I have demonstrated my allegiance to fiction. At present, I am about seventy-five percent done with what will become my sixth novel. Three – Crazy of Natural Causes (2015), Forgive Us Our Trespasses (2016), and Cowboys Come Home (2016) -- have been published in the past two years. It appears likely that Don’t Ask, …
Tag: fiction
Writing the Ages I’ve Been
Not too long ago, I stumbled across a quotation: The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the ages you have been. – Madeleine L’Engle. All I know about Ms. L’Engle besides that sentence is that she was an American novelist who was born in 1918 and died in 2007. That’s …
Read My Books, Save Your Money, and Hope for the Best
Army beat Navy. Anything's possible. Sure, Donald Trump was there, and he shared the TV booth for a while, saying his usual nothings to Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson. I'm trying my best to respect the office in spite of the man who will soon occupy it. I still have friends who think it's …
Continue reading Read My Books, Save Your Money, and Hope for the Best
Appeasement
I awakened this morning, and my mind was alive. It was aliiiiiive. Like Frankenstein. Then I staggered into the living room, and before I even put on some coffee, took my meds, and answered the alarms in my innards, I grabbed a pen and a notepad and wrote "appeasement" before my racing mind left it …
One Big Hullabaloo
In the 1960s and ‘70s, pop-music shows became popular on network TV. It was common for me to come home from a high school football game and, unable to sleep after either good or bad performances (mostly the latter), watch In Concert and The Midnight Special. In the ‘60s, a couple were on network TV. …
It All Works in its Way
It’s probably a little aggravating to follow me on Twitter. My main account, @montedutton, covers a lot of territory because I cover a lot. Many of my followers are NASCAR fans. A reputation lingers after 20 years traversing the beat as a reporter and columnist. I still write a few columns each week from afar. …
Moving Right Along
Local sports are dying down, or at least the willingness of others to hire me to write about them, for now. The football teams have entered and exited the playoffs. Rain has returned to the Desert Southeast, and smoke from the mountains is at last on the wane. All I know to do is keep …
The Rush of Danger
The matter of whether Michael Carlson's The Age of Daredevils is fiction or non is unimportant. The tale of the men and women who tumbled fatefully over the Horseshoe Falls of Niagara and through the raging rapids thereabout is true. Carlson's knowledge is imposing and his research painstaking. The fiction in it is the thoughts …
A Cry for Help, or, at Least, Reading
I’m just about to dive into the 21st chapter of my next – and sixth – novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which is a few paragraphs shy of 50,000 words in its first draft. Italics will be added when it’s published. But first! A warm-up. La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lah! Get the old digits cranking like pistons! My urgency …
The Result of the Roads
My next novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, is now above the 46,000-word mark. I worked on the 18th chapter during parts of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. This morning I updated the outline, which is now nearly 13,000 words on its own. Updating ranks right up there with paying bills and trimming the branches of trees …
Nightrider's Lament 