Fact and Fiction

My non-fiction is primarily drawn from childhood memories of Yulan, New York, a hamlet in Sullivan County, during the late 1950s and early 60s. They are anchored in a clarity dictated by subjects illustrating and implying specific points. I consider writing an important and responsible act, part skill, part art, but always an enjoyable activity as seen through the lens of time and memory. In reading fiction, I have always been most interested in character-driven, as opposed to, plot-driven stories. Consequently, my written fictive efforts generally reflect this preference.


My characters are drawn both from my experience as well as from my imagination. Their conflicts, characteristics, as well as, the way they speak, act and see themselves, stem from experience and imagination as well. These characters are generally hybrids of more than one person, either female or male, often functioning in their everyday environments. Some are soldiers, lawyers, police officers, teachers, photographers, painters . . . functioning within varied settings from urban to rural often reflecting a blue-collar nuance and culture.


The plots of my stories function to support the stories that the characters tell: the natural friction between daughters, mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives generally complicated by changes in their livessometimes major, other times minorthat cause them to confront those around them as well as themselves. From philandering spouses, to selfish, incompetent or overindulgent parents, or individuals who discover that their lives must change. These plots, linear as well as cyclical, reflect the human drama of strength, weakness, doubt, certainty, moral choices and consequences, love, hate, fear, hope, anxiety, despair and happiness.


She stepped over the puddles and around the mud along the driveway to the mailbox by the rutted road out front. Efforts like thisalong with things like thunder and lightning storms, which terrified her, as well as woodchucks and raccoons prowling around all-night, which kept her on edgereminded her that she was not a country person. Still, for the last few weeks, the culmination of months of study, their place in Manhattan hadnt worked. She had needed the tranquility of this remote house, in the Catskills, where she had spent her summer tomboy childhood.


Franca walked slowly back to the house and retraced her footprints as she flipped through the handful of mail. One return address, New York State, Certification and Licensing Unit, caught her attention, and she tore it open with her finger:

From Black Still Water


She climbs the three steps in front of the local high school and remembers sitting on the wide stone slabscoffee in one hand, a cigarette in the otherwaiting for her little girl to finish her dancing class on countless Saturday mornings, but the memory quickly disintegrates when she opens the large steel door, and it clangs shut after her. The escaping music is deafening; vibrations pound against her chest, and in the sudden, overpowering darkness, she finds it hard to breathe. Slowly her eyes adjust, and she makes out the dancing figures through the white smoke generated from behind the jungle of gigantic speakers and amplifiers, off in the distance. She hugs the wall, inches her way along searching and her breathing slowly returns to normal.

From: Dancer


*Standing by the sink, looking out over the lake, Jaime listens to the sounds floating up from the basement, work noises: the hammer striking nails homeone, two three . . . four, occasionally punctuated by the high-pitched whine of the power saw and the slap of discarded wood as it falls to the tile floor. All day, he works, non-stop, framing it out, refusing lunch a couple of hours ago, and now it is almost three in the afternoon.


Tonight, after working a four-to-twelve at the uti*