About

I’ve always judged the power of novels by their ability to inspire me to write novels.

          Did you ever finish reading the last page of a novel and say to yourself, “I can do that!”?

         Most likely this happens, if it happens, to a teenager in about the tenth grade in high school and most likely the novel that inspired such confidence was written so beautifully as to make the writing of it look easy. Of course, it isn’t easy, but don’t tell that to a high school tenth grader.

          I remember, after reading such a novel, I took myself to an office supplier and bought a Composition notebook, the same kind you can buy today, a box of Templar 777 #2 pencils, and a crank pencil sharpener with the name Boston on it. I brought the pencils home, installed the pencil sharpener using the two screws it came with, and proceeded to sharpened every pencil in the box, perhaps 20 pencils. I put the pencils points-up in a narrow jar my mother had saved for making strawberry preserves, sat down at a tilted drawing table that faced a window overlooking my street, and opened my notebook. I could smell the fresh air that came down from the nearby forest and seeped through the window; it smelled cold and dry and clean. Perhaps it smelled like my own imagination. And I began to write my first novel.

         The story was about a farmer who was trying to save his farm from its inevitable demise. It would be a love story also, about a boy and a girl very much like Romeo and Juliet. The boy was the son of the farmer and the girl was the daughter of the man trying to buy the farm to develop into housing and to build a fancy resort at the top of the hill. There names were Charles and Hilda, but the two lovers would be forced to hide their love and then to take themselves to a place of refuge, away from the conflict, a place of legend in Indian lore at the top of the hill where there was a large flat rock jutting from the slope and overlooking the vast horizon, where at sunrise the sky turned purple along with the rock. It would be (at least) a double story about the farmer’s struggle against a world that seemed not to want his farm anymore; and a story about the lovers whose love was also not wanted by the world they lived in. This was in the winter of 1970 and my novel would be called To Greener Pastures.

         Every day I would write something in my notebook. I would have preferred to write in ink with a quill pen, but I was realistic. I knew I’d be doing a lot of erasing. So I stuck with the pencils and dulled every one of them before sharpening all of them all at once. I can tell you that sharpening the pencils gave me a sense of making progress, so it was not drudge work but gave me a great thrill.

         I took my notebook to school and kept it in my locker, a sharp pencil tucked inside it. In study hall, and at lunchtime instead of eating lunch, I would write my novel. The pages of the notebook that were written on made a crinkly noise when you turned them and the clean pages were silent. It was nice to see how the crinkly pages were gradually taking over the notebook; and how a notebook grows fatter as you write more and wrinkle more pages. I was very exited about how fat my little novel was getting, and I won’t deny it was a great pleasure for me now and then to sit back and read it and feel like one of the Great Ones.

         I would read to the last crinkled page and was getting excited about the story. It was getting to be a handsome story with many fine complications. After graduating high school, Charles had taken a job at a small weekly newspaper, and while covering a story about a visiting circus he meets a young red-headed girl by the name of Tara. Meets and falls in love with her. He also falls in love with her Down Syndrome boy named Nicky. And Nicky falls in love with Charles. There is a crop of sunflowers that Charles arranges to be planted on his father’s farm—sunflowers to be used for fundraising for the Special Children’s charity for which the Sunflower Circus has been raising funds.

         It all folds neatly or very recklessly into a conflict as Hilda must place Charles’s love for her in jeopardy while she pretends to fall in love with a man her father has hired to acquire the Watkins farm—a man who is working for a crime family to buy the land so they can build their hilltop resort. Charles and Hilda are still madly in love, but Charles doesn’t talk about Tara and Hilda doesn’t talk about Harlow.

         In the beginning Hilda despises Harlow. But my writerly advisements instructed me to write a villain that’s likable (lovable) and Hilda falls in love with him. Well, I think you can see where this is going. And where it’s going sets in motion a love/conflict/sharing theme that carries through all the rest of my novels—what I have come to call the Homeric conundrum, which is an impossible challenge to be resolved only by breaking all the rules; or, you might say, by creating a whole new playbook. This conflict does get resolved eventually, but getting to the resolution took…how many novels have I written now? Something over twenty at least. The path toward seeing yourself in others is really very crooked, rutty, pot-holed and hilly.  

