Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, September 8, 2017, 12:03 p.m.

I’ve shaved nearly 10,000 words out of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which has become an on-again, off-again, long-term project.

At the beginning of the year, I mostly set it aside to write two related auto-racing novels, Lightning in a Bottle and Life Gets Complicated, a sequel. I enjoyed creating Barrie Jarman, the brash stock-car-racing boy wonder, navigating a path through the wreck-strewn track of stardom.

Not one of my protagonists have I disliked. Before Barrie, I wrote what I wanted to write about them – Riley Mansfield (The Audacity of Dope), several in The Intangibles, Chance Benford (Crazy of Natural Causes), Hal Kinley (Forgive Us Our Trespasses), and Ennis Middlebrooks and Harry Byerly (Cowboys Come Home) – and was satisfied to let them go.

Until Barrie, all my heroes survived in the story but not in my mind. The villain in Forgive Us Our Trespasses, Denny Frawley, succumbed in both places. Antagonist Denny, not protagonist Hal, dominated that yarn.

The simplicity of the Barrie Jarman Adventures is appealing. I raced through them as if I were Barrie on the track. They’re simply plotted. I always wrote in third person before Barrie, whose life is described in the words of his soft-spoken confidante, Uncle Charlie. Charlie’s voice made it easier for me to be funny. I’ve often aspired to funny and settled for amusing.

The other novels are all ambitious. They have multiple characters and settings that switch back and forth. My basic outlines get complicated. There is much to tie together. Such is the case with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which was ninety percent completed when I set it aside.

Two novels about Barrie were fun. I continued to dicker with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell on the side. Real-life conditions in the country changed. I felt a need to revamp the novel to reflect what has really happened. It required adjustment from start to finish. The new ending is in my mind. I’m not quite ready to write it yet. I’m still editing and rewriting. This the third trip through the manuscript. I feel the way I imagine a director brought in to clean up a film might. Changing scenes. Deleting scenes. Moving scenes around. Constantly confronting myself with the same question: Does this make sense?

I could be cleaning up a mess. I could be making another one. I feel good about it right now.

Back to Barrie.

I wrote two stock car racing novels because (1.) I still have points to make about racing, even though I’m five years removed from two decades of writing about NASCAR for a living; (2.) Even though I am old, I like writing about people who are not; (3.) I gave Barrie the spirit of the past and the lifestyle of the present; and (4.) lots of people who follow my writing do so because of my free-lance columns on motorsports. Most of it was for me, but some of it was for them.

I wrote both novels with the intention of also making them interesting to people who aren’t fans of stock car racing. Both novels examine the biracial love affair of Barrie and Angela Hughston, an issue less objectionable to their generation than to the stock car racing fan base. Barrie has an instinctive distrust of authority.

Imagine John Mellencamp as a teen-aged stock car racer. He wasn’t Barrie’s model. I just thought of it.

At the moment, I feel worn down by the tedium of editing. I’m anxious to get through editing the existing version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so that I can get creative again and finish it.

 

 

If you’d like me to mail you a signed copy of Life Gets Complicated, or any of my other novels, you can find my address and instructions at montedutton.com. (montedutton.com/blog/merchandise). Or, just drop me a line and you can pay through PayPal.

I’ve written seven 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.

Lightning in a Bottle is the story of Barrie Jarman, the hope of stock car racing’s future. Barrie, a 18-year-old from Spartanburg, South Carolina, is both typical of his generation and a throwback to the sport’s glory days.

Life Gets Complicated follows Barrie Jarman as he moves up to FASCAR’s premier series. He and Angela Hughston face discrimination for their interracial love affair, and Barrie has to surmount unexpected obstacles that test his resolve.

Cowboys Come Home is a modern western. Two World War II heroes come home from the Pacific to Texas.

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. It’s a fable of life’s absurdity.

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.

Signed copies of Lightning in a Bottle are on sale at Emma Jane’s (see ad above). Signed copies of all my fiction are also on sale at L&L Office Supply in uptown Clinton, South Carolina.

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).

Write me at hutdut@duttonm@bellsouth.net or “message” me through social media.