"I was in the Mammouth Book of Future Cops a whie back, with a Raymond Chandler parody set in future San Francisco, and not long ago I was the lone male heterosexual writer in the British anthology 'Va-Va-Voom - Red Hot Lesbian Erotica.' Just me and 32 Lesbian writers. I try to cover all terrorities. Had a piece in 'Minnessota Parent'a while back, though I am not a parent and have never been to Minnessota, (except to change planes). Had one in 'Range'(but am not a cattle grower), and so on. The count is about 1500 pieces since the sixties, so I've had time to get around. I'm probably one of the few writers to have published in both 'Hustler" and 'The New Yorker' I'm often astonishing younger writers with memories of those early days. For example, in December 1978 I made four or five sales (one to 'The New Yorker'for, I think, about $1250), and the money added up to close to $5,000. I was living in an apartment where the rent was $185 per month. Rent for two years! Hard to believe such times ever existed. Today my rent and bills are about ten times what they were then, and just the next month's rent always looms like the sword of Damocles." Larry Tritten (1939 -2011)

It had been a land of silk and money..... A place where mechanical horses with rubber legs carried people for miles without resting; and glass birds carried them still further to lands beyond...... Every house was lighted with a captured fragment of the Sun; and there were erotic pictures that had been painted by the acolytes of the god Kobak on walls everywhere..... All the markets were stocked with trance-inducing drugs and remedies that were sprayed with cans and men in fur suits hawked contracts that could be exchanged for cash on the date of a loved one's death...... ..... So much the English scrawls said, so much it was assumed was true; but few people knew where the truth could be found now....... Few men could read or write...... There were fragments of the old literature in the hands of a few scholars and wizards, men like Glossary, Helix, Talk Show, Fellini and Paramount...... But there had been no new literature for at least a decadeon...... Life was drab and dutiful for all, predictable, and to be sure, undistinguished by any merriment more spectacular than an occasional impromptu dance or a rowdy tumble down a hill....... In the Parkin hills, beyond the uplands, near the edge of the Nether Sege, in the Land of the Seven Hummocks, an arrows flight from the Sunken Dingle, lived a youth called Bravo, the first and only son of the plum-vendor, Muddle...... Long since had Muddle's wife, Giddy, been killed by an overdose of the color purple; and now Muddle and Bravo lived alone........ Muddle harvested Sloes by day, while the lad gathered bits of lint into a great ball and fished with an axe, or tried to sell packets of extra breath to road-weary travelers........ All of the youth of Semblance were restless, especially before grabbing a mate; but Bravo seemed especially so....... He was a dreamer........ Dreams were rare in Semblance, toil was all....... For this reason, Bravo awoke one morning, beating even the Sun up from it's clouded bed of cloud and mist, in the darkness packed a bag for traveling, a single change of cloak, tunic, twilled pantaloons, and deer-skinned underlinen, a tube of sweet grease, half a dozen rusks and a flask of plum ale, and a pair of spiked knuckles and kicking shoes to discourage layabouts........ Long ago, in his early youth, Bravo's uncle, or had it been his aunt, they wore each other's clothing, had filled his mind with tales of a land beyond, nay beyond yonder and far past hither, in the regions of Yawn, where once a grand city of jewels and gold and glass and candy had been, where even now it was told, a future waited for him with the courage to seek and find it......... Since Bravo could remember, no one had left these parts. His people, louts in the aggregate, cared little for what might be obtained beyond the soot and cobalt darks of the out-lands. This much he knew, there was wanderlust in his blood........ Besides, a girl who lived in the Vale of Moles, and who was not indistinguishable from a water-beast, had twice left bread on his sill, and was, he was sure, intent on snaring him with a swivle and gaff at the next grabbing of the mates........ Bravo struck out as the rays of the morning Sun dissolved the rays of Eve and scatterwags sung in clumps of violet fern.......... South past Point Moot and Point Nil he headed, whistling as he walked, then took the isle past Mons into a forest of gaunt Bonewood trees, pausing there to rest, as the inks of night colored the sky, he came to Scant, where he sought lodging at the Outside Inn, so called because the landlord could afford neither a forked wall nor a roof........ Over a plate of greensock and pizza leavings, he noticed the other diner at the Inn, a woebegone fellow in a tattered brown suit and rat skin sandals, nursing a leather of ill chill......... "HO, come share a leather of chill." the traveler called to Bravo, after seeing that he was being watched........ He thumped the table with a sturdy hand, turning to the landlord to call "Two bags of dark for the youth and I, and do the quick step, man"........ Then he fired a glance like a volied ember toward Bravo, "Join me lad" ......... Bravo, while reminding himself that caution and courtesy should weigh in equal balance when meeting strangers, accepted the invitation........... He took up a place facing the man and introduced himself.......... The landlord brought them each a pouch of Threeknox chill, took the ebony disc tossed to him in the air and went back to the kitchen to fuss at his wife and hound......... "Traveling lad?' asked the hard case, squinting over his pouch.......... Bravo saw that he had a face that looked like it had been carved out of sour amber wood by a artihiser with eye for neither beauty or detail.......... "So," said Bravo and sipped from his leather......... A thing once told by his father to Bravo came into application now: "Never speak until you've listened, unless your coffers are full and your fowl fed." ....... Reflecting that, on second thought he doubted that he knew the meaning of the adage, he elected to listen......... The traveler, according to the tale he told, had been the valet of a magician with whom he had traveled the realms beyond the Devil's Bedpan........... They had gone about changing minds, for a small fee......... Wherever they found doubt, in a maiden without the courage to choose a suitor, a speculator without solid conviction, they would provide assertion by striking the subject's ocupitt with a slat, dressing him in a bunny suit, and giving him an arcane rune to cherish........... But somewhere, something had gone awry.......... The valet had set out brown shoes for the magician to wear with a blue cloak......... Bush-hogs had set upon them both, and thieves had taken their biscuits............ The valet had been banished from the magician's employ with the promise that he would never ever be able again to discern silver from gold, blond from dark, or rain from shine........... "And so I travel alone," concluded the valet, whose name was Easlipt......... Bravo inquired "Whither?"