This is the sixth in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
Writing “Have Not” reminded me how convenient it is to have Google. In describing the opulent lifestyle of Philip, Bernard and the others living in Hăven, I needed to reference some real-world baubles of the rich and famous. A few Google searches, and I discovered one of the most expensive wines, the elegance of vicuna pants and the extravagance of a Peugeot Onyx sofa. None of these things, by the way, are to be found in my home.
 
Lifestyles of the obscenely wealthy aside, “Have Not” revisits the theme in “Coveting Fields,” but in a different way. “Coveting Fields” had Ella desperate to possess something owned by her neighbor, Lila. “Have Not” looks at it from the other direction: the obsession of holding a station in life where others covet you and what you have, and how that obsession influences our society.
 
“Have Not” is really about power. We all crave it to some degree. It’s why people climb corporate ladders, or run for political office, or thump their chests while demeaning others on social media. But the truth is, power only matters when someone else doesn’t have it. Comparing ourselves to those who fall behind is how we measure our journey to acquiring power.
 
It’s also worth noting that the journey isn’t especially long for many of the people in power. They inherit their station, or they benefit from privilege. They possess power with little effort and no compelling reason to use it for good. As the prophet Haggai writes, “You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
 
My PR work with nonprofits serving low-income populations partly inspired “Have Not.” I came to realize that a lot of people, myself included, measure their so-called success against those who struggle to succeed. It’s a state of affairs that must change—one, because it’s the right thing, the human thing to do; and two, because, as Philip discovers, when the measuring stick disappears, those in power may find the new measuring stick isn’t to their liking.

This is the fifth in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.

When I was very young, there was a small children’s carnival called Kiddie Land on the south edge of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Open during the warm months, it featured rides like a tiny Ferris wheel, a toddler-sized train, little boats in an algae-green pool that went in circles like a merry-go-round, and live horses tied to another merry-go-round contraption across the street, enduring an endless line of would-be cowboys and cowgirls.

I adored Kiddie Land.

It’s long gone now. The place where it stood is less than a mile from where I live today, just a parking lot and restroom serving a bicycle trail. But one day I wondered: What if Kiddie Land had survived the decades since? What would it be like?

I suspect it might be a lot like Wakefield Family Fun Park—a tattered attraction desperately trying to hold onto something the world no longer offers.

Like many of my stories, this one sprang from a single image. Somewhere I once read—sadly, I can’t find the reference—that C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, would create a story from one mental image that might not even be significant to the tale. I find myself doing this often. My novel, Radiance, developed out of a short story I wrote years earlier, but there was a single image that prompted me to write it: a drawing I found of an astronaut standing on a small asteroid hurling toward the Earth. Who was the astronaut? Why was he on that asteroid? Why does it matter?

Wakefield Family Fun Park was an alternate future for Kiddie Land. And that led me to write this story.

In some respects, Wakefield is also a metaphor for Nelia Rodge. Nelia isn’t falling apart—far from it. Her career is skyrocketing. She’s the picture of success. And yet, in her mind, that picture isn’t complete. She can’t help but cling to a long-held fantasy of a perfect mate. If she could somehow tweak that one thing, she believes, her life would be even better.

“What Might Have Been” is a classic “be careful what you wish for” story. But it’s more than that. It also a reminder to find and celebrate the value in what you have. Nelia had a loving husband and healthy, if not always agreeable, children. But she convinced herself it wasn’t enough—until The World of Might-Have-Beens teaches her a frightening lesson.

This is the fourth in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
“All The Stage A World” might be the most Twilight Zone-like tale I’ve written yet. It’s another one of those stories that just came to me full-blown, and quite recently.
 
I was thinking about an old theater that, amazingly, still operates in a small town where I once worked as a reporter. The theater was built over a century ago, in the heyday of vaudeville and the infant days of film. Back in the 1980s, I toured the place while it was undergoing renovations. It’s been renovated once or twice since then. At the time, I couldn’t help wondering what it was like to see a show there in the “olden days.”
 
Fortunately, I had a way to find out. An elderly gentleman was working as an advertising salesman at the newspaper where I was employed, and he had run the theater for many years. He shared some of his experiences, including witnessing stage acts like the magician Harry Blackstone. My own memories of that theater inform “All The Stage a World,” a mix-up of a line from Shakespeare. Or the band Rush, if you prefer.
 
