LittleBuddhaTW

No, thank you. It's receiving comments like this that give me the energy and motivation to keep writing. I'm glad you're enjoying it, and hope you will like the sequel as well!

I usually loved Fridays. Fridays meant freedom – late nights, no homework (or at least pretending there wasn’t), and Saturday mornings with a bowl of sugary cereal, cartoons humming in the background, and Mr. Bojangles curled up against me. Fridays meant more time with Jack – warm skin, tangled legs, the world shut out like it didn’t matter. But not this Friday. I was dreading this one. Because I didn’t want to go home with Jack. I didn’t want to spend the whole weekend prete

It is indeed terrible. Got those little bastards twice in college. I was so ashamed and embarrassed when I went to the Student Health Center, and they said, "Oh, it's nothing, we see at least twenty cases a day." 😆

Jack had promised to call his grandmother nearly a week ago. Yet here we were, Thursday afternoon, and still nothing. Not even a text. It wasn’t like him to drag his feet on something this important – unless he was scared. And knowing Jack… yeah, that was probably it. Still, Jonah’s fourteenth birthday party was the next day, and I didn’t want this hanging over us like a thundercloud. We needed to rip the Band-Aid off now, so we could actually enjoy ourselves instead of spending the whole w

I agree, to an extent. I need at least a rough outline to get me going and keep me organized, but the final product rarely resembles the original outline all that much, except maybe the chapter titles, general themes behind each chapter, and the main arcs of the story (although I do occasionally change some main arcs, and "Medellin" is a super example of that). We'll see how SFTF Book 2 turns out. I'm only on Chapter 7 so far (aiming to get that written this weekend, and maybe Chapter 8, depending on how much trouble Chapter 7 gives me -- it's a tough one, with a tough and delicate subject matter). Oh, and Chapter 32 will be posted in about 5-7 minutes.

I look forward to those days, believe me. I wake up every morning with all kinds of aches and pains that usually last a good part of the morning. I'm a lot slower than I used to be and can't walk as far, my near-photographic memory is shot, my eyesight is crap, and it actually takes a little effort to seduce the cute 20-something Colombian guys (it still doesn't take much, but still ...). I feel mentally about 20, but physically, I'm pushing 75 or 80 (although I'm actually decades younger than that). What I really need is a nice vacation. I could hop on a plane and get to a Cartagena or Santa Marta beach in 45 minutes, but too much work to do, too much writing to do. Ah, life.

In my dog's younger days, he used to love chasing possums, raccoons, squirrels, and all kinds of small jungle creatures. Fortunately, he never came out of the battles with a scratch. Sadly, his hunting days are over, and he kind of just lays around and licks himself all day.

Dead raccoon is probably one of the worst smells you can imagine, depending on how "fresh" it is. If you hunt it yourself, though (or know a place that sells it fresh, like in West Virginia), raccoon is one of the tastiest meats, if it's cleaned/washed properly, and you really need an old grandma who knows all the tricks to do it. If it's not cleaned/washed properly, the meat has an extremely gamey taste. When done right, it's wonderful, especially in a stew or something like that. To get back on topic, I just finished writing Chapter 5 of the sequel last night (first draft), and that sucker came out at 11,000 words! An average chapter from Book 1 is about 4,000 to 6,000 words or so. I have a feeling that Book 2 is going to be a BEAST. There are also some really cool new characters, and of course, lots of drama and tension. One character, who has the potential to become a core character, just came to me as I was writing. He wasn't even in my outline or character sketches, or anything. No matter how much time you spend planning, creativity and new ideas just keep popping out. I'll give y'all a little preview: His name is Adam, he's in English II with Nick and Jack, he's so far in the closet that he can see Narnia, he loves baseball, and so far seems like a nice guy.

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm just a regular guy who likes to live around the world, write (for a living and for fun), and occasionally hang around with cute Colombian guys. I've always thought of myself as a bit of an itinerant monk, but I seem to have settled down in Colombia (South America), where I've been for the last 7+ years, and don't really have any plans on leaving unless the violence gets a lot worse (although I live in one of the safest areas) or all the guys miraculously turn ugly all of a sudden.

I actually had Tonye Patano more in mind, the actress who played Heylia James in that old Showtime series, Weeds. But every character is going to appear slightly different based on the reader's imagination. For example, for Jack, I had the actor Jack Dylan Grazer in mind when I wrote that character, although there are some differences.

Christian slammed the pickup truck’s tailgate closed with a grunt. “That’s the last of the bags.” He stepped back, wiping his hands on his jeans like the effort of shoving four teenage boys' luggage into a space designed for two was the greatest challenge of his life. It practically was. We’d tried every possible configuration, but no matter what we did, there just wasn’t room for Mr. Bojangles. And I hated it. I crouched beside him one last time, pressing my forehead to his snout

I might come back with even better stories. 😉 Especially if I take that ultra-cute 22-year-old friend of mine, Daniel, along with me. Or my 19-year-old friend, Brayan, or my 19-year-old friend, Alejandro, or my 24-year-old friend, Ferney ... you get the picture LOL

Chapter 31 is coming tomorrow. Already working on Chapter 5 of the sequel (first draft), already making pretty decent progress. And the chapters in the sequel are LONG, at least twice the size of the chapters in Book 1. It's a good thing we've still got a fair amount of Book 1 left to go and then "Medellin" after that. It should give me plenty of time to finish Book 2 by the end of "Medellin." Then maybe a short vacation to the Amazon or the Caribbean or something. The Pacific Coast of Colombia is also supposed to be breathtaking, but I haven't been yet, because supposedly it's a wee bit dangerous in some areas over there right now. I also hear Monterrey is nice. I know a super-cute 22-year-old from there (but he lives in Medellin now). Decisions, decisions.

A relaxing Wednesday was exactly what we needed after an exhausting Tuesday. After everything – Tommy, the theme park, photo album-induced humiliation – we were grateful for a full day of doing absolutely nothing. Mom was working a shift at the ER, so Jack and I took full advantage of the empty house. We lounged around in just our underwear, watched hours of terrible daytime TV, and let Mr. Bojangles climb all over us like we were his personal jungle gym. I kept glancing over at him –

I'll start posting it as soon as "Swing for the Fences" is done, so in about 7.5 weeks. It's not available anywhere right now other than a flash drive locked in my safe 😁