Michael Little - A Little Romance
I 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), a contemporary romantic comedy set in Reno. 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, most recently, "Pickles and Shawnilynn and Me at the Mall."
Dog days, anyone?
August 3rd, 2010
What do the following have in common? Not to put any pressure on you to answer this question, gentle reader, because after all it is summer, and the dog days are here, and our bodies and minds have been in vacation mode for weeks now (including the three major parts of summer -- pre-vacation, actual vacation, and post-vacation-"tell-me-again-what-we-do-here"), and I'm the kind of writer who tends to fall down the long rabbit hole of an seemingly endless run-on sentence on any given day of any season, and when I crash at the bott [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Summer in Hawaii ... Spam on the grill
July 28th, 2010
My friend Richie from up the street stopped by last weekend with two cans of Spam (not Spam Lite but Spam Classic, what Darrell calls Spam Heavy) and six adult beverages (already chilled).I had no choice but to fire up the grill, and the rice cooker. Richie, who knows where the sharpest knife is in the kitchen, attacked the romaine lettuce he found in the fridge, and pulled out the Costco jumbo size Ranch dressing, while I popped open the Spam and began slicing. Could lunch be far behind?
It was while we're standing at the [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Lost and found in Newfoundland ...
July 25th, 2010
The exotic calls to us. And second chances. If you live in Hawaii and pick up a novel set in Newfoundland, you might as well be visiting a distant planet. If you live in Newfoundland, that exotic, distant planet is Hawaii. Or, as for some characters in Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, the exotic might just be Florida.All is not new, however. Folks who move to Hawaii from Seattle or Texas or wherever, bring their past with them. Take that first step onto the cold remote rock of Newfoundland, as does Quoyle in the novel, and y [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
The dream machine, part 2 ...
July 18th, 2010
In part 1 of this rant, or musing, I began to explore the idea of the creative mind as a dream machine.If the mind of a fiction writer or poet is a blender that receives sensory images, images that will be the key ingredients in the next story of poem, the mind blends these ingredients into something designed to delight and nourish, feeding first the writer and later the readers.
I also wrote about this dream machine as the rational mind, methodical and efficient, loud and self-important and in co [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
The dream machine, part 1 ...
July 12th, 2010
When you see the words "dream machine," what image pops into your head? Maybe you think of the London space rock band with that name. Or perhaps a psychedelic poster from the '60s and '70s. Or maybe even the stroboscopic flicker device from the Sixties that one stares at with eyes closed.Not me. I hear "dream machine" and I see orange. I hear the sweet loud sounds of an industrial blender at work. In a few moments my name will be called and I will walk to the counter to collect my power size, one's-a-meal "O [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Learning from the lauhala weavers ...
July 3rd, 2010
In the superb June/July issue of Hana Hou!, the magazine of Hawaiian Airlines, Catharine Lo writes about the art of lauhala weaving on the Big Island. I love hearing the voices of Auntie Elizabeth Malu'ihi Lee (seen here in Monte Costa's photo) and the other weavers in the article, and I am struck by these words from Michelle Zane-Faridi: "All your life—that's what it takes to be a master."Michelle has been weaving for 12 years, and I imagine that she is on the path to becoming a master weaver. Auntie Elizabeth, wh [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
More praise for Juliet Kono's Anshū
June 28th, 2010
As promised, here is more advance praise for Juliet Kono's novel Anshū, which Bamboo Ridge Press will publish in September.
For more about Anshū, see "Anshū: powerful novel coming in September." I am moved by the strong personal impact of the book on these early readers.
Read the rest of this entry »Juliet S. Kono has crafted a remarkable novel, weaving together experiences of darkness and flames and turning it into a story of luminous strength and determination. Himiko is a very young child who is consumed with fire—burns them everywhere even at the risk of turning her own body into fuel for the flames. Pregnant in pre-World War II Hilo, Hawai‘i, she is sent to Japan where she encounters harsh treatment from relatives who have little to spare.
