Back next week!

Life intrudes again: I won't be blogging this week until probably Friday or maybe Saturday, depending on how things go (I've got another one of those trials. It's really annoying how my boss expects me to work for my pay). While I'm off suing people, why not check out the archives on this site, or look at one of my other sites:


Thinking The Lions: It's life, only funnier - -my life, to be exact. With memories of trips to DC and my honeymoon mixed in with stories about all the jobs I've had, plus my destructive twins and a lot of music.


The Best of Everything: Just what it sounds like: A roundup of everything that's The Best in any category you can think of... ranging from the most scientifically accurate Modest Mouse song to the Best Olsen Twin.

AfterDark: The scariest stories you'll find anywhere. Serialized short horror stories. Two completed stories right now: What You Need: Taylor has what people need... and that's too bad for him, and "The Grave-Robbers" -- New Sam learns a lot about his family when he turns 12, including why there are so many bodies buried below the house. Plus, The End of Light just started. Will Joe The Magician destroy the world?

"5 Pages." Read a novel the way I write it: 5 pages at a time. In Up So Floating Many Bells Down, you'll meet Sarah, whose fiance drowned the night of her bachelor party -- sending her off to join a group of people trying to prove that there's a serial killer at work. Meanwhile, her brother Dylan leaves town after the tragedy, setting up shop as a writer/photographer in Las Vegas. But he comes back over Thanksgiving one last time before heading to New York... without either of his fiancees.

Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World: 2 weeks ago, Rachel woke up and realized that she didn't know who or what she was. On the advice of her octopus, she headed south, where she met Brigitte. Just as they fell in love, though, Rachel was kidnapped and dragged off an adventure through the 73 dimensions. It's the world's only sci-fi/horror/fantasy/erotic/serial novel!

Are you a frustrated writer? Me, too -- kind of. But I'm less frustrated since I began talking about writing, and getting published -- or, rather, not getting published -- on AAAAAUGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Or: Why is it so hard to get an agent, get published, get rich, and move to Hawaii?) You'll find posts on my efforts to get published, plus how I come up with ideas, plus a lot of fun thoughts about writing.

And, because sometimes I get goaded into it by the need to make a living, I also write about the law on Family and Consumer Law: The Blog. If you have a family, or spend money -- or know someone who does -- this blog is for you.

The End Of Light (3)

The End Of Light: Joe The Magician wanted to put on a great show... he just didn't know how great it would end up being. Click here for the table of contents for this story.

“I’m telling you,” said Jackie, “I know what I saw.” She sat back in her chair and looked at the others around the table.

Rich, across from her, looked skeptical. “It was probably dark, and easy to fool you.”

“Did he know you were coming?” asked Conan, from the top of the table. He leaned carelessly on his hand and looked away from the windows, squinting as he did so. Jackie was about to answer him but paused because Conan had beckoned one of the assistants over. “Can we close those blinds or something? God, it’s bright in here.”

That made those on the other side of the table nod and a few of them look at the windows, which were filled with sunlight. The sun was not directly shining into them, not at 3 in the afternoon, not yet, but it seemed as though they were under a spotlight nevertheless.

The assistant had begun fiddling with the knobs to move the automatic blinds down. They hadn’t been in these studios for long, the Conan staff, and it was all new to them. Jackie didn’t like it. She didn’t like California; she wanted to be back in New York City, where there was weather and things were cool at times and the city was more alive and vibrant than this sunbaked wasteland, Southern California.

She said: “No. He didn’t know I was coming. I surprised him at the back door and I watched him the whole time. He didn’t set anything up. He didn’t leave the stage. He just walked out onto thin air.”

She didn’t mention the weird-sunburnt-hands.

“This guy’s good,” Conan said. “So what’ve we got on tap for tomorrow?”

Jackie looked at her notes. Rich spoke up first, though – he was always doing that to her, always jumping the gun. She wanted to throw her pencil at him – but knew that he would laugh at her using a pencil instead of a pen, and that he would then say neither should be used and she should just use a netbook like everyone else. Rich said:

“The usual. We’ll go up there, film some screwing around backstage. You can mess around with some props. We’ve got a couple of gag tricks for you to try – like the I can do that bit. There’s a giant magician’s hat that we’ll bring up. You can pull it up to him and suggest that he pull you out of it.”

“The rabbit costume,” Conan mumbled and looked at his own notes.

