Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 23, 2017, 9:35 a.m. I had another brainstorm overnight. I’m working on two literary projects. One I’ve been working on for several months. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is up to about 80,000 words in first draft. Two weeks ago, another sleepless night led me to a second project, tentatively …
Tag: Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Comedy Remains Elusive
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, January 5, 2017, 9:32 a.m. Try as I might, I don’t seem to be able to write a comedy. Oh, a couple of years ago, I took a stab at it. My third novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, was funny at times. It was a fable of life’s absurdity, but I …
The Way I Write the Things I Write
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, …
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 …
The Winter Solstice of Our Content
I raced right through Winter Solstice, a compilation of short stories by Kindle Press authors. Part of the reason I raced through was that two of the stories, “Strange Bedfellows” and “Chance Chills,” are mine. I’m lying. They were the first two I read. When an author reads stories he wrote, and he hasn’t …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Spinning Supplemental Yarns
It’s not just another Thursday. I’ve been writing for most of two days. Come to think of it, I’ve been writing all week. I’ve been writing all month. I’ve been writing my whole life. If I didn’t love writing, I’d be tired of it by now. On Monday and Tuesday, I wrote about sports. Two …
Nightrider's Lament 