Twenty years ago, I took my daughter, Sara, to the ocean for her fourth birthday. She just learned to dog paddle, and proudly walked up to anyone in sight, saying, "I can swim." The sea was calm, so ... [+]
Rolli is the author of Kabungo - a novel about a cavegirl who lives on Main Street. His website is rollistuff.com "Bibliomaniac" is in Short Circuit #09, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Books are gentle companions. Usually. Except for that one time I was just about murdered by books. That was twenty years ago . . .***I didn't know what to do with my life. I had no prospects. I had an arts degree. So I started reading a fair bit. More than usual. I read for ten to twelve hours a day. I'm not sure if I was deeply depressed, or just really loved short stories. I read a lot of Hawthorne. Poe. Wodehouse—he's pretty good. I bought a couple thousand books. Not all at once. I was only an aspiring writer back then, so I could still afford to buy things. I still lived at home (I had an