Published in the January, 2010 issue of the Biscayne Times newspaper:

The days when Miami was awash in cocaine, cash, and bullet-riddled bodies are over. Today art gallery owners likely outnumber drug lords, and running gun battles are far less common than book fairs, art festivals, music conferences, and fashion shows. What was once the nation’s murder capital is now a well-branded cultural Mecca.

So just over a year ago, when the body of 18-year-old high school senior Alex Tillman was found beside the FEC railway tracks in Wynwood, the killing seemed reminiscent of an earlier decade, when violent criminals and cartel hit men committed scores of equally brutal slayings.

At the time of Tillman’s death, local news outlets made a point to mention that he had no criminal record and no involvement with drugs or gangs — declarations made necessary, apparently, because he was from Overtown, where most murders are still drug-related.

Indeed Tillman didn’t fit the profile of someone whose life was likely to end in criminal violence. His murder, friends and family suspect, was likely motivated by something else altogether — jealousy.

To read more, click here.

Published in the September, 2009 issue of the Biscayne Times newspaper:

Miami art collectors Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz are well along in the construction of their expansive new Design District museum that will showcase their world-renowned collection of contemporary art. It is scheduled to open in time for Art Basel Miami Beach in December. And although their art may be new, across the street from their building, where they’re planning a parking lot, they are dealing with something much, much older: oak trees.

Two 80-foot-tall Southern Live Oaks, estimated to be nearly 100 years old, rise from the soil like living monuments at the rear of the vacant lot at 28 NE 41st St., their wide evergreen canopies casting precious shadows over this corner of a sun-blasted city. Miami, in fact, is ranked among the worst in the nation for tree canopy. “Born” in the early part of the last century, the twin oaks have matured with the neighborhood as it went from agricultural seclusion to mid-century ritz to drug-ravaged slum and finally to its present incarnation as the Design District, one of Miami’s most vibrant commercial areas.

Those two stately oaks, however, may soon fall to the chainsaw.

To read more, click here.

(October ‘09 follow-up story here: The 41st Street Oaks Live to See Another Day).

“Given a chance to travel back in time, most people would choose to visit some pivotal or alluring period in human history—Classical Greece, Galilee in the era of Jesus, the Renaissance, or Victorian England, perhaps. But Tito and Che-Frio, two dim-witted and equally untalented Miami musicians, are drawn to a much more recent era—the year 2002. In those innocent, early days of the 21st century, people knew nothing of Bluetooth, camera phones, or the TV series Lost. More importantly, Reggaeton, that vigorous, hyper-sexualized stepchild of hip-hop and dancehall, had yet to come rumbling like a busload of lustful insurgents onto the North American music scene.”

.To read more, click here.

Published in the March, 2009 issue of the Biscayne Times newspaper:

Not far from Biscayne Boulevard, outside his ramshackle home just north of the 79th Street Causeway drawbridge, Omar Ali is slumped in a folding chair, his thin frame draped in well-worn canvas work clothes, his face turned toward the sun. He’s listening to Classical FM radio over a pair of loudspeakers, fidgeting with an unlit cigarette, and watching an osprey obsessively circling the sun-sparkled waters of Biscayne Bay that stretch before him.

The bird swoops down, talons outstretched, and with a soft splash, snatches a fish from the water. It rises, shakes off the water from its plunge, and glides over to a rotting wooden pylon to feast on its writhing prey. Ali smiles. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth, almost lights it, but stops. It’s the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, smoking is forbidden during daylight hours, and he’ll have to wait until sunset to break his daily fast.

But the 54-year-old Egyptian metal sculptor isn’t focused on his hunger or nicotine craving right now. He’s mostly thinking about the five-ton, stainless-steel sculpture towering 25 feet over his head, casting a strange, twisted shadow over his Shorecrest property and, more figuratively, over his life.

To read more, click here.

Illustrated version available here: The Titanium Dreams of Omar Ali.

Published in the January, 2009 issue of the Biscayne Times newspaper:

There was a time when American life revolved around trains. For more than a century, from before the Civil War until after WWII, nearly every long journey on land began and ended on a railway platform. From the romantic steam engines of the Gilded Age to the stainless-steel streamliners of the mid-Twentieth Century, trains were fixtures in everyday life that captured imaginations and came to represent freedom, opportunity, and progress. Wherever the railroad went, new settlements, new industry, and a new way of life followed.

