Joe Flood's Blog, page 32

Public Servants, Not Trump Servants

President Trump is “locking down” government communication, including social media, at federal agencies. A crackdown is occurring at the Department of Transportation, HHS and other agencies. Press releases, tweeting and even public speaking is banned – temporarily, they claim. Trump loyalists are being embedded to monitor the work and communications of public servants.

Public servants are called that for a reason – they work for the public. It’s a service, paid for with your tax dollars. Federal employees do not work for a single faction. They serve all of us, no matter which political party we support.

They are public servants, not Trump servants. Their work belongs to us. They have an obligation to communicate to the citizens who pay their salary.

I worked as a contractor in the communications department of a large federal agency. Among my duties was updating the social media account. As long as I avoided certain hot-button issues (like climate change), I was allowed to write and post to Facebook and Twitter without review.

Was this because senior management was interested in more important matters? Or didn’t think social media was important? A little of both. Press releases went through rounds of reviews because they could be printed out, marked up and distributed. The ephemeral world of social media didn’t lend itself to such micromanagement so was left alone.

It’s also impossible to monitor, as the rogue Badlands NPS account revealed. While there are tools to manage social media, my agency didn’t have them. We didn’t know how many social media accounts we had, who ran them or what they were doing with them. Different components of the agency had set them up, without informing HQ. Passwords to social media accounts were widely shared and given to interns and even contractors, like myself.

I felt we should communicate more, not less. There were some fascinating stories inside the agency where I worked. Technicians developing tools to alert the public to severe weather. Scientists uncovering the secrets of the lightless deep ocean. Researchers helping farmers plan for drought.

There should be more government communication, not less. Every government employee should be allowed to communicate with the public on the subject of their work. Conservatives should demand this – don’t you want to know what your money is being used for?

Information wants to be free, wanting to escape its bounds and find its way to readers. Just look at the 2016 campaign, during which embarassing DNC documents were leaked by the Russians.

The Trump action will ultimately fail, the tools they used against opponents now turned upon them. Once the feds discover how easy it is to go rogue, an alternate universe of federal information will be established in cyberspace, outside the control of Trumpian minders, a Wikileaks of climate reports, scientific research and gossipy accounts of government life, ultimately achieving the aim of making government information accessible to the people.

For what better way to get people to read something then to tell them that it’s banned?

Women’s March: Day of Hope

Inauguration Day ended with me running in fear down K Street, as the DC police fired “flash-bangs” to clear the mob of anti-Trump protesters.



Anarchists had set a limo on fire and were trying to stop the fire department from putting out the blaze. The explosions made me jump but it was being in the middle of a crowd that suddenly turned tail that was so frightening. It was run, or be trampled.

I needed a large bourbon when I got home.

The next day was the Women’s March on Washington, the first stirrings of opposition to President Trump. No one was sure how many people would attend.

The crowd turned out to be three times the size of the inauguration, nearly half a million people crammed into the streets of DC. The march was so large that they couldn’t march, the route being filled with people from mid-morning until night.

Not being a fan of crowds, I was going to meet some friends after the march. But they couldn’t get to me and I couldn’t get to them, separated by a few blocks and a couple hundred thousand people.

On Inauguration Day, I rode my bike down H Street, virtually alone. Now, a day later, tens of thousands of people streamed down this street by the White House. Rounding the corner on 15th St, I ran into a vast and immeasurable horde of women in pink hats pouring up from the Mall. I’d never seen anything like it, not even during the Obama inauguration of 2009.

I wanted to get to Freedom Plaza so I could get a photo of Pennsylvania Avenue and marchers stretching to the Capitol. But I couldn’t get there, feeling like a salmon trying to swim upstream. A never-ending crowd marched down the inaugural route, doing their own alternative parade, cheered on by protesters occupying the bleachers lining the route.

I dipped into one little corner of this vast throng, before turning to go back up 14th St. There’s a little crest on the street. Looking behind me, I could see the crowd stretching down 14th all the way to the Mall, where thousands more were marching. More people than I’ve ever seen in my life. Every few minutes, a vast cheer would rise up, echoing off the office buildings.

