I still have my first short story written when I was six. A boy finds an injured prairie dog and nurses it back to health. I already believed in surprise endings because he then throws it into the ocean where it lives happily ever after. My writing career received a boost in junior high when I had a crush on Miss Snow, the journalism teacher. I wrote for the school newspaper there and continued in high school, college, and the Stars and Stripes in the Army.
In the real world, I continued to write as a freelancer for newspapers and such varied magazines as Billboard, gourmet, financial, sports, ad agencies, and designed crossword puzzles. Basically, if they were willing to pay me, I was willing to do it. I also sold a couple of movie scripts and some fiction and taught fiction for a few years at College of the Mainland in Texas. I once ran on a national championship cross-country team, and I play a mean game of snooker. Ann, my wife who is a PhD, accomplished pianist and violist, and who holds a national record for the 20K in the USA, is one companion. The other is Churchill, my Staffordshire Terrier companion, confidante, advisor on dialogue and narrative, playmate, protector, and all-round good buddy.
What writers do I admire? I have a good friend on Kindle named Billie Sue Mosiman who I admire. Search her books out. They're good. Others are Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Ken Kesey, John LeCarre, Anne Rice. I'll throw in an obscure one, Jim Corbett. If you scratch deep enough in my writing history, you probably end up with his book called "The Maneaters of Kumaon." When I was very little, my grandfather's ranch didn't have electricity. No television or even radio. When I was in my room in the adobe guest house, there wasn't much to do, but he had a lot of books in there. I finally picked one up which happened to be that one by Corbett. It fascinated me. The true story of a tiger that ate hundreds of people and one man going out alone to get it really caught this young boy's imagination. I ended up reading all of the books in the library. When you get right down to it, I admire any writer who can put together words and sentences and paragraphs that people want to buy. That's magic, when you think about it. Just reaching into a dictionary and pulling out a bunch of words and selling them.
What do I like to write? I like to write what I like to read. I like stories with interesting, unusual characters. I like it when they face impossible odds but somehow overcome them. I like improbable, unpredictable plots that end up believable. I like stories that are a mixture of spy, detective, action, love, and extremely bad guys. I guess I'm a romantic because I believe in heroes and heroines. Sometimes in my writing I like for my heroes or heroines to start out with all of the wrong things in their environment, but something noble within them overcomes it all and they become truly heroic by the book's end.
I think Oiorpata, the first novel I have up on Kindle, is a good book. Fifty-seven J may be the best character I've ever written. If you read the book, you can do me a favor by reviewing it.
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