Red Riding Hood

It was the ear­ly eight­ies and I was grap­pling with my first mid­dle grade nov­el, a piti­ful imi­ta­tion of Daniel Pinkwater’s Alan Mendel­sohn, the Boy from Mars. The boy in my apt­ly-titled “The Dooms­day Kid” played Dun­geons and Drag­ons and attend­ed a rock con­cert that end­ed in a bot­tle-and-can riot. For “research,” I tried to teach myself D&D and dragged my hus­band to a Bad Com­pa­ny con­cert that end­ed in his tem­po­rary deaf­ness.… more