In contrast to the Inauguration Day protests, everyone was happy. There were no arrests. No one was masked. People smiled, took photos together and laughed at the signs mocking Trump.

The celebration went on into the night, demonstrators with signs parading around the White House for hours after the official end of the march.

I met friends for dinner afterward, going to an Irish bar a dozen blocks away from the protest. Far enough where I thought we could get a table. Wrong. Every seat of the bar was filled with women in pink hats. The TV was turned from a basketball game to CNN. When the broadcast showed video from the march, the crowd cheered, their voices filling up the bar, the sound of a vast protest movement coming to life.

The post Women’s March: Day of Hope appeared first on Joe Flood.

Inauguration Dispatch: Day of Fear

May you live in interesting times.

– An old Chinese curse

No fan of Trump, I contemplated leaving the city for the Presidential Inauguration. I ended up staying for leaving was a kind of surrender. The inauguration was just in one corner of the city and could easily be ignored.

But the pull of history was too strong to ignore. I’m a writer and a photographer. These historic events are material for me, to be captured in photos and transmuted into fiction, like how I turned my election night experience into my short story, Victory Party.

I wanted to be in the room where it happens. Or at least on the street.

On Fridays, I go to Friday Coffee Club, a meetup of bike folks at A Baked Joint. The coffee shop was open so I went, figuring that I might run into some inaugural crowds.

Nope. A couple hours before the inauguration and the streets were empty. H Street had been blocked off to traffic so I rode down the middle of it, just seeing a couple of buses go by. There’s always a line at A Baked Joint but on this Friday, nobody was there. And there were no bikes out front. Just a couple of Friday Coffee Club people had made it in.

The only action on the street was from the anti-Trump demonstrators, who were assembling at McPherson Square. It started to rain, so I headed home to watch the inauguration.

As Trump wrapped up his speech, I heard a helicopter overhead, hovering just a few blocks away. A well-organized band of anarchists (oxymoron alert) had thrown rocks at Starbucks and other businesses. It takes a lot to get the DC police to arrest you but they did, making more than 200 on Friday.

The helicopter went east and continued to hover, eventually drawing me out my apartment, camera in hand, expecting to see one of those typical DC protesters where people chant and sit in the street.

But McPherson Square, packed with anarchists and the Black Bloc, had a very different vibe. Within five minutes of entering the park, I saw a Trump supporter get punched in the head and knocked unconscious by a guy who was dressed like Bane. The First Aid tent was nearby; the medical volunteers did nothing, unconcerned about a Trump supporter’s injury. Instead, National Guardsmen came into the park to rescue the guy. The police were lined up outside the park and would not come in.

I live in DC. It’s my city. I felt afraid in that park, in a way that I never did during the Occupy and other demonstrations in DC. Violence has an ugly quality that’s instantly recognizable. You feel it when it occurs, an anxiety rippling through the crowd.

The kids in the hoodies weren’t going to square off against the heavily armed police. Instead, they were looking for soft targets, such as businesses and lone Trump supporters. Or you and me, if they wanted to – the police were not coming into the park. I left.

14th and K was the epicenter of the protest. In front of the Washington Post building, the windows of a limo had been smashed in by the demonstrators. Protesters were standing on it. Then members of the Black Bloc marched by, their faces covered. Someone threw something into the limo. It caught fire, black smoke billowing up into the sky.

I snapped some quick pictures. People said the gas tank was going to blow. Others said the police were coming.

As I turned to leave, I saw a woman behind me, silently pleading for peace. It’s her heartbroken face that I’ll remember more than anything else. Within seconds, I would be running as the police fired flash-bangs into the street.

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From the Cold Room to the Cloud: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Back in the day (the 90s), the servers were kept in the Cold Room. This was a floor devoted to rows of black boxes on racks that served up our web pages. They would sit there, seemingly inert, until something went wrong. Then the cry would go out “the servers are down!” and the techies would disappear into the Cold Room to fix the problem.

The downside to having physical servers in your office is obvious. You need to keep them secure and safe. Your technical staff is tasked with maintaining a physical asset. They spend their time unboxing and installing new equipment. And you’re limited by the amount of space you have. You can only serve up so much web. Too much traffic and your web site goes down.