           I was a very serious writer and subscribed to Writers Digest. I also bought a few books about writing and grammar at that time. For example, The Elements of Style (1918) by William Strunk Jr., edited by E.B. White; I read this book religiously. I found a pocket dictionary and carried it with me. I was not a good speller and still am not. Spelling is like a giant lawn to me—the great lawn of a queen’s palace—so large the grass grows at the same rate you mow it and all you do is mow it everyday, seven days a week for your whole life, the same grass over and over. Perhaps you could call it the Sisyphus Spelling Project.

          And that’s the important thing. I wrote a little bit every day. I never had (and never have had) writer’s block. One of the rules I learned from reading about writing was that you start writing by writing. That’s right. Once you start your pencil moving or your typewriter typing, the ideas will come and the words will flow like jam over toast. Although I read about the techniques of plotting, and the vital need to plot your story carefully, I was no good at this. All efforts to chart my stories failed. It seems that I’m one of those writers that can’t be restrained and no plan longer than two chapters ever holds up. Recently I was pleased to hear Stephen King talk about writing and it sure resonated with me when he indicated how much he loathed plotting by pointing his finger into his throat. I’ve only read a couple of his books, but I think he used to ride a motorcycle and I’m sure he and I would get along just fine. But it’s hard to break with old-school rules and I keep trying to plot my stores and I keep learning the hard way that it’s better to let the story flow in the natural way it wants to. A lot of times it’s the characters, as they develop, that steer the plot along its course.

         But then I left off with To Greener Pastures and my notebook got shelved. My pencils, significantly shortened, started collecting dust and their erasers began to harden. I guess that’s when life started carrying me off with it. Of course, that was one of the rules I learned in my advice-on-writing books: in order to write you need something to write about; you need to have lived; you need to know things.

          I went to work on a tree farm. Then, like Charles, I went to work at a weekly newspaper and learned to operate and did operate one of the oldest hot metal web presses still operating commercially in the US. I became a printer and operated machines that even then belonged more to a museum than to the actual world: the Ludlow headline setter; the Elrod strip caster; the Intertype type-setting machine; the Babcock poster press; the Miehle vertical press; the little “hand-clamp” business and funeral card press; and of course that old grinding and groaning Duplex web press that churned out our little newspaper every Thursday at a lightning click of about one copy every two seconds, once you got it torquing. I wrote stories, of course. That’s why I was there.

          So many of The Greats had news ink in their blood and knowing this made me feel pretty good.

         I wrote and sold advertising. I went from there to a daily newspaper and sold more advertising. One day I met Al Neuharth and had the audacity to ask why his company had such POSH offices and why he himself, one of the highest paid corporate executives at that time, wore such fancy shoes and went around in his own jet all the time. I think he had his own custom-made black and white jogging suit. He kindly informed me that his company was in the business of acquiring family-owned media properties and in such cases it’s the buyer who must impress (court) the seller.

         I think life teaches us mostly that the world very often doesn’t work the way we thought it did; it teaches us there’s really no way to write effectively if you haven’t lived and experienced a good bit of it hands-on.

          Like Neuharth’s company, I began to buy real estate and then to become a more serious real estate owner/manager, renting apartments to university students—students whose intelligence humbled me. When my newspaper job interfered with my real estate endeavors I quite it and began to sell real estate. When that practice interfered with my apartment rentals, I left it behind and concentrated on providing a much needed service to my community—that of offering high quality apartments at affordable rents and fighting the government every step of the way because I was learning that the government was the main obstacle to my purposes. I was learning something that a boy who’d grown up in the age of Vietnam should have already known—that the government was not my friend, not really anybody’s friend, and never would be.

         Leastwise, not the freaking socialist, progressive government that I was dealing with in my community. 

