This is the honest-to-god, authentic account of how I lost my savings, a prized Mercury coupe, and a cavity-prone incisor tooth—all in less than twenty-four hours. It's a profoundly memorable event, since a grown man rarely relinquishes a tooth. Still, I wouldn't have traded the coffee-stained, tarnished ivory for a bar of solid gold or even a Pulitzer Prize, and at least my insatiable dentist has one less reason to bitch.

The year was 2022 when I set my nearsighted, middle-aged eyes and twenty-four karat-lusting heart to the last frontier. Cartographers call it Alaska, but I called it “the future.” My entire thirty-four years of mundane, anti-exclusive living as a once-promising author had elapsed only in New England, and my situation was becoming a little long in the tooth.

There it is again, an idiom.

After another publisher rejected another middling manuscript, my agent warned me about using too many idioms, cliches, and pop culture references.

“Stop taking these cheap shots, these goddamn stereotypical, undeveloped characters, low hanging fruit and puns, and shallow plots. I mean, shit, your writing used to be good, better than good even.” The agent's suppressed anger over the phone stung even though he was as far away as New York City, and whenever this happened, it was best to agree with the man.

“I know,” I admitted, wallowing in self-pity and not sure where my career and creativity took a wrong turn. One thing was for sure, I had lost my mojo somehow, somewhere after my second successful novel dropped off the bestseller charts and the royalties stopped trickling in.

“Maybe you need a change of scenery?” my agent advised, unhappy seeing one of my uninspired short stories get dismissed by the indie presses.

“Maybe we could just push it out on the Kindle?” I offered.

The agent's muffled silence was worse than his answer. It sounded like a fist was pounding on the table. “Yeah, that would be a good idea if you hadn't offended every single person with the last one. Right? It somehow racked up more one-star reviews than that fucking terrorist-turned-poet hack, and my grandmother's cookbook has outsold it!”