Russell Heimlich, web developer at Billy Penn, illustrated this problem – and a solution – in his recent presentation on Amazon Web Services at the January WordPress DC Meetup.

He used to work at US News & World Report. The biggest thing they do all year is their issue on college rankings. Millions of parents and students check it out to find the best universities in America. Back when Yahoo was relevant, the web portal ran the college issue as a featured link on their home page. The US News site crashed within four minutes, their servers unable to handle the massive spike of traffic.

The solution is to have a more flexible hosting environment than boxes sitting in a cold room. For many organizations, that is Amazon Web Services (AWS). Instead of unboxing equipment, web developers set up servers virtually in the AWS environment, pointing and clicking on a grid until they have the idea solution for their hosting and traffic needs. Rather than serving web pages off your servers, you’re serving them from Amazon’s. While Russell made it look easy, it’s an expert-level tool that is customizable and complex.

However, AWS is so robust and efficient that it powers much of the social media and network services that we think of being in the Cloud. But the Cloud is not magic. It has been configured, set up and hosted by humans. Rather than working in the cramped confines of the Cold Room, developers now play in the infinite spaces of the Cloud.

The post From the Cold Room to the Cloud: Amazon Web Services (AWS) appeared first on Joe Flood.

Practical Advice for Protesters

More than 200,000 people are expected at Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington.

I’ve lived in DC for two decades and have witnessed countless protests, from the aimless grifters of OccupyDC to the thundering anti-war protests of the George Bush era.

I love taking photos of protesters. It’s real drama on the streets of DC. And while I’m not one to rise up, fist in the air (unless it’s in support of bike lanes), I admire their passion.

Living in DC, it’s easy to be jaded. During the Occupy movement, it was protest du jour, as a couple dozen millennials occupied K Street at rush hour every evening (“Whose streets!” “Our streets!”) while police protected them from a sea of angry drivers. The protests had a ritual quality – the same people, the same slogans, the same protocols until the whole thing fizzled out, the professional left drifting away, leaving McPherson Square a shantytown of broken tents and broken dreams.

But protests can make a difference, as any history of the 1960s will tell you. More importantly, they bring like-minded people together, allowing them to forge stronger connections and partnerships. If you’re a liberal in Oklahoma, a protest like the Women’s March provides affirmation that you’re not alone.

Protest means sacrifice. You’re giving up your time and money to support a cause you believe in. It ain’t easy. And protest in DC, amid the marble columns and soaring monuments, can be thrilling. And exhausting. Here’s some practical advice for protesting in Washington, DC.

Transportation

Washington is a complex urban environment, relatively dense, with limited access points. We have a semi-functional subway system, some commuter rail and are surrounded by highways in perpetual gridlock. Complicating things, there’s a river on one side. And chunks of the city, like around the Capitol and White House, are closed to the public.

Don’t expect to drive anywhere near this mess. Take Metro, a bus or a bike. Leave early and give yourself plenty of time.

The good news is that Washington is a walkable city. You can walk from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial in fifteen minutes.

Also, the scale on the Metro map is deceptive. The stations downtown are closer than they appear. It’s only a couple blocks from Metro Center to Gallery Place. If you’re coming to the Women’s March, use the stations off the Mall, like Archives and Federal Triangle to avoid the crowds.

Bikes aren’t allowed in the exclusion zone during Inauguration Weekend. Which is a pity, because they’re the best way to get around the city. Capital Bikeshare is the city’s bikesharing system and it’s cheap and easy.

The Circulator buses are also a great way to get around. The fare is a $1 and the routes are pretty straightforward.

Comfort

You’re going to be walking! Wear comfortable shoes. The day of the march is not the day to break in a new pair. No one cares what your feet look like.

Bring food and water. Around the monuments, your food options are limited. If you’re lucky, you can get a hot dog from a stand. Pack some snacks. Also, all the water fountains on the Mall have been turned off for the winter. Bring water. You’ll get thirsty from marching and chanting.

Dress for the weather. Check the forecast and dress a little warmer than you think you’ll need. You may be outside for hours.

