Tag Archives: novel writing

June 29, 2024 · 12:21 am

Terry Pratchett, the Grand Wizard of Discworld

image borrowed from TVtropes.com

I firmly believe that I would never have succeeded as a teacher and never gotten my resolve wrapped around the whole nonsense package of being a published author if I hadn’t picked up a copy of Mort, the first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that I ever encountered. I started reading the book as a veteran dungeon-master at D&D role-playing games and also as a novice teacher having a world of difficulty trying to swim up the waterfalls of Texas education fast enough to avoid the jagged rocks of failure at the bottom. I was drinking ice tea when I started reading it. More of that iced tea shot out my nose while reading and laughing than went down my gullet. I almost put myself in the hospital with goofy guffaws over Death’s apprentice and his comic adventures on a flat world riding through space and time on the backs of four gigantic elephants standing on the back of a gigantic-er turtle swimming through the stars. Now, I know you have no earthly idea what this paragraph even means, unless you read Terry Pratchett. And believe me, if you don’t, you have to start. If you don’t die laughing, you will have discovered what may well be the best humorist to ever put quill pen to scroll and write. And if you do die laughing, well, there are worse ways to go, believe me.

Discworld novels are fantasy-satire that make fun of Tolkien and Conan the Barbarian (written by Robert E. Howard, not the barbarian himself) and the whole world of elves and dwarves and heroes and dragons and such. You don’t even have to love fantasy to like this stuff. It skewers fantasy with spears of ridiculousness (a fourth level spell from the Dungeons of Comedic Magic for those fellow dungeon masters out there who obsessively keep track of such things). The humor bleeds over into the realms of high finance, education, theater, English and American politics, and the world as we know it (but failed to see from this angle before… a stand-on-your-head-and-balance-over-a-pit-of-man-eating-goldfish sort of angle).

Terry Pratchett’s many wonderful books helped me to love what is ugly, because ugly is funny, and if you love something funny for long enough, you understand that there is a place in the world even for goblins and trolls and ogres. Believe me, that was a critical lesson for a teacher of seventh graders to learn. I became quite fond of a number of twelve and thirteen year old goblins and trolls because I was able see through the funny parts of their inherent ugliness to the hidden beauty that lies within (yes, I know that sounds like I am still talking about yesterday’s post, but that’s because I am… I never stop blithering about that sort of blather when it comes to the value hidden inside kids).

I have made it a personal goal to read every book ever written by Terry Pratchett. And that goal is now within reach because even though he is an incredibly prolific writer, he has passed on withing the last year. He now only has one novel left that hasn’t reached bookstores. Soon I will only need to read a dozen more of his books to finish his entire catalog of published works. And I am confident I will learn more lessons about life and love and laughter by reading what is left, and re-reading some of the books in my treasured Terry Pratchett paperback collection. Talk about your dog-eared tomes of magical mirth-making lore! I know I will never be the writer he was. But I can imitate and praise him and maybe extend the wonderful work that he did in life. This word-wizard is definitely worth any amount of work to acquire and internalize. Don’t take my convoluted word for it. Try it yourself.

borrowed from artistsUK.com

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Tagged as book review, books, Discworld, fantasy, favorite author, humor, novel writing, satire, teaching, Terry Pratchett

May 11, 2024 · 12:08 am

Cloudscapes

Once upon a time, the English poet and, I would argue, cartoonist, William Blake once said, “You look at the sky and see clouds, while I see the assembled heavenly host!” This is why my literature class in college about the Romantic Poets of his day made him out to be a certifiable nutcase who probably belonged in in a mental institution. (And back then, in the 1800’s, the sanitarium was a place where inconveniently crazy people went to die.)

Look at a couple of my cloudscapes. Do you see angels?

Cloudscapes (a poem)

Blue and white and filled with light…

The cloudscape burns with angels…

And wholly bought with grace unsought…

I long to fly with angels…

Are they really there in the cloud-filled air?

I see them there, they’re angels!

So, there you have it. I’m a loon. I don’t even have the excuse of being a Romantic Poet and well-known for my poetry as a defense against the loony bin. But as the matter stands, I am fully willing to accept the consequences. Creativity has its price. And, while you may not agree that I am somewhat creative, I am swimming in a vast ocean of perceived revelations that enriches me and fulfills me at the very same moment that it drains all the energy from my soul. If that is not what it means to see angels… then I do not know anything of use to anyone but me.