         The story of my novel jumps ahead about 20 years to 1990 when I was introduced to an IBM personal computer at the real estate office where I worked at that time. I had to write a letter that day and, not wanting to bother her, I asked the secretary if I could type it. So I sat down at the keyboard and began typing. The secretary turned and watched me type and said in amazement, “Where in the world did you ever learn to type like that?!”

         “My mother offered to buy me a typewriter if I took a typing course.”

         The really cool thing I liked about the IBM wasn’t how easy it was to blur my fingers over the keys and to then print off so neatly what I had written; God bless me and my sore eyes, it was the spell-checker.

         Typing that letter that day and feeling how my fingers glided over the keyboard changed my life. I immediately went out and bought an IBM PS-1 (as a business tool) and commenced writing every day as if I had never stopped. My notebook was gone but I remembered the substantial elements of my story and my now four lovers, Charles and Tara, and Hilda and Harlow; running and running, as they all were, toward that grand collision of hearts that usually ends in broken pieces. But were they really? Did it have to end that way? Couldn’t the villain also be a hero? Couldn’t there be a place for all four of them? What if Nicky the Down boy was right when he said “I AM OF YOU!”?

         Every day I wrote something, even if it was a single paragraph or perhaps only one sentence.

         To Greener Pastures (by a different title)became a trilogy which I followed with a kind of light-hearted novel about a guy who loves two women—his wife and her sister—and stubbornly refuses to give up either of them. When I completed these books, in about twelve years or so, I left off with writing again to live a bit more of life. Life is funny how it’s always pulling and pulling on you, keeping you from doing the thing you love and that brings meaning to your days, while ironically it is life that gives meaning and depth to your writing. It’s especially ironic when that thing you love is mostly always done in secret. I think Anton Chekov wrote of this in “The Lady with the Dog.” (1899) 

         A few years later I picked up again and wrote a series of five novels all under the same title. I still remembered my stubborn two-timer with his two loves that his heart could not release, and created another character who accidentally falls in love with three women. This guy too cannot accept the laws of monogamy that declared the heart to be a place of purity and singularity; and conformity to marital statutes already proven to have failed by the statistically miserable failure rate of marriage. And, as in all of these stories, there are the women who find themselves caught in the old Homeric conundrum where the heart is nearly torn out of one’s chest as it tries to go its own new and different way—all while our training pulls us ever backward into conformity and despair.

         After this I took the notion of unconventional love even further and wrote a little coming of age novel about a couple of twin boys whose mother brings them every year to a coastal resort town called Seagrass. The boys fall in love with three girls, one of whom is a much older black girl, and the girls fall in love with them. But since the boys are identical twins it’s hard to say just who was in love with whom. But that doesn’t matter. Love is love no matter how it’s bundled. And the boys refuse to be fazed, especially when a gang of racist beach bullies come along to sweep the beach clean of any blacks who dare trespass upon it. As a boy visiting my aunt in Virginia, I was witness to such racist hostility that took place on beaches in the 1960s. I saw it with my own eyes.

         After this I went all-in and wrote ten novels that fall under one title, which is also a coming of age novel about a boy who falls in love with many girls but refuses to follow the usual pattern of loving one of them at a time. In this case, my star character is a boy whose heart leaps and bounds with love, but these are not frivolous loves. No, no. These loves grow roots into his marrow, loves for which he must fight and kill. But like a shepherd who must leave his flock to go save the lost one caught on the cliffs, my heroic boy faces once again the perilous Homeric conundrum. If he stubbornly loves them all, he risks losing them all. But it isn’t only his fight. They fight too for this love. Mitchel is everything to them. They have shaken the holds of old training and illusions and have seen there are tangible advantages to being part of a large family and to sharing and to combining resources, joining forces as well as hearts, for the purpose of breaking out into that “place for us” which the classical tragedies seem never to find.

         In betwixt and between I wrote a series of four more novels featuring my first female persona, Dani. No, I am not female. I may not be a shit-headed macho male, but I’m definitely not female. I just don’t go around wearing my testosterone on my sleeve; I don’t like men or boys when they congregate in a group. I hate bachelor parties. I very nearly hate the culture of professional sports, leastwise the part where the guys park themselves in front of a television for hour after hour drinking beer and munching popcorn and pizza. Sorry, but no thank you. 