Tech

Ah, the problems of our connected age when we can’t get connected. 100,000 people trying to update Twitter at once is going to tax even the most robust network. Your cellphone may not work in the crowd. Be patient. If you’re meeting people, make plans ahead of time, if possible – don’t count on them being able to reach you.

At some point during the protest, everyone is going to need to recharge their phones. People will peel off, in search of electricity, clustering around outlets like cavemen around a fire. Bring or borrow a portable battery. I like my Jackery portable charger.

Police

You need an appointment to get arrested in DC. It’s true. The DC police are not going to arrest you during a protest, unless you’re a celebrity who has made previous arrangement with them. It’s a highly choreographed and largely symbolic affair. The city is still paying off plaintiffs from their last mass arrest during a protest so they have no interest in arresting you or anyone else.

The Park Police, however…  Perhaps because they’re least intimidating of DC’s numerous police forces (they have the word park in their name), they tend to be the most aggressive. Nothing they like more than closing monuments and public spaces. Do what they say, even if it’s nonsensical. The same is true for the Capitol Police and the US Secret Service. There are at least 28 separate police forces in DC plus countless rent-a-cops so there will be men with strange uniforms and guns yelling instructions at you.

Security theater has overwhelmed Washington over the past two decades, stealing space from citizens and making it the private reserve of the nomenklatura. It’s infuriating. And expanding, as the Secret Service slowly takes over the Ellipse and other public spaces around the White House.

They love putting up fences. Fences around monuments. Fences around fountains. Fences protecting other fences. Someone climbed over the fence! Put up another fence!

This absurdity will be at its highest level during the inauguration, as if chain-link could protect us in the era of the drone and missile.

If you’re here for the Women’s March, expect to be funneled through fences, like cattle, and subject to TSA-style search. You won’t be able to get near most of the monuments, either – they’ll be protected by fences, of course.

Photography

It’s tough to participate in an event and take photos of it. Fortunately, my friends from DC Focused, InstagramDC, ExposedDC and countless local photographers will be there to document the action using #WomensMarch

I’ll be around too, posting photos to my Instagram account and Flickr. Ironically, I’m not a big fan of crowds, so I’ll be on the periphery, where I can easily escape.

Don’t bring much gear! Nothing bigger than a small bag is allowed during the Women’s March.

If you are taking photos, look for details that stand out in the crowd – a red flag, a friendly smile, a cheeky sign.

Plan B

Planning ahead means having a Plan B. Make sure you have a contingency plan, one that covers events ranging from the annoying to an actual emergency. For example:

You get separated from your group and the mobile network goes down. Where will you meet?
You’re tired/hungry/cranky. Where will you go for food/water/caffeine?
You get anxious in the crowd. How will you get out?
An actual emergency occurs. It’s chaos. Where will you go to be safe?

Hint: hotel lobbies make excellent places to hang out if you get lost/bored/tired. If you’re at the Women’s March, go north to Farragut Square and Dupont Circle to find food and shelter. I like the Renaissance Dupont, because they have an Illy cafe there.

Trump is determined to bring back many elements of the past. He’s also bringing back the era of the mass protest. The Women’s March is just the first of many.

If you are coming to DC to make your voice heard, plan ahead. And wear comfortable shoes.

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Victory Party: The Story of a Story

Victory Party in the City Paper

My short story, Victory Party, won First Place in the City Paper Fiction Issue. Since then, a number of friends have asked me about the story. Where did the idea for Victory Party come from? How did I write it? Why did I write it?

Here are answers to Frequently Asked Questions. It’s the story of a story – how Victory Party got made.

Idea

The deadline for the City Paper contest was not long after the Presidential Election. It was a natural subject. According to Mary Kay Zverloff (author of Man Alive!), who judged the competition, the vast majority of short story submissions dealt in some way with the election.

I was surprised, like most people, by the depth of Trump’s support. This election was Hillary’s to win – all the polls agreed. But, clearly, there was a secret class of Trump supporter, people in the shadows, who kept their opinions to themselves.

Who were they? What motivated them? Exit the DC bubble and it’s not hard to find folks suffering from hard times. As I wrote in Victory Party, these were people who:

voted for the man, out of desperation, a mad hope that someone could change their cursed little town and their cursed little lives.

