Authors Electric

 Mine was Tom Robbins. The sticker of Tom Robbins stuck on my computer stand. This was not because I thought Tom Robbins had a hot bod or face. I don't remember ever giving much thought to whether he was physically attractive at all. His  writing  was hot. And funny. Funny has always been dangerous for me. I have been "in love" with many funny men who have not much to recommend them in the looks department. Make me laugh, though, and apparently my standards become extremely negotiable. I wanted to live inside the strange, funny, sexy world of Robbins' books. More specifically, I wanted to be a character in one. And eventually, somewhere between the sentences and the weirdness and the sheer pleasure of encountering a mind that did not seem to travel by any of the usual roads, I developed a crush on the man who was making all of it up. “Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice.” Learning mo...

  Tom Robbins died.  Oh, I didn't have any easy way to say it because there is no easy way to tell the world that your favorite author of all time has left you here without another book.  News Report Oh, don't even speak to me. I don't care if I am being dramatic. I cannot tell you how many rough patches in my life this odd man's odd books got me through. Nor can I adequately describe how he made me want to be a writer. I keep my laptop on a stand now, at the behest of my chiropractor, and I have Tom's photo on the stand, looking up at me from under my laptop. Telling me to be laid back, but to also write the thing. You can see me talking about his book Still Life With Woodpecker here . I've met some cool authors in my life: Ken Kesey, Kinky Friedman, Walter Mosley, Juan Felipe Herrera, but never Tom, my #1. And never my #2, which would have to be Raymond Chandler, but I think he was gone before I got here. If you haven't read Tom Robbins try what is probab...