Well, if you were coming to this page in hopes of news regarding today's first Yankee spring training game, you might as well flip to Twitter as I'm not quite on-board with the MLB package yet. Any and all funds I have to spare are going toward self-promoting my book, "A Rose by any Other Name." Of course, the unexpected auto-subscription was insult to injury: "sure, I'd love it if I could, but..." was my conversation with the rather kind and apologizing Indian customer service rep' who handled my reverse charge yesterday.

So, I'm more than two weeks into an approximately six week IndieGoGo campaign and I guess I should have gone with KickStarter, or so I have been told. But we march on; that rock isn't going to push itself up that hill, now is it?

It's not lost on me at this time where I'm trying to raise money to get Rose out into the world, and I'm working on both editing what will eventually be my next book - and my first novel - "Live Fast! (Die Out of Town" and scribbling ideas and bits and pieces of what will be the next long-form piece I write. Tentatively entitled "Memory of the Stairs: An Arsonist's Confession" I am finally going to plumb my childhood as source material. Fire will be a major character in that book.

Here's a repeat posting of the video/story of what has become the popular favorite from "Rose" - the story for my grandpa, Izzy Hecht, entitled "Mustang Sally."

The running time is under eight minutes, so please take a look and a listen. Yes, I am working on bringing some higher quality video your way, but for the time being, this is the best I have.

If you would like to help me come to your city with Rose and read some of these stories in person, why-- I'd love to do that. So much so that I have set up just the place where you can aid me in that mission. Here's the link to my IndieGoGo campaign page. I need to average over a $100 a day from this point on to even come close to making my goal. So far, it's been only been "Hello, Wisconsin," but "Greetings, Los Angeles" and "What's up, Berkeley?" have a nice ring to 'em...

Thanks for your time,
Brian