This is how I came to read Eddie & Sunny. I pass this along because I have some hope of you following the same path. I entered my novel Crazy of Natural Causes in Amazon’s KindleScout program, which is a path to publication. When I entered it – posting a sample, a Q&A, short synopsis …
Ruination
Sipping a cup of coffee, Haney McGee thought about Ebby Newlin, the old man who didn’t drive a car, worked his whole life at a gas station without ever running one, and looked out for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Haney had been in Denver, trying like hell to keep …
The Gratifying News
On Wednesday night, I spent a long time talking about NASCAR on the phone, and at the other end of the phone was a radio show, and I was in a mischievous mood, laughed easily, and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Meanwhile, the iPhone I’d muted was trembling every minute or so. It was on the …
Regrouping
I’m lagging. I’m having a crisis of creativity. It’s not writer’s block. It’s just good writer’s block. I’ll snap out of it. It’s like what Jerry Jeff Walker sings. Gimme a beer or two and I’ll be fine / At least it worked every other time / I’m a rodeo-deo-deo cowboy / Bordering on …
A Different Kind of Racing Book
Motorsports and American Culture: From Demolition Derbies to NASCAR, Edited Mark D. Howell and John D. Miller (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield) I’d never heard of this book until a copy of it was given me by my friend John Edwin Mason, who, in addition to teaching African history and the history of photography at …
My Guy Dave
I’m sentimental at times. In 1983, when my baseball hero, Carl Yastrzemski, said farewell to Boston and trotted around the perimeter of the Fenway Park field shaking hands, I cried when I watched the video. I never felt more stupid. It was a highlights video of Yaz’s career, and I didn’t expect to cry. Watching …
One of My Daddy’s Days
This was a Daddy Day, which is not to say I am one. It is a subset of what my late father called “one of them Dutton deals.” To me, a Daddy’s Day is one in which very little gets done. My father, who died nearly 22 years ago, could waste a day as …
Service After the Sale
I’m sure the employees at the nearby cell-phone “store” dread to see me coming. Maybe they’ll forget by the next time. It frustrates me that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and it doesn’t. It plunges everyone into a black hole of communications with impersonal recordings, interminable periods on hold, and a barely …
A Fable of Raised Expectations
During the heyday of high school football in this town, lots of fans used to watch the team practice late in the evenings, after the mill shift ended. It was the late seventies, and that was a decade that saw Clinton win four state championships and reach the finals twice more. One day I was …
Them Ain’t Got No Coffee Blues
Supposedly drugs do not really make a person creative. They merely make him think he is creative. On the other hand, supposedly, image is reality. I don’t feel creative this morning. I feel listless. I feel dull. I need drugs. The drug is caffeine. I didn’t realize I was addicted to coffee until the apparatus …
Nightrider's Lament 