Anshū: powerful novel coming in September
June 21st, 2010
I consider myself extremely lucky to be one of those with an early look at Juliet S. Kono's new novel, Anshū, from Bamboo Ridge Press. The book will be out in the second half of September, so you have all summer to savor the often overlooked delights of anticipation.Anshū tells the story of Himiko Aoki, a teenage girl in Hilo who is sent to live with an uncle and aunt and cousins in Tokyo in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Himiko becomes an eyewitness to suffering and survival in the war years as the story mo [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Shakespeare and the World Cup ...
June 14th, 2010
Why did England goalie Robert Green let that easy ball roll in for the only USA goal in the 1-1 tie at the World Cup? I believe I may have the answer.Was Green distracted? And if so, by what? How could he allow an easy roller, one that any schoolboy would have stopped, to bounce off his gloves and into the net? I've concluded that he must have been distracted by something. He simply put his goalkeeping on automatic pilot because the shot was not a dangerous one. He had stopped balls like that th [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Sweet love remembered ...
June 12th, 2010
Summer, a time for summer reading, discovering a new book, a new writer ... but also a time to visit old friends. Speaking of old friends, my William Shakespeare bobblehead has migrated recently from the writing room to the piano in the living room.This particular bobblehead is also called a "nodder," and Shakespeare does nod if you touch his head. Is he approving the music? He stands at attention, quill in his left hand, a stack of books at his feet. He's not writing. Is he simply observing? Is he wait [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Having a drink with Larry McMurtry ...
June 5th, 2010
My friend Richie from up the street asks me, "When do you find time to write?"
"Late at night is the second best time," I tell him, "for me anyway." He waits for the rest of my answer. "But my favorite time is before sunrise. Five a.m. While you're still sleeping."
Richie cringes just at the sound of "five a.m." "You set your alarm?" he asks.
"No, I just wake up some mornings and know it's time to write. I awake the hound (Simone, our Italian greyhound) and we go downstairs together. She goes back to sleep on the sofa and I pour a large mug of Kona coffee and head for the keyboard.
Cross-training for writers ... heart and craft
May 31st, 2010
It's been a long Memorial Day weekend, and I should have been writing, but instead I settled in one evening with a DVD of John Ford's 1952 film The Quiet Man. Ford, who is best known for his Westerns filmed in Monument Valley in northern Arizona, directed John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in this beautifully filmed hymn to Ireland.
The Quiet Man was a film Ford had been trying to make for years, until finally Republic Pictures agreed, on the condition that Ford first make the studio a black-and-white Western, to make up for the losses they expected for The Quiet Man.
Salvation Army babes and bad boys ...
May 23rd, 2010
Here's a recipe for romance and fun, one that's on display in the delightful who-needs-Broadway-we-have-DHT production of Guys and Dolls currently at Diamond Head Theatre in Honolulu.Take one bad boy (gambler Sky Masterson), add one good girl (Save-a-Soul Mission doll Sergeant Sarah Brown), throw in a supporting cast of lovable gamblers and leggy Hot Box nightclub dancers (led by the wonderfully comic Adelaide, who's been engaged to Nathan Detroit for 14 years) and a cop named Brannigan who's trying to bust the floating crap game, [...]
Read the rest of this entry »
Murphy's Law, HotForWords, and when romance lies in the dust ...
May 17th, 2010
One of the guilty pleasures that I find myself indulging is watching Marina Orlova, the popular Russian-American etymologist and HotForWords YouTube sensation, as she explains the origin of words and phrases. Check out the Google for an introduction to my favorite language teacher: "Not your typical philologist. Etymology, philology, word origins, origin of, hot teacher."
Marina, who was once told that she could not be a model because at 5-5 she was too short, is now raising the language IQ of thousands of devoted students. A year ago she had 200,000 YouTube subscribers (as a blonde). This year, even as a brunette, Marina continues to shine and win more fans.
Godzilla and the Hawaii Book and Music Festival ...
May 11th, 2010
It's back! The 5th annual Hawaii Book & Music Festival invades the civic grounds at Honolulu Hale this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, May 15-16) like a family-friendly Godzilla (not the less-than-friendly Godzilla, the destructive version of the giant radioactive mutant Japanese monster with the dangerous tail who likes to smash Tokyo and anything else in his way).
All the festival details and schedule are online. Take a look and then come back.