But what would it be like to be a Trump supporter in Washington, where 96% of people voted for Clinton?

Conducting research with The Emperor’s Clothes at McClellan’s Retreat

Setting

There are a lot of bars in my fiction. Write what you know! It’s the default setting for a Joe Flood story. I find bars to be interesting places that bring all manner of people together. Having talked to a few bartenders, I’m also fascinated by the business of bars, how a couple dollars worth of booze gets magically transformed into an $18 drink.

DC has seen a rise in this “cocktail culture” over the past few years, as the loveable dives of my youth give away to exclusive speakeasies. I decided a ridiculously hipster bar would make a good locale for my story, the better to illustrate the contrast between elite DC and the real world.

I had two sources of inspiration for my setting: Bar Charley and McClellan’s Retreat. I wandered into Bar Charley on election night. It’s a cozy, brick-lined basement much like my bar in Victory Party. And, like in my story, there was a palpable sense of tension there on election night, an expectation of victory tinged by a fear of the unfathomable.

My other inspiration, McClellan’s Retreat, I just love. Quiet, dark and with no TVs, this Dupont Circle craft cocktail bar is a great place to meet friends for an intimate chat.

Characters

I mock the people of DC in books like Murder on U Street. I think newcomers to the city are naive and clueless. A shiny veneer has been placed over a Washington that still houses the poor and disaffected, a city where anything not locked down gets stolen.

In Victory Party, my bar patrons are sloppy and careless, blithely handing over their credit cards to questionable individuals and willing to get in any car that looks like an Uber.

It’s also a city of winners and losers, in which incumbents capture whole economies and take the benefits for themselves. Homeowners vs Renters. Baby Boomers vs Gen X. Feds vs Contractors.

I illustrated this dichtomy with two characters: Randy and Michael. Randy is an ex-con with $27 in the bank. Michael owns a bar which serves watered-down drinks – and no one notices. Their view of America is shaped by the opportunities available to them. Crime tempts Randy while Michael is effortlessly rich.

Plot

Short story submissions to the City Paper contest had to be less than 1000 words. That’s short. This blog post is longer than that.

The word limit forced me to focus on the most essential elements of my story. All I wanted to show was the moment that Trump won, the shock in DC, and one person who was happy about it. Victory Party sketches out its characters and themes and then delivers us to that epiphany.

Writing & Editing

When I write, I like caffeine and background noise, preferring to work in coffee shops. I wrote the first draft of my story the week before Thanksgiving. The first draft was 1300 words. It was called “Her” and was largely about the reaction of Hillary’s supporters to the loss.

After writing the first draft, I let the story sit for a day and then began cutting, to get the tale below 1000 words. Inspired by the excellent new Hemingway bio, Ernest Hemingway: A New Life, I chopped anything resembling exposition, i.e., explaining the characters rather than showing them do stuff. Show, not tell. 

I focused on Randy and his outsider’s view of the speakeasy, letting out just enough exposition for the reader to understand why he would resent a bar full of wealthy, naive Democrats. “Joe Flood masterfully doles out information,” Mary Kay Zverloff said in her introduction to my story, a comment which made me happier than anything else. She even used Victory Party in her writing class as an example of how to do exposition.

After getting my story below 1000 words, I picked at it for days, like a turkey carcass, deleting and rewriting bits and pieces of it.

The ending was a struggle. How much happiness would Randy reveal? I rewrote the last paragraph several times. In the end, I opted for my main character having a quiet moment of victory, one that he knows won’t last.

I also changed the title, from Her to the ironic Victory Party.

What’s Next

To celebrate the Fiction Issue, the City Paper had a party at Kramerbooks, where I read my story before a packed audience. I’ve been going to Kramers for decades – this was a thrill.

If you liked Victory Party, you’ll love my novel Murder on U Street, a mystery set in the real city beyond the monuments. Read this book if you want a wry look at the DC art scene.

