Not too long ago, I stumbled across a quotation: The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the ages you have been. – Madeleine L’Engle. All I know about Ms. L’Engle besides that sentence is that she was an American novelist who was born in 1918 and died in 2007. That’s …
Tag: The Audacity of Dope
One Big Hullabaloo
In the 1960s and ‘70s, pop-music shows became popular on network TV. It was common for me to come home from a high school football game and, unable to sleep after either good or bad performances (mostly the latter), watch In Concert and The Midnight Special. In the ‘60s, a couple were on network TV. …
Moving Right Along
Local sports are dying down, or at least the willingness of others to hire me to write about them, for now. The football teams have entered and exited the playoffs. Rain has returned to the Desert Southeast, and smoke from the mountains is at last on the wane. All I know to do is keep …
A Cry for Help, or, at Least, Reading
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 Result of the Roads
My next novel, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, is now above the 46,000-word mark. I worked on the 18th chapter during parts of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. This morning I updated the outline, which is now nearly 13,000 words on its own. Updating ranks right up there with paying bills and trimming the branches of trees …
Little Help? Got a Manuscript Loose Out There
On with the show, this is it! That Oscar-winning rabbit concluded his intro with that tune, and, as of 12:01 a.m. today (Wednesday, August 17), my fifth novel, Cowboys Come Home, is up for nomination in Amazon's KindleScout program. Two previous novels -- KindleScout is fiction only -- have been published in the program, which …
Continue reading Little Help? Got a Manuscript Loose Out There
Seeking Just the Right Amount of Me
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 …
Wandering Through the Fingers of My Hands
Each morning Facebook provides a look back to items I posted on this date in previous years. Mostly it informs me that what I am doing is the same. Now I'm trying to tie all the loose ends in my fifth novel, Cowboys Come Home, together. The manuscript is ready. I have to make up …
Crazy Little Thing Called Writing
So much to do. So little time. It wasn't too long ago that writers got to spend their time writing. They didn't have to tweet and post and pretend it was writing, too. A book is an art. A blog is a craft. A tweet is a trick. It's not that I don't enjoy social …
Questions, Anyone?
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 …
Nightrider's Lament 