“We’ll splice in that footage.”

More talk, and Jackie turned a little in her chair to watch the blinds finish going down. The light still blazed through them and she could almost feel the heat, almost feel the brightness. Strike that, she thought. I CAN feel it. She wondered if the air conditioning was as high as it could be. As the blinds reached the bottom of the windows, the intern working the controls began turning them to close the light out. The room grew only a little dimmer. She looked at the blinds. The light was almost pushing through them, reminding her of almost-insubstantial fingers pulling on the slats of the blinds and trying to widen them.

“There must not be a single cloud in the sky today,” Conan remarked, looking at the blinds, too. The room was not noticeably darker, even with the blinds fully shut. “Let’s knock off early, okay? I’ve got my notes and I’ll review the stuff. Make sure the trucks are packed. We’ll meet here tomorrow at 6 a.m.”

A little more shuffling and talking. A few people decided to go back to their offices. More said they were going home to pack. The whole crew was moving up to San Francisco for the week – another shift, for Jackie, who didn’t like moving in the first place. She sat a little longer and watched people walk out.

Rich paused at the door. “What’s up with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Jackie told him and stood up. She walked out into the hall, and Rich, ahead of her, paused again and let her catch up.

“Going home to pack?” he asked. Jackie shook her head.

“Not yet,” she said.

They got onto the elevator and rode it three floors down to the main lobby, bustling with cameraman and sound guys and makeup artists and here and there a celebrity – Jackie and Rich were both used to seeing celebrities and didn’t bother to react to most of them. Danny DeVito walked by and Jackie nodded at him; she’d spoken to him many times in the past and knew him about as well as she knew any celebrity.

She didn’t talk to Rich as they went to the revolving door, the sunlight streaming in through the glass-fronted building, making the lobby seem as though it was filling up with brightness. The lobby was hot, too, and yellow-tinged. She wondered why Rich had waited for her. As they walked through the revolving door, he let her know.

“So,” he said, and she was outside and then he was, “Want to get a drink?”

The heat outside was almost unbearable: It was like some giant man, a giant man full of fire and sweat, had grabbed her and squeezed the breath out of her as she walked outside.

“What?” she asked, momentarily distracted by the impact of the heat. What is it, 120 out here? She wondered.

“A drink,” Rich said. “You know. At a bar?” He wiped his forehead and looked up. “Jesus. It’s frigging hot out here.”

Jackie rubbed her hands and pulled at her collar, which was sticking to her neck already. “A drink?” What was he up to?

“Yeah. Someplace cool.”

God no, she wanted to say. Rich, you’re a total loser, she wanted to say.

But Rich had more seniority than her, and Conan liked Rich. And Jackie liked her job. She wondered why, suddenly, Rich was wanting to go get a drink with her. She walked a little towards the parking lot, Rich alongside. A few steps, a few seconds, and they were in the parking lot and away from the buildings that had blocked the sun. Jackie had to answer him, and she turned towards him. The sun was directly behind him. Her mind raced through what she could say: I’ve got to meet someone. I’m tired. I don’t drink (he’d know that was a lie), I’ve got plans, I’ve got a lot of work to do…

What she said instead was: “Do you think the sun looks… bigger?”

Rich opened his mouth, then turned and looked over his shoulder, shielding his eyes. “I… no. Maybe.”

Jackie tried to look at it, and Rich continued looking at it.

“Not bigger,” he said, “So much as… brighter.”

The End Of Light (2)

"It's not tricks. It's the beginning of our new life."

Conan had pocketed the tickets, thinking to himself that he wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t be at any hack magic show, and wouldn’t have booked a magician onto The Tonight Show, not for anything. He’d put the tickets in his pocket and looked out at the crowd as Joe had looked out, too, and had thought to himself this: Not gonna see me there. Then he, saw the crowd standing and applauding and he looked back at Joe. He thought, but didn’t say: You got a standing ovation? For giving me tickets? You didn’t even do a trick…

Joe had seen Conan looking at him, and had said: “The beginning. Of our new life. Come and see the show.”

Joe now pulled into the back alley behind the theater, parking his car near the stage entrance for the first rehearsal. He stopped ticking off entertainers in his mind, having gotten stalled trying to decide if Hulk Hogan had been a world-changer. True, he’d not done much, but there was no denying that everybody knew who he was. That was something in and of itself, wasn’t it?

