By Shady’s Bluff

The most popular pledge level of my Kickstarter includes a collection of my first animal stories. I knew most of them were on a flash drive, but I also knew that I had illustrated versions (made with free clip art) of some of them somewhere. I printed them out at some point and never saved a digital version of them, so this week I started going through all of my old stuff to find all of my stories.

In the process, I re-discovered a few things I had written of which I am still really proud, going all the way back to elementary school. Some of them I will add to what is being sent to those who pledged accordingly. Some I will include on this site. And with at least one of them, I will see if I can re-work it a little to see if it can be a children’s book.

One of the things I am ready to share here is a poem I wrote for an assignment during my senior year of high school. To be honest, I don’t remember what the assignment was, nor even writing the thing. It’s called By Shady’s Bluff, and I will say that I wrote the last stanza a few nights ago before posting it here. Everything else is as it was when I turned it in almost 19 years ago (and received a score of 122 (?) for it, along with a “Great!” from my teacher.)

Another writing assignment I might eventually include on this site is one revealing my apparent extreme dislike of Dionne Warwick (long before she disrespected Beyoncé.) Seriously, how many high school kids have extreme grudges against R&B singers 40+ years older than them? I was a weird kid.