say but I was in a bit of a panic as there was no Tennessee to go with Horton so I gave it no thought as I hustled Horton inside the house and began calling for Tenn.

Nothing. My worst fear. It was nighttime and one of the Dudes was missing.

I raced back outside and Lafayette once again insisted that I come in and meet his friend. Not wanting to be rude and both wanting and dreading the coming search, I figured do it, get it over with and begin the search. So, I followed him in and there, on the couch, was Tenn.

I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to say. I got the whole story then.

The day had been a windy one. As Eudora had still been outside when I left, I set the cat door to in only. Seems the wind wanted in as well and kept pushing the door open. The Dudes, being the smart little critters they are, figured out they could duck out, presumably to look for me, and so they did.

Lafayette and Drey tried to round them up but they are wary Dudes and kept getting away. Finally, Lafayette brought out some turkey meat and managed to coax Tennessee in the house where he spent the day sitting on the couch and watching TV. Horton wasn’t going that route so he stayed outside, in the my front yard, protecting the house while waiting for me to come home.

Murder city, huh? Burnt out houses, empty lots, a population that doesn’t care? Yeah, you can believe that bullshit if you want. The Dudes are curled up next to me as I write this. In a city that didn’t care, they’d likely be dead and gone.

Thanks Drey, and, especially, thanks Lafayette.

I grew up in this city, spent nearly my entire kidhood not eight blocks from where I now sit. There were a few empty lots back then, overgrown and wild, nestled between the order of trimmed lawns and brightly painted houses. They were our fantasy worlds, our heart dark jungles, an ever changing tableau of Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, GI Joe war games long before there was a GI Joe.

These empty lots were transitory things; one day an overgrown playground, the next cut and cleared with pipes poking up from a cement pad. Men and material would follow. The sound of hammers and saws would echo through the neighborhood. A house would appear and soon, new neighbors, perhaps a new friend.

Melancholy thoughts on this foggy morning walk with the Dudes. The block south of here has more empty lots than houses and of the houses, only eight of the fourteen are occupied. Two of the empty ones are boarded up by a security company. The rest are returning to their former elements, bit by tiny bit. Raccoons, feral cats, brown squirrels and opossums scamper about here, their scent driving the Dudes wild. Turn a certain way and it’s like walking in a vast woods with city sound effects piped in through hidden speakers.

One could easily find despair here, lament for a once great city. And there are moments of that, I must admit, as I struggle to pull this house together on little more than a wing and prayer. It doesn’t last long, this despair. There is opportunity here if you look past the fearful image Detroit has acquired, however rightful that image might once have been or may still be. Opportunity if you’re a seat-of-the-pants kind of thinker, wouldn’t mind an extended urban camp-out, am able to tolerate chaos for long periods of time and can think outside the box … way outside the box.

I own a roof, four walls and a basement for less than the cost of a new hot water heater. Here is what it looked like before I arrived. The electricity was, finally, turned on last week and I’ve begun rewiring the place. The back bedroom is completely rewired, there are several lights and outlets in the basement and overhead lights in the bathroom, kitchen, landing and a motion sensor light over the back door. There’s a new door on the front, the old front door is on the back, complete with kitty door for the critters.

<--Old Door New Door-->

I’m hunkered down in that small back bedroom, insulated against the coming winter. A makeshift kitchen and entertainment center sits in what will one day be my dining room. I’ve done the measurements and, when the Witch of November comes calling, I can move it all into that small bedroom.

Now that I have some light, it’s time to start working on the water problem.

Structurally sound, it sits on a slight rise from the street which has helped to keep the foundation strong and the basement dry. Two bedrooms on the ground floor and a long, low-ceilinged bedroom upstairs, it has a huge living room, a tiny kitchen and an extremely damaged bathroom. Damage-wise, the bathroom is the worst of it. The entire back wall is torn out. I guess, if you’re going to steal a bathtub, it’s easier to tear out the wall then to drag the thing out the smashed-in backdoor.

