About the Author: The very first piece of creative writing that I can recall producing came in the fifth grade. Saint Paul’s School in Baltimore. It was a poem, a direct rip-off of the two doctors, Dr. Seuss and Dr. Dolittle. As I recall, it featured a bird with a head at both ends - the paean to Dr. Dolittle’s Push-Me-Pull-Me - and was in a cadence that was pure sing-song Seuss.

It wasn’t until 10th Grade, when I found myself the so-called ‘manager’ of the school’s junior varsity football team, that the writing bug returned and took its next big bite. Manager = water boy/laundry schmuck and general team flunky. Irked by the ignominy of this role, I took advantage of an open-topic essay assignment my English teacher, Mr. Longstreth, to unload about the rotten cards I had been dealt. Mr. Longstreth was also the football coach, so the forum was perfect. I lamblasted till the cows came home. And Coach gave me an A+, commending me on the quality of the dressing down I had given him and everyone else in my essay. And there it was. I had discovered the pen-as-sword motif.

l of which brings us up to the present in which we find Hitchcock Sewell on a long (if not necessarily deserved) break. To while away our time while Hitch cools his heels, I direct you to my parallel endeavor…my new series… under my new name. I won’t go on and on about it here, for I’ve already gone on and on about it on my other Web site. So…if you’d like to take a look at what’s happening there, as well as read first chapters of the new stuff…you can head over to www.RHawke.com.