cranking.

I'm an erstwhile published short story writer somewhere in the hinterlands of my first novel, tentatively entitled Southern Exposure.

But until I complete this baggy monster, I wish to offer my support to my friend Sol for the inspiration (really, kick in the pants) I received reading his life-changing novel Beginner's Luke–my review of which follows. Enjoy the Adventure!

I won't call myself a failed novelist because though I've written a handful of stories, even published one, I never seriously tried to write a novel. Oh, I've never been short on ideas. Plots come like leaves on a tree to me. I just somehow along the road of life became a mother instead of an author. So I was a little surprised, at myself, to find my old dream of writing reawakened by an iconoclastic little novel entitled BEGINNER'S LUKE I received out of the blue–literally, from cyberspace as a PDF–from an old friend I hadn't heard a peep from in years.

I met the author, Sol Luckman, during my sophomore year of college, when he was a senior getting ready to enter what we both rather scornfully referred to as the “real world.” I remember roadtripping together to DC, smoking on the terrace during intermission at the National Symphony, feeling the unexpected warmth of the early April night, watching boats drift by like phantoms on the Potomac as we discussed what we agreed was a general “watering down” tendency in American fiction.

Sol was a writer born out of time, a beat poet who'd arrived on the scene a generation too late, the kind of guy who worked on stories in DC bagel shops, writing with a green pen for spring in a coffee-stained journal. As a boy you just knew he'd slain the dragon, stood tall on his horse before the Ring Wraith at the gate of Minas Tirith, seen things just beyond the light, just below the water, fed the flames of Beltane's fires and carefully gathered the mistletoe. I figured, frankly, he'd make an utterly unreadable novelist.

How very wrong I was. BEGINNER'S LUKE, the first book in a series of six, is that rarest of birds: an inspiring comic novel composed almost entirely of one-liners. Reading it was like having a string of accidents: page after page I kept running into myself. The self I planned to be anyway before the creative part of me became a bug in amber, suspended indefinitely, a life on hold, to be continued … The experience of reading BEGINNER'S LUKE was a profound awakening to the knowledge I still have my own story, or stories, to tell.

BEGINNER'S LUKE isn't for everybody, let me warn you. If you're so inside the box you've forgotten what sunlight looks like, if you're one of those benighted empiricists who demand numbers, statistics and facts ad nauseam, who prefer microbiology to mythology, meatloaf to filet mignon, kraut to caviar, go read E. Annie Proulx or Richard Ford.

But if you're willing to bust a gut laughing, mostly at yourself, distinguish between what you are and what you can be, and in the process fire up your belief in your ability to create the life you desire and deserve, do yourself a favor and give yourself the gift of Luke. Just remember: it's only the beginning.