Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Hi, I’m Rachel and I can write the lights out.

Tommy and I got to know each other years ago, online, when he was Sticks of Fire, the one-man show hosted by Blogger, and I was Skinny Stars, a sweet, young girl who liked to party. Skinny Stars earned me a weirdo stalker, who would sit on benches and railings at my usual weekly hotspots. One day, the stalker waited outside of Victoria’s Secret in Ybor for forty-five minutes twirling a pen like a butterfly knife. He started to follow me to my car and then disappeared into an alley. When I turned the corner to the car, he was in front of the passenger door. I went back to Centro Ybor and made my sister come get me. I shut Skinny Stars down that day.

Then, I met Mr. Bill at Mangroves or Ceviche or something. I don’t even remember. He had a website called SoHoTampa, and I told him about Skinny Stars. He wanted me to blog with him and I thought that sounded awesome. We kept SoHoTampa civic-minded, writing about politics and local events. A bunch of people organized a blogger fest that Tommy couldn’t be bothered to attend, so we never actually got to meet him. Instead, I met my boyfriend. That was over two years ago.

SoHoTampa’s direction got kinda boring for me, so I just started doing the Skinny Stars angle again. I may have gone slightly overboard with some of the details of my personal life and quite a few people caught notice. Readership exploded. The St. Pete Times’ tbt* put me on the cover of an issue with an article about Tampa Bay bloggers. I won Best of The Bay - Popular Vote and Tommy won Best of the Bay - Editor’s Pick. Tommy and I finally met in person to film the video Blog Stars!, a collaborative effort where we passed out copies of alternative weeklies that wrote about our blogs. I wore white hot pants and suede boots with fringe and Tommy wore one of those big, loose Hawaiian shirts. He looked almost exactly as I imagined.

I stopped blogging altogether for awhile. I am a fickle, young sparrow and I decided to fly in another direction, namely, that of gainful employment and trying to get serious with the silliest boyfriend ever. Tommy and Mr. Bill joined forces while I grew up a little, and then, one day, Tommy asked me if I wanted to write for him.

“Sure,” I said.

“I should have asked you sooner,” he said.

I’m gonna make you guys really happy.

You can find more of Rachel*’s wonderful prose here in the Sticks, and at the Interbay Superstar.