With a new year beginning for California Update, I got to thinking about my writing group: John, Jim, Tom and myself. For over a year, we were each putting out stories each month— and then it stopped.

I can't say that there was any one reason. Actually there were four of us—four reasons. Let's start with John.

During the time john was writing for California Update, he was homeless— according to him, he was one of the happy homeless. He had been homeless for several years— he wasn't destitute but would have been if he had to pay the going housing costs.

Being homeless, John hung around a local church. And after a time, he became interested in the church secretary—but she wasn't interested in him. So she took out a restraining order— which John never received— because he was homeless he had no mailing address.

So the next time he chanced upon the woman, she had him arrested. He was sentenced to the Yolo County prison.

While at the prison, he had a hernia attack and required surgery—actually three surgeries. This was rather expensive for the county, so before anything further went wrong with John, they decided that the world would be better off if he was released,

So, not fully recovered, John was let out and went to his mother's house to recover. Eventually, he was placed in West Sacramento housing. Meanwhile, he lost his desire to write. One down.

Jim was helping the West Sacramento police force as a volunteer. One day, the force had some volunteers take a bike class. Best as I can make out, the cyclists were in a line when one started to fall and they all went down like dominos.

Even though Jim wore a helmet and didn't even hit his head, the swift deceleration gave him a concussion. A year later, Jim still can't concentrate enough to write. Two down.

For Tom, the story is more upbeat. He got super interested in writing and was researching the history of the Chinese in the old west.

This refocused his writing on genre magazines and lots of traveling for his research. Three down.

And that leaves me. Without those three, we had no writer's group.

I continued to write for California Update and have been focusing on music and songwriting.

My latest article is, "What Became of My Writer's Group?"

~ Al Zagofsky