Dusk Before the Dawn

Let’s just call this a public service announcement.

Like many, I am not a fan of waiting, nor the English perfected fine art of “queueing”. When I had to get my Driver’s License renewed in person, I could find no information on-line for which Harris County Driver’s License office had the shortest lines. I hope this information saves you some time.

• All of the offices appear to triple the test of your patience by having three lines: the line to the information desk; the line (or chairs) to wait to be called; and the final “hidden” queue to have to take your test or have your picture taken.
• If you are in northwest Harris county, avoid the Grant Road office (10503 Grant Road); the first line just to get to the Information Desk is almost always out the door, and announced wait times of 3-4 hours are not uncommon;
• The Townhurst office (1601 Townhurst, near I-10 West and Beltway 8) was the one I went to, and I waited less than 90 minutes for the entire process; plus the people in that office were helpful, and amusing (one lady kept announcing that “lovely new people in line should go to the Dacoma office”);
• The Dacoma office (4545 Dacoma, near 290 and the Loop) that was being pushed as an alternative had apparently just been renovated and reopened, new, clean and no waiting; whether that will hold out once folks know it is reopened, I have no idea;
• I heard unsubstantiated reports on the Baytown office (usually no waiting, but too far for me) and the Vantage Parkway office (near the airport, avoid it for its long lines).

Hope this helps you wait less.

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In the summer of 2005, I was about to venture into my third
small start-up company, wrapping up the last items with my previous employer. As luck would have it, my previous employer had offices in Europe, in Milan, Munich and London. We were lucky enough to wrap in a non-business trip to Greece, including the island of Paxos around my visiting the European customers and offices.

I was hiking around that island one day, being pursued by thoughts of start-up company financing, when I came across a large villa, facing out across the Adriatic Sea towards Italy. Wouldn’t it be great, I mused, if there were a nice angel investor in that villa who would like to invest in this next venture?

What if he were an Italian drug smuggler?

That was the genesis for my new novel, Software by the Kilo.

But it wasn’t until last November, several years after that first trip, that the novel was finished, with a World War II back story that tied the original start-up plus Italian drug smuggler story line together.

It is no coincidence that the book is released on December 2, the anniversary of “Little Pearl Harbor”, the bombing of Bari, Italy in 1943, which ends up as a pivotal setting in the novel.

Of course I had to add in that one of the Italian henchmen loves Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, and that led to the body count game…

I never thought it would be more than three years between novels; obviously Stephen King I’m not, in more ways than just output. But I’ve enjoyed thoroughly the writing process, getting the pieces of the story to fall into place, bouncing ideas off of friends and fellow writers. The voices in my head never shut up, so my therapy to keep what little sanity I have left is to keep putting them down on paper.

The book is available at your local independent book stores like The Twig in San Antonio (now in the Pearl Brewery!), Books Inc. in California, BookPeople in Austin, Murder by the Book in Houston, Katy Budget Books in Katy Texas (if they don’t have it, stomp your feet and ask them to order it, please), at Amazon (.com and overseas), Barnes and Noble, and other outlets.

If you have any questions or feedback before, during or after, please let me know. More info on the novel is here.

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The race is over, the soreness is gone (well, almost), and my first ever half-marathon (at the San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon) is in the past. Bert and I crossed the finish line at 1:56:57, an 8:56 per mile pace, beating our 2 hour goal and finishing about 2,000 out of 20,000 half-marathon runners. Congrats to my friends Everett and Michael who also completed the run, and all of the other participants. As someone who has in the past played sports like basketball and rugby (i.e., sprint, stop, sprint, stop…or, as one of my so-called friends called it, sprint, stop and watch others, sprint, stop and watch others) running 13 miles was a daunting event.

So what did we learn from this latest undertaking, this latest accomplishment struck so resoundingly from the bucket list:
- San Antonio cops never change; the starting line was in Breckinridge park and the exit at Hildebrand was backed up two miles. I suggested to John, who was dropping Bert and I off, to pass the line and pull over on the freeway, and we would walk down Hildebrand. But one of SA’s finest motorcycle cops pulled John over, telling him he was going to write him a “big ole ticket”. He motioned Bert and I back, telling us to get in the car or we would all get tickets. “Go down to St. Mary’s exit, there’s no one there, you’ve done this before.” We hadn’t done this before, but he was right…there was no one at that exit, and we two plus several hundred others walked part the ever-tempting Bombay Bicycle Club bar to the 40 some odd starting corrals on Broadway. (more…)

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For the fourth year in a row, I’ll be at the Trinity University Alumni book signing on campus in Ruth Taylor Hall. For the third year, my partner in crime (and excellent author) Robert Flynn and I will share a table, which is dangerous just in the intent. Also for the fourth year, beer drinking and mexican food consumption will commence shortly after the book signing (or as Bob calls it, being ignored by non-readers) ends.

My next novel will not be ready in time for the signing (I will have information on it), but Bob’s latest Echoes of Glory will be there. Bob was the writer in residence at Trinity about a hundred years ago, and has won many awards for his Texas and Vietnam based fiction, and for his excellent collection of humorous essays. I’ve read Echoes of Glory and enjoyed it, my notes on it are here.

Come on by if you are close.

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There are so many double entendres I could use, but I leave that for the comments.

We’ve had a team (Komen Get It) for four years in the Houston Komen run. My wife started it with Sue whose lost her mother and a cousin to breast cancer, and my son has run it with me for the last three.

Times change. Sue moved to Denver, my son is off to college (but still doing work for two charities at UTA), and Audrey is out of town.

