In 1992, I started writing an Ambitious Literary Novel, The Wine Ghost. It’s a novel of redemption and recovery on a world-wide stage where we consider the terrible freedom of Frank Boyles, the last Baby Boomer. I have written elsewhere that it took 300K words to achieve the current 100K. The 200K excess words were properly jettisoned or repurposed,…
Category: Writing
The Wine Ghost, Pt. I: Revisiting an Old Friend
Fifteen years on, I’ve started to rework my first completed novel manuscript. It’s The Wine Ghost, in which we consider the terrible freedom of Frank Boyles, the last Baby Boomer. Set in Arizona, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, and Thailand, The Wine Ghost was twelve years in the making. I wrote at least 300,000 words on three continents to…
The Role of the Troll
I rest easy in the long, lonesome place between completing a novel and making the sale, all thanks to a forum troll. It’s not fun, mind you. Agents queried thus far have passed. Contests and direct submissions aren’t panning out either. It’s disappointing, but it’s just business, and these people are polite and professional. I…
Blame Horror Movies, Pt. I: The Mystery of Dead Ernest
For decades, Atlantans argued that Dead Ernest was none other than Ted Turner. That’s right. We honestly believed that before satellite Superstation WTBS, before CNN or The Cartoon Network, before Turner Network Television or Turner Classic Movies, this media mogul had dressed as a warbling backwoods ghoul to introduce the Friday night horror movie. It was…