July 2013

I am reading Steven King’s new book, Joyland, so when I caught a glimpse of this from the side of the road, I had to take a look-see.         California’s abandoned gated communities, shuttered amusement parks, forlorn desert strip malls — crèches for a new society struggling to survive the ruination of the old. […]

Morro Bay, California. El Rancho Motor Hotel by the good people of Best Western, Morro Bay. Hitting the open road was, at some point, emblematic of the American vacation. In fact, it was so popular that by 1962 nearly 75 percent of all public lodging establishments in the United States were roadside motels. The blanding, […]

California is war torn, and the hard dry landscape does not bear its injuries decorously. Each burned-out swatch of wildfire victimized land, each bulldozer gouge, each swath of stolen hillside, each mark of human commerce, all stand naked against their surroundings, unmitigated by time. Even the great heavenly chunks of untrammeled nothingness lay exposed, up […]

We have a date with a miniature horse farm, so we exit on highway 246 which rolls through the hilly ranch country 36 miles north of Santa Barbara. The bucolic Santa Ynez Valley is a verdant landscape of rolling hills frosted by  coastal winds. There are 9,000 acres of ranch land adjoining the isolated and beautifully austere Santa Inés Mission, […]

Today Mark and I pack up the family Prius and head up the California Coast. Destination: Carmel- by-the-Sea, founded in 1602 by Carmelite friars. I am joining the likes of Sinclair Lewis and Jack London and hole myself up in a cabin to force some progress on my novel. I have lived in California 20 years […]