I was digging deep again, as I do every year or so, into my box of keepsakes and relics that I really don't know why I kept them but did. Stuff I wrote as a kid (some of that, I must say, rather disturbing), old letters of the real life mailed sort, newspaper clippings of miscellany, that have strangely yellowed and gotten brittle already and that shit just ain't right since it seems not so long ago ... whatever, I'm getting old. From the Kansas City Kansan , newspaper that we got delivered daily, Friday, July 25, 1975, I had cut out and kept this one particular article headlined "Youngster completes first novel." I was always writing as a kid, so I remember very well snipping this one item, on account of the twelve-years-old youngster was my same age, and I very much wanted my own novel published. Of course I hadn't written it yet, but I figured this proved I could do it, too, kept it for an affirmation thingy. Over the years I've remembered saving that s