THE LAST GAME

I wrote a novella. In fact I penned two. One is entitled The Last Game. Niches and Crannies is the other.



Neither is very good. I guess that's why I've found my own niches in travel journals and blogs.



My first effort was based on the premise that neighborhoods have a character of their own and as a character a life of their own. What happens to a neighborhood before its youth grows up and plays its last game was the animus of the book. A neighborhood taking on a life of its own feeling the pangs of childhood growth almost as a protective parent was tough to sell. But it was fun to write, reflect, and speculate about.

Reminiscence is always fun and with the safe distance from actuality, a little better the second time through. And that's the way it was with both stories. But I knew there was a lot of incompleteness, a lot of holes. Yet I had devoted so much time that I was ready for closure. So I ended them both when I seem to run dry. Hey, so do Grisham and Martini and Patterson, so why not I.

I thought I might edit and take the best of both and transition into one, but the softness of me set in and so they both sit there on my book shelf. There are only a few in existence including two I left for the MTV High library.

So my literary career as a novellaist started and ended there. Somewhere out there is still The Great American Novella. It just won't be written by me.