What Am I?

2013-04-06T15:56:00.002-07:00

It creeps into workplace meetings, onto trains, and in airplanes. It sneaks down aisles in grocery stores and slithers from nearby booths in favorite restaurants. Sometimes it starts slowly, skulks a while and then rushes forward abruptly when it’s too late for a quick retreat. Like a hunter, it stalks it’s victims across rooms, in hallways, on elevators, and even during Sunday

Prologue

2011-07-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Brothers Siegfried and Glen Salinger left home on foot two hours before daybreak on Saturday, March 28, 1936. Taking a few items they could carry in nap sacks and the clothes they were wearing, the brothers starting walking east. They didn’t know where or what they were walking toward, but both understood they could no longer stay at home. The land in Liberal, Kansas was capable of growing

Lonesome Dove

2011-07-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer winning Lonesome Dove these past several weeks. After reading novels like The Road, The Help, and Mudbound, McMurtry's style, pace, and rhythm are quite a change. I quite enjoy it though. It's an ambituous style to aspire to, so I'll gladly leave that to those who are more talented than I, but I can't help but wonder if Lonesome Dove

Jump School

2009-11-15T09:38:00.002-08:00

I rubbed the sweat from my eyes for 3 hours. Burning, itching, pain that wouldn't stop. Two days of 100 degree heat, too much dust, and too much dirt infected my eyes and blurred my vision. At 3 p.m., uncomfortable from the weight of the T-10 parachute harnessed to our backs and miserable from a lack of air conditioning, the Jumpmaster called us to our feet for one last walk through inspection.

Small Town

2009-11-15T09:38:00.001-08:00

From the age of thirteen I’ve always aspired to achieve something great in my lifetime, to make a difference, to get noticed. I suppose my desire to make an impact is rooted in the humbleness of youth. I grew up in a small town in rural Missouri with a population of three hundred people.

Hard Work at Home

2009-11-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a Midwestern farming community where I was introduced to work at a young age, and I’m not talking about doing a few chores around the house to earn a weekly allowance. In the summertime we picked weeds in the garden, helped load the hay wagon, snapped green beans, picked strawberries, mowed the lawn with a push mower, and “hilled “potatoes. In the winter time we hauled buckets of hot

The Holstein

2009-11-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

My dad bought a holstein cow and calf when I was five years old. I remember seeing the calf for the first time in the barn. He was a little bundle of fur laying in a pile of wheat straw near his mother to keep warm. I named him Lazy.Lazy The Calf was bottle fed beginning a few days after birth. Twice a day my mom mixed white powder and warm water in quart sized plastic bottles.I remember my dad

The Well House

2009-11-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

On our farm, my dad and grandpa built a shed out of cinder blocks that enclosed the water well. Besides the seven feet high walls, the small building had a pitched plywood roof covered with shingles. We called it a "well house".The well wasn't a dug-by-hand fairy tale bucket and rope type well, but a modern water source dug by a professional using well digging equipment mounted on a big truck.

My Story

2009-11-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

My parents, grandparents, and all who came before them were farmers. They grew gardens to put food on the table and raised cows, pigs, acres of corn, soybeans, milo, and wheat to put money in their pockets.At five years old, my dad moved our family into a mobile home situated in the middle of a cow pasture. There were livestock, dogs, cats, trucks, trailers, and tractors. And to accompany it all…

Bottle Caps and Returnable Bottles

2009-11-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

I used to collect bottle caps. At eight or nine years old, it was a quest to collect as many as possible and as fast as possible. In our house, it was Pepsi's. At grandma's you got RC Cola and Dr. Pepper. I don't remember too many Coca-Cola bottle caps. Come to think of it, where I grew up, no one really drank Coca-Cola's (and they still don't).I'm not sure I remember the exact number, but it was

Barefoot in the Summertime

2009-11-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

The last day of grade school was generally around May 15th and we returned to school the day after Labor Day each year. From May 16th until Labor Day, we rarely wore shoes during the daytime unless we were working with hoes or rakes in the garden, feeding the livestock, or going into town for some reason.Bare feet in the summertime meant freedom. Freedom from the hour long bus ride to school,

Sacred Cipher

2009-11-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

I finished reading Terry Brennan's first novel Sacred Cipher last week.This novel has a Christian message and focuses on a traditional good versus evil scenario. This novel offers a little bit of history lesson, a little bit of religion lesson, and a whole lot of mystery and intrigue. I read a lot of thriller-mystery-adventure novels and this book fits that category too. The author obviously put

Serena: A Novel

2009-10-27T18:33:00.001-07:00

By this time I've made no less than 10 trips into every Books a Million, Borders, and Barnes & Noble I've passed within 5 miles of since late August in search of Serena: A Novel by Ron Rash. It was recently released in paperback, but I never found it in hard back in any of the bookstores. I guess I'll just have to break down and order it from Amazon.com.