Did I mention there is no electricity? Not that it would matter as all the wires in the basement have been stolen. Ditto the copper water pipes. Ditto the furnace and hot water heater. Kitchen sink? Bathroom sink? Gone as well.

Surprisingly, except for some water damage in the living room and one bedroom, the upstairs is intact. Maybe the thieves exhausted themselves lugging all those heavy objects from the house and decided to return at another time to rip the copper wires from the wall. For some reason they didn’t return, leaving the upstairs intact. I like to think they didn’t come back because they were run over by a Greyhound bus on their way to fencing their loot. A satisfying thought, though not likely to have happened.

In a way, they did me a favor stealing the electrical wire. It was the old, two-wire, cloth-bound stuff which was more or less fine when all you had to power were a few low wattage lights and a radio or two. I would have ended up replacing most of it anyway. Now, I just have to replace all of it.

Now, stealing the furnace, sinks, bathtub and water pipes, that doesn’t please me so much. C’est la vie. I’ll deal with all that when the time comes.

The electricity will be on by Tuesday evening, the water by noon the following day. That is when the real work begins. In the mean time, I’ve been lessening the chaos as much as I can and cleaning the place up. Mowed the lawn, cut down all the weed trees. The place is looking a hell of a lot better than when I got here.

All in all, the next few months should be interesting.

Oh, and did I mention what this place cost me? Three bedroom house, full basement, garage.

$500.00 USD. I paid more for the car I drive.

Back in late 81 – or was it early 82? Winter in any event – I packed up the last of the luggage, tossed the cats in the back seat of the Volkswagen and headed southwest, out of Detroit to parts unknown, the vow to never return trailing behind like the sleet and slush and ice bound streets I was escaping from.

Never say never.

It’s nearly thirty years later. The last six have not, overall, been pretty. A few highlights here and there; my novel Stealing The Marbles has been published, my second, Meter Maids Eat Their Young, will be out before Father Time sweeps his scythe across 2011 but, in general, it’s been a downhill tumble from California to New Mexico to this bug infested junk yard in the armpit of Florida.

Never say never.

For reasons I have yet to comprehend, Detroit has been calling me of late. Funny, that. Detroit is the boogeyman used to frighten adults. Mention the city and watch folks recoil in fear. The Motor City turned The Murder City. White-flight, abandoned, stripped and burnt out houses, a city in decline. And it’s calling me home.

And I’m not sure why.

Writers, I think, are superstitious. I am, about certain things. And skeptical as well, especially about superstitions. Signs and portents and cities calling to us are sought after yet questioned when they seem to appear. Last week, a friend sent me an ad for a rental in South Warren I could afford, at a place called Shadylane Estates. Don’t let the name fool you. It’s a bloody trailer park. What she couldn’t possibly have known is the significance of that ad, of her sending it to me at this time.

Life is like a story in that it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It starts at birth, ends at death and pretty much everything in between is the middle. Stories are rarely that linear. What would be the point of backstory if they were?

If I were to write my ‘story’, something I would never do in full, it would not start at birth. It would start in a place called Shadylane Estates for reasons I have no intention of explaining. It just would. Because that is where it did start.

Signs and portents. The superstitious me has had a field day with that rental ad.

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again. He was probably right. Still, nearly everything that is not in storage in Albuquerque is now packed and ready to roll. I have no idea where I will land but soon, very soon, it and I and all my critters will take flight, into the cool and the dark, heading toward the unknown once again, only this time it won’t be to parts unknown. It will be to home unknown.

Could make for an interesting story one day.

Now you Twitter Twitter Twitter till
Your keyboard smokes
On to Shelfari
Then you write a Red Room post
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
At the Author’s Den
That’s what it’s all about.

Tweak your author blog
Till your fingers turn blue
Link up with Linkedin
Do an email interview
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
On a stranger’s site
That’s what it’s all about.

