Sample From "Somebody..."

All Darnell Watkins, paralyzed soul singer and reluctant icon, wants is some relief from the winter chill, his writer's block, and some persistent bad memories. Instead, when his best friend is murdered, he has to learn to cope with tragedy all over again. Here is an excerpt from "Didn't You Used to Be Somebody?"

"If you'd like to be alone to write this in your diary, I could leave."

      I snapped out of it, cleared my throat, and looked away. If I had known the clock would start winding down on our lifelong friendship, I'd have hugged the son-of-a-bitch and dared the world to write whatever down-low mess they wanted. Not that they would have; I'd been downgraded from pop act to survival story, any scandal wiped out with the snap of my spinal cord. Anyway, these young folks coming up put us to shame. So, I don't know why I snuffled and said "Allergies" only that it satisfied him, and he gave me this little nod, as if to say all was forgotten.

    I suppose I should have known something was up when I got a phone call before noon, although morning calls didn't give me an automatic jolt of fear since my mother passed.

      "Mr. Watkins? This is Detective Ken Ingram from the Phoenix Police Department. I need to talk to you about Alex Parsons."

     I honestly expected Alex, loopy from being up all night, to sing me some "great harmony" he found in his head after five Coca-Colas, and even after the flat-voiced detective identified himself, I only thought there had been more involved in the burst of creation than Coca-Cola, in which case, I'd be more than prepared to hound the backsliding motherfucker.

     Having made the resolution to start right then, if need be, I straightened my spine and said "Could I talk to him, please?  If he needs a lawyer, I can handle that."

       The cop coughed and sighed.  I figured he hadn't been doing it long if they let him make human noises.  "Sir," he told me patiently. "That won't be possible.  Mr. Parsons was fatally shot.   His body is at the medical examiner's office."

This story is available in Tales Of The House Band, Volume 1. Still looking for a home for the novel version.

Tales From The House Band, Volume 1

Why "Bohemian Crip?"

Not only because ‘like freezing my eggs, but with words,” would sound kind of gross.In its way, it’s almost true, but a turnoff, right?It is true that I’ve spent  most of my time as a writer that’s not writing waiting for someone else to put my words out there, so much so that I never made the most of my previous blogs. I won’t be foolish enough to say I’ll never do that again, especially as network executives have switched back to old TV Guides for content, instead of far-flung corners of the net, but it’s beyond time that I try to make a dent instead of bitching that nobody pays attention to me.

 I always came back to this concept, though.Part of it is simple, that nobody puts “crip” with anything but “super” so that we can write about the girl with the permanent, gleaming, inspiring smile who “never lets anything hold her back"

Don’t worry about her…we won’t be writing about her again, here) Offbeat juxtapositions are funny, but I think I wanted to create an image for myself in crip culture that is less driven for approval than that found in popular culture. Maybe we have the same drive to please, wrapped up in more artistic trappings.  I'll find out as I go, I imagine.

 In a ham-handed theft from Virginia Woolf, though, let’s imagine she has a snarky, arty, older sister that occasionally also likes to bitch about pop culture and politics. The Bohemian Crip, right? She doesn’t like to be held back either, but she is more used to it, and more likely to write a snotty rhyme with your name in it than try to win you over if you try to stop her.

So, anyway, welcome, and if this doesn't scare you off, we should have at least a short, bumpy, journey together.