8:45 AM Wednesday, July 15th, 2006 It’s a delicate balance, really. I want to be here early enough to beat the crowds of summer people.  Early enough that all I can hear are the waves slapping against the shore instead of the screams of small children resisting sun screen applications. Early enough that all I can see when I look over the top of my John Grisham paperback are the water, the buoys that signal how far out you’re allowed to swim, and way out, across the miles, the faint, mist-enveloped outline of Long Island. But I also want to be here late enough that the sun is shining in full force so that it has a fighting chance at blending the horrendous tan lines I’ve incurred this summer.  There’s the obvious “farmer tan” or…

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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from  a young adult (YA) novel-in-progress.  CHAPTER ONE: Day 1   I used to think living was harder than swimming through glue. But now, since I’ve  been locked up in juvie  for the past three months, I realize that my pre-jail life was a freaking breeze. Jail will do that to you; change your mind about things. A girl can do a shitload of thinking over the course of two thousand one hundred and forty hours. Trust me. I’ve thought A LOT about what I did to get myself tossed in an eight by ten foot cell, staring out the tiny window on the back wall. And there’s nothing to look at but the tall wire fence that wraps around the place like a giant handcuff. Here’s The Truth:…

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Note: This is an excerpt from the novel, Call Me Harry: Murderer, Bank Robber or Mayor?, which is available as a Kindle book. It is Volume 1 in The Harry Parnes Series. A sequel will be published int Fall, 2014. Harold ”Harry” Parnes, 63 years old, has just been released (again) from a prison in New Mexico. He’s walking the dirt road from the prison toward the town of Mesa Rock. A car passes by. The Toyota Camry stopped and I was glad. I was parched, my forehead was blazing from sunburn, my knee was throbbing and I was closer to panic than I had been since my first seven years worrying about the cellmeat in prison. I heard music, a thunderous, monotonous, pulsing drop beat with angry Afro Americans mumbling rhythmic pornographic curses. Hip…

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Good afternoon, y’all. First off, I really want to thank everybody for coming on out today and giving old Lawrence the sort of sendoff he deserves. I know if he was here to see it, our friend would be just beside himself with joy at all this. Except for the being dead part, I mean. I don’t suppose he’d be too thrilled about that. Well, when Lawrence’s ma asked me to say a few words today, I almost told her no. I’m not too great in front of crowds and all. But Lawrence, well, I know he’da been there for me. So here I am. And here’s what I have to say. I sure hope it’s okay enough. We called him Lucky, the boys and me did, even back when we were all kids. And…

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I. Late, as always, but I suppose specters have no clock. “Would you like another Coke?” My waitress, heavy enough to be a mother with a face twice as harsh, did not bother to catch my eye, but how could she when the shadows cast over the tables were deeper than those over the bar?  I looked down into my glass. Dark fizzy foam reminded me where I was, corner booth facing glass splintered with girls. Hot and hotter underneath their sweatshirts and sweat soaked into their hair. There she sits . . . and I softly whispered to myself, as I did on the landing between staircases at home and at school, “Hey . . . Nicole.” “Mr. King of. . .” My waitress blinked, as if tricked by the light. “King of Night-marez?”…

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