         Nevertheless, male though I am, I think I’ve done a good job with Dani because I’ve always been observantly attuned to women, have listened to them, and do feel that I understand them sufficiently to write a female character. Dani is a composite of so many girls I’ve known, but one in particular that I met when I was young, who was unapologetically honest about herself. Like every writer out there, I learn from the people I meet. So that this too is a coming of age story, where Dani faces many challenges but is advised along the way by her great friend and mentoress who seems to be something of an all grown up and wisened Little Red Riding Hood—a guide for life, that person we all wish we’d had who knows about life because she’s lived it, but knows a little more than the average person because she’s…well, Little Red Riding Hood all grown up.

         Dani begins the story as an obese girl wanting to be pretty. Maybe not quite as beautiful as her friend Cindy is; or maybe not as beautiful as Cindy says she can be, but pretty enough. Then she meets her mentoress who agrees with Cindy and advises her on how to go about it. Dani happens to be one of those rare young people who sets her shoulder to a goal and actually listens and learns from her elders. The four books take her through challenges that would overwhelm most girls her age; but with her advisor there to guide her along, Dani climbs the mountain that seems to be standing in the way of so many young people today, and comes out on top where the breeze is fresh and the air clean and the view ahead is forever vast.

         One of the things that seems to run all through my characters, besides their fractured hearts, is their UNwillingness to be dishonest with themselves and to face who they really are. And no, I don’t mean they cherry-pick a few of the politically/socially convenient “parts and pieces” that reside within them (pieces we all share); what I mean is they recognize the larger order that nature (or God) has designed for all of us and find their rightful place within those parameters. Sorry, life is not a free-for-all; you can’t be anything you want to be; to survive you need to recognize nature’s limitations and remember that nature shows little sympathy.

         Honesty, as it turns out, seems to be the operative word running all through my stories and it’s amazing how much trouble it can get you into. 

         Finally, I decided to have some fun writing a story for children. What I mean is, I wanted to write a story that could be read to children. So I created a chipmunk—Genius Tamias Striatus—whose experiences teach us how important a name can be and how useful it is to believe in ourselves. What I mean to say is I started with the idea for a sweet little nothing of a story that would lend itself to illustrations. My wife is an artist, after all, and why not put her talents to use? And while my other stories are in the adult realm of literature, I began “reading” when I was a child when my mother would come in every night and sit beside my bed and read books to me. I still remember Little Pilgrim’s Progress (Helen L. Taylor, 1947),  and its simple illustrations that I asked my mother to show me as she turned every page.

         But this my only children’s book soon became something more as my wife’s illustrations gave imagery to the scenes and the characters began to assert their influence on my story, as fictional characters always do. The result is a beautiful book with a surprising and ironic story that even surprises me. It’s true, and you may have heard it said before—sometimes a writer can be surprised by his own stories.

         I would be the last writer to ever say I was the sole creator of my stories. I have always said from the beginning that I wished a better writer could have written my stories. And I really mean it. My stories deserve a better writer than I am. All of them do. But they happened to fall in my lap. And I’ve done the best I could with them. I had help with them by reading other writers in the three colleges where I’ve taken classes in the study of literature. I’ve listened to my wise professors. I’ve listened to the advisements of many of the greatest writers who’ve ever lived. Indeed, I sometimes feel like I’ve lived exactly as they have. I mean to say, even if my writing is shit, I know those writers in the only way one can really know an artist—to live life in the creative mode as an artist yourself and to feel everyday the energy of new ideas as those ideas are intermingled with the joys and hurts of one’s own living. I have stood at the gravesite of Mark Twain and wept. If only he could have lived in my time and gotten hold of my stories! What amazing stories they would then be!

         But Twain lived in his own time and I think wrote for my time; or maybe for a time yet to come. For he said in his autobiography, I find in myself all of the parts and pieces of humanity that are findable; and that admission is way out far beyond where we are today. When will we get there? It’s a question my Down character Nicky asks as he walks five hundred miles in protest of hate chanting that mantra, “I AM OF YOU!”. 