You do a reading here
A conference there
You drive across the country
To save the airplane fare
You’re doin’ the Promo Pokey
No time to write a book
That’s what it’s all about.

Early in May, from extreme left field, I received a website contact from a journalist at Adesmeytos Typos. She had come across my book and contacted me for an interview. I was thrilled beyond breathing, spending a day bouncing up and down, calling everyone I knew and, finally, settling down to answer her questions. The interview was published May 9th. I don’t yet have a link to the page but she sent me a jpg of it and I’ve posted it below. It’s in Greek, of course, but I think it looks cool.

I’m hoping to have a link to the page soon and a pdf file. I’m hoping as well that they will do a review.

For those to whom this is all Greek, here is the English version of the interview:

1. Tell us some things about the plot of the book

Danny Samsel is a thief extraordinaire. After stealing a painting from the most secure house in America, he finds himself in hiding and essentially exiled for over a year on the island of Kefalonia. Restless, unknowingly encouraged by a friend and desiring to reunite with his estranged girlfriend, he comes up with the idea to steal the Marbles, knowing he will need her help to do so.

Traveling around the world, he begins to gather the information and the personnel necessary to begin his quest. Along the way, he encounters a rogue Interpol agent who will prove to be his worst enemy.

Gathering in London, Danny and Company breach the British Museum, steal the Marbles, and begin the long journey across Europe. There is danger at every turn, betrayal and loss along the way until they reach their final destination.

2. How you came with the idea to use the Parthenon marbles in your book?

I have always had a love for Greece; the myths, the architecture, the culture, the country and its people. I had the opportunity to visit Greece in 1999 and my first visit to the Parthenon was an experience beyond words. I had known about Lord Elgin’s removal of the Marbles but seeing the temple, walking amidst its still eloquent grandeur, really brought home to me their meaning.

On my second visit to Greece in 2003, I spent a pleasant evening with my friend Gerasimos Ambatielou discussing the Marbles and their plight. He is very passionate about them, about their theft and the need for them to be returned to Greece where they belong. That passion for them ignited my own growing passion and the idea for the story was born that night. That is why the book is dedicated to him and his sister Maria and why Gerasimos was the inspiration for his namesake in the story.

Do you refer to basic parts of their history

I spent several months reading everything I could about the Marbles and as a result of that research, there are references throughout the book regarding the Parthenon, the Marbles, their history and their subsequent theft by Lord Elgin as well as the abuse they’ve received at the hands of the British Museum.

3. Do you have any connection with Greece?

I have dear friends in Greece, the Ambatielou family of Nea Smirni. They allowed me into their home during my two visits and showed me a friendship I hold dear in my heart. Gerasimos sparked the idea for the story, Stamo introduced me to some very interesting cuisine, their Mom and Dad were the inspiration for Eleni and Dino in the story and my dear friend Maria was my tour guide for the mainland as well as the island of Kefalonia, which has become my heart’s second home. This love for the island is why the book begins and ends there.

4. Do you follow the updates regarding the issue of the marble.

Very closely. I follow several blogs and newsletters regarding the return of the Marbles as well as the various organizations devoted to their return. Indeed, I have pledged a portion of my profits from the sale of the book to some of those organizations.

5. From your reader’s reviews I found out that many Americans do not have a clear idea of what is the true story behind the Marbles. Do you agree?

Sadly, yes, I agree. Americans are painfully ignorant of world affairs that do not directly affect them. It has been my hope that Stealing The Marbles would enlighten those who have read it to the plight of the Marbles.

6. Do you believe that the awareness of the international public opinion would help the Greek Government to have some progress on the issue?

Yes and no. The British government seems particularly adamant about keeping them despite recent trends of other governments in returning antiquities to their source. However, recently I’ve noticed a growing, world wide interest in their return. When I first started my research for the book, I was able to find two organizations devoted to their return. Now there are a dozen or more. I believe that one day, the Marbles will find their way home again.

