"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
James M. Jackson came in handy. I needed his novel Ant Farm. It leads to more. I can't wait to get around to them. Ant Farm reminds me of the mysteries of the late Dick Francis. Jim's Seamus McCree is an American. Francis mainly wrote about Englishmen. Ant Farm reminds me of a Francis mystery …
Continue reading Watch Out When the Ants Scatter on Jim Jackson’s Farm
I'm envious. Writers are an envious tribe. I try not to succumb to envy, because my style is what has developed and evolved throughout my life. I bear the scars and achievements of my existence to this point. In a song, Guy Clark once quoted the rodeo cowboy Larry Mahan thusly: “Mistakes are only horses …
Continue reading I Didn’t Know Where I Was Going, but I’m Glad I Went
I felt as if Linda Sands was something of a kindred spirit while reading her offbeat crime novel, 3 Women Walk into a Bar. It's been out just a little longer than my novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, and most every character in Linda's story is crazy, or, at least, eccentric. Mine's not a …
Continue reading They Walk In but Never Out, and as Far as this Novel Is Concerned, Neither Will You
Friends, countrymen and countrywomen, city folks, cowboys and Indians, readers frequent and infrequent, As you know, I've written another novel. It's good because, right out of Amazon (the retailer, not the river, but the two could be related by marriage), and into my portable devices, I read it. It took just slightly over one day, …
As I have mentioned before, for obvious reasons, you don't have to own a Kindle to read my Kindle Publishing novel, Crazy of Natural Causes. I don't own a Kindle myself, but I have free apps installed in my Surface tablet, two iPhones, and an iPod. Here's what I didn't know till today, mainly because …
I'm tumbling down the stretch. On Tuesday, Crazy of Natural Causes becomes available for download at amazon.com. It has been available for advance order since July 14. I assume the advance price of $3.49 will be in place through Monday. I don’t know anything else. It’s up to Amazon. It’s my seller, and it’s also …
On Tuesday, July 21, my third novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, will be released by Kindle Publishing and available for immediate download at amazon.com. Those who have ordered it in advance, or do so between now and then, will received an immediate email containing a download shortly after the clock strikes midnight. Those of you …
The day before yesterday, I drove over to Presbyterian College and shot some video footage of high school kids going through football drills. Why? Well, I do like watching football practice from a distance of, oh, forty years when I was out there sweating in the sun. I went to a football camp before my …
The reason promoting a book is so hard is that what one can do is might-nigh infinite, and time is maddeningly finite. Crazy of Natural Causes, my third novel and first published (at least for now) strictly for Kindle, is available for advance purchase on Monday (July 6). It becomes immediately available for download on …
Ahhhh. Next week my third novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, is scheduled to go on sale for advance orders. It will be available, uh, "on demand," about two weeks later. The release of a book is exciting. It's the culmination of lots of work: drafts, outlines, rewriting, tinkering with the order, et al. Now I …
Nightrider's Lament 