I'm kind of at the end of a long writing journey that began when I was a Marine in Vietnam. I've never had what a person would call an amazing output in terms of volume. Some writers can write a story in two days and a novel in a week. I worked on Lord of Homicides for two years before the rewrite. Since I rewrite each day when creating the novel, my rewrites were never too difficult, but they were time consuming. Michael In Hell and The Bad Season each took about six months. Last Chance of a Crazy Virgin, Waiting For An Open Bed, and Sudden Victims took years of collected writing. Bad Night In The Holding Cell took less than a year.
My absolute favorite is Last Chance of a Crazy Virgin. I had a ball with this comedy. I wrote the first sentence in 1976 and probably finished the novel in the 80s. It made a final marketing meeting at Bantam "over the transom" and was rejected in favor of a book by a more famous writer. It was originally published as Driving With Ace with a promise of promotion that never appeared. My timing as a writer has never been the best and neither has my promotional ability. I have crossed eyes, a twitch, and a hump on my back. I would make most male writers at a conference look like movie stars, and that would be very hard to do. I don't really have those physical things wrong with me, but I often feel that way as a writer.
My favorite story is Crossings. I don't know why. It's a sad, post world destruction story of love and regression to violence. Maybe because it's the last story I wrote. I figure that maybe some day after I'm gone, people will begin to notice I had something to say and my books will become popular. I imagine every writer feels that way if they aren't one of the chosen few. I'll be 65 in a few weeks, and I no longer know if I have the patience or the will to say anything else about the human condition. So, I've included a collage of all the covers I've created for my books and stories. I also had a ball doing the covers, which is a difficult task for anyone, especially, a guy who can't even draw stick men.
If I do finish more books, I'll get them out there. But if not, it's been both depressing and a lot of fun at the same time.
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