......... "Hither," replied Easlipt, "And of a yen to wander yonder, except" his voice hesitated, "except this curse. Yesterday in a bawd house, I paid a golden minum for a tryst with a dark-haired maid, though the price was a silver minum and I prefer women with hair as bright as mid-day moonshine. Then I walked for hours in a downpour supposing the weather to be fair.".......... He shrugged and addressed his chill. "What I need is a traveling mate.".......... Bravo had an idea............ He, an unseasoned traveler, bound for beyond could profit by the company of one who knew the ways of the road......... Pulling his lip, Easlipt considered the offer, then smiled, clapped Bravo on the shoulder and sealed their bond with another round of chill, which sped them both into the arms of the ancient sleep god, Valium............ On the morrow, as the rising Sun mottled the horizon with the glimpse of apricot and indigo light, Bravo and Easlipt rose, dined on cold flipen snipe wing, and set out............. Departing the Inn, they crossed the nearby flats and rose into the adjacent heights, descending at mid-day into the marshes of Blindhog Bog, and from thence passed through the village of Hence, an uncommon place where all and sundry walked with a twitch and fluctuated their forefingers upon their lips, making a sound something like "blib, blib, blibo, blee blee, blee!"........... From Hence, they went Thence, and from Thence into regions beyond Bravo's knowledge............ They paid a sullen sculler to fare them across a channel on a raft............ They crossed a swaying rope bridge over a gorge filled with rushing water and picnicking trolls, who fired overripe berries at them from slingshots............ They traversed a brief thick forest in which transient incorporeal iridescences flickered and basked on breezes all about them.......... "The ghosts of colors abused," explained Easlipt, and they hurried on.......... Sunset brought darkness as dense as licorice and they build a fire before which, after a meal of berries and onions, Easlipt took out a flute and played a very ancient song called "You deserve a break today"......... Then they fell into a depth of conversation........... Thus began Bravo's education; and the days that followed as they made their way through bog and finn and glen and vale and dale, over crag and through thicket and across meadow and prairie........... Easlipt imparted a hundred strange and complex notions to the lad, and filled his mind with useful lore.......... He taught him how to distill gin and the roots of the gourd's plant........... How to trap birds by reading the air............. How to iron a shirt with a hot rock............ And how to make stucco............. He taught him how to make an extra coin in a strange village, and how to barter with a one-eyed merchant. (Stand off to one side at an angle)......... He told him of a concept so strange and swore him to secrecy that only wizards were said to know it.......... All things in the world, even whisps and dust, were made of tiny invisible units that could, with the proper magic, be made into explosives powerful enough to deafen the owls in the next county............. On the ninth day of their travel in a land unknown to either, Bravo and Easlipt entered a village of straw huts and amicable-seeming folk............. Of a passerby, Easlipt inquired where they might return two empty bottles they found for deposit........... "345567891124234," answered the fellow............ "I'm afraid, uh," Easlipt began.............. "437" nodded the fellow and went on his way............ Hearing laughter, the two turned to see a young woman of marvelous beauty observing them.......... Her hair was pale as ale....... Her skin as tan as flan........ Her smile a sunrise in her face.......... "34458762," she said to Bravo, shyly....... Easlipt pulled at his nose........ "I'm beginning to understand," he said......... "These folk have foregone words and substituted a numerical symbology as a means of communication"........ "Perhaps I can use sign language to inquire about an Inn where we might find accommodations for two."....... As the young woman heard Easlipt's last words,"42"..a deep blush colored her features.......... And a man passing by overhearing as much turned suddenly to glare in indignation at Easlipt......... All in a rush then, two ominous men in black vestments appeared and seized Easlipt, and he was dragged quickly from the scene.......... In short order and before Bravo could even voice protest, a youth returned with what was left of Easlipt in a small tin..a bit of jell and some bone fragments.......... Taking the tin, Bravo left the village in a hurry, followed by the young woman, who had to dodge thrown compost each step of the way.......... At first troubled to be traveling with a young woman his own age and timid in relating to her, Bravo soon discovered the advantages of the situation when she lured him into an apple tree to pick fruit and asked him instead to guess her sizes......... Before their second date together, Bravo and Bryn Marr had learned the rudiments of each other's languages, and she was asking him to get a job........... During the following days Barvo and Bryn Marr traveled north by northwest to a land beyond the blue horizon, where one morning they passed beneath the great arch of a rainbow over which bluebirds flew............ Exhausted from the intrigues and adventures of their trek, they rested atop a hill, with miles of green orchards in sight........... It was here that Bravo took out the tiny jar of finder's light that Easlipt had given him one eve. with the specific caution not to open it until the end of the road had been reached............ He opened the jar. shook out the light, then tugged Bryn Marr along to follow the lucid golden essence which was flickering like a firefly as it led them across a meadow to a tumbled pile of stones then faded into naught.......... Bravo paced around the stones 'til he saw the "X" graven in the earth, with what seemed to be veins of pure gold........ Holding Bryn Marr's hand tightly, he placed his foot squarely upon the "X"........... This was the key to the vortex; and no sooner than he applied the pressure of his weight, then he felt himself turned and whirled, spinning round and round, days and hours and minutes and centuries whirling round him in a cold, dark spiraling, and when he came to a stop, his phone was ringing........... He opened his eyes to the sight of his desk, covered with important papers that demanded his attention.... More overtime.... Accounts that had to be double-checked, letters that needed answering, deadlines..... He felt a twitch from his ulcer.... Beside the picture of his smiling wife, his three children and their Snhnauzer, posed in front of his Levittown duplex, the desk calendar read April 13th..... He hadn't done his taxes yet.... His ulcer complained again.... The payment for the Rabbit was also overdue... Remembering that, he could not remember from how far beyond he'd come to this desk....This time....This place.. .but what did it matter?............. Was it Bourbon or Scotch they were out of at home?