The word “angel” (according to Wikipedia, the source of all true knowledge) comes to English via Late Latin and the word “angelus” which the Romans stole from the Greek ἄγγελος ángelos, The ángelos is the default Septuagint’s translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mal’ākh denoting simply “messenger” without specifying its nature. (Notice, I am giving full credit to Wikipedia because it is far more all-knowing than I.)

I have many atheistic and agnostic notions in my ultimate belief systems, but still, I claim to be a Christian and believe in God Jehovah… within limits. I still communicate with God on a daily basis, and while I don’t publicly pray anymore (a notion promoted by the Biblical Jesus) I find answers to my questions and solutions to my problems from the observable universe around me.. the messengers of God. So, now that I have fully rationalized being crazy as a loon, I am going to tell you where that craziness is taking me. I started a new Paffooney for one of the books I am working on. Here is the pencil sketch;

This will be a picture of Valerie Clarke and her Daddy, the farmer Kyle Clarke. In my fiction, Kyle loses his farm to the bank (in the Family Farm Crisis of the 1980’s) and believing himself incapable of any longer supporting his family, kills himself. But the thing is, the love of his daughter transcends death for Kyle. She is able to reconnect with him time and again because the angels work for her as well as for Kyle. I may be loony and ill in real life, facing the Angel of Death myself, but I am not done doing God’s work… not yet… not for a long time to come.

The finished picture.

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Tagged as angels, creativity, goofiness, humor, metaphor, novel writing, paffooney, pencil sketch, philosophy, photo Paffooney, poem, poems, poet, poetry, religion, William Blake, writing

May 8, 2024 · 12:20 am

Notes from the 70’s; the Master Plan

I have wanted to be a writer and cartoonist from childhood onward. I didn’t really begin in earnest until the last few years of my teaching career with retirement looming directly ahead. Now I have made the leap off the cliff. I retired a year ago. I did everything short of bankruptcy to put my accounts in order, and transformed myself into a starving artist. I have a full retirement from Texas, subject to a grandfather clause (no relation to the Santa Clause) that allows me to receive enough money to live on for the rest of my life (thanks to the trick of being a teacher back before George W. Bush and Rick Perry came along to pillage Texas education and reduce what they pay those lazy, lousy teachers for their lifetimes of service). Of course, I must try to limit my expenditures as much as possible, because… well, it is a teacher’s pension.

But my plan from the 70’s, begun in high school and carried out through college and my teaching career has allowed me to stay on track to create something massive and complex. My story ideas have been collected over time and are all based on a very simple rule… “Everything is connected.” Every story I now labor to put into prose mentions other stories and has story fishhooks in it to catch readers and pull them into something else. Most of my work is set in farm-town Iowa in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. I made them all a part of the 20th Century on purpose because the personalities the characters are all based on were a part of my life then. Certain elements run through all the stories. Let me explain a few.

1. Some characters appear in many stories (sometimes as a main character, and more often as a supporting character. The French boy who sings karaoke beautifully and makes his cousin’s bar business a success by entertaining people there appears in two stories that happen at about the same time. Both of those stories are still waiting to be written. Tim Kellogg appears in my stories from the time he is but a twinkle in his parents’ eyes until he becomes the leader of the infamous boys’ gang of liars called the Norwall Pirates.

2. Most of the stories are centered around members of the Norwall Pirates. They are a group of small town boys dedicated to adventure, telling lies, and seeing girls naked. Much of the magic, science fiction, fantasy elements, and just plain hallucinations in my stories are the fault of boys who tell stories and lies so well that sometimes they believe them themselves.

3. Character arcs that begin in one book will often continue in another. Sometimes I go back in time and explain something that happened much earlier. The Pirate’s club first appears in my novel Catch a Falling Star set in 1990. The origin of the club is told about in Superchicken, a novel I have blogged about, but not yet published. That story happens in 1974. Valerie Clarke is introduced in the novel PDMI Publishing LLC is currently working on, Snow Babies, which takes place in Winter of 1984. She is the leader of the Pirates in the finished, but not yet submitted novel The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. That story spans 1988 to 1991.

