Is it too late to get a fake ID?

As I was reading a college comedy this a.m. that featured hijinks involving a fake ID, I had a pang of regret. I never had a fake ID. Never really needed one. I never developed a taste for beer (although Dos Equis' Buena Nocha seasonal brew is pretty damn tasty and unfortunately no longer imported to the US) and if I had a taste for the favorite cocktail of Duke undergrads (Southern Comfort and 7-Up) the ingredients were readily available in the dorm pantry. Even with a fake ID I'm not sure I could have carried "over 21" off. (The last time I was carded, I was out with my brother having Mexican food. I was 33.  It was a bright moment and now a faded memory.) I wish I'd gotten a fake ID now. It feels like a rite of passage I missed out on.  If I'd known I would end up writing dark fiction for fun and  profit, I would definitely have bought one.
Which reminds me.
My mother was one of the most strait-laced people I've ever known. She could be a little school-marmy about it, but she was raised to be a proper Southern woman and despite some strenuous efforts at achieving escape velocity from the remnants of her upbringing, she remained ladylike to her dying day. (She would have been horrified when I chased an orderly out of her room the night before she died, telling him if he came back I would kill him.  Seriously, it was two in the morning and he was there to take her vital signs, even though she was already in a coma and would die two hours later. I am not a polite Southern lady despite my mother's best efforts.)
But the point is... my mother probably never did a dishonest thing in her life, much less a criminal thing.
The last year I lived at home, my sister was in college and my brother was in his last year of law school. Our mother's best friend had been diagnosed with a really nasty, fast-moving kind of cancer. She was on heavy-duty pain meds and they weren't helping the nausea from the chemo.  My mother came up with the idea of buying marijuana and sending it to her but wondered aloud at the dinner table where she might find such a product. Without hesitation we all spoke up with suggestions about where marijuana could be bought and then stopped as she gave us the evil eye.
"So I've heard," I added, which was true. I've never smoked pot in my life.
"Mailing marijuana is a felony," my brother added, which I thought was a nice bit of deflection.
My sister got up to get more iced tea.
In the end, she didn't buy the weed.
And in the end--and this is true--her friend went into remission and was ultimately declared cancer free after joining a church run by a charismatic young preacher.
My mother died two years later of lung cancer; her friend is still alive.
Life is funny and unpredictable.
Next time I'll get the fake ID.

Nightfalls anthology

The Nightfalls anthology is in its final editing cycle and it's a terrific group of stories. The anthology will be priced at $3.99 (a bargain for 29 stories), with all proceeds going to Para Los Ninos, an organization that helps at-risk kids and their parents succeed in education and in life.
The cover design is by Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services, who donated her work to the project, She will also be designing both the ebook and the print version.  The stories range from speculative fiction to horror to humor with side trips to science fiction and noir-flavored lit fic.

Everybody I asked to participate in this anthology said yes, and then they gave me wonderful stories (and one poem). It's been a pleasure to work with everyone and I hope to do it again soon. More details to come, but just to whet your appetite--here's the TOC:

Acapulcolypse

            Thomas Pluck

Some Say the World Will End in Fire

            Sidney Anne Harrison

Forward is Where the Croissantwich Is

            Chris Rhatigan

Somebody Brave

            Kat Laurange

Our Lady

            Dale Phillips

Greene Day

            Nigel Bird

Isabel

            Megan McCord

The Memory Keeper

            Sandra Seamans

Bon Appétit

            Barb Goffman

Déjà vu

            Christopher Grant

It's Not the End of the World

            Matthew C. Funk

A Sound as of Trumpets

            Berkeley Hunt

Supper Time

            Col Bury

Blackened

            Dellani Oakes

The End of Everything

            AJ Hayes

Last Shift

            Steven Luna

Into the Night

            Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

Blackout

            Richard Godwin

Amidst Encircling Gloom

            Scott J Laurange

Devotee

            G. Wells Taylor

Princess Soda and the Bubblegum Knight

            R. C. Barnes

The Last Wave

            Kaye George

The Dogs on Main Street Howl

            Allen Leverone

Call the Folks

             Alex Keir

The Knitted Gaol Born Sow Monkey

            Peter Mark May 

Crossfade

            Christian Dabnor

The Tasting

            Jesse James Freeman

The Annas

            Patricia Abbott

Night Train to Mundo Fine

            Jimmy Callaway

Children's Book Relief

If you're like me, you have a whole bookcase full of books you've read and will probably never read again.  Maybe you cull them every once in awhile, sending them to live at your local library, or donating them to your nearest thrift store, or just leaving them on buses and on benches like a friend of mine does. Maybe all you really need is a good reason for cleaning off those shelves.
Now you have one.
Urban Librarians Unite is hosting a fund drive to benefit children affected by Hurricane Sandy. They're looking for donations of used and new children's books and new activity books and coloring books (with crayons) for children.

Europe's Top Cop is ... a woman!

