Once again, here are haiku derived from short items in "police blotter" columns from small-town newspapers on the west coast and beyond. I'd say more, but I'm falling asleep.
Thanks for coming by, and enjoy.
Steamy car windows.
They conceal much, but the cop
had seen quite enough.
No place left to be
except the supermarket.
And they don't want her.
First rule of mugging:
small bags clutched by dog-walkers
rarely hold money
"Invisible men
have been stealing my knick-knacks!"
"Yes, I have cats. Why?
For unknown reasons
an unknown man hit him and
left by unknown car
Waiting in his house
was a puppy that someone
thought he had to have.
From her house she heard
a mysterious "plop" that
no one could explain.
An unknown cousin
wandered in unannounced and
was taken captive.
Chairs in the streets and
fires as well and the cops can't
wait for school to start
People in the walls:
alluring targets for a
drunk with a crossbow.
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8 comments:
"Sweet Thursday" is one of my favourite novels, and this is my favourite set of Police Blotter Haiku so far. I'm casting you as Doc; which character would Rhumba like to be? (I have dibs on Hazel.)
Hmmm... I think Rhumba would make a pretty good Fauna; she's good at sorting things (and people) out with no nonsense. But if I'm Doc, she's really gotta be Suzy. Our courtship was long and drawn-out; we were overly tentative despite the fact that there wasn't anyone else either of us enjoyed being with as much. Until we decided that we were being idiots, and then it all sorted out.
I was always a Steinbeck fan; and of course now Cannery Row is 25 miles away across the bay. I can see the lights at night.
I'm glad you enjoy the haiku. I put some time into them, but sometimes I can't tell whether they're good, bad, or indifferent.
Numbers three to six cracked me up. I read number three aloud to the son and couldn't finish for laughing.
Number nine put me in mind of the good cop in Cannery Row, and number eight sounded like Mack and the boys.
So, your best hit rate yet: very nice. Thanks.
I look forward to the young adults' novel. Best to Rhumba.
Thanks for that. My goal is to write a certain number of haiku, and then make the top 50 percent into a small book. I won't tell you what that number is, but I'm close to the halfway point. There's no telling how long it'll take me to go all the way. But this isn't a race, thank goodness.
The childrens' books I wrote years ago, and while I've spiffed them up some they don't necessarily reflect how I'm writing now. That said, I hope you enjoy them, but won't feel crushed if you don't; and I'm going to make it possible to read them online without buying them (as long as you don't mind weekly installments).
Oh-kay!
I'd like to say that good content is always worth paying for, but then again I'm not averse to getting something for nothing, and, like Charles Dickens and Stephen King, I'm a big fan of the serial format, so here's what I would do: I'll read them, aloud, to the twins, aged nine, in earshot of the older son, aged eighteen, and let you know how they go.
I'm predicting they'll read a LOT better than the current read, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the longueurs of which tempt me constantly to skip, and NO-BODY NOTICES.
Cheers
Tough crowd, there.
I have a confession: I've never read Harry Potter. Rhumba bought the first one; I read the first ten pages, and stopped.
And I've read a ton of young-adult fantasy. I was all over Diana Wynn Jones' earlier work, for example, which was thematically similar.
But the prose in HP just lay there. It was like wading through corn syrup in big boots. I couldn't take it. But apparently the rest of the world could. Go figure.
As for "something for nothing," I'm considering it an investment. A friend of mine has done very well publishing serial work on his blog and then selling it in book and especially ebook form. I'm not a big fan of ebooks -- we have a Kindle, I don't care for the experience -- but many people just love it.
Anyway, thanks for offering your kin as a test audience. I appreciate it, and I'm quite interested in the feedback.
Thanks,
Boomer
I could discuss my puzzlement at the HP phenomenon at length, but to no purpose, especially since the complete justification for HP's existence is that no child who had waded through all seven would baulk at attempting "War and Peace" on grounds of length alone.
And there's more to that than we might suppose, we of the print generation.
Aso, it isn't only the laffs that I appreciate with the haiku. It's also the pinpoint delineation of character and motive, and that's a handy attribute for prose, as well.
Best
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