Cliff Notes

The Cliffs at Ragged PointI seem to have a preoccupation with cliffs, both in fiction and in my everyday life.  In Love in the Present Tense, Leonard launches his home-built hang glider off one.  In The Day I Killed James, James drives his motorcycle off another.  I quit my day job and became a writer.

Sounds like a one-time jump, but nothing could be further from the truth.

This morning I took a good look at my appointment book for the rest of the year.  It’s a lot different from last year, because of my landmark (for me, anyway) decision to stop traveling and speaking on behalf of the Pay It Forward concept.

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$@%*!!! (Reprint)

I have gotten quite a bit of blowback about the language in that book (always from adults, never from youth). Almost none of it has been said to my face. For example, at one of these town in IN, I was told that the school had received phone calls from parents troubled about a handful of words. But when I speak, and open for questions, it's very rare for anyone to bring it up directly. I wish they would. I have opinions on the subject, and I'd like to have an open discussion.

I guess that's what blogs are for.

So here are my opinions:

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I Owe It All to Lenny (reprint)

(This little essay was originally written for the Random House web site.)

I can’t define myself as a writer without mentioning Lenny Horowitz, my high school English teacher. I never called him Mr. Horowitz. He let us call him Lenny.

Lenny sent my world in a completely different direction (and if you’d seen the direction I was going at the time, you’d understand that he was a lifesaver): he taught me to love reading again, and he told me I could write.

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