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Aloha to
‘My Kind of Town’

You've probably heard politicians or athletes say they're moving on to devote more time to their families. That's what I'm doing in giving up "My Kind of Town," that has appeared on Page D2 after four-plus years of daily serials and six different "books." (Say what you will about plot lines and character development, in all that time I didn't miss a day.)

The family to which I'm devoting more time in this case is my MidWeek ohana. In particular our new baby, MidWeek -- The Weekend.

I'll miss the researching/creating, hearing from readers who cared about my characters and working with great professionals at the Star-Bulletin. I'm honored to contribute to a newspaper with a noble history, and that today is by far Honolulu's most interesting daily. And since a Star-Bulletin editor asked for a recap, here's how the series started and how it went.

With David Black about to buy both the Star-Bulletin and MidWeek, I spent a month after work and on weekends writing a sort of "pilot" for a serialized novel, a form I learned to love from Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" in the San Francisco Chronicle during my years in the Bay Area as a sports writer/columnist for the San Jose Mercury News (and Charles Dickens long before that). I e-mailed a proposal and a month of daily installments to Mr. Black and, to my utter shockmentation, he accepted it! I'll always be grateful.

We began March 19, 2001, with the Honolulu Soap Co., which opened on a chance meeting between long-lost cousins Quinn and Lily Ah Sun, and them falling for each other before they realized the family tie. (Amazing how many local people later told me the same thing happened to them. Or how many others have said, "I know who so-and-so really is." Sometimes they were right.) Lily and Quinn discovered, of course, they aren't blood kin, and today are happily married parents of toddler twins, Kaleiolani and Ikaika.

I wrote "My Kind of Town" (yes, of course, a salute to Frank Sinatra) mostly on weekend and holiday mornings, and relied as much on research as inspiration. Whether it's fiction or hard news, there is no substitute for serious research, and for that I leaned on book/music stores, the Web and, mostly, people I've known in 25-plus years as a journalist in Hawaii.

Inspiration really does happen, though I tend to agree with Roger Ebert -- "only when you're working." Many times a phrase, character name or plot twist came into my head and I could only say, ho, where'd that come from, thanks. Other days, the mind yawns, the muse wanders, you're a writer on deadline, so you grind. Good stuff comes from both. Kind of like real life.

As you might have noted, each of the six books -- Honolulu Soap Co., Hunt Club, False Teeth, Lama on the Lam, Tubers and Uncle Osama -- had religious threads, if not themes. Blame it on a college minor in theology, a year in a Lutheran seminary and eternal questions ever after. Although I'm not a regular churchgoer, I do believe there's Something Pretty Damn Big Out There, and the only God worth worshipping is the God of Peace, Love and Compassion, however you spell His/Her/Its name.

I'll miss Lily and Quinn, Cruz MacKenzie, Johnny B. Goo, Detective Sherlock Gomes, Dr. Laurie Tang, Salvatore Innuendo, Chuckie Boy Kulolo and St. Meg the Divine, Mano the fisherman and his sharks, Lama Jey, Elizabeth Resurreccion, Kamasami Khan, all the Tubers, Baz, Fatima and Imam Ibrahim, even Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka (the shoulda-been governor who remains addicted, armed and at large), each real enough to feel like friends and neighbors. If you'd like to read more about them in book form, please e-mail me. I'd like to give them a longer life, too.

Finally, when you smell the aroma of eucalyptus and sea spray, look for Ola, the very large, very beautiful, very brown, very naked goddess of life. Those who look, see.