What makes this tale so Serling-esque is how bizarre it is. I shook my head more than once as I wrote it. It also has a strong overarching theme, that being the wages of greed. Darren Starr ought to be a sympathetic figure, and initially he is—the poor theater owner having to close the doors for lack of business. But all it takes is a few dollar signs to turn his head from reviving a long-lost family tradition to padding his bank account. His fate is very much in line with the words of the apostle James, “You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.”
 
BeeGo, Laifly and the other imaginary characters have their roots in Pokémon, which my son played as a kid, along with a dash of TeleTubbies and other shows for the very young. For the record, I created BeeGo long before the television show Legends of Tomorrow fashioned Beebo. I’m relieved that they don’t resemble each other.

This is the third in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
Random Precision is a collection of tales I’ve written over many years. As I went through my files, I realized some of the older stuff simply wasn’t good enough to be published. Because I really wanted at least 25 stories in the book, that meant I had to write some new material. “A Speck of Sawdust” is one of the new ones.
 
“A Speck of Sawdust” started on a day when I found social media particularly discouraging. Accusations and put-downs abound. In the online world, modern-day truth is often founded on opinion, not facts or rationality. I began to wonder what might happen if this sad state of affairs crept into other aspects of our society—in this case, law and justice executed by the online community.
 
Greta is obnoxious and almost wholly unlikeable. Yet I didn’t want to make her a simple dark-hat villain. On her last night of freedom, with her scheme never a sure thing, there’s a growing desperation that (I hope) pulls the reader in. You don’t want her to succeed, but you don’t necessarily want her to fail, either. Interestingly, she manages to do both—with disastrous results.
 
In some respects, the current state of judging via social media is like what Greta experiences. While online death penalties aren’t likely, the assassination of one’s character can live on the internet forever. Every poor decision or every misrepresented moment exists in bits and bytes that can re-emerge at any moment. Greta faces a literal death in the end; her reputation died before she stepped out of the detention cell the first time.
 
“A Speck of Sawdust” is another biblical reference—Matthew 7:3-5, which cautions us to reflect on our own shortcomings before calling out the flaws of others. It’s a measure Greta fails to meet spectacularly.
 
I had to dig deep in the memory banks to describe the bar scene, as it’s not something I’ve done in decades. A few modern TV programs helped. They also helped me remember why I haven’t been back.

This is the second in a deep-dive series on the stories in Rick’s newest book, Random Precision. The following blog includes spoilers.
 
In 2003, I did a weeklong mission work project with a homeless program in Staten Island, N.Y. I wasn’t a stranger to the plight of the homeless; by then I’d been volunteering with a shelter in Kalamazoo for 13 years. But I wasn’t prepared for the story that one young Staten Islander told. Living on the streets, he’d sometimes get so hungry that he’d steal napkins and butter pats from sidewalk cafes and eat butter-frosted napkins as a meal.
 
Years later, that single anecdote became the inspiration for “The Chasm.”
 
Stories of swapping places are as old as “The Prince and the Pauper” and as recent as “Freaky Friday.” In this case I took a cue from a biblical parable: the rich man and Lazarus. In Luke 16, Jesus speaks of a well-off man who ignores the beggar Lazarus until the two die. Lazarus lands in Heaven, and the rich man wakes up in Hell, and they’re separated by “a great chasm” that keeps the rich man from gaining relief.
 
For me, the “chasm” in this story is one—or many—of our own making. Extreme income disparities keep the poor from succeeding. Systemic racism keeps Blacks, indigenous and people of color from sharing in the American dream. Prejudices—“they’re lazy, they’re scammers, they don’t deserve any help”—are chasms that marginalize entire populations.
 
“The Chasm” puts one of those prejudiced individuals into a homeless man’s shoes. He experiences the despair, the hopelessness, the bigotry—and yes, the eat-a-napkin hunger—that his counterpart lived with every day. But in this story, the rich man isn’t trapped in Hell. Lazare (see what I did there?), suddenly given every resource to succeed in life, sacrifices it all to find and restore his tormentor. But Derek Vayne learns a lesson that will stick with him forever.
 
Many people who read “The Chasm” find it shocking and sobering because it makes the homeless experience real, more than a nameless person with a cardboard sign at a street corner. My hope is, in making it real, we’ll be motivated to do more to help the homeless.
 
“The Chasm” won a community literary award in 2005. I had to update it a little for Random Precision, swapping Derek’s original clamshell cellphone for a smartphone. Virgil’s Real Barbecue is an actual restaurant near Times Square, one of my favorite NYC eateries (though sadly I haven’t been there in several years). The places Derek walks in his wanderings are all places I’ve trod.