Novel writing took a backseat in 2025. I’ll be back to it soon enough. These past few months – since September, I believe – I’ve been delving back into my writing roots and creating a play (or plays) for the first time in more than three years. I’ve missed play-writing, and once the ideas started flowing, I’ve had myself a grand old time. The play (or plays) will end up being a book. Yes, I plan to produce it for the stage at some point, but the book will be first. Here’s the draft cover.

Cracks in the Universe is, as the title suggests, a play of 10 plays. Each play is approximately ten minutes long because I’m very fond of that genre. Each play only has two characters that find themselves up against a reality which isn’t as it seems. I wanted to suspend reality a bit for these plays and let the craziness of the universe seap in, so these are not my standard 10 minute play of the past. They are quirky. Funny. Unique. Thought-provoking. No one else has seen any of these yet. I hope to do a reading at some point to get some feedback before the book publishes later this spring.

What I find interesting about this collection is that I have no idea what I have here. Because many of the stories don’t follow a normal arc (some even have extended monologues or the unabashed breaking of the 4th wall), I can’t quite figure out how other people will perceive them. Maybe they are boring. Maybe they’re brilliant. Maybe neither, but there’s something appealing about them to me. They are less structured, more interpretive, less didactic and more open-ended. You might walk away and say I have no idea what you’re talking about or you might say – whoa – let me think about this a little more.

This is what I find most fascinating about creativity. It pops up unannounced and just does what it wants. Sure, the writer may try to mold it into his own likeness, but sometimes it’s a wild beast and just does what it wants, regardless of what an audience demands. I hope it isn’t the case here. Either way, it’s been really fun to delve back into playwriting and I hope to see this production on the stage within the next two years.

Order of Show:

1. On Death’s Arrival
2. The Crack in the Pavement
3. I’m Jumping, Who’s the Idiot
4. The Roger Thornton Dental Group Billboard
5. Absolutely or Not
6. The Water Buffalo on Grant Street
7. Green Room
8. And the Point Is
9. The Sobriety Chip
10. A Crack in the Universe