January 20, 2020

Short

Deadlines, day jobs, and distractions: they're all part of a writer's life. But here's a hint: don't mention pizza in front of non-writers when you have a story brewing!

Roger White is a trapped man. When someone comes to rescue him, will he recognize the face of a friend or of an enemy, and will he have the strength and the courage to fight his way out?

In the latest hours of the night and the earliest hours of the day, a writer can find the solitude necessary for a long inward journey of the mind...

Write an entire novel in thirty days? Fine, the explanation behind it is that we're nuts.

There was a time when feet were the primary mode of transportation, and everything that people needed was within walking distance of home. Then came cars, and "progress" ...

The neon sign above the door hasn't worked for twenty years, but even so, one night in thirty Ernie's Diner illuminates two lives with love.

All spring we wait for the celebrations of May Day, the music, the dance, the celebration of our community ...

It's disgusting to see someone's ear bitten off, but you had darn well better watch what you have to say about it afterwards!

Moving to Lincoln Heights was a compromise, at best. I was born and raised in the city. I liked the convenience of having dozens of small stores all within walking distance. Mina had lived most of her life in a gated community; the sort of place where you needed a six-figure income and a relative in politics to even apply for residence. To her, I lived in a ghetto; to me, she lived in a police state. There were truths to both opposing opinions neither of us wanted to admit.

Riding along behind a herd of cattle, the dust coating your hat and your sun-weathered face, you get a sense of how little stocks and bonds matter. It's the sky, and the movement of the earth beneath your horse's hooves that matter, and how they let your heart fill all that space that gives your life a meaning ...

There is a time and a season for everything, and if fools cannot manage to figure out that there is a time for living and a time for loving, then ... why ... people will have to seek out that time of light and happiness when they can.

The open window at the top of the tower looks out upon the face of the Moon, the only face in view. Is this the world? Is this a dream? These are the questions asked hour by hour, day by day, each moment defying what was known to be normal in my family ...

What Hollywood has to say about zombies is purely theatrical ...

The people have changed as the years have gone by, at least in names and faces. Only two things are the same, the bar itself, and the loneliness of the lives of its patrons. Anthony Driscol and Keri Sherwood have decided to change that ...

Ace Piker Press reporter Dan Mulhollen tells how he saved the face of America in the 2008 presidential primaries.

Looking back through your years, examining the relationships you had -- how many can you remember, and how many would you rather forget?

There are layers to every story, and the richness and fascination only get better when you start to hear about what happens on each layer ...

While leaves drift from the trees, a pilgrimage must be made, a pilgrimage that will draw old memories to a close, and set feet on a path into the future. Originally appeared 2006-10-23.

Originally appeared 2007-10-22.

Dan Mulhollen tokes a new look at an old classic fairy tale: "The Little Match Girl."

Dan twists another fairy tale into something to make your eyes bug out.

What is art? Is it only the things that end up in a museum? Only the things that can be sold in a reputable house? What about the crayon scrawl that a mother carefully saves because it was the first drawing her child made, with colors so bold and beautiful? What about the thoughts that occur in measured order, flowing from a pen onto paper, portrait of the shadows of a heart?

Are words only words, or can they be something more? And is a gesture only a gesture, or can it be a statement of belief? And who is it who really has the right to decide what meanings words or gestures have for each person?

It was the night Andrea spent all month dreading. The strange affliction overshadowed her with its power, and the consequences might follow her until the next full moon ...

I suppose I should have been thankful for the holiday. Normally, people would have been driving to work, delivering supplies, and making all the noises that come with the start of the new day. Most of them would have wondered what this crazy woman was doing standing in the middle of a traffic circle wearing only a towel.

When betrayal and cruelty are the hands on the potter's wheel, the resulting vessel will take on a sadly distorted shape, and hold depths of pain. Poured out, the contents will drench all...

The world has changed, and the dead are no longer "departed" ... do they live among us, or do we die among them ..?

Behind one door is someone who is always willing to lend an ear to matters of the heart or of hope, someone the entire family can count on to be present for advice or for company ...

The co-workers leaning against the back of the building smoking, the office hens with their cheap and heavy perfume, the copy machine spewing wrinkled paper and toner dust, the supervisor who thinks that "managing" is done by "threatening workers" -- is that what you really want?

Who is it, waiting there, knowing so much about that private life?

Confronted with an unexpected event, do we step forward to embrace the adventure -- or is it better to remain safe?

No longer young, no longer innocent. What she sought in the world was more of an illusion than what she saw before her ...

