"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)
I can't drive 55. I can drive 62. They never stop you when you're 10 miles an our or less over the speed limit. About four months ago, I got my first speeding ticket in at least five years. I got it in the worst state possible to be stopped for speeding, North Carolina, which …
Continue reading Speeding, and Fiction, and … Speeding Through Fiction
I'm sort of a mass of contradictions this morning. I want to get myself in the mood to work on fiction, but, so far, this has been one of those mornings in which I can't come up with a topic, and so I bide some time by reading my timeline, and checking the weather, and …
I spent most of Thursday back in time. It was New Year's Day of 1947, and LSU and Arkansas were playing to a scoreless tie in a Cotton Bowl contested in snow and ice. That much is true. The game was taking place amid fiction. I completed the longest chapter to date in my …
I love writing fiction. At the end of a good chapter, I feel warm in the knowledge that I have done my best. The best of days is when I spend most of it writing and playing my guitar. This morning I finished the editing process of the next novel, Forgive Us Our Trespasses. I'm …
Nowadays I write novels in order to make a living, or, at least, that's the direction I'm headed. Free-lance sportswriting provides some regular income. Royalties come in bits, snatches, and clumps. They're slow when I need them and flood in when the crises are past. I'm making progress. When I got my first novel, The …
I'm editing. Applying the lessons of my current novel, Crazy of Natural Causes, I'm taking my time more with the next one, Forgive Us Our Trespasses. It's a balance. In order to eliminate mistakes, I take my time. In order to get it out as soon as possible, I hurry. This time I'm stressing the …
Being in an informal community of writers -- the ranks of the Amazon KindleScout winners are growing exponentially as more and more of the program's novels are released -- has led me down disparate paths. Jennifer Skutelsky led me up into the Andes in her Grave of Hummingbirds. As such, I felt a certain kinship …
This morning I awakened the usual way, which is to say I put on some coffee, washed down the daily medication, and retired to another sector of the manse for normal relief of bodily functions. Then I returned to the kitchen, stirred Sweet 'n' Low into the coffee -- which, I might add, was recently …
This Christmas I'm thankful for my characters. Not the characters, mind you. As a lad, Christmas was full of "characters": the uncle who always showed up sloshed on Christmas morning and stayed all day long, and my father, who would drink with anybody but him, fleeing to parts unknown; the Christmas Eve parties with the …
It's no surprise I enjoyed Joe Clifford Fausts's joy ride of a novel, Drawing Down the Moon. Dating back to a dive into the Beat Generation about a decade ago, I've grown fond of "road novels." My first, The Audacity of Dope (2011), was about a songwriter leading bad guys (and girls) on a merry …
Nightrider's Lament 