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Becoming an avid reader at an early age, I thought I might become a writer. I still thought so
in the senior year of high school, but, when a scholarship suddenly made college possible, I
used it at the University of Pittsburgh to become a chemical engineer. One of the few things
I knew, or thought I knew, about writers is that most of them died broke. Worse, most of them
lived that way too. Chemical engineering allowed me to raise a family that didn't have to go
barefoot except when they wanted to.
But the tilt toward writing remained. A particular interest in the American West was prompted
by an interest in history and my father's gun collection. The family farm in West Virginia had
a house and barn of logs, dating from the 1860s. A lack of electricity on the farm made a
living museum of the place, which was also rich in Indian flint artifacts. The book, 'Roughing
It', by my favorite author, Mark Twain, also had its influence. My book, 'Thirsty', which was
published in 1983, consisted of humorous tales of life in a fictional Idaho gold mining town
called Thirsty. It won the Western Writers of America Spur award as the best western of the year
written by a new western author, and was reprinted in a large print edition by G.K.Hall in 1999.
An audio book edition, retitled "Sundown In Thirsty", (cassette/CD) was released by Books in
Motion in April, 2003.
In 1984, a genuine New York literary agent offered to represent me if I would stick to the
western genre. Taking the road less traveled by, I declined, and have had occasion since to
wonder if that other road might have attracted the multitude by having fewer potholes. The
problem is that good plots tend to be born when you didn't even know you were pregnant, and
they refuse to restrict themselves to genre. I feared that I couldn't remain original in a
genre box.
My next book, 'The Green Flame', was published in 1991 by the American Chemical Society. It
was the result of being a writer who worked as a chemical engineer on a classified government
project. It was a very dangerous and expensive project which resulted in many accidents and
eight fatalities. When it ended in 1960, I thought it would be buried in secrecy forever.
By 1985, I thought the story should be told, and began writing it. Thousands of people had
worked on the project and I remain surprised that no one else wrote that story. It may be
that writers aren't so common after all.
Having gone past age 70, I'm not as confident of my immortality as I once was. (Okay, if the
good guys die young, I ought to last at least to 100, but who's to guarantee it?) Fortunately,
technology seemed to offer a high road to publication in the form of print-on-demand services
and internet sales. In June of 1999, I decided to publish six books via Xlibris within the year.
Actually, it took more like a year and seven months, but, close enough! Ah, but there's no free
lunch! After too many years of plugging away at the marketing problem, I've concluded that even the
least of the established publishers has infinitely more marketing know-how than I do. Time to
chalk that one up to experience and move on. (Except that all 6 books are inexpensively available
from Xlibris as e-books, readable on Kindle, Nook, and even cell phones. Who knows what may happen?)
What I moved on to was a book with the working title, Western Limericks. Sure, and don't ye
know that limericks don't have to be Irish? All that's required is that a story or essay be
shoe-horned into 5 lines in which lines 1, 2, & 5 rhyme, as must lines 3 & 4. The status of
that effort can be found on the "Western Limericks" page of this web site.
So, okay, the publishing world has been slow to recognize the value of Western Limericks. Now
I'm still pushing a non-fiction work I'm calling "Surviving Suicide." (Originally WNS for "Why
Not Suicide?") Its publication, if ever, may be a year or two in the future. I can be patient
and persistent when the world gives me no other choice.
What's next? Well, I'm working on a novel I call "Lord Louie & Lady Ashley." It's my best ever,
and is on track for completion of the first draft this year. Come June, 2010, I'll begin looking
for a publisher.
Manuscript rejections are a 'given' for writers. Perhaps their only benefit to the writer is to
teach a stoic acceptance of pain or a stubborn persistence of optimism. After all, I've survived
histoplasmosis, been through 3 hernia patches, a cancer cure, a tumor removal, a quadruple heart
bypass and a bleeding stomach ulcer. So, yeah, I can take it. And hey, 2008 was the year I was
cancer-free for five years and authorized to donate blood again.
And did I mention that the last patent of my engineering career (so far) revealed how to use salad oil
in an electrical capacitor that had once used PCBs? I rather like that patent and it was nearly
lost to technical patent procedural requirements except that luck intervened twice to keep it
alive. So, yes, I'll not bemoan my luck in frivolous things like writing when it holds so well
in things that really count.
Luckily, my wife of 50 years is tolerant of my incurable writing/publishing affliction
as are our two sons and two daughters. And I expect I've got at least 10 good years left to keep
plugging away at it like an alcoholic, not really sure I want to be cured.
I was born in Pennsylvania in 1929. Recession? Depression? Shucks, I slept through a lot of
it. Wish I could do the same this time around.
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