4. Much of my nuttiness was originally created in the 1970’s. Even though the stories were given a setting much later, all the illustrated Paffoonies I have dropped into this post were drawn in 1977 and 1978. I keep these cartoon character model sheets in one of my magical tomes, the Norwall Book, a loose-leaf binder full of drawings and junk carefully preserved in plastic page-protector sheets.

So, this is all the proof that my leap off that cliff into retirement will either make a very big splash or hit the rocks very hard. It will be very something. And I hope to live to see it… especially to get all of the stories I can possibly finish written and published… with a ghost of a hope that my own drawings, cartoons, and illustrations will count for something. So, now my plan is revealed. Let the enemies plan their counter-moves, and may the devil not move the water at the bottom of the cliff.

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Filed under humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as big plans, books, cartoons, colored pencil, humor, novel characters, novel writing, old art, Paffoonies, pen and ink, writing, writing advice

May 5, 2024 · 12:30 am

Farming Family

I have been working on the beginnings of the novel When the Captain Came Calling. It is not the first draft. It is the third entire re-write. I wrote this as a graphic novel before graphic novels were an established form. Then I tried to rewrite it as a traditional novel, and it is now coming into its YA novel form. But I can’t begin to explain this novel-writing project without telling you about the Clarkes. Yes, they are a very important Iowegian family who farm and are entirely fictional. (Kids, what other words do you know that begin with the letter F?) They are based, at least a tiny bit, on my own family when I was a kid, but very specific parts of it. My Uncle Larry, mother’s older brother who is now gone (but never forgotten) was the inspiration for Dash Clarke. Kyle Clarke, the father in the picture, is Dash’s younger brother… though he is not based on my other maternal uncle. The daughter in the Paffooney picture, Valerie Clarke, is based on my own daughter combined with a girl I had a crush on in grade school and a girl who had a deeply felt crush on me when I was a young teacher. The Clarkes are third generation farmers, just as my own family were back in the time this story is set. Unlike my family, the Clarkes do not come out of the 80’s with their family farms intact. What grandparents built, the sons lose hold of, and the world becomes a much sadder place because of it. The story is about a lot of things in addition to a family losing their farm. It is filled with magic, telling sea stories and other lies, and the truth behind both the magic and the lies.

I posted this today because today is the day I finished the Paffooney illustration that started the post. Here is what it looked like in progress;

Paffooneys are a made-up thing by which I name the whole great glob of artwork and stories I have created that represent the never-ending music in my soul. I am not a singer or a song-writer. The only way these tunes come to life is through the toons which I ignorantly call the Paffoons because the loons have nothing on me.

Here is a cover mock-up for the novel which shows another picture of Valerie Clarke, the most beautiful little girl ever born in Norwall, Iowa (a phrase that her Uncle Dash christened her with when she was small, and it caught on with the entire town.)

This is a classic post from the archive, and so the book is now available on Amazon.

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Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, creative-writing, humor, novel, novel characters, novel writing, paffooney posts, Paffoonies, Valerie Clarke, writing

December 5, 2023 · 2:20 am

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons

The Ship’s Log of the Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck in the Earther Year 5239, the month of Marching, 23rd day of the month.

I have not ever wrote a ship’s log entry before, but now that Dad is marooned on a faraway star, and both Mom and my older brother Wose are dead, there ain’t nobody else to do it.

I became captain of the Dreaded Luck about a week ago when a Lupin pirate killed Wose, but got disintegrated at the same time that the bullet entered Wose’s big, stupid head. I thought then that I would be the last living being on the starship. And I am only twelve until my birthday in Joon. Fortunately, though, I found the little Lupin puppy-girl that the pirate Lupin werewolf had brought with him. She’s cute and cuddly, not at all like an evil Stardog. I renamed her Friday and adopted her for company. And she told me a bunch of stuff about her pirate pack on the nearby planet. I needed that spy-stuff information to solve my problem of not having any crew.

