It is a good day to face reality, Easter. The celebration of Christ's Resurrection has coincidentally, over time, tied itself to the vow of poverty otherwise known as tax time. It's not actually until April 15, but it behooves one to approach that date with caution, lest one leave oneself insufficient time to prepare …
The Fallibility of Atticus Finch
I finished Go Set a Watchman on the first day I cut grass, and, on the first day, it's more than just riding around and around the yard. It's getting the battery charged, and a flat fixed, and trips to the Ace Hardware and the Family Dollar. Preoccupied is better than being distracted. I thought …
Inside the Park
It was the bottom of the sixth inning on a Tuesday afternoon, and Johnny Shelburn stepped to the plate with the bases empty and two men out. Sacks, his teammates called him. He played first base. He took a strike. A little high for his taste. The Larranega Heights pitcher was a lefty. He …
Please Buy My Novels Out of Thin Air
My new novel, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, goes on sale at Amazon.com on March 29. To my friends who cling to their tightly packed paper, I apologize because the new novel, like the last one, will be unavailable in print, at least for now. I'd like to sell paper novels. I own the rights to …
And Away We Goooooo!
Sigh. I have so much to do. It's a matter of chipping away at all of them until, at some point in the distant future, I'll get a vague feeling that something has been accomplished. This is how I lost my way. On Monday, I spent the morning producing a weekly NASCAR column for Bleacher …
No Ordinary Indiscretion
In the past year, I've read a lot of chases. Hapless victims of fate, running for their lives. A young man trying come to grips with a mother both dead and outlandish. The Southwest. The Mid-Atlantic. Florida. Polly Iyer's Indiscretion begins on the coast of South Carolina and changes venues to Boston, where it …
The Crazy World Is Just Getting Older
It's a lovely Saturday morning, not that I have so much as cracked a door to sniff the chill wind. My confidence relies on the sunlight flickering through the blinds behind me. The outside world flickers, also, affected by the various blinds of the programming I happen to be using. I read Sarah Palin's Facebook …
High Above the World Where No One Cares
Marvin staggered out of bed, stopped off for a leak, and advanced boldly into the kitchen in search of a swallow of water to combat the cotton mouth. Gaining coherence and mental acuity, he applied the fundamentals of coffee making to his machine and retreated because nature was beginning to call, and, sometimes, in …
Rudderless in a Rainstorm …
... Or, How I Cross-Blogged for Kindle Scout For the first time, here at wellpilgrim.wordpress.com, the following words aren’t mine. This is a guest blog from a fellow author, and I hope you can muster some eleventh-hour support for his KindleScout campaign. -- MD By Steve Vernon I contacted Kindle Scout winning author Monte Dutton …
Moping About the Madness
This morning I'm feeling paralyzed. I need to write about cowboys in 1946, and my mind is stuck in the present. I've tried sticking planks under the tires. I've jammed the gears. Nothing. So I decided to ruminate here. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. Here's the transition I've been making, and it may be unduly influenced …
Nightrider's Lament 