I also have another novel in the works – Drone City, a satire in which a drone crashes into the White House, leading to the end of the country as we know it. It’s a comedy. I’m editing the manuscript now and am looking for agent. Look for it later this year

Victory Party FAQ

Victory Party in the City Paper

My short story, Victory Party, won First Place in the City Paper Fiction Issue. Since then, a number of friends have asked me about the story. Where did the idea for Victory Party come from? How did I write it? Why did I write it?

Here are answers to Frequently Asked Questions. It’s the story of a story – how Victory Party got made.

Idea

The deadline for the City Paper contest was not long after the election. It was a natural subject. I was not alone in this. According to Mary Kay Zverloff, who judged the competition, the vast majority of story submissions dealt with the election.

I was surprised, like most people, by the depth of Trump’s support. This election was Hillary’s to win – all the polls agreed. But, clearly, there was a secret class of Trump supporter, people in the shadows, who kept their opinions to themselves.

Who were they? What motivated them? Exit the DC bubble and it’s not difficult to find people disgusted with this city and yearning for better lives. As I wrote in Victory Party, these were people who:

voted for the man, out of desperation, a mad hope that someone could change their cursed little town and their cursed little lives.

What would it be like to be a Trump supporter in Washington, where 96% of people voted for Clinton?

Conducting research with The Emperor’s Clothes at McClellan’s Retreat

Setting

There are a lot of bars in my fiction. Write what you know! It’s the default setting for a Joe Flood story. I find bars to be interesting places that bring together all manner of people together. Having talked to a few bartenders, I’m also interested in how bars operate, how a couple dollars worth of booze gets magically transformed into an $18 drink in the right setting.

DC has seen a rise in this “cocktail culture” over the past few years, as the loveable dives of my youth give away to exclusive speakeasies. I decided a ridiculously hipster bar would make a good locale for my story, the better to illustrate the contrast with elite DC and the real world.

I had two sources of inspiration for my setting: Bar Charley and McClellan’s Retreat. I wandered into Bar Charley on election night. It’s a cozy, brick-lined basement much like my bar in Victory Party. And, like in my story, there was a palpable sense of tension there on election night, an expectation of victory tinged with a fear of the unthinkable.

My other inspiration, McClellan’s Retreat, I just love. Quiet, dark and with no TVs, it’s a great place to meet and talk though their Manhattan is $25, which is insane.

Characters

I mock the people of DC in books like Murder on U Street. I think newcomers to the city are naive and clueless. A shiny veneer has been placed over a Washington that still houses many poor and disaffected. It’s a city where anything not locked down will get stolen.

In Victory Party, my bar patrons are sloppy and careless, blithely handing over their credit cards to questionable individuals and willing to get in any car that looks like an Uber.

It’s also a city of winners and losers, in which incumbents take all the benefits for themselves, leaving the rest of us nothing. Homeowners vs Renters. Baby Boomers vs Gen X. Feds vs Contractors.

I illustrated this dichtomy with two characters: Randy and Michael. Randy is an ex-con with $27 in his bank account. Michael owns a bar which serves watered-down drinks – and no one notices. Their view of America is shaped by the opportunities available to them. Crime tempts Randy while Michael is effortlessly rich.

Plot

With a story less than 1000 words, there’s not a lot of room for plot. All I wanted to show was the moment that Trump won, the shock in DC, and one person who was happy about it. Victory Party sketches out its characters and themes and then delivers us to that epiphany.

Writing

I wrote the story over a couple days in November. The first draft was 1300 words. It was called “Her” and was largely about the reaction of Hillary’s supporters to the loss.

As I do, I wrote it in coffee shops. It’s where I can focus. On a MacBook Pro, in Word, in case you were wondering.

After writing the first draft, I let the story sit for a day and then began cutting, to get the tale below 1000 words. I had just finished reading the excellent Hemingway bio,  Ernest Hemingway: A New Life. Following Papa’s advice, I cut out anything resembling exposition, i.e., explaining the characters rather than showing them do stuff. Show, not tell. 

I focused on Randy and his outsider’s view of the speakeasy, letting out just enough exposition for the reader to understand why he would resent a bar full of wealthy, naive Democrats. “Joe Flood masterfully doles out information,” according to Mary Kay Zverloff, a comment which made me happier than anything else.