Randy Wayne White

2009-10-16T19:19:00.001-07:00

We ate at Doc Ford's on Sanibel during a recent visit. The seafood was very good. I also purchased Sanibel Flats during the visit. Doc Ford is a re-occuring character in many of White's novels.We visited a local book store and several other local eateries. Everyone was eager to talk about the series of Doc Ford novels anytime we asked about it. It appears Mr. White aka Randy Stryker is a well

Show - Don't Tell

2009-08-10T15:56:00.000-07:00

I think I naturally gravitate toward telling instead of showing, but I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. Here's a passage I've been working on that ended up "telling" too much.Since returning from Iraq, U.S. Army Captain Riley Burke struggled to sleep through the night. He’d been diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome and could no longer pursue an Army career. At first, Riley

Mudbound and Serena: A Novel

2009-08-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

I listen to Michele Norris, award winning radio host of NPR's All Things Considered, on my drive home from work almost everyday. (She also appears with George Stephanopoulos occasionally on his Sunday news maganize program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.)According to the St. Petersburg Times, Ms. Norris has placed Mudbound by Hillary Jordan and Serena: A Novel by Ron Rash on her reading

Literary Agent - Rachelle Gardner

2009-08-08T11:36:00.001-07:00

Rachelle Gardner's blog post "How Do You Learn to Write?" is worth reading and re-reading each time you get a little down in the dumps about your writing or lack of writing success.A quote from Rachelle's post:I think the answer is that you have to be scrappy, and you have to learn any which way you can. You piece it together. You take the lessons where you can find them. If you're a writer, or

Carly's Voice

2009-08-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

ABC News featured a story tonight about Carly Fleishmann, an autistic teenager with a gift for writing. I find it truly remarkable that writing has offered her such valuable therapy. Visit her blog or follow Carly on Twitter.

Daybreak - revisited

2009-08-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

I did some more work on a piece of writing a posted a few days ago titled Daybreak. I'm not normally a fan of the Prologue, but most novels published in the past few years begin with one. Here's a fourth (fifth) attempt:Brothers Siegfried and Glen Salinger left home on foot two hours before daybreak on the third Saturday of July, 1936. Taking a few items they could carry in their nap sacks and

Write a Novel - Watching TV

2009-07-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

I found a very creative blog post today titled "How to Write a Novel While Watching TV". The article is posted on Jerry Kolber's writing blog. I'm not sure it would actually work, but I'll admit that I've tried to write while watching TV many times and failed miserably. At least now I know what I'm doing wrong - I need to watch more TV and write for shorter periods (only during commercials).

Daybreak

2009-07-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Brothers Sigfreid and Glen Sallinger left home two hours before daybreak on Saturday, July 26, 1932 and headed east toward Kansas City.Availability of affordable land lured their German grandfather to Liberal, Kansas forty years earlier. You could look in four directions and see nothing for miles and miles. No cities. No houses. No people. The land was good for growing wheat and corn. But, with

Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage

2009-07-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sky, the novel many credit for starting the western novel genre. Published in 1913, it was Grey's first major novel and remains one of the most popular. Since the original printing, it's never been out of print.I've enjoyed the first four chapters, although the writing style is cumbersome and overly descriptive at times. However, on the

Gerald McCathern - Dry Bones

2009-07-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

While on a recent vacation, I visited Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo, Texas and took this picture. Formed by water erosion of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, the canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States.In the gift shop, I met Gerald McCathern, an author who resides in nearby Hereford, Texas. He's written several books about the rise of Texas cattle ranching

John Grisham

2009-07-03T19:12:00.001-07:00

USA Today recently featured an article celebrating John Grisham's twentieth year writing legal thrillers. The Firm, Pelican Brief, and A Time to Kill are 3 of my all time favorite movies.I found an insightful interview Grisham granted to Bill Moyer's in 2008 that provides an insight into his thought process.

I Can't Play Guitar

2009-06-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

When I was six or seven my grandmother gave me a book by Mel Bay titled something to the effect of Learn to Play the Guitar. My dad had an inexpensive guitar and let me strum it sometimes. I sat down and tried to duplicate the chords and techniques Mr. Bay demonstrated in the book. I spent most of the summer trying, but I did not learn to play the guitar that year. Or the next one either. But, I

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