There was a mousy looking woman outside the door, wearing a white blouse and gray skirt and with limp, flat hair, holding a clipboard and a cell phone in her hands.

“Mr…” she said as he closed his door.

“Joe,” said Joe. “It’s just Joe.” It had been, he knew, Joe Krzyzewski, but he didn’t acknowledge that ever, and had no reason to, having legally changed his name 7 years earlier to Joe.

“I’m from The Tonight Show,” the woman said. She held her hand out. Joe took it and looked at her.

“Yes?”

“We appreciated your inviting Mr. O’Brien last night and after talking it through today, decided that he would take you up on it.”

“So they sent you up here on short notice, huh?”

“Yes,” She said. She smiled. “I got up at 5 a.m. I’m exhausted.”

It was four p.m. She looked tired, he realized. The sun beat down on them, hot and close. “How long have you been waiting?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Not long,” she said. She pointed at the door. “They said in the front of the theater to wait back here.”

“Well, come on in. I’ve got a few things to look over and I’m doing a rehearsal on the stage tonight. Why did a producer have to come up here to let me know that Conan is going to come?” He figured he should refer to Mr. O’Brien as Conan if they were to be equals.

“We’d like to film some of it.” Joe had used the stage-door key he’d been given and opened the door, letting them into the cool, slightly-damp, dark back stage area of the theater. He closed the door behind them. “You know Mr. O’Brien’s method. He’ll come and mess around, make jokes, spend a day or two doing that and then put it on the air. The shows don’t start until 8 p.m., right?”

“Except for the last one,” Joe said. “That one starts at 6.” They walked around a few props and dressing rooms and out onto the stage, the large, dark auditorium looming out beyond them, lit only by dim lamps on the walls. “I’m glad he’s coming,” Joe said. “It’s going to be spectacular.”

“He was impressed with the crowd reaction you got last night, he said.” She looked around on the stage. “There’s not many props here.”

“No. No, there’s not.” Joe had brought in with him a case and he set it down, now, on the stage. He looked around and then up at her. “Can you step over there, please?” he asked her, pointing a little more towards what would be stage right, off by the curtains. She did that, saying:

“I’m Jackie, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Jackie,” Joe said and unclicked the locks on the case – which was itself slightly larger than a briefcase but slightly smaller than a suitcase. Joe lifted the lid up, keeping it between him and Jackie and she watched as he held his chin in one hand, kneeling, and his other hand traced around in the air, as though he wasn’t sure what to take out of the case. She watched him and wondered if he was putting on a show for her now, trying to be mysterious. His brow was furrowed by his face appeared uninvolved in the thinking, a blank slate.

Joe stared into the briefcase. He looked up at Jackie and said: “Today, it’s a briefcase.” He didn’t elaborate on what that meant. Then he rubbed his hands together, briskly, set his face, and plunged both hands in.

Jackie watched as he pulled a piece of ordinary-looking white chalk out, thicker than some chalk, about the size of the sidewalk chalks available in most drugstores and toystores. This one was white. Joe pulled it out, she thought, a little quickly and without a flourish. He quickly snapped the case shut but left it there, in the center of the stage.

“Okay,” he said, and stood up. He looked around. “Stay over there for a bit. What would be involved in this shooting?” he asked. Shooting? Jackie wondered for a second, as she watched Joe pace, and he looked up at her as he stood near the front of the stage. “Well?” he asked.

“Oh.” She suddenly got what he meant. She watched as he walked back towards the back of the stage in measured paces. “Not much. We’d scout out in the next few days. We were thinking maybe do some backstage stuff, show the theater, the preparations, and then maybe some stuff on opening night, too.”

Joe stood now at the back of the stage, chalk in hand. He bent down and looked at the floor. He held the chalk awkwardly.

“Don’t you have stage hands?” Jackie asked. “Assistants?”

Joe shook his head and held up his hand.

“Hang on a second,” he said. He said it simply but Jackie hushed up anyway, hearing something in his voice. Joe closed his eyes again. She saw him shake his head and move his free, non-chalk holding hand in the air, in the way that someone trying to do arithmetic in his head might. He’s putting on an act, she thought.

It didn’t seem that way, that he was putting on an act, just as it hadn’t seemed that he’d done anything really spectacular last night on the show; before he’d left, he’d promised a trick to Conan’s audience if they gave him another standing ovation. The crowd had leaped to its feet and begun applauding, roaring and cheering and Conan had looked out at the crowd, amazed at the reaction this Joe had gotten.