The ship’s computer, David, was not independently intelligent, so I got help from an AI program called Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter. He helped me train one of the giant spiders in our cargo hold. And he turned out to be a very wise and capable friend. He read and memorized the ship’s owner’s manual. So, he could help me repair the starship and anything that broke down or was running poorly. That took care of the need for an engineer to replace old Wose. He could also teach me how to use the pirate skiff and drive it to the planet so we could secretly steal a pilot from the Stardogs’ prison.

The Crocodile guy went along with me to the planet in his holographic form, transferred from my spaceship to the skiff by data transfer. Friday went along mainly to hold onto me and not be left alone on the ship with only giant spiders and cleaning bots for company. And while we were there, we found and freed a group of Nebulon prisoners. If you’ve never met one, since I don’t know for sure who you are who will read this log, Nebulons are those blue-skinned alien people with bright yellow hair and red cheeks. We Earther-types call them Space Smurfs for some long-forgotten reason. And I didn’t know before we met them how different they really were from us, though also how much alike they are.

Suki, an adult Nebulon lady who was my size but much older than me, not only helped us all escape from the Stardog pirates but promised to use her pilot skills as part of my crew in gratitude for freeing her people. I like Suki a lot. She is also now not only a crewmember but my very good friend.

Suki’s piloting skills and my gunnery skills combined to help us win a space battle against the Stardog pirates. We apparently killed the leader of the pirates in battle, but he also used a virus to kill David, our shipboard computer. Fortunately, the Crocodile Hunter could take over David’s functions and was even better at it than David had been. We left the planet of the pirates with a six-day-long jump through folded space.

But we came out of jump space next to a monstrously huge space whale.

“Oh, my God!” I swore as I was floored by the size of the moon-scaled massive creature.

“Don’t worry, Cissy,” Suki said to me. “I am Nebulonin Clan Vorannac. That space whale is one of our clan.”

And then the super-sized creature moved to swallow the Dreaded Luck whole.

*** This novella is the second book in the Cissy Moonskipper’s Travels series of stories. This is the introductory preface of that story.***

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Tagged as anime, Cissy Moonskipper, lupin-iii, novel writing, novella, science fiction

December 2, 2023 · 2:15 am

Reading Assignments

Yesterday I revealed that I have no earthly clue how to be a best-selling author with a blog and a brand and all those other things that marketing racketeers keep pettifogging at me about. I may not know anything about marketing and being an author, but I do know how to be a writer. I have learned to say things flat out when they are on my mind and I know how to do the two essential things that a writer has to know how to do… I can practice writing every day, and I can read.

If you are one of those few who actually read my blog regularly, you may remember some talk about the classic novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Believe it or not, I know how to read and understand great books. You can find me on Goodreads.com to see some of the wonderful things I have been reading, and to decide if you might like them too. If you are not on Goodreads already, why not? That is now your next assignment, young reader. Oops. You know what they say, “Old English teachers never die, they just lose their class.”

Today’s little self-imposed book report is about a book that I read my senior year in high school, 1975. It is called The Other by Thomas Tryon. It is a book that was made into a movie. The author is also a Hollywood actor that has been in many films. He wrote the screenplay for the movie version. But I have to tell you, the movie pales in comparison to the book itself. Movies simply cannot give you the rich depth of atmosphere and the delicate psychological nuances that a book can. Movies show you something. A book can explain something in detail. And that is a key difference.

Michael Beyer‘s review

Dec 22, 14 · edit

5 of 5 stars

Read in April, 1975

This is a fascinating book for it’s ornate description of long-ago New England life, and the eerie way old houses and long-gone people can twist and mangle our lives. It is a psychological horror story about twin boys, Niles and Holland Perry. They are polar opposites. Niles is warm and loving. But Holland is distant, cold, and sinister. Their grandmother Ada, a lovely old woman with deep Russian roots, has taught the boys to play an ESP-sort of game, reaching out with their minds to feel what a bird feels, or a squirrel, or a magician to find out how he did a certain disappearing trick. She has no idea that the mind-game will have such a devastating effect on both the twins and ruin so many peoples’ lives. I cannot say more without revealing the magic the author uses to bring this book to a totally unexpected and devastating conclusion. This book is not everyone’s cup of tea… and it may be many readers’ cup of arsenic… but it worked its spell on me. I recommend it if you wish to be chilled to the bone marrow.