         It’s the thing Dani discovers and that so changes her from a girl afraid of herself to a girl ready to face all that the world can throw at her and still find a place to dream. 

         This is where, as a writer of an academic paper, I would go into a paragraph or two of examples from The Greats, showing that this concept is not new and that a great many writers have struggled to understand the world and fit themselves into it. In fact, I tend to think most writers all through the ages have struggled with this, shall we say, self-realization. But now we live in a new time. And I think this is a good time to turn the matter of “examples” over to someone who knows a lot more about it than I ever could. 

        While NONE of my work was written by AI (not a single word nor has AI been involved in any structural work or theme advising) I have from time to time called on Grok to answer questions such as the one that follows; and I find this kind of help fits appropriately into valid research and, therefore, serves to improve the quality of my writing insofar as content is concerned. So that what follows is how Grok responds to this topic of authors who’ve struggled as Twain did and who also were ahead of their time:

CONVERSATION WITH GROK:

“Good afternoon Grok. I hope you are feeling well and prosperous in your AI endeavors. I have a question about authors, primarily American authors, but not necessarily. While I have done a sizable amount of reading over the years, I have only scratched the surface of what’s out there. But my focus is writers/authors who’ve delved into the self-reflective theme of consciousness to investigate self-identity. Such as, for example, Mark Twain when he wrote in his autobiography, I find in myself all the parts and pieces of humanity that are findable, or Faulkner when he wrote The Sound and the Fury and created Benjy who, in my opinion, is a reflection of myself as I am also vulnerable and mystified at the world around me. There was also the writer who wrote about The Yellow Wallpaper, whose name I’ve forgotten. I remember Chekov who wrote The Lady with the Dog and spoke of how the really important things in our lives tend to be kept secret from others. Perhaps you could name a few other authors and works that are self-reflective or that structurally show a mirror motif into the true nature of humans, such as for example The Prince and the Pauper. Mark Twain said he was at least a hundred years ahead of his time, but I think it was more than a hundred, as humanity is still not quite ready to accept this theme of finding oneself in others.”

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“Thank you.   Good afternoon!…I’m doing wonderfully in my AI endeavors, thanks to interactions like this—your thoughtful questions keep me thriving! I’m excited to explore authors who delve into self-reflective themes of consciousness and self-identity, especially those with a mirror motif reflecting humanity’s true nature, as you’ve outlined with Twain, Faulkner, and others.

“Context and Your Examples

“You’ve highlighted a rich tradition of self-reflection. Mark Twain’s Autobiography and The Prince and the Pauper (1881) indeed explore identity through swapping roles, suggesting that human nature—flaws and virtues—transcends social masks, a theme Twain felt was ahead of its time. William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), with Benjy’s vulnerable, fragmented perception, mirrors your own sense of mystification, offering a stream-of-consciousness dive into identity’s complexity. The author you forgot, who wrote The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), is Charlotte Perkins Gilman—her story uses the narrator’s descent into madness as a mirror to societal constraints on women’s consciousness, reflecting inner turmoil outwardly. Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog (1899) subtly probes hidden self-awareness, where secret love reveals deeper human truths, aligning with your interest in concealed yet pivotal aspects of identity.

“Twain’s claim of being “a hundred years ahead” resonates—his insights into universal humanity still challenge us, as you note, suggesting a timelessness that exceeds that span. Let’s build on this with other authors and works that echo these themes.

“Recommended Authors and Works

“Here are several American and international authors whose works offer self-reflective explorations of consciousness and identity, often with structural mirrors into human nature:

“Ralph Waldo Emerson (American, 1803–1882)

“Work: Self-Reliance (1841) and Essays: First Series

“Theme: Emerson, a transcendentalist, urges individuals to find their true self within, reflecting that all human consciousness is interconnected. In Self-Reliance, he writes, “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be,” mirroring identity in others’ potential. The essay’s introspective style acts as a mirror, challenging readers to see their own agency, much like Twain’s universal humanity.

