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Michael Little - A Little Romance

michael-little2I write novels and short stories that take a comic look at romance and modern life. I'm a native Texan who landed in Hawaii and discovered that living on an island has many advantages. For example, you can put Jimmy Buffet on the car stereo, keep making left turns, and end up where you started, only happier.

Recent novel: Chasing Cowboys (2009), available at Bestsellers in Honolulu (support your local bookstores!). Short stories appear in Bamboo Ridge's collections, including "Mango Lessons," "Walter! Walter!," "Walter and the Dream Girls," "Seven Ways to Tell If You Married a Cosmo Girl," and just published in November 2009 "Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall." Visit michael-little.com.


Two characters in search of a writer

March 10th, 2010

restaurantA man and a woman sat across from each other at a corner table in a small neighborhood restaurant. Each one held a script and studied it, not speaking or looking up until they were done.

INT.  SMALL ITALIAN RESTAURANT - EVENING
Rick and Debbie seated in a corner booth.  It’s late and the restaurant is almost deserted.

DEBBIE
Shut up!

RICK
I didn’t say anything.

DEBBIE
You were about to.  It’s my hair, isn’t it?  You keep staring at it.

RIC [...]
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A stand-up about writers ...

March 8th, 2010

seinfeld-cast-in-garageIf I watch one more rerun of Seinfeld I swear I’m going to turn into one of the characters. I think I’ll be Jerry.  He seems the least neurotic.  Kramer is the happiest in the group, but being Cosmo Kramer would be risky business most days. George and Elaine? Really? Don’t even go there, although the time that Elaine got to be boss for a while and talked on the phone while she smoked a cigar with her feet up on the desk is memorable.

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"Make 'em laugh ..."

March 5th, 2010

jill-marie-landis1Our guest blogger today is New York Times bestselling author and Kauai resident Jill Marie Landis.  Welcome, Jill!
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After reading Michael's blog "If you tickle us, do we not laugh?" I recalled a quote I heard in a writing workshop eons ago. It was attributed to Charles Dickens. "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait." (I'm not sure that's the correct order, but you get the gist.) When I googled the quote today, I found it attributed not only to Dickens, but also to Wil [...]
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Things I did not do during the tsunami warning ...

March 3rd, 2010

tsunami-formation1You'll have your own list of things you did during the tsunami warning in Hawaii last Saturday, but here's my list of things I did not do. See if any of these sound familiar.

1. Head for the hills. Not that I wasn't advised to do that. In fact, we were awakened early Saturday morning by the phone ringing. This was after being up half the night watching the tsunami news on TV. So the phone rang at 5:45 a.m. At that hour I always mistake it for the alarm clock and hit the snooze button. But it keeps ringing, so I [...]
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If you poison us, do we not die?

March 1st, 2010

agatha-christie-writing3Here's the third question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect.  Earlier we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter, as well as a common concern by readers and writers for characters in pain.

Now we come to poison and dying, and at a time like this I wish I were a mystery writer.  Agatha Christie loved to kick off her mysteries with a good old-fashioned poisoning.  Her 80 mystery novels have sold about four billion copies in 45 languages. They say that everybody loves a good mystery, and apparently everybody also loves a good poisoning.

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If you prick us, do we not bleed?

February 22nd, 2010

injectionHere’s a second question that helps us understand how readers and writers connect. Last week we looked at the connecting power of humor and laughter (“if you tickle us, do we not laugh?”). Now it’s time to share a little pain.

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If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

February 18th, 2010

laughterIf you tickle us, do we not laugh? This is the first of several questions I want to begin to explore, with the goal of understanding how readers and writers connect. The tickle question comes from Shylock’s speech in Act 3, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice.

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Love cops and Valentine's Day

February 12th, 2010

chasing-cowboys-cover1Maureen O’Connell asked me a few questions about romance and Valentine’s Day for an article in this Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser. Yes, I write romantic comedy, but I don’t pretend to be an expert on romance. I may be a bit less confused than when I began writing about romantic entanglements, but, like most guys, I still feel somewhat clueless and clumsy when it comes to questions of romance.