I am reading this book now for the third time. It is rare that I read a book more than once, because every time through changes your perception of it and risks making you dislike it. But certain books are immune to that effect. And I am re-reading it now because I want to closely analyze the techniques he used to create his surprise ending. There-in lies the reason for this reading assignment that I have given myself. That is how I roll as a writer.

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Tagged as acrylic painting, autobiography, book review, book reviews, books, fantasy, fiction, horror, humor, literature, novel writing, paffooney, poetry, reading, why aren't you on Goodreads?, writing

September 3, 2023 · 1:17 am

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (by Thomas Hardy)

I decided I wanted to be a novelist because of Charles Dickens. I loved the way he told a story with vivid characters, rising and falling crises, and story arcs that arrive at a happily-ever-after, or a how-sad-but-sweet-the-world-is ultimate goal. Sometimes he reached both destinations with the same story, like in David Copperfield or The Old Curiosity Shop. I have wanted to write like that since I read The Old Curiosity Shop in 9^th Grade.

Thomas Hardy has a lot in common with Chuck. I mean, more than just being old Victorian coots. Hardy knows the Wessex countryside, Blackmoor and Casterbridge with the depth and understanding that Dickens bestows on London. Hardy can delineate a character as clearly and as keenly as Dickens, as shown by Diggory Venn, the Reddleman in Return of the Native, or Tess Durbyfield in the novel I am reading at the moment. These characters present us with an archetypal image and weave a story around it that speaks to themes with soul-shaking depth. Whereas Dickens will amuse and make us laugh at the antics of the Artful Dodger or Mr. Dick or Jerry Cruncher from a Tale of Two Cities, Hardy makes us feel the ache and the sadness of love wrecked by conflict with the corrupt and selfish modern world. Today I read a gem of a scene with the three milkmaids, Izz, Retty, and Marian looking longingly out the window at the young gentleman Angel Clare. Each wants the young man to notice her and fall in love with her. Sad-faced Izz is a dark-haired and brooding personality. Round-faced Marian is more jolly and happy-go-lucky. Young Retty is entirely bound up by shyness and the uncertainty of youth. Yet each admits to her crush and secret hopes. Tess, meanwhile, overhears all of it, all the time knowing that Angel is falling in love with her. And worse yet, she has sworn to herself never to let another man fall in love with her because of the shameful way Alec D’Urberville took advantage of her, a quaint old phrase that in our time would mean date rape. There is such bittersweet nectar to be had in the characterizations and plots of these old Victorian novels. They are more than a hundred years old, and thus, not easy to read, but worth every grain of effort you sprinkle upon it. I am determined now to finish rereading Tess of the Durbervilles, and further determined to learn from it, even if it kills me.

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Tagged as book talk, Charles Dickens, goofy ideas about reading classic novels, novel writing, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, Victorian novels

August 15, 2023 · 12:45 am

Conversations With the Ghost of Miss M…

Beneath the old cottonwood tree there once stood a one-room school house. My mother went to school there as a girl, a short walk from home along the Iowa country road. Misty mornings on a road between cornfields and soybean fields can often conjure up ghosts.

I took this morning walk with the dog while I was visiting my old Iowegian home, and I was writing my fictional story Magical Miss Morgan in my head, not yet having had time to sit down and write. I was reflecting on times long past and a school long gone, though Miss Morgan’s story is really about my own teaching experience. Miss Morgan is in many ways me. But I am not a female teacher. I am a goofy old man. So, why am I writing the main character as a female?

Well, the ghosts from the old school house heard that and decided to send an answer.

Miss Mennenga was my third grade and fourth grade teacher from the Rowan school. The building I attended her classes in has been gone for thirty years. Miss M herself has long since passed to the other side. So when she appeared at the corner… Yes, I know… I have said countless times that I don’t believe in ghosts, but she had the same flower-patterned dress, the glasses, the large, magnified brown eyes that could look into your soul and see all your secrets, yet love you enough to not tell them to anyone else. Suddenly, I knew where the character of Miss Morgan had actually come from. I also realized why I was drawn to teaching in the first place. Teachers teach you more than just long division, lessons about the circulatory systems of frogs, and the Battle of Gettysburg… They shape your soul.

