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 …
Tag: songwriting
How I Got Here Musically
I remember when I first heard of Don McLean and "American Pie." It was a little over forty-four years ago. I was in the library of Bell Street Middle School, reading Time magazine. At about the same time, maybe even the same day, I read an article about James Taylor. I still tell people …
Isn’t Fun the Greatest Thing You Can Have?
My greatest ally is my guitar. Or, my guitars. I keep one leaning against the couch to my left while I type away here. I just got finished playing a few songs to get me ready to write this blog. I played a couple of mine, "Stuck in a Rut" and "Uh, Huh." Then I …
‘Nasty Habits,’ a Song
I love to write songs. You can find rough versions of them on my YouTube channel (oddly enough, called "Monte Dutton"), mostly videos from back when I was occasionally playing little gigs at places near NASCAR tracks. This one, "Nasty Habits," is the first one I've written in about six months. I love writing songs, …
My Fiction and Welcome to It
Let’s see. What’s the most boring, clichéd way I can begin a blog? Oh, I got it. Good news and bad news. First, the bad. Sales of Crazy of Natural Causes have been sagging recently. Rather than ranging from 15,000 to 50,000 in the ever-changing rankings, the range has shifted to 50,000 to 200,000 over …
Nothing Left to Lose
On Saturday morning, I was riding around and around my front yard on a mower, listening to Charlie Robison’s “Desperate Times.” That’s where this dark tale started. Joe Scharmann had applied for dozens of jobs. Three had deigned to invite him for interviews. Those whose job it was to conduct the interviews knew better than …
Drudgery for a While
I’m between stories right now. I just spent a couple weeks or so on a short story, “The Bright Lights Burn,” that wound up being about 16,000 words. It takes up the story of Riley Mansfield, the likable rogue who was the main character in my first novel, The Audacity of Dope, six and a …
The Bright Lights Burn
SEVEN YEARS IF IT’S A DAY The walk down to the mailbox wasn’t far, but it was hilly. The right knee, operated on so long ago, was wearing out again, and there wasn’t a damn thing Riley Mansfield could do about it. He now understood what was meant by the term “trick knee.” One morning, …
A False Sense of Security
This is the sixth episode of this short story about the character, Riley Mansfield, I created for my first novel, The Audacity of Dope. The first five, in order, were "Seven Years If It's a Day," "Like Old Times," "High in La-La Land," "Far, Far Away," and "Melissa, Under Water." Riley Mansfield had no sixth …
Like Old Times
Here’s the second episode of this short story, which revisits Riley Mansfield, the main character in my novel The Audacity of Dope, seven years later. The first episode was called “Seven Years If It’s a Day.” LIKE OLD TIMES To his satisfaction, Riley Mansfield’s position had descended in the public consciousness, but he still …
Nightrider's Lament 