Larry Tritten...Writer Extrordinaire

Born in Iowa August 7, 1938, Larry Tritten spent most of his childhood in Northern Idaho.
His father, Pete, ran the Pine Creek Tavern in rural Idaho, where Larry, his brother Dale, and his Mom and Dad lived until Larry was about 10.

It was then that the Tritten family moved to Coeur d'Alene, where Pete bought and ran a tavern on Fourth Street.

Larry enlisted in the Army and served on Okinawa for two years. 

He returned home and attended North Idaho Junior College for two years.

He married a Coeur d'Alene girl named Theo Anne, and got a scholarship to study creative writing at San Francisco State University.

He lived in San Francisco for the rest of his life.

He was a prolific writer.

His works include books, short stories, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, movie reviews, humor and much more

He wrote scores of travel articles and went on more than 50 travel junkets all over the world.

He was influenced by such writers as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jay Friedman, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Jack Vance, Richard Matheson and Woody Allen.

After his death in April, 2011, Harlan Ellison wrote the following:
"I was enormously fond of Larry, of his humor, his goodwill and sense of being proudly, as I am, a simple "blue collar" artisan.
I tried to help him out as many times as I could when his times got tough; and now it's over.
At least for my pal.
Larry didn't know, near the end, how ill I've become, nor how close to denouement is my own life.
But, what is, is; and I have no regrets.
It's been a Great Life.
I wish, toward the end, Larry's could have been easier, too."