“You remember getting in trouble for doing jokes in class when you were supposed to be studying your spelling words?”

“Yes, Miss M, but I didn’t make any noise.. they were pantomime jokes that I stole from watching Red Skelton on TV.”

“But you pulled your heart out of your chest and made it beat in your hand. You had to know that was going to make the boys smirk and the girls giggle.”

“I did. But making them happy was part of the reason God put me there.”

“But not during spelling. I was trying to teach math to fourth graders. You interrupted.”

“You made that point. I still remember vividly. You let me read the story to the class out loud afterwords. You said I needed to use my talent for entertaining to help others learn, not distract them from learning.”

“I was very proud of the way you learned that lesson.”

“I tried very hard as a teacher to never miss a teachable moment like that. It was part of the reason that God put you there.”

“And I did love to hear you read aloud to the class. You were always such an expressive reader, Michael. Do you remember what book it was?”

“It was Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary. How could I have forgotten that until now? You made me love reading out loud so much that I always did it in my own classes, at every opportunity.”

I remembered the smile above all else as the lingering image faded from my view through the eyes of memory. She had a warm and loving smile. I can only hope my goofy grin didn’t scare too many kids throughout my career.

I needed a post for 1000 Voices that was about reconnecting with someone. I could’ve used any number of real life examples from everything that has happened to me since poor health forced me to retire from teaching I could’ve written any number of things that would not make me feel all sad and goopy about retiring and would not make me cry at my keyboard again like I am doing now… like I did all through that silly novel I wrote… even during the funny parts. But I had to choose this. A debt had to be paid. I love you, Miss M… and I had to pay it forward.

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Filed under 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as compassion, ghosts, goofiness, humor, novel characters, novel writing, photo Paffooney, retirement, teaching

August 5, 2023 · 11:43 pm

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

I am the man from the Setting Sun,

Come to the future to deliver the past.

What does that even mean, that silly little two-line poem I wrote twenty years ago? Am I not old enough to know better than to create a snippet loaded with goofy contradictions? Apparently not. But I am old enough to deliver the past. I have been around long enough that I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated. I saw Neil Armstrong take that “small step for man” on the surface of the moon. I have learned a number of lessons from the past. And as a writer, I can deliver those lessons in the form of stories. I was born in a different century. I have been around for more than half of one… approaching two thirds. I have collected all kinds of wonderful things in my goofy old brain. And make no doubt about it, with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor since 1983, my Sun is about the set. So, I have a mission, to open the eyes of people who are too foolish to avoid listening to what I have to say, or to read what I have written.

I saw The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews in the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa in 1965 when I was not yet ten years old. I heard the song My Favorite Things for the very first time on the old black and white Motorola TV set in the clip I posted at the start of this post. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a puppet show I never missed on Saturdays if I could help it. In a world before video games and computers and even color TV, kids still had priorities. And my world was definitely a world of imagination.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

So, what kind of knucklehead must I be to think younger folks would want to know about any of this stuff from the time of dinosaurs and black-and-white TV? I write books that are basically genre-breakers and about way too many different things to make sense to adults. As a result, I classify myself as a Young Adult novelist, a writer for children… but not the beginning reader kind, or the early chapter-book kind… the kind like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Light in the Forest, or Dicey’s Song. I write books about what it was like to be a kid in the past… the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s… last century. And I have some knowledge and expertise in this area because I was one of those teachers during that time period that got to know the kids in my classes. I made the horrifying mistake of actually talking to kids, asking them about their lives, and listening to their answers. I talked about all manner of things with all manner of kids… brilliant things and stupid things… with dumb kids, smart kids, smelly kids, charming kids, and the kids everybody else hated. You know… I did all the stupid mistakes that teachers who have no earthly idea how to do discipline would do, and got those kids to learn to behave at least halfway like human beings by being somebody they trusted and respected and… on rare occasions… believed. Right now I am working on Snow Babies. It is set in 1984. And I hope to be good enough of a Sunset Man to be able to deliver it to the future.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, oldies

Tagged as 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, good old days, goofiness, humor, imagination, life as a kid, novel writing, oldies