It’s not just another Thursday. I’ve been writing for most of two days. Come to think of it, I’ve been writing all week. I’ve been writing all month. I’ve been writing my whole life. If I didn’t love writing, I’d be tired of it by now.

On Monday and Tuesday, I wrote about sports. Two NASCAR columns. Two football advances for Friday night – here’s the one that’s been posted – and a story about a local volleyball team. That left me open, sports-wise, until Friday night.

As these words are written, the fate of my fifth novel, Cowboys Come Home, is uncertain. I know it’s going to be published. I just don’t know yet whether it’s going to be published in Amazon’s KindleScout program, where Crazy of Natural Causes and Forgive Us Our Trespasses found an online home. It’s vastly different. It’s a whole new genre for me. I’m proud of it. I think it’s a ripsnorter. I don’t know Amazon’s position on ripsnorters. I don’t know if different is better.

Can’t please everybody. Just got to please yourself.

I sort of took Rick Nelson’s song, “Garden Party,” out of context. I conveniently omitted admission of whether or not I’m all right now and learned my lessons well. I’m supposed to do those first before I get to pass up pleasing everybody and pleasing yourself. That last part’s easy.

Apart from Amazon, we the KindleScout authors work together. We share links to one another’s books. One colleague put together a cookbook where many of us – I wrote about making hot wings the way I imagine Chance Benford of Crazy of Natural Causes would. It’s fared well, in no small part, I expect, because it’s a free download. Now another one is being compiled, a sequel. I’m not participating because I don’t see anyone yearning for knowledge on how to toast a bagel and smear cream cheese.

What I am participating in is the brainchild of another fellow novelist more enterprising than I. He has come up with another novel idea to promote our … novels. We’re writing short stories using characters who played prominent roles in our novels. I’ve written one with Benford, the protagonist of Crazy of Natural Causes, three years after the events of one novel, and today I’ve been taking Hal Kinley to the aftermath of Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

I thought I was through with those two when I wrote the novels. The idea is to reinvigorate sales of the novels by writing additional tales about their most compelling characters.

It’s occurred to me, now that I’m almost done, that it would have been better to take up Benford and Kinley before the novels, not after. These short stories might reveal too much about the stories that preceded them.

Hindsight.

It has been fun, but it’s distracted me from other deadlines and commitments, and I’m going to have to do a lot of catching up in the next few weeks.

I’ve written four novels and a collection of short stories. I’ve also written a number of books about sports, mostly about NASCAR. You can find most of them here.

The Kindle versions of my books, where available, can be found above. Links below are to print editions.

I’ve written a crime novel about the corrosive effects of patronage and the rise and fall of a powerful politician and his dysfunctional family, Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

I’ve written about what happens to a football coach when he loses everything, Crazy of Natural Causes.

I’ve written a tale of the Sixties in the South, centered on school integration and a high school football team, The Intangibles.

I’ve written a rollicking yarn about the feds trying to track down and manipulate a national hero who just happens to be a pot-smoking songwriter, The Audacity of Dope.

I’ve written a collection of 11 short stories, all derived from songs I wrote, Longer Songs.

Most of my sports columns are at montedutton.com.

Follow me on Twitter @montedutton, @hmdutton (about writing), and/or @wastedpilgrim (more opinionated and irreverent). I’m on Facebook (Monte.Dutton), Instagram (TUG50), and Google-Plus (MonteDuttonWriter).