Babble-Ray! Guess what? No, she’s not walking yet. But thanks for asking. No, all she’s doing is trying to repeat the sounds we make. Not a big deal. Or anything. Like the time yesterday she pulled the cat’s tail, and I explained to her that hurting the Kitty was a sad thing. “Thee!” she said. […]

Father’s Day. All hail to the good ones, you know, by blood or by fire baptised into the guild. For Lee, whose father means a lot to him in some strange ways. Like the time Mary gave Vern twenty bucks to get the kids’ hair cut. Vern’s buddy gave the kids buzz cuts for free

The Friday Nite Game. Whew. I’m not the hostess type, but this was a lot of fun. We had absolutely 0 annoying guests, 0 blowouts, 0 injuries (not even the cat). I didn’t get to play 100% of the time, but when I got to, I had fun. Characters: The Tinfoil Avenger/Black Iron — Phillip

Ray Bebe. It’s confirmed. She can clap her hands now. And last night, she played with my hair–and didn’t pull it all the time.

Company cometh. Roland, Sharon, and Philip are in town, over at Matt & Stacy’s. They’ll be over here at 1 p.m. or thereabouts. Joe gets off work at five or five 1/2 and will be here afterwards. I haven’t heard whether Doyce is going to be here for sure or not. Lee spent the night

Conflict. Hm. I shouldn’t be writing about this: that’s my instinctual response. There are some secrets too deep to be told. As a writer, I mean. Because they’re almost like…cheating. The deep secret of the day is conflict. I don’t know how many people are actually reading the Mrs. Kurtz fits, snorts, and sniggers, and

Mrs. Kurtz, On Hold, snort the ninth. The Bethany Gobbledy-dook voice said “Hold please,” and the phone clicked. Once again, the hold button had been missed entirely. “You —–,” the Bethany voice hissed. (Mrs. Kutz held her breath. If only she could hear better!) “What did I tell you?” “The customer is always…right?” Scott’s voice

Musings du Jour. One of the things I’m slowly figuring out as I work on and research the genre for Beauregard is that crime writers like details. My guess is that it gives the detective narrators that little ping! of veracity, the one that says, “This isn’t just a story, it’s a dossier, or a

Zoo Stories, by Alward Edbee. Saturday morning I took Ray to the zoo. When you’re a zoo member, you can go an hour early. In the cool. Before the lassitude settles over everything like a plague of flies. Before the class trips come out. The bad news about early morning zoot trips. The little bunnies

Mrs. Kurtz, fit the eigth. On Hold. The beginning of a scream–the kind of scream that makes people call the cops– She exhaled. As if her breath were a loaded weapon and she wasn’t ready to fire it yet. “Yeah, you might say there’s a problem.” The voice was pretty well disguised. If she hadn’t