Author Archives: mcbruce56

I am not a robot. I am not your huckleberry. I am not a crook. I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party. I am not afraid. I am not your boss. I am not your momma. I am not interested. I am not dead yet. I am notContinue reading “I Am Not a Robot”

That peculiar-looking item in the photo, dear children, is an old-fashioned contraption called a “typewriter.” When your correspondent was a young man, it was all the rage among writers. If you didn’t have a typewriter, you couldn’t submit stories. (Though if one looked through the Writer’s Market of the day, sometimes you’d see a placeContinue reading “A Little News”

One day as I strolled along the sidewalk toward the San Bernardino Family Law Court, I saw the scene above. Evidently someone has vanished, leaving only their shoes atop what looks like an electrical gizmo. I feel like this a lot in my life as a lawyer. I feel like I could disappear any minute.Continue reading “Born This Way”

Those of you who have read my Minerva James stories might think that she is the only detective I ever write about. Those of you who have been brave enough to look at my writing page (on this website) know that I have other characters. There’s Staff Sergeant Jackson James of the OSI in theContinue reading “My Little Mermaid”

I just happened to stumble upon an old Adam 12 episode on television the other night. In it, a “good kid” got busted for shoplifting and his father came to bail him out. The father tried to be understanding and supportive and the kid said “Dad, get mad at me!” The father said, “I’m notContinue reading “The Cruelty of Time”

A friend of mine loaned me two folding bookshelves when I first came back to the High Desert in November 2018. She didn’t have room for them in her tiny rented room. Well, now she’s in a bigger place and wants her bookshelves back. So I had to unpack the books from these shelves andContinue reading “The Eternal Sadness of Bookshelves”

Until you can make a living writing, it is an avocation. It is something you dedicate yourself to, heap lots of time doing, but see little return. Now, if your avocation is stamp collecting or macramé or origami, you can devote yourself happily to it, create your little corner of the world, keep going untilContinue reading “My Advice: Quit”

For good reason, the Mamas and the Papas sang that you can’t trust that day. Monday always seems bleak. A month of Sundays sounds like a vacation. A month of Mondays sounds like living in Pittsburgh. I write this blog on Monday after tearing myself out of bed. I wasn’t sleepy, I just didn’t wantContinue reading “Monday, Monday”

I am old. I need to get that clear before I start this rant. I started writing my stories when I was 10 years old. To give you some perspective, the Beatles were still a new phenomena at the time. I grew up believing in a fairy tale. The fairy tale was that if IContinue reading “The Tyranny of the Internet”

If you want to humble yourself, read the journals of great poets who had tragic and impossibly difficult lives. Like the lady pictured above, Marina Tsvataeva. Of course she’s Russian. As someone once said, the Russians take their poetry so seriously that the government shoots poets. Or in Marina’s case, they starved her out soContinue reading “Marina”