Warm winds, incredible sunsets, gently lapping waves—CUT! Please no, not another travel article about barefoot idylls on island paradises. Instead, let's consider how you (that being me) can have the cheeriest expectations of a balmy Caribbean house-sitting gig met with the miserable crush of the human ego, so that you (that still being me, but more embarrassed now) behave like a caged animal. Let's start before the howls: my girlfriend, who … [Read more...]
About Tom Bentley
I'm a published journalist and essayist (hundreds of articles), and the author of a short story collection, Flowering and Other Stories, published last spring by AuthorMike Ink. My 1999 short story, "All That Glitters," won the National Steinbeck Center’s short story contest. I have won many other nonfiction and fiction awards and contests.
My new book, "Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See" helps to discover and develop your writing voice.
I live in Watsonville, California and love to write. Except when I hate to write.
Without An Address, You Can’t Go Home
When I lived in Las Vegas, my title at United Parcel Service was "Bad Address Clerk." Because Vegas is a town of drifters, grifters and shifters of identity, packages would continually go astray, paralleled by the wanderings of their addressees, who in a month's time in Vegas might have changed their residence—and their jobs, spouses and perhaps even their sex—two or three times. And then disappeared. So my shelves were filled with boxes large … [Read more...]