Solution: my wife says it is simple:
- Larry runs 5K Houston Komen run with running buddy Bert (should be dog slow since we’ve been training for the SA half marathon);
- Larry flies to Denver, meets beautiful wife;
- Larry and Lee do 5K Denver Komen run (should be dog slow since they have like mountains and stuff up there), Audrey, Sue and a cast of others do 5K Denver walk and gab;
- Larry et al celebrate with many adult bevvies.

I signed up too late to have an online Houston Komen page (perhaps it wasn’t as simple as originally planned, but if you would like to donate, Click here to visit my Denver Komen page or you can donate to the Houston Komen at running buddy Bert’s page.

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My wife has won trips to the Super Bowl and the Atlanta Gran LeMans, among many other prizes. She does this with a bit of luck, but mostly through the daily hard work of an internet “system” she has perfected over the years.

So when she said we should drive to a casino in Louisiana on July 11 because it was “lucky 7/11″, and a certain casino was giving away additional prizes,  I quickly agreed. We rarely if ever go gambling, but my wife’s instincts are almost always dead on.

The universe was talking to us…just not quite in the way we were expecting.

About a month earlier, my wife’s car, an ultra-dependable BMW X5, had died at the most in-opportune time - driving to the airport to pick up my daughter, with other relatives in town for my son’s high school graduation. The BMW dealership had supposedly fixed the problem, an air sensor which when faulty made the reliable car sputter, not accelerate, then die.

As we were driving along I-10, almost to Lake Charles, my wife took over the driving. She wanted me to look up slot machine strategies: finding and playing the loose machines, how to maximize the payback percentages. She was excited and energetic; I knew she was tapped into something.

Then the trusty Bimmer died in the same way…only this time it was while we were going 70mph up the bridge leading into Lake Charles. It coughed, it sputtered, it wouldn’t accelerate…with an 18 wheeler in the rear view mirror, accelerating to make it up the bridge. (more…)

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My wife had purchased two magnums of 1993 Silver Oak Alexander Valley several years ago. One we gave to our friend Monte for his birthday, one she gave to me to save for a special occasion. (more…)

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With little fanfare (other than self-generated) my local airline has informed me that my last flight (back home from Denver) put me over a million miles traveled with them. Coincidentally, my car turned over 123,456 miles…milestones everywhere, pop the champagne! I have mile on other airlines of course, but not enough to add up to much.

I certainly know some people who have more, though most people have a hard time fathoming spending that much time in a plane. While most of it was for business (esp. international trips during my 15 years with Compaq), we were able to bring the family along on many of the trips, and had more than our share of vacations thrown in (Hawaii a bunch, Greece, Spain, Belize, Guatemala, lots of Mexico).

Plus, I wrote my first novel while going back and forth to gay Paree to close a contract. As long as I find a way to make use of the time (whether it is too relax, read or write a good book, or talk to someone interesting), I have never really gotten tired of traveling.

Some of the highlights that I can recall: (more…)

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For the 2nd year in a row, we did the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, a 5K run or walk or sleep-in (depending on your disposition). My son and I ran, raised money and had a generally good though hectic time (he needed to be back at the high school for a band contest very soon after the race was over).

The race was once again in downtown Houston. Several buildings still had plywood or plastic sheets covering the windows. But it was a blue sky day, low temps for Houston, excellent running conditions. The release of the birds for those that had lost their fight with the cancer was right before the race, a moving piece to contemplate why we were there. It made my son and I both think about the conditions, so soon after Hurricane Ike.

My brother (Mr. “Boston Marathoner”) had been ed-u-ma-cating me on interval training and also on the mental aspects of running. He noticed from my times that I was running the first half faster than the second, and suggested that I start slow and finish strong. This helped in my training, so I employed it in the Komen run, with the help of my trusty nike+iPod gadget (which I cannot recommend enough as a training aide).

I put together a mix of songs that would (in theory) start me out at a normal (read: non-aggressive in typical Larry fashion) pace and would pick up halfway through.

The mix:
- Feel Good Time by Pink: nice and slow, so I would not overrun myself.
- Time Stand Still by Rush; building up, but still slow enough. Great lyrics, I was singing and running.
- Papercut by Linkin Park; a song from my son, got my pumped for the rest of the race.
- Jailhouse Rock by ZZ Top (live!); excellent beat, got me moving faster.
- Beat It (Fallout Boy with Jon Meyer); made me smile, since this is another track I got from my son but he didn’t know it was a Michael Jackson remix. That almost turned him from the song, but it’s an excellent running song.
- 3’s and 7’s (Queens of the Stone Age); from a Lance Armstrong interval training mix, the beat moves your feat on the faster intervals.
- Kickstart My Heart (Motley Crue live); it is hard not to sprint when this one comes on. As with last year, the end of the race goes under an overpass on Allen Parkway, so you are coming up a hill at the end of the race (after training in flat Houston!). This song pushed me through the hill.
- Cult of Personality (Living Color); got me over the finish line.

Depending on my iPod or the Komen race clock, I was either just over 25 or just under. Close enough for my goals, I had been finishing my training runs around 25:30. My son, who stayed out the night before playing in the band at the football game, did well too.

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My book is sold through many avenues, and one of the most promising and intriguing is Author’s BookShop, an effort by Brad Grochowski to feature and promote independent authors. Brad works diligently on behalf of independent authors, promoting indie publishing in any forum that he can.

Brad will have Author’s Bookshop and my novel, Dusk Before the Dawn, at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 26 - 28. If you are in or near Baltimore, drop in and say hello to Brad.

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