One of the questions Maureen asked me was to name my most romantic character. Excellent question, and for this one I had the answer in about two seconds. Donna Cooper, the title character in my first novel, Queen of the Rodeo, seeks true love and romance for herself throughout that story. Then, in the prequel, Chasing Cowboys, she’s a 19-year old who plays a supporting role as one of the two narrators.

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Romancing the snow and ice

February 8th, 2010

2010-winter-olympics-logo1At last!  The Winter Olympics are almost here. Opening ceremonies take place this Friday.  Once every four years we are treated to a festival of the world's best athletes on snow and ice. I know we had the Summer Olympics in Beijing two years ago, but I'm one of those people who enjoy the Winter Olympics more. It's smaller and cozier, and it has all that snow and ice, cool stuff we don't see living in Hawaii. Before the show begins this week in Vancouver, I'm feeling nostalgic for the 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin. Here's what I wrote then about some of the nice-on-ice highlights, including some lessons for writers.

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J.D. Salinger, we hardly knew ye

February 1st, 2010

jd-salingerJ.D. Salinger, best known for writing a sensationally popular and critically acclaimed novel over 50 years ago, and for never having appeared on Oprah or The Tonight Show, or pretty much anywhere else outside of Cornish, New Hampshire, after he ran from his celebrity, died last week at the age of 91. This news has been rattling around in my head in the five days since he left us (this time for good).

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Clues for the clueless ... men should read romance novels!

January 27th, 2010

man-reading-book-21Please welcome our guest blogger, local romance writer Sally Sorenson, with something for the guys:

Do men read romance novels? The better question might be, do men admit to reading romance novels. Better still, why not?

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A no-huddle approach to writing

January 25th, 2010

peyton-manningRichie’s wife, Noelle, was the one who began asking a series of questions about the Colts and their no-huddle offense, and while Richie was patiently explaining to her how it works, and why Peyton Manning was dancing around before the play and shouting things and gesturing to his teammates like crazy, that’s when I got this brilliant idea that writers can have their own no-huddle approach to writing. At least I think it might be brilliant, although I haven’t told anyone about it. Until now.

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Cheetos and the Second Coming

January 20th, 2010

cheetos-bag1

As I promised myself when this new year began, I've been appreciating life more because I've been focusing on the joy of small moments. These moments can come at unexpected times while reading a good book, or watching a favorite movie (like the closing scene of Fargo), or even reading the odd news stories that the Internet is so good at publicizing.

One such news story that keeps popping into my mind is the amazing Cheetos story that surfaced in the summer of 2008.  Here we are a year and a half later and I c [...]
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I stay confused ... but it's all right

January 13th, 2010

hawaiian-islands2The famous ethnic and cultural diversity of Hawaii is something we love to point out to anyone who will listen. I've known this for thirty years now, because it's been that long since I moved to the islands from Seattle (on January 8, 1980), taking one of those crazy leaps of faith, trusting that this was where I belonged. Aside from the natural beauty of Hawaii, the beauty and diversity of its people are what we grow to appreciate more deeply over the years. This is one amazing mix plate.

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Brave cowboys and strong women

January 11th, 2010

red-river-1Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl. Ah yes, the old Hollywood formula. But what if it’s 1948, and you have Howard Hawks to produce and direct the movie, and John Wayne and Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru to light up the big screen, and Borden Chase and Charles Schnee to write a powerful screenplay, and ... since the story is about the first great cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, let’s get a few thousand head of cattle to stir up the dust and challenge the cowboys, who aren’t boys at all but men, real men, tough men.

And let’s make the women strong and brave, and ready to face the hard life of the Wild West and the hard heads of the cowboys they love. Then let’s call it Red River, and make a classic that will take its place with Stagecoach and High Noon and Shane and Lonesome Dove and the very best examples of that great American invention, the Western.

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