Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, April 1, 2017, 4:14 p.m. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Both long dead. Both masters of a genre. They wrote about crime fiction about hard-boiled detectives. Both are known more for the movies made from their novels than the novels themselves. I wanted to read Chandler and Hammett. I had for …
Tag: Monte Dutton
The Big Surprise Is Here
This blog is a news release. I'm sending it out to many people. Why am I making it available to you? Perhaps you have news to disseminate. Perhaps you have a blog. Perhaps you follow mine. Perhaps you are on social media. Perhaps you like reading. Perhaps you like fiction. Perhaps you like motorsports. …
The World Gets a Little Larger When the Modem Dies
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, March 24, 2017, 9:45 a.m. On Tuesday night, I was having a lovely time sitting around in a circle, taking turns with others, playing guitar – most of the others could pick one – and singing while a fearsome storm raged outside. I was in a barn. There were refreshments. Meanwhile, …
Continue reading The World Gets a Little Larger When the Modem Dies
Even the Best-Laid Lies …
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, March 20, 2017, 10:56 a.m. Jesse Few lives in the suspended adolescence of the power life. Suddenly, all of his indiscretions come back to haunt him at once. So goes the irreverent narrative of Lying for a Living, Steve McCondichie’s debut novel. I traffic in such irreverence myself. Its smirk …
The Rush to Fiction
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, March 18, 2017, 10:25 a.m. It’s been a lovely cruise, this week. Other than a couple cold nights at athletic fields, it was mainly noteworthy for what I am doing now, which is typing in various directions. This wasn’t nose-to-the-grindstone typing, in part because I own no grindstones, but also because …
That First Draft Goes Down So Easy
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 11:25 a.m. Hmm. How can I describe this? I probably don’t have to. Many who read it will be authors, too. They’ll know what it’s like to get a first draft finished. The mountain is climbed. The story is done. He (or she) has to get back down …
Poverty Helps
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 10:45 a.m. I haven’t really had much to do. Local sports, or at least my market value for writing about it, has subsided for a while. Bills are outstanding at both ends, which means I am both owed and owing a decent amount. I go to the mailbox …
I Don’t Know Why, but I Know When
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, 10:45 a.m. Sometimes a football team knows full well the importance of a game, and it knows it had better play well, and all the players tell themselves they’d better be ready and … sometimes themselves just don’t buy it. The fans simplify. They talk among themselves, and …
Horror and Relief
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, February 23, 2017, 1:18 p.m. I have tried to find a market for my fiction. I don’t have lots of money to pay for the search. Five novels now. Six and seven in progress. Nothing makes me happier than the completion of a chapter, well, except, maybe, getting the whole yarn …
A Confederacy of Trumpets
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, February 17, 2017, 11:15 a.m. I’m tired, and I think it’s President Trump’s fault. I should exercise, but, first, I need to be exorcised of President Trump. It requires too much exertion. It is an altogether futile assertion. I don’t like the man, nor his policies, but he makes ideology irrelevant. …
Nightrider's Lament 