When I was growing up–I know that begs the question–if I wasn’t gigging frogs or shooting marbles I used to wile away my idle hours by hanging out at my dad’s women’s clothing store.

One of the publishing industry’s dirty little secrets is that first novels sell much better than second novels. So why not enhance your chances for success by calling your second novel your first?

Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it's loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the…

I am skinniest in the morning. My belly forgets the previous day’s sins, and I wake up looking taut like a model. Then it starts.

Kudzu obscures the gate where jasmine bloomed last summer.

The Cleavers were never really undone by anything. Everyone, however, has a limit. June manages it all, as usual, with her characteristic grace, lovely crinoline - and a bit of manipulation.

I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Amir was a ghost, and he was terrible at it. No one had taught him how to be a ghost. There was no orientation, no welcome packet, no handbook. Ghosts started in limbo with only a name, and nothing else.

Planned developments have garages in the back, hasty retreat and advance protected by the Genie Automatic, come and go and go and come, waving is optional.

Ripper the dog died after eating a Quarter which had lodged in Ripper's throat choking her to death. Steve Latino buried her in the backyard the next morning. He felt nothing…

I whispered, “I love you” and then, “Goodbye”

Once something starts, there is no telling where it will go.

[Huh!]

Dog time is water. Incidents bob near the surface, fall into whirlpools, sink or drift with the flow.

I’ve lost interest in the limelight since I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to be in it. We walk past the Porker Palace and see crowds of the rich with piles of pig in their hands, stacks of pork piled up on their plates as they swirl amo