Jackie had been backstage, too, and had watched from the wings as the crowd had stood, beginning with some in the middle of the lower level of seats until eventually they all had been standing. Joe had remained seated next to Conan, calmly smiling at the crowd. They’d eventually quieted down as he’d waved a hand at them.

“Okay, so let’s see the trick,” Conan had said, wondering what it could be; this Joe had arrived without any equipment at all, just a dusty old duffel bag that he’d brought out onto the stage with him.

The crowd waited expectantly as Joe took a sip of his coffee, the cup that had been placed on the desk, and Joe then looked out at them.

“I’ll see you all opening night,” he said. Then he’d looked at one person in front of him, a young man wearing a plaid shirt, and said “Check your shirt pocket.”

The guy had looked, and pulled out a ticket, identical to the tickets that Joe had given Conan. He’d gasped, surprised. The remainder of the audience had sat, wondering: Is that the trick?

Jackie watched now, as Joe finished whatever he’d been mentally thinking about and began walking backwards in a crouch, chalk touched to the stage. It was, more or less, in the center of the stage and he traced a line from the back wall up towards the front. She was sure he was doing some kind of act for her but she held her breath anyway, waiting to see. As he got near the center of the stage, she noticed that the chalk line was perfectly straight. And she noticed that Joe’s hands were darker – sunburnt seeming.

“You,” Joe had said on the show last night. He’d pointed to a woman on the aisle, a little further back. “Check your purse.” The woman had opened her purse and pulled out a ticket, seeming genuinely wondrous, holding it up and laughing. Jackie wondered: How’d he get those people in the audience? Had he been talking to the crowds lined up outside. “You’ll want to go get tickets for all seven shows,” Joe told the lady as the camera man zoomed in on her smile and surprised expression.

Then Joe had turned back to Conan. “Not bad, right?”

“Well,” Conan said, not wanting to cast aspersions on his guest, but Joe hadn’t listened and instead had turned to the audience. “He’s not convinced,” Joe said, loudly. He’d turned towards the band. “Max – why don’t you guys all check your wallets?” Max had looked confused but had pulled his wallet out.

Before he could get it open, the guitarist had said:“Hey!” and his yelp of surprise was genuine. Jackie could hear it. The other band members, too, each had a ticket in their wallet. As the audience clapped, hesitantly, not sure if this was part of a gag or a set-up, Joe had turned and said:

“Still not convinced? Everyone: Check your pockets and wallet and purse.”

There’d been a rustle and mumble and shuffling and one by one surprised gasps or hollers or Heys! Or Wow and then a groundswell of applause had come up as people realized that they, too, had tickets, and they were not part of any act or set up or gimmick. Jackie had watched, backstage, and had, on the spur of the moment, checked her own jeans pocket.

She’d had no ticket.

She watched now as Joe continued crouch-walking backwards towards the front of the stage, tracing his line, his eyes closed, she saw, his hands definitely sunburnt. She looked at the case again. Powder? Spray-tan in the case? He was tricking her.

One, two, three steps more and Joe stood up and opened his eyes, the chalk line traced all the way to the front of the stage. “There,” he said, and looked over at Jackie. “Now, you were saying?” He asked, casually.

Jackie looked from the chalk line to him and then dropped her clipboard. “What…” she said, bending to pick it up and walking over to him.

“What?” Joe said.

Jackie pointed down and said “How are you doing that?”

They both looked down, then, and saw what had startled Jackie: In drawing the line, Joe had backed up and backed up until he’d ended up where he was now: Standing, chalk in one sunburnt hand and the other empty, but not on the stage.

Instead, he was two feet off the stage, floating in thin air.

Joe looked down and then back up and said “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

The End of Light (1)

Sometimes, in the years that came after, people would look up and wonder: What if the sun had actually been starting to go out before we arrested him? That is, they would look up at the now-dark sky in the now-freezing air that they struggled to exist in, and wonder: What if we were wrong?

Others thought something else. They wondered: What if he could have helped, for real?

* * * * *

Joe was a stage magician. A trickster. He engaged in sleight-of-hand and misdirection and other fool-the-eye shenanigans. But he dreamed of more. He dreamed of becoming the greatest magician, the magician who would capture the imaginations of the public the way only a few entertainers ever had.