To read more, click here.

(March ‘09 follow-up story here: Still Waiting for the Train).

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“Literary agent Taryn Fagerness of the Sandra Dijkstra Agency recently lectured at Miami Dade College in downtown Miami about the best way to approach an agent. She graciously dished out advice to aspiring writers during a four-day literary event hosted by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts…Here’s what she had to say”:

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To read more, click here.

Published in the August, 2008 issue of the Biscayne Times Newspaper:

The City Inn hotel at 660 NW 81st Street in West Little River is the kind of place you wouldn’t recommend to your worst enemy. Tattooed pimps with gold teeth patrol the surrounding streets on spray-painted bicycles. Drug-ravaged women in stained miniskirts and worn-out pumps drift in and out of the lobby, stopping occasionally on the curb outside to light a cigarette, thrust out a hip, and nod to passing male motorists.

To most people, the ten-story City Inn is just one of many eyesores along I-95. Nestled against the west side of the expressway, it stands out more than most buildings along that particular stretch of asphalt, thanks to the large soft-drink banner and other ever-changing advertisements that completely cover the north and east sides of the hotel. Cellular companies lease roof space from the inn, and their large white antennae sit prominently atop the building, lending the hotel a hint of technological sophistication. Up close, though, there’s nothing sophisticated about it.

“That place is really, really bad,” says veteran Ofcr. Darrell Nichols of the Miami Police Department, when asked about the hotel. And with that grim assessment, I decide to do what any sensible writer would do: go and get a room.

To read more, click here.

Illustrated version available here: Edifice Complex: City Inn.

Published in the September, 2008 issue of Present Tense Magazine:

Excerpt: Miami and Tel Aviv share a similar aesthetic, boomtown history, temperament, regional significance, club scene, Mediterranean architecture, and lifestyle. “Tel Aviv and Miami are very progressive, very vital places,” says Shirley Kahn, a retiree and tour guide at the Jewish Museum of Florida. “People are constantly moving and they’re outdoors a lot.” The vibe of Miami’s popular Ocean Drive or Lincoln Road can be felt on Tel Aviv’s Shenkin or Dizengoff Streets, where outdoor cafes and bountiful shopping attract a wide cross-section of society. “And, of course,” she adds, “there are kosher delis and temples on every corner in some neighborhoods.”

To read more, click here.

Published in the September, 2008 issue of the Biscayne Times newspaper:

No one seems to know when exactly Frank Sinatra stayed at the historic Vagabond Motel at 7301 Biscayne Blvd. But everyone over a certain age is required to have at least one Sinatra tale to tell, and Eric Silverman, the Vagabond’s charismatic 55-year-old owner, is no exception. “This place was a retreat for guys like Sinatra, away from the spotlight of Miami Beach,” he says. “It’s not like there was an announcement that he was here. He’d come to hang out at the bar and maybe get up and do a number. It was more of a private thing — you understand?”

To read more, click here.

Illustrated version available here.

(October ‘08 follow-up story here: Further Adventures of the Boulevard’s Big Man).

(December ‘08 follow-up story here: Don’t Mess with my MiMo).

(April ‘09 follow-up story here: From Hero to Zero).

The briefest novel excerpt ever. Featured on Six Sentences:

The old wind-up clock on the bedside table said three a.m. and the boy, sitting on his windowsill, fought the heavy, persuasive lure of sleep. The street below was empty except for the occasional moped whirring by in the night, briefly obscuring the nighttime cricket songs of summer and throwing up invisible plumes of pungent smoke. Ship lights blinked in the dark distance and some were so far out to sea that it was hard to tell whether they were stars low on the horizon or large vessels on the verge of dipping down to the other side of the earth. An hour passed and drowsiness eventually jumbled his thoughts to the point of hallucination, until he slid off of the windowsill and onto his bed, but sleep didn’t come easily and once again he was awake and staring at the stars through the open window. For years, they appeared as white dots painted on a flat surface, but now he could see their depth and understood that the bright ones were closer and the faint ones farther away. The notion of eternity briefly entered his brain and a sick, helpless feeling took hold of his gut and he closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, but the thought would never be far from his mind again.