So here it begins, my novel, Imaginary Bebop.
Chapter 1 – ‘Round Midnight
“He’s a clown.”
But Irwin’s words couldn’t cut the clamor, the hundred mashed-up voices, the heat the smoke the bass and the funk, the song and the singer, the cigarettes the booze the blur and the blues. The bar killed the words, dead in his mouth.
“What?” said Will.
The beat shook spirals in Irwin’s scotch … his sixth.
“A clown, man. A sad clown,” Irwin howled.
Will shook his head.
They sat at the corner table, the one closest to the stage at the …

Enough time has passed. It’s time to tackle Imaginary Bebop.
I read a list of “things writers do” the other day, the type of list that always pisses me off because there is this idea growing like the blob on the Internet that only a set group of people who have conformed to a certain set of behaviors, and bookmark the same blogrolls, could dare call themselves writers. They must always read, always write, always talk about why they write, always suck up to agents on their blogs, follow the same …

Working part-time in a Long Island vineyard and connecting with fellow Long Island wine lovers is giving me a great opportunity to engross myself in what is my favorite part of the region, an agricultural paradise that erases the stain left by the emptying strip malls and boarded-up gas stations that litter this suburbia.
So, let there be local wine.
Since Roanoke Vineyards contracts Roman Roth, winemaker for Wolffer Estate, to make its wines, it also sells some Wolffer wines in its tasting room. And since Wolffer is one of the few …

For the second time, I participated in Twitter Taste Live, an especially fun wine tasting for geeks like me that combines wine love with social media overkill. (Ah, geekdom, I sing your anthem proudly through purple-stained lips.)
While last time I got to taste a series of Finger Lakes cabernet francs, which were as a whole quite good, this time my cohorts and I tasted sparkling wine made in the upstate New York region. I’d never had a bubbly from there, I didn’t even know they were making them in the …