Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, October 26, 2017, 11:03 a.m.

It was 100 degrees in Los Angeles for the first game of the World Series. The president is Donald Trump. A hurricane hit Ireland. Puerto Rico is still an American wasteland a month after Maria. I thought, oddly, about an old pop song.

Take a letter, Maria / Address it to my wife / Say I won’t be coming home / Gotta start a new life.

Okay. So it’s not a precise match.

Did I mention the president is Donald Trump?

These times are affecting me. Last night the World Series game was a classic. Half of it I spent watching the news on other channels. Until recently, that would have been unthinkable. Until recently, I could depend on hell waiting ten minutes before it broke out.

Funny thing is, most of the constant motion is Trump running in place. Or tweeting in place.

I go about my business in grim resignation. I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon. Genghis Don got elected. He’s in cahoots with Attila the Russian.

My Republican friends have gone soft on Russia. I never saw that coming. They engage in whataboutistry. Hillary did it too! They ignore all the facts that matter and ignore the ones that don’t. They have the permission of Kellyanne Conway to believe “alternative facts.”

I write. It’s all I know to do. I keep my head down. I try to stay out of trouble on Facebook by holding it down to a few comments a day. Sometimes I can’t help it. I like Twitter better because it doesn’t provide as much room for meanness.

I’m winding down the next novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I’m rewriting the ending to account for current events. I spent the first half of the year writing two fun, funny, irreverent, first-person novels about stock car racing. I sat Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell aside for them. Now I’ve edited, pared down, and proofread the first 39 chapters, and they’re ready to go. I’ve just got to finish the ending. It’s mapped out in my outline and clear in my mind. It’s a matter of doing it, and I’m saddling up my writing horse to gallop into Chapter 45 as soon as this blog comes to a stopping point.

Meanwhile, down the line, I’m pondering a baseball novel. Maybe a few more baseball fans still read more than 140 characters at a time.

Okay, that’s the stopping point. It’s the best I can do at the moment.

 

 

Most of my books — non-fiction on NASCAR and music, collections that include my contributions, seven novels, and one short-story collection — are available here.