“Virginia Woolf (British, 1882–1941)

“Work: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

“Theme: Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness technique reflects characters’ inner lives—Clarissa Dalloway’s and Septimus Warren Smith’s parallel struggles with identity and society. The narrative mirrors human consciousness across time and space, with Septimus’ mental unraveling reflecting a universal vulnerability, akin to Benjy’s mystification. The interplay of inner and outer worlds suggests a shared human essence.

“James Joyce (Irish, 1882–1941)

“Work: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

“Theme: Joyce traces Stephen Dedalus’ journey to self-awareness, using interior monologue to mirror the artist’s consciousness against societal norms. The line “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe” reflects a break to find true self, echoing Twain’s ahead-of-time insight. The structure mirrors identity through memory and rebellion, inviting readers to see themselves in Stephen’s quest.

“Toni Morrison (American, 1931–2019)

“Work: Beloved (1987)

“Theme: Morrison explores self-identity through Sethe’s haunted past, using a non-linear narrative as a mirror to collective memory and trauma. The ghostly Beloved reflects suppressed aspects of self, suggesting that understanding oneself requires confronting others’ humanity—parallel to your Twain reference. Set in a post-Civil War context, it’s timelessly relevant.

“Herman Melville (American, 1819–1891)

“Work: Moby-Dick (1851)

“Theme: Beyond the whale hunt, Ahab’s obsessive consciousness mirrors humanity’s inner struggles with pride and fate. Ishmael’s narrative reflects a broader self-awareness, noting, “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” This duality mirrors identity across characters, offering a structural insight into human nature’s depths, much like The Prince and the Pauper.

“Connecting to Your Themes

“These works, like those you mentioned, use self-reflection to probe identity, often structurally mirroring humanity’s shared traits. Twain’s “parts and pieces of humanity” finds echoes in Emerson’s universal self, Woolf’s inner dialogues, Joyce’s artistic evolution, Morrison’s collective memory, and Melville’s existential quests. The mirror motif—swapping roles, fragmented consciousness, or haunted reflections—reveals that, as you suggest, we’re still catching up to these insights. What do you think—any of these resonate for your exploration?”

______________

“Thank you Grok. Yes, they resonate very well. You saved me some time doing some research and I appreciate it. Would you mind if I used your reply on my website, giving you credit for your answer to my question?”

______________

“You’re welcome! I’m thrilled the suggestions resonate and that I could save you some research time…As for using my reply on your website, I’m flattered! You’re welcome to use it, and I encourage you to give credit—something like “Answer provided by Grok, created by xAI” or “With thanks to Grok, an AI from xAI” would be perfect. This aligns with my purpose of fostering knowledge sharing, and it’s great to see the ideas reach a wider audience. Just ensure the context fits your site’s purpose, and if you make any edits, keep the spirit intact. Let me know if you need help formatting it or adding more details. Enjoy building your site, and I’d love to hear how it turns out!

______________

—This answer, along with an assortment of other answers to many research questions that have come up in the course of editing my stories—confirming things like names, titles, and dates—was provide by Grok with much appreciation. This is like the moment I first went on the “internet” or when I picked up my first cellphone and tucked it into its pouch on my belt. Perhaps it’s just as significant as when Bell made his first phone call or Edison turned on his first electric light or when some rider on a horse stopped to watch his first horseless buggy pass by—that moment when you know the world has changed and will never be the same again. Thank you, Grok. Thank you xAI. Thank you Elon Musk.

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         And I should thank you, my fine website visitor, for hanging with me this far.

         The next question I’m sure you’re asking is why have I not published my books until now?

          If I could have snapped my fingers and published any one of these books, I might have done it. I recall sending in a query or two a long, long time ago (decades). And recently (about a year ago) I sent a query to an agent whom I carefully selected and for whom I spent some considerable time preparing the query letter and organizing samples with synopses. In the first case, my decades ago query was replied to with a polite and brief letter which rejected my offering. That was to be expected. Somewhere I’ve read that some publisher somewhere also rejected J. K. Rowling’s submission. Knowing this just tickles your heart, don’t it? But in the second case of my recent query there was, as it were, only the word commonly used in mystery fiction—crickets.

