It’s been awhile since I’ve had the time to add to the website.  2015 was a hard year.  I’ve been rather ill, still am, though better.  I won’t bother you with the details.  Needless to say, it has slowed me down.

So, here I sit, having finally finished working on my federal taxes for 2015, with other things crying for attention.  I did actually finish writing the next book for Doug Whittier, protagonist of Fall to Earth. The title of the new book is The Running Water River Bridge.  It’s a more complicated story than the previous books.  When the good guys lie, it’s worse than when the bad guys do it.  The next requirement for the book is to put it into the correct format for publishing…and then one last reread.  I think I will like this one the most.

The book to follow it will be a digression from the mystery/murder line, although I have a good idea for the next one of that type.  I have had requests within my family for me to write an autobiography.  Face it, spending  50+ years as an engineer leaves most of my close relatives and friends in the dark as to what my life has been all about.  My now deceased mother-in-law automatically thought that engineers simply looked up how to design things in a book…not so in real life!  You’ll see.

The plan for the book is for it to be grounded in writing that’s mixed with some poetry and sprinkled with some pictures.  My selected title is, The Practical Poet.  There is some chance that I can pull it off, but I do worry about its level of boredom.  It will take some thought, that’s for sure, and yet it will be non-fiction…easy, right?

Before finally deciding to write for fun and profit (still waiting for that part), I mused about the issue of why anyone would want to read what I write.  It all seems so egocentric.  As it turns out, it really is two other things, once you ignore the ego part.  It is both hard and fun.  I have written non-fiction memos throughout my time as an engineer.  I would say that fiction is actually much harder, especially book length fiction.  That first forty to fifty thousand words seem to take forever, and by then you still don’t know where the story is going to take you, the writer.  I worry that I left the reader back in the first few chapters.  You (the writer) don’t even know who the killer is in most cases until closer to the end of the story…or even how he or she gets caught…if ever.

Writing is probably more of a mystery to the writer than it is to the reader!

Anyway…glad to be back!