"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)
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, May 16, 2018, 10:22 a.m. Sameness has become weird, which is unsustainable because if the weird becomes the same, it will cease to be the weird. One would think there would be limits. To this point, one would be wrong. Life reminds me of a Tom T. Hall song called “Everything …
Continue reading ‘I’m Mad as Hell and … So Is Everybody Else’
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 1:45 p.m. Baseball season has begun. Tax season has ended. The Red Sox are off to the best start in team history. That’s good. My taxes are filed. That’s good, too. When the federal refund crackles across fiber-optic lines into my bank account, it will be better. A …
Continue reading Around these Parts, Things Are Roughly the Same
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, April 6, 2018, 10:45 a.m. This week has seemed slow. Most seem fast. Yet my life has been full of activity. First the audio version of my stock racing novel, Lightning in a Bottle, was released. The audio version is fantastic, thanks to the diligent work of narrator Jay Harper. He …
Continue reading The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Imagination
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, April 1, 2018, 4:48 p.m. On Saturday morning, I left a couple small crises behind me as I drove down U.S. 76 to Newberry College, there to join my friends Brent and Sharon Sanders to watch their daughter, Hailey, play women’s lacrosse for Tusculum College against the Wolves. This was my …
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, March 16, 2018, 4:15 p.m. Trial and error. Risk and reward. Deadlines and commitments. Random meetings. A few nights ago, I bumped into a man I grew up with at Dollar General. I bought some soap and a box of Raisin Bran. Even though I live in a small town, and …
Continue reading Run Along, Nothing to See Here: Just Random Thoughts
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, March 10, 2018, 11:57 a.m. It's been a busy week. I got more done on Friday than any day in quite a while. Everything worked. Interview subjects called me back promptly. By the time I got finished writing about a soccer game and talking on a radio show while it was …
Continue reading My Mind Is Tired and Incapable of Suitable Organization and Motivation
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 8, 2018, 1:41 p.m. I've written about my first two baseball games of the spring. The home team won both. Both were in dramatic fashion. Both had runners cut down on the basepaths with disastrous consequences. One was a bit of a long shot, and the other was damned near …
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, February 28, 2018, 11:17 a.m. In 2017, I wrote two novels about a young stock-racing ace named Barrie Jarman. Of my seven novels to date, they are the only ones related to each other. I've often explained this by saying that once I've completed the arduous process of writing a novel, …
Continue reading Why You’d Enjoy a Stock Car Racing Novel … or Two
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, …
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 11:22 a.m. “My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.” – Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), Blazing Saddles. Today my mind is more of an intravenous placebo drip, and any cascading rivulets are probably a result of coffee and …
Nightrider's Lament 