There is a turn of the road where everything seems to be ... well not exactly what you expected. In fact, some times the path you take makes you what someone else might not have expected ...

Was it memory? An overheard story? Or echoes of something that once might have been?

When business is booming, picking and choosing your sales tactics is a viable path. But when the company is tanking, and jobs are on the line, you go with what works -- even skills that are a bit rusty ...

Color matters in a population ... at least until the population realizes that color doesn't matter, and that we're all people under whatever skin color we wear ...

Alas, Dunwitty was Dunwitty, and Miss Haversham was ... well, she was dismissing him, wasn't she?

"This time of year," she said, her voice soft, yet possessing an alarming severity, "the curtain between the worlds is thin. Rips do occur..." An oh, what a rip it was ...

A sense of place is important. How many accidents happen every day because someone takes some sort of wrong step?

Bah! Humbug! Where are those blasted Christmas lights?

Who are you really? What you see in the mirror, or the reflection in your own heart?

Yes, sometimes it seems, you can go back, and things can change ... especially if you've done some changing yourself ...

The aliens are part of our world now, but will their strangeness ever be integrated fully into our culture?

The item of the highest value is the unbroken promise of love ...

Censorship is not necessarily a bad thing. However, you have to consider who is doing the censoring and whether they are doing it for the common good, or because it gives them power ...

Oh, well, we've all experienced something like this, haven't we?

It was like having a rug pulled out from under your feet. And yet, the fall itself taught a lesson about balance ..

The world ends, with a bang, a whisper, and a Nazi pie?

Certainly it is best to perceive truth and goodness as we go along, but some times we have to learn it the hard way ...

The stage door was almost perfectly an entrance for the doors Lauren found shut in her personal life ...

"Political correctitude," they decided, "means that the pursuit of happiness is mandatory and literal." ... And the only Right you have had better be the far one!

What keeps the bricks and stones in place isn't just mortar; what makes the lights shine and the machinery hum isn't just electricity. What will you see if you choose to look more closely?

Who is this woman, and why has she suddenly taken my house by storm?

It was elite, it was private, it was ... perhaps not quite enough of a good thing ...

The path to the future is paved with cryptic scrawls ...oops!

"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yes, when our fear generates paperwork that people can't surmount, that's scary indeed ...

A short tale about a short man who is shortly to become ...

An eye for an eye, the old law goes. Is it Justice being served, or that Revenge is tasting so sweet? Suddenly both half-blind, what does each side now see?

When you have a large and convoluted family, maybe discretion is also the better part of interaction ...

No one can know what the future holds, though we can make some educated guesses. And the past ... that's out of our reach as well ...

Almost anyone who has ever suffered from insomnia knows that nothing good happens at three in the morning, but even reruns of "Gilligan's Island" are better than a kidnapping by malignant skeletons ...

Only one man will survive and be rewarded great rank -- the rest will become creatures without hope or dreams ...

As time wears on, some of the painful broken edges wear down, until something interesting can slide into a heart ...

Does it mean that we don't have to bother trying to go to work any more? The date is coming up in less than two weeks, so there's just enough time to empty the savings and visit the Caribbean, right? Or should you invest your capital and prepare to sell garments that say, "The End of the World Came and All I Got Was this Dopey T-shirt"?

What if you woke up tomorrow and it was seven centuries later, and a lot of problems had been solved? Would you long for the past or...?

"Remember that when you post something publicly on the internet, there is a good chance it will never go away. Post responsibly!" --Kit Klienman.

Once they had been afraid, but they fought bravely. Once they had been shut down, but they survived on their wits and their talents. And now...

When someone looks at the front of your house, who do they see?

Genealogy is a funny thing. You can see echoes of the parent in the child, odd traits revealed by the past. And when you begin to investigate your lineage, you find there are some questions that float to the surface as well...

It's right to stand up for a principle, isn't it? Only whose principles do we choose, and where do they come from?

Is being politically correct over-rated? When is opinion a crime?

Do you ever stop and think about what it was like back then, when the future was still an unknown iceberg in the Ocean of Life?

What a little princess she was!

Sometimes the best plan of action is to just be up front and genuine...

Was it this? ... No, that's fine. Was it that? ... No, no, that couldn't be it. Didn't I take care of those yesterday? Of course I did ... but ...

Good thing they didn't have Facebook back then...

"Read all about it!" Does that include opinion and fantasy as well as news?

This future is closer than you think...

Go ahead, look him up on Wikipedia...

MAGA!

There's a reason the demographics of the F-book are changing...

Are you ever ready for something like this?

You only wish it was far-fetched...

