It was my first writing class. A local session near my home. The class met at 7:00 in the morning, and that’s where I started P-Town.
Several years later I applied for admission to a creative writing workshop at the University of California, Berkeley. It was by invitation pursuant to the submission of a writing sample, and the moderator’s approval. I don’t know how many applicants there were, and we started with 14 people in the workshop. Most were in their 20’s, while I was over 50 by that time.
We met as discussion group, and there was tension from the beginning. The format included a weekly submission that would be discussed during the next meeting. Sometime during the week of my submission the moderator called to tell me that the women in the class were very upset by the characterization of Mona. Brian warned that I might become the target of some very personal criticism. He was right. It became a very harsh and challenging experience after that.
I had been working on a novel titled “Position 6”. Somehow Brian had learned about it, and towards the end of workshop schedule he asked for a sample. I gave him the first 60 pages. Months later I received an envelope postmarked somewhere in Oregon.
Sparo was a character in “Position 6”, but later became a short vignette submitted to an avant garde publication for consideration. At the time it did not include the Shakespearean dialogue that cascaded as a sonnet. It was returned somewhat apologetically as not for them but, perhaps, for other publications that were recommended.
Soon after I turned to professional writing in order to advance a growing commercial real estate investment consulting practice. By 2000 I had gone live with the first fully integrated Internet investment training platform which eventually included seven training modules containing more than 200 text and image files. Later I would add 18 hours of streaming video. I started with AOL’s Web based development protocol. Later I used advanced HTML editors. Google was barely known, and all Internet search was open source. My first paying customer was in Oakland, California. A check for $15.00 in 1998. Over the years my client roster grew to more than 500 individuals, and included public and private instutions; eventually reaching Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and South East Asia.
I was years ahead of my time, and a clear path to a new generation of opportunity and marketing strategy lay ahead. By then, however, I was over 60. Time and too many of life’s mistakes had caught up with me. But, I was fortunate to generate a relatively hands free income for more than 20 years. In time it became clear that I was not going to write “The Great American Novel”, as my literary voice became more poetically eclectic.
The work that follows has not been edited for grammer, or style.