Bending gender
When I was an eleven-year-old boy I had a friend from school, a round-faced boy whose shirts billowed out at his middle and whose fingers were always a bit sticky. Cal was his name, short for Calvin. Our friendship solely focused on our near addiction to horror comic books— Vault of Horror, Weird World, Haunted Horror, Beyond, Eerie, Tomb of Terror. He somehow was able to cobble together a growing assortment of such titles and we would pore over each issue after school, our sessions always called to an end by his mother advertising the preparation for dinner.
Much later I realized that these afternoon sessions with Cal also featured a Billy Elliot moment
PANZIL Unleashed
In 1997 I was struggling with an illness in my family while agonizing over a book I had been writing about severe cases of schizophrenia. My friend, David Gordon, seeing me distressed, suggested I take a break and write a children's book. David was an artist and longed to illustrate one. So we teamed up and produced this book about a young dragon,
How to Write a Children's Book
Panzil. How did I think of that?
I can blame my late friend, David Gordon, who coaxed me into writing a children's book. He was a graphic designer and he let me use his back office and his dining room during a dark time in my life, a time when one of my children was suffering from a debilitating illness that was worsening.