"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, 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. …
Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, August 26, 2017, 10:58 a.m. There are those who believe I waste my talents tramping around small-town football stadiums writing about what I see. They are so wrong. Last night Laurens held off Clinton, 24-18. In a small tract of land known as Laurens County, named after a statesman from the …
Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, July 28, 2017, 11:01 a.m. As I have recently realized, my novels have some recurring incidences, and several incidents. Over the course of writing six novels and dozens of short stories, my protagonists have characteristics I applied to more than one. I didn’t really realize the extent until I started hyping …
Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, June 18, 2017, 10:15 a.m. In a way, Father’s Day is empty. I’m not one, though a niece, nephews, a great-niece, and great-nephews pretend I am. This I appreciate. In another, it makes me ever more mindful of how I remain affected by my father, who died in 1993. Over the …
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, …
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 manuscript of Cowboys Come Home is slightly more than four hundred pages, 94,000 words, double-spaced and twelve in point, and the manuscript of the as-yet-unnamed sixth novel is six pages and 1,600 words, but things are looking up. It now has an outline. A major difference between the former and the latter is that …
A while back, I asked for questions from readers. It took quite some time, but I finally assembled enough of them to compile this blog. Question: Is Forgive Us Our Trespasses based on something in your life? Answer: Of my four novels to date, this is probably the least based on my own experience, though that's a …
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
Nightrider's Lament 