After getting my story below 1000 words, I picked at it, like a turkey carcass, deleting and rewriting bits and pieces of it.

The ending was a struggle. How much happiness would Randy reveal? I rewrote it several times. In the end, I opted for my main character having a quiet moment of victory, one that he knows won’t last.

I also changed the title, from Her to the more ironic Victory Party. One of my last changes was to go back into the story and make more explicit that the party in the bar was a victory party.

What’s Next

If you liked Victory Party, you’ll love Murder on U Street, a mystery set in DC beyond the monuments. In this novel, someone is killing artists and hipsters. Read this book if you want a wry look at the city’s art scene.

I also have another book in the works – Drone City, a satire in which a drone crashes into the White House, leading to the end of the country as we know it. It’s my attempt to write a Christopher Buckley novel, but one set in the real city. I’m editing it now and looking for agent. Look for it later this year

Victory Party: Reading at Kramerbooks

Joe Floods reads Victory Party at Kramerbooks. Photo courtesy of Kramerbooks.

That’s me reading at Kramerbooks! The bookstore hosted a celebration for the City Paper’s Fiction Issue on Sunday, January 8th. I read my short story Victory Party, which won First Place in this annual competition.

It was a freezing Sunday night – and it was packed! Kramerbooks cleared out space in the middle of the store for the reading. Chairs were set up and drinks were served. The night was hosted by local author Mary Kay Zuravleff, who entertained the crowd with DC trivia between readings. I read first, then the finalists read and then we all mingled over beer and wine amid the stacks.

Kramerbooks is my local bookstore. One of the first places I ever visited in DC, this Dupont Circle bookstore/bar/cafe represents everything that’s great about living in a city. Giving a reading at Kramerbooks – it’s a dream come true!

 

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Victory Party Wins City Paper Fiction Contest

My short story, Victory Party, won First Place in the City Paper’s Fiction Issue.

The annual Fiction Issue sought stellar, unpublished short fiction from local writers. Submissions were judged (anonymously) by Mary Kay Zuravleff, whose latest novel Man Alive! was a 2013 Washington Post Notable Book. Stories had to be less than 1000 words long. 

Set in a U Street speakeasy on election night, Victory Party is about the moment that the liberal bubble pops.

The City Paper said:

Good fiction vividly and accurately describes the world we know; great fiction upends that world. And so this story not only exposes the privileged ignorance so many had about the election but also introduces believable supporters for the opposition.

I’m a writer and photographer who has lived in DC for more than twenty years. My fiction is primarily about Washington “beyond the monuments” – the real city and its neighborhoods and people. I think my fiction has a verisimilitude that you won’t find in more commercial works that treat Washington merely as a backdrop. Instead, I write about the city that I wander and photograph on a daily basis.

If you enjoyed Victory Party, then check out my novel Murder on U Street, a mystery set in the city’s art world. It contains the same jaded look at a gentrified city wildly out of touch with the rest of the country.

And come see me read Victory Party at Kramerbooks on Sunday, January 8 at 6:30 PM! It will be a celebration of the City Paper’s Fiction Issue!

 

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Confessions of a Grinch

SunRail train in Winter Park, FL

Confession of a Grinch: this is my least favorite time of the year.

I know, it’s Christmas and we’re supposed to be happy but the increasing darkness of the days just gets me down. Seeing the sun set at 4:45 PM fills me with low-level dread. December in DC is gloomy, whole days where the golden orb never appears, obscured by an omnipresent layer of clouds.

It’s not the cold – you can dress for that. But you can’t prepare for the lack of light.

Thank god for Florida. And thank my wise parents for leaving Illinois for the Sunshine State. This holiday break amid green trees and blue skies is exactly what I need to cure the funk of the season. Also, the days down here are a good half-hour longer, the sun lingering over the golf course to 5:30 and beyond.

After the holidays, I’ll go back to Washington. The freezing temps of January don’t bother me – it’s invigorating, giving you the feeling of accomplishment just to walk out the door. And the city is magical when it is covered in a thick coat of snow.

So, just get me past Christmas. Then, like a train leaving the station, each day will get a little bit longer, accelerating into the sunny days of spring and summer.

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