1)Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into writing? I grew up in a small three bedroom/one bathroom house with my parents and nine siblings in Buffalo, New York. Presently, I live in a suburb of Buffalo with my wife and three college age children, who are never going to leave. As far as how I started to write. I went through a pretty aimless period after high school where I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do and was in and out of college. Finally, in my early twenties I started read in a pretty serious way—stuff like Kerouac, Philip Roth, the poetry of Anne Sexton—which led me to want to give writing a shot. Problem was by the time I was all read up I was in my late twenties and had the pressure of trying to keep a roof over my head and a pretty serious girlfriend, whom I would eventually marry and have children with, so I had to shelve the writing thing. But when the kids got older and needed me less, I started to get up before work (really th...
It was a four day rental just down the road from Skaneateles (pronounced: skin-ny-at-las ) on Lake Otisco in the Finger Lake region of New York Stat e. The mid-June weather was pleasant and the rolling green hills that descended down to the lake provided a wealth of charming views. On one of those hills sat the two story rental which was constructed of decorative hard split cinder block with double hung windows and a metal roof. A large deck extended out from the side door and curved around to the front of the structure. From the deck you could hear the shallow Otisco waves gently kiss the shore and you could get a glimpse of the lake through a multitude of leafy trees, but not in a way where you would say things like, “Wow, what a view!” or “OMG, that’s some body of water!” Though the construction of the rental was newish, the inside was filled with old wood, creaky fixtures and antiques. Shelves with hundreds of hard-covered books lined the l...
The Old Pink My Old Pink story starts in the early 80s at the establishment next store— Mulligan's Brick Bar. It's when the Old Pink was still The Pink Flamingo or, as we called it, The Pink. The Brick Bar became a thing when my friend and fellow Brockport State washout Kevin McNamara started working there. Not only did he work there, but he quickly rose to the rank of manager—no one could ice up a case of OV Splits like KevMac. Of course, as it is a best practice of the most effective managers everywhere, he used his elevated position to hire all of his friends, including me—the worst White Coat/Bouncer in the history of the Brick Bar. Remember the White Coats? We used to circulate through the packed bar, witnessing a thousand broken dreams and missed connections as we picked up and disposed of dead cases of OV Splits, beer bottles, and spent glasses of vodka and iced tea. We also had a secondary function of keeping the peace in the bar. While th...
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