7. For those like you who know the actions, made by our government, how well you think that we handle the situation?

I think the Greek government has done quite well in the face of very stubborn opposition. Melina Mercouri was of particular inspiration to me during the research and writing of Stealing The Marbles.

8. In your book Daniel manages to send Marbles home, back to us?

Yes, back to Greece. I won’t reveal the end of the book but before the last page is turned, the Marbles are on display in the Acropolis Museum. A bit of trivia here, if I may. The epilogue to the book was the first thing I wrote. It remains my favorite part of the book and I think, hope, it captures well the passion the Greek people have for their Marbles.

“Jack, I’m so sorry to have to tell you your wife has been murdered.”

“Oh, my, how horrible. Would you like some tea?”

And yet they work, sucking you in and keeping you turning the pages to the end. One of these days I’m going to figure out how that happens.

In my humble opinion, there are two great cozy writers: Lilian Jackson Braun of The Cat Who fame and M. C. Beaton (Marion Chesney) of Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin fame. I’ve read pretty much all The Cat Who books and nearly all the Agatha Raisin books. It wasn’t until I saw a BBC presentation of a Hamish Macbeth story that I started reading that series.

I recently finished Death of a Chimney Sweep, a Hamish Macbeth cozy from M. C. Beaton. I started it several weeks ago but events in March kind of screwed things up for awhile and I set it aside. I picked it up again yesterday and finished it in one sitting.

Pretty typical for a cozy, as noted above. Quite a number of deaths in this one, all bloodless and muted but still … A lot of author convenience as regards clues and plot but that’s pretty typical of a cozy as well. After reading several Hamish Macbeth cozies, one begins to suspect that Hamish must be psychic the way he picks up on things so quickly. I do like the fact that Hamish shows a bit more emotion than most cozy characters, especially where his critters are concerned.

Did I like this one, you might ask? Yep, sure did. Will I read more Hamish Macbeth? Yep, sure will. Wish I could say why. Wish I knew why they grab me so. C’est la vie, I guess. I’ll just keep reading them and maybe one day I’ll figure out the why.

Blacky Black, one of the Gingersnap family that found their way into my life in Albuquerque and followed me here to this forsaken sandbar between the Gulf and the Atlantic ocean, went missing. Not completely unusual for her, I told myself at first. She’d done it before and, as she was neutered, I wasn’t worried that she would bring me even more little bundles and carry the Gingersnap family into the fourth generation. But as the days dragged on, surpassing the longest she’d ever been gone in the past, I began to lose hope. The only thing worse than having something you love die, is having something you love disappear without a trace. Closure is hard to find under those circumstances. You always wonder and you will never stop wondering.

Sometimes, a critter comes into your life and leaps so deeply into your heart you can’t imagine how it keeps beating without them there. Typhoid, or Big Lug as I had begun to call him, was such a critter. He brought me joy, made me laugh, gave me strength in the all too many rocky moments my life seems to have become these last few years. On March 11th, he died. One moment he was this boisterous, happy, crazed pup and the next he was sprawled out on a chrome table with the vet giving me that look anyone who loves a critter fears more than any other.

I don’t remember leaving the vet’s office, don’t remember much of the week that followed. The loss of that little guy devastated me. I’m still not completely recovered. I wonder if I ever will be.

Two blows, one month, all but eclipsing the joy of the good news I received during those 31 days. Stealing The Marbles is getting some serious exposure amongst the Hellenic community worldwide. I heard from my Athens friends Maria and Gerry. 919 people singed up for a chance to win a copy of STM on Goodreads. I heard from my publisher that Meter Maids Eat Their Young is a go project and the contract for the book arrived a few days later. All things that should have had me jumping up and down pumping my fist in the air.

This will pass. I know it will. Life goes on and all that rot. But at the moment, my heart has a hole that is all too slowly closing.