Mirielle Balestrazzi

It's been a good week for women here in the U.S. and now comes the news that Interpol has elected its first female president, Mirielle Balestrazzi. According to news reports, she's been a police commissioner in France since 1975 (when she would have been 31) and she's been the particular bane of organized crime in Bordeaux and Corsica.
I love that the number of "first" females is rapidly dwindling and believe that soon the whole notion of some jobs being beyond the reach of women will seem as quaint and old fashioned as sarsaparilla.

What's the story here?

Photo by Patrizio Martorana

Our brains are wired to make sense of the events we observe. When it cannot put together the puzzle pieces from our observations, our brains will simply fill in the blanks. That's the point behind those tests of how well we can read sentences that are missing vowels or have such a hard time spotting extra letters. Based on previous experience, our brain sees what it wants to see.
I think another way we're all wired is that we all share a need to turn our experiences into a narrative. If you've ever heard the phrase, "It is what it is" and disagreed, I think you're tapping into this impulse, or this imperative, or whatever it is that provides the perspective and the point of view to turn situations into story.
"Bad life, good anecdote," Carrie Fisher used to say, and I embraced that phrase as my mantra.
But it's not just writers who do this.
When I worked for Los Angeles Magazine, I car-pooled with two women who could not have been more different from each other and from me. One was an elegant ex-model whose husband was a handsome, successful executive. The other was a careworn mom whose life had been full of sorrows--an ex-husband who supported the family (or not) as a gambler, a first-born child who died from a reaction to the polio vaccine.
We were locked together in a small space for at least 90 minutes a day and sometimes longer and as women do when they're together, we talked.
Often the talk was trivial--about work, about movies, about people we knew. Sometimes the conversation was heavier, about an abortion one had had, about seemingly insurmountable in-law problems that were wreaking havoc in a marriage, about hopes and dreams and aspirations.
And one day we saw the piles of rubber bands at an intersection.
M saw them first and remarked upon them and J and I looked and thought, Huh. That's odd.
And that would probably have been it except that not long after, we saw another pile of the rubber bands--the skinny little ones--at another intersection.
Before long, we were seeing the piles of rubber bands all over the place, as if droppings from some big rubber dog that would pass by unnoticed, leaving its scat behind.
It almost drove us crazy trying to figure out the significance of those piles of little rubber bands.
and then one morning we came in to work very early, for reasons that escape me, and the mystery of the rubber bands was solved when we saw a paperboy on a corner putting them around his newspapers before loading up his bike.
The best advice my father ever gave me was, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."
We were disappointed when we found out what was really going on.
Because we wanted there to be a "story" there.

Recipe for a fall afternoon--Pizza

Photo by Szazlajos

It is actually cool here in the Southland, which is kind of a relief. I like summer as much as the next person but when it gets to be the middle of November, I'm ready to put away my shorts.

Since it's cool, it's time for pizza and I am not talking about ordering up from Shakey's. I'm talking about making it yourself. It takes a little longer but trust me on this--it's worth it. When I make this for parties people follow me into the kitchen to get fresh pieces before they exit. 

Once you eat this pizza, you will never, ever be able to go back to store-bought pizza, which is why I post the recipe every year.  I got the recipe from my mother, who got it from her friend Eleanor Trigg (along with an odd lemon/currant dessert recipe that I don't remember her ever making and which has sat unloved in the back of my recipe notebook since I inherited it in 1986).

Eleanor Trigg’s Pizza as interpreted by Mickey Tomlinson as handed down to me…

2 pkgs of bulk pork sausage  (I use Jimmy Dean’s hot.  You can also use turkey sausage)

1 yellow onion, diced

½ cup (or more) dried Parmesan cheese (in the green canister, not fresh)

Garlic powder to taste (you won't need as much if you use "hot" sausage

Italian seasoning to taste

2 large cans tomato paste

Lick of olive oil

Story for a Wednesday: The Temperature at which Love Freezes

Here in Los Angeles we're experiencing our sixth month of summer, but I remember winter... Here's a new story for a chilly day. Because somewhere it's chilly.

The Temperature at Which Love Freezes

By Katherine Tomlinson

Credit: Websurfer6

The front door shut with a soft but emphatic click as Jonathan slipped out of the house. Even though he knew Kaye wouldn’t have heard it—she slept like a hibernating bear—he still found himself looking over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t wakened, that she wasn’t following him with her furious eyes.

But Kaye had merely grunted and turned over, burrowing deeper into the 600-thread count sheets and goose-down comforter.

There was only one person who would send Jonathan a text in the middle of the night; only one person whose text he’d read in the middle of the night.

Jonathan had grabbed the phone, fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table and read the message without turning on the light.

Come outside. I have a surprise for you. <3 span="span">

She’d attached his favorite picture of her, the one he’d taken after surprising her in the shower.

With barely a glance at his sleeping wife, Jonathan had slid out from beneath the covers, squeezed his bare feet into the fleece-lined slippers Kaye had ordered online without checking his size, and padded silently across the carpeted floor. 

He’d tied his plaid bath robe tightly before venturing out into the cold, well aware that all he had on underneath the flannel was a pair of thin cotton boxer shorts.

Outside, Jonathan breathed deeply. Purged of the vague day-time petroleum scent that always lingered in the wake of rush-hour commuters using his street as a short-cut to the freeway, the night smelled like pine needles