Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 12:23 p.m. It would probably be easier to write a song. A song can be quick and clever. A blog requires a bit more wisdom. It has to be more than clever. It’s not as complicated, but there’s more heft in its thoughts. Not that I’m an expert …
Tag: Life Gets Complicated
Words and Lyrics and Titles and Tunes
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 2:42 p.m. I listened to a Johnny Cash song that had slipped my mind. “See Ruby Fall.” I feel I know exactly how Cash wrote it. He was in his tour bus, heading through the country, probably in the mountains of the Appalachian chain, and he saw an …
Don’t Ask; I’m About to Tell
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, March 24, 2018, 4:46 p.m. Surprise, surprise. I awakened this morning to discover that a close friend’s edit of my next novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, had arrived via email. Last night I arrived home from a free-lance assignment to discover that my stock car racing novel, Lightning in a Bottle, …
Why You’d Enjoy a Stock Car Racing Novel … or Two
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
This Too Will Pass … Or It Won’t
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, …
No Master Plan
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 9:45 a.m. The process of writing what will be my eighth novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, has been unique, not because I’ve tried some original new method, or suddenly awakened with some master plan that had earlier eluded me. It wasn’t a master plan. It was a rapidly …
The Car Won’t Start
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 …
A Long Trip Down a Rocky Road
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, September 14, 2017, 1:32 p.m. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell* is going to be my most carefully composed, diligently examined, and thoroughly questioned novel to date. At the moment, I’m taking a break from the long slog of rewriting and reconsidering what will be my eighth novel. Twice I interrupted the process …
Torn between Tales
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, September 8, 2017, 12:03 p.m. I’ve shaved nearly 10,000 words out of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which has become an on-again, off-again, long-term project. At the beginning of the year, I mostly set it aside to write two related auto-racing novels, Lightning in a Bottle and Life Gets Complicated, a sequel. …
It Is What It Is at the End of the Weekend
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, September 3, 2017, 3:34 p.m. I’ve drawn no conclusions from the past few days. They’ve been good experiences, I guess. Character building. Not altogether good. Not altogether bad. Clouds with silver linings still glistening. Greer clobbered Clinton, 41-0, in the local home opener. Chapman clobbered Laurens, 61-24, on its home field. …
Nightrider's Lament 