There was Elvis, of course. Elvis could have taken over the world, if he'd done it right. Joe sat at a stoplight on his way to a show and ticked them off in his mind. Elvis was an entertainer who everybody knew and who was more famous than anyone else. And the Beatles. He clicked a second long, wiry finger up, making a peace sign on the red tuxedo pants leg he wore in the rarely-hot San Francisco sun. Oprah. That's three. Three fingers, and the light was green, and he drove on, tuxedo shirt crisp and silver in the afternoon sunlight that almost never reached the ground in San Francisco, usually blocked by buildings and by fog and by clouds and by the general climate.

Not too much longer to the theater where he'd booked a weeklong series of shows that would begin in just 5 days. Ads had been running on television, even, promoting this show to a national audience. 7 shows, each with a bigger trick ending them. 7 shows, billed as The Beginning.

Joe had gotten on the Conan O'Brien show, last night.

"The beginning of what?" Conan had asked him.

"The next phase," Joe had said, "Of human existence." This was part of the spiel, the part the advertising guys and his agent and even his girlfriend, had loved. Joe had mixed in some new-age-y stuff and mixed in some religious elements (carefully, of course -- no need to invite trouble) and gotten new patter and had begun selling his magic not as tricks but as interventions from the next phase of existence into this.

It had been big. The first couple of shows, in little towns around California, had begun drawing buzz. He'd even made it into not just Entertainment Weekly ("We might someday put him on the cover as the first magician to ever be there..." the article had said. "Keep watching his act...") but also a blurb in Newsweek, mentioning that he was the "Hot New Stage Show" in California.

On Conan's show, he'd said: "I've found a way, Conan, to move beyond the laws and energy we know and use, and tap into what's next. The Mayans knew it -- most of the ancients did -- that something big is going to happen. It's going to happen in 2012. And that's almost here. And what's Next," Joe always said Next so as to announce that it was capitalized, "Is amazing."

He'd paused. Conan O'Brien, for his part, had been skeptical in his own mind. He'd sat back and thought That's a load of horseshit, but something made him not say that. As he looked at Joe, as Conan had looked at Joe and thought What kind of one-named entertainer goes just by Joe?, he'd also thought: there's something about this guy.

Joe had ended his pause: "In the Next phase of our existence, there will be new energies, new ways of thinking, of doing, of being, Conan. And I've found out how to tap those now. So I'm giving a preview of sorts. Starting June 23, I'll be doing 7 shows. Just 7. I have to limit it to 7 because of the danger of going beyond 7. But each show will be different -- you can come and see all 7 and not see the Joee phenomenon" -- Joe didn't use trick -- "Twice. And each one will end with a bigger revelation than the night before."

"Those sound excellent," Conan had said. In his mind, he'd thought again this guy's a little different. Not bad different... And Conan had said "I can't wait to see those tricks."

Joe had pulled two tickets out of his pocket, to the roaring applause of the audience, and handed them to Conan. The clapping nearly drowned out his tagline:

"It's not tricks. It's the beginning of our new life."

The End of Light (Table Of Contents)

It was just tricks. Just sleight of hand. That's all. He swears.

Now would you let him out?

(1) Joe Comes Up With A New Idea.

(2) Joe begins setting up the show.

How many things can go wrong in your life?

It's Sunday morning and you've got a flat tire. It doesn't matter because your car wouldn't start anyway; it needs a tune-up. Which means you have to stay at home today. That wouldn't be so bad except that the roof is leaking, so you'll spend most of your day putting buckets under the spot where the water comes through.

You need money. And you need it now. You can't wait for banks to meet with you, have you fill out application after application, do credit checks, talk to President Obama, have you fill out more applications, and then finally deny you. Plus, how would you get to the Bank? It's Sunday morning, and remember about your car?

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Let's Help Some Little Kids!

The auction has begun! I am auctioning off the first of the Books Taken For Charity. Even as we speak, you can go to eBay and bid on a copy of my book, Eclipse, autographed by The Greatest Band In the History of Ever, Murder Mystery!

The auction will go for 10 days, and all proceeds go to benefit Mateo and McHale Shaw and help pay their medical bills. So please... please please please, go bid on the book. You get a great book, autographed by The Greatest Band, and you'll be helping two wonderful little boys.

Click here to go directly to the page to bid. Help these little boys out!