Photo of Ray Bradbury. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t have a real post today. Nor do I have time to write one. But I saw in the news that Ray Bradbury has died and had to say something.
How do I begin? I could get lost talking how The Small Assassin put me off of having children for at least an extra year or two. Or how Something Wicked This Way Comes opened my younger self to a whole new vision of what fiction could and should be. How I read Halloween Tree to my children at Halloween. How Dandelion Wine gave me a sense of the innocence of childhood and the weight of adulthood when I stood on the boundary between.
Somehow these thoughts don’t seem adequate.
Ray Bradbury wrote about Martians and dystopian societies and grandmas and tattoo artists and circuses and friendship and death. But no matter what he wrote about, no matter what you felt about his writing style or his subject matter, one thing is undeniable:
Ray Bradbury wrote from the heart. And what a big heart he had.
Thank you, Ray Bradbury, for sharing that heart with the rest of us.
Marie Loughin's "I WANNA BE . . ." 
I think of him every time I buy a new set of tennis shoes. I loved you, Ray. Thank you for posting this, Marie!
Funny, me too.
Lovely tribute, Marie.
So sad. I’ve never read either “The Small Assassin” or “The Halloween Tree,” but I definitely will. And “Fahrenheit 451” is on my list of my most inspirational novels. Even though he wrote it in the 1950’s, it feels like a documentation of life either today or in the not-too-distant future. I loved teaching it to my students and getting them to really look at their lives today and wonder how many of the little things we let go by every day.
You’re right. Not enough to say, but what can you really say about such a great writer?
Paul D. Dail
http://www.pauldail.com- a horror writer’s not necessarily horrific blog
“The Small Assassin” is in October Country, a collection of must-reads. “Halloween Tree” is sort of a children’s book, but worth reading.
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