Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, May 2, 2021, 12:09 p.m.

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Mainly I’ve been writing about local sports, most notably the football coaching disaster at Presbyterian College, lately, but my young associate and I have been diligently preparing for the launch of a new site and another one after that.

Today’s hits. Golden oldies. Interest is booming. It better keep on. Get your shots.

Somehow, I’ve read a couple books in fits and starts, a lot of them while sitting in a booth waiting for food at my favorite cafe.

My reading has been slow. My writing, at least of fiction and blogs, has lurched to a halt.

The same is true of music. I get to a stopping point and restore my soul by plunking my guitar and singing songs I love, some of them I wrote. But I’m not writing anything new. I do have a title that a tucked away a month ago.

I’m giving 4 on a scale of 5 to both the books, The Road Beyond Ruin by Gemma Liviero and Zoo Nebraska by Carson Vaughan.

I managed to squeeze a full mug of coffee out of my balky machine. It’s working fine again … kind of. Just last night, I was pricing new ones on line.

But I digress, as I am fond of doing.

This is part of my feeble attempt to find a little time each day to write about something other than sports, the business, and short-term addiction of social media.

Another digression.

The Road Beyond Ruin is a sad, tragic tale of World War II through the eyes of what seem to be a hapless Italian, devastated Germans and a mysterious little boy, an orphan of war.

They are all much more complicated, and the initial simplicity transforms into secret motives all around with careful organization and planning by the author. This has the effect of keeping pages turning. It is adroitly plotted. The tale is revealed as if peeling away the husks from an ear of corn.

Zoo Nebraska embarrassed me. I was three quarters through it before I realized it wasn’t a novel. I thought certain dialogue odd, but I thought it a flaw in fiction rather than a virtue in non.

At which point, my pulse quickened. Could this be true? I had been reading it as parody. As Tweety Bird might have said, “I did! I did see a puddy tat!” I was saying “It’s twue! It’s twue!”

That settles it. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Look my books up on Amazon. They are close to nothing.

Become a patron of my work.

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