"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)
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, April 6, 2018, 10:45 a.m. This week has seemed slow. Most seem fast. Yet my life has been full of activity. First the audio version of my stock racing novel, Lightning in a Bottle, was released. The audio version is fantastic, thanks to the diligent work of narrator Jay Harper. He …
Continue reading The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Imagination
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, April 1, 2018, 12:24 p.m. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will make some readers angry. What doesn’t? This novel is either my best or my best mess. I did my best. I put lots of effort into it. No one is objective about oneself. The readers decide for themselves, and their verdict …
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, March 30, 2018, 1:32 p.m. Hindsight is supposedly 20/20, though I’ve often found memories to be considerably photoshopped. For instance, it just occurred to me that I have something in common with John Steinbeck. Hint: It’s not talent. I’m not particularly modest. In fact, I’m not remotely modest. I think it’s …
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, …
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 22, 2018, 11:30 a.m. Science fiction is hardly my field of expertise. I just happened to dream up this scenario overnight and felt compelled to write it all down in the form of a short story. Dagwood Brandt made a fine living preaching against preaching. The executive director of AFG …
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 15, 2018, 12:15 p.m. Fritz Kolbe is just a man. He has no yearning to kill and never does so in Andreas Kollender’s The Honest Spy, expertly translated into English by Steve Anderson. Perhaps because the novel begins in South Africa, where he is assigned a diplomatic post by the …
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, January 5, 2018, 8:49 a.m. At some point, this feeding frenzy has to run its course. As with all feeding frenzies, some good has been achieved. Tides of frenzy sweep along with them some rampaging tyranny. To this very day, I am kind to women who wait on me at restaurants …
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, …
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 …
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 …