When the quality of the product goes isn't what you think it should be, do you just throw it out?

As Seen on TV!!!

Do your fictions tell more about you than you think?

Maybe you remember this, too...

Honesty? Compassion? Whatever happened to those?

Doesn't sound all that far-fetched anymore...

Ever wonder how someone can prove who they really are?

If the secret is taken to the grave, there's only one way to uncover it...

Poem

Poetry for a cold winter day, when love and Spring seem so far from your heart.

It's like this; it's like that -- but all the words point to only one thing for which our whole being strives.

No crashing, no shouting, no furious passion ... there is something far greater, and far more precious ...

There are regrets, there are memories, and love always has one thing more: hope...

Some blossoms have a set season, but with others, you can't tell if there will be fragrance or thorns...

Poem, unrhymed, by Dan Mulhollen.

As we wait for Spring to fully arrive, Dan Mulhollen writes about hope.

Far apart, so much seems impossible, but yet ...

If everyone looks the same, you may need to adjust your glasses and take a look at some new possibilities ...

Hope is lost, and no amount of rhetoric can salve the bitterness.

"...Wake up counting dreams so quickly gone, And wondering were some of them for me?" Dan Mulhollen explores the edge of loss.

The spiritual journey, the spiritual eye.

Poetry considering the things that we find ourselves listening to ...

Nobody truly realizes, how many thoughts ...

The athlete is in range, he eyes the orange rim ...

When dreams are not the same ...

Shut the door ... leave behind the bothersome world ...

I stand outside the graveyard gate, And wonder if I'm tempting fate ... (Originally appeared 2006-11-13)

... we pretend our clothes are not threadbare, and covered in graveyard mud...

...No names, no pasts, almost no world exists beyond the automatic door...

"We met in Common Time; Those unimaginatively-named, but warm weeks ..."

"A woman of soft mornings ... the warmth there in your smile"

'Today is not the worst day of my life.
Nobody I know has died
or suffered serious injury ...'

'...one-thousand statistical mysteries.
I wonder who they are
and wonder if I really want to know...'

Poetry to think about ...

"...Reflections seeming there both deep and vast..."

A poetic thought about cage birds.

"...are chains meant to be yanked?...

"...return to the tatters we've ripped apart..."

"...any poem That's worth the time...

"...something you want to make real..."

"Forty-nine years ago I visited the Falls...

"...This will occur on some known date And nothing more than a cosmic note..."

"...there's something to say about something warm..."

"...lessons that I think are wrong..."

Inspired by the 1915 silent film, "Hypocrites." A link below the poem will take curious readers to a YouTube video of the movie.

"...For what strange season's mystery is this?..."

"...To make writing an almost daily thing..."

"...your pre-conceived notions: For which you can never be wrong?..."

Listen -- did you hear it, too?

Comics

A new snow on an Ohio neighborhood.

Sometimes the only place to put the snow is on top of the car!

Heavy snow in Ohio lines a residential sidewalk.

Nonfiction

A young boy learns that there is more to sweet autumn cuisine than leftover Halloween candy.

Dan Mulhollen shares a holiday recipe remembered from his youth: Butter Nut Horns.

Who knew that a ghost of Christmas past could smell so much?

Essay

When it comes to salads, Dan Mulhollen considers them at their most useful merely as food for thought.

Daydreaming happens. Sometimes we think it's a waste of time, but at others ... specifically at times when the blank page beckons, daydreams are shown to have sparkling facets like precious gems.

Good thing Dad liked him more than Ariel did...

Opinion

Almost every history student in high school could say that what they were taught was dry and seemed to have no point. Over this summer break, maybe history teachers ought to worry lest about the text book and think about teaching what really happened.

You see them in coffee-shops, fingers poised above the keys of their well-worn laptops, their gazes intense. You know about the writers' way of life ... or do you?

Ah, Christmas -- and the traditional story of Scrooge...

Serial

Chapter One: A desire to experience something new leads to travel, and the road traveled -- where will that take the weary wanderer..?

Luke takes a vacation and tries a new dish...

Who is this woman, so mysterious, so alluring...?

Clair was like an exotic adventure -- but when will that adventure take place? Is it time to re-assess a lifestyle that can allow it?

A dream come true -- Clair has appeared at Luke's door and brought some lively times with her. Now she wants to experience the psychological maze of Willoughby Castle...

Part Six of Seven. Clair goes forward with her idea of the initiation rite at Willoughby Castle...

Conclusion. Clair's secret is out, and Luke is okay with it. But can two such different people live happily together?