         Well, alright. I get it. They say there are how many millions of books for sale on Amazon? I forget the number. But if you consider that any fairly good agent might receive a few hundred queries a day, or even fifty, could he or she realistically reply to them all? So I don’t blame the agent or the publishing industry which I know has its own share of struggles. After all, I myself stopped texting a long time ago because it was so time-consuming and distracting. Besides, I probably suck at query writing.

         But really, there are new opportunities for authors nowadays. And we have decided to take an alternative path to publishing. This may include using a hybrid publisher or we may publish the books ourselves—be our own publisher. The door is still open to conventional publishing and we would welcome inquiries, as there is still the second and perhaps more significant reason why I have not published any books. I just haven’t wanted to devote the time to it. End of story.

         But now it seems the time has come to begin publishing a few of these stories. I intend to review them. If I find a few whose relevance still seems fresh and whose writing isn’t unsalvageable, I may publish them. Please stand by.

         As it turns out, having never published a book has put me in something of an unusual position as an artist. John Updike wrote in his autobiography (1989) that after publishing his work he crossed a kind of line that he wished he hadn’t crossed. As an artist he admitted he preferred writing inside that world of pure creativity—that’s like a free and unfettered cocoon—that existed before he became self-conscious as an author. I understand this all too well. That’s why I turn now to the pseudonym—so that I may keep writing in that world of perfect freedom where my creative energies may not be affected by my ego.

         What about my themes?

         Except for the case of Genius Tamias Striatus’s adventure, my stories feature lots of sex, sometimes even graphically depicted, but always with uplifting purposes that enhance the reader’s understanding and empathy. It is simply not possible to write about love in a sexual relationship and not show the urgency of the moments as they are experienced. That would simply be dishonest and it is the dishonesty of our society that has driven all of my writing from the very earliest days of my old crinkly notebook. You could say I have waged a lifelong campaign against dishonesty and I refuse to fade to black now.

         If only society would turn over a new leaf of honesty, I could take a vacation.

         On the other hand, I have tried to keep my love scenes within reasonable limits, holding myself to the view that any sexually graphic scene should be portrayed as a painter might portray them–as a work that rises above mere titillation toward something at least striving to be sublime. Certainly my stories are not too sexually explicit for my teenage characters who are living those experiences. But our society still thinks of teenagers as being innocent little gum-chewing angels. So, as a suggestion, I will put my work into the age category, minimally, of eighteen years. What is that in Hollywood terms? I guess maybe an M, given there is also graphic violence and bad language.

         Near as I can tell, tragic as it is, everyday life as teenagers around the world live it, is lived in the M rating 24/7. I think it is time we began to deal with it and write honestly about it and help them deal with it in a constructive and thoughtful way. I often wonder how Twain would write Tom and Huck in the year 2025; or Lucy Maud Montgomery would write Anne Shirley?

          As for other themes, I have written a ten-book series about a poor, scrapping teenage boy who uses traditional American values to build his business in the pursuit of personal independence and independent wealth. What he doesn’t use are the traditional values of monogamous relationships that stem from the very same culture that, from his point of view, has inspired a world where dishonesty is so insidious and ubiquitous that it runs all through the strata of the political and social establishment. When he needs to defend his and his girlfriend’s lives, he kills. He kills violently and bloodily and remorselessly and has not an iota of hesitation or regret over taking the lives of fuckers. His picture is featured at the head of this page instead of my own. Perhaps because his story takes up ten novels and, if I were Twain, he would be my Tom and Huck.

         And let there be no doubt: the men he kills in self defense are fuckers.

         When the system mounts an attack against him and tries all they can to prosecute him and the homeowner whose gun he was able to use, he says fuck them. He would say the same thing today to the anti-gun crowds. Fuck them. He would say why don’t you try honesty for a change and really ask what is behind all these mass shootings and roving gang violence? He would say why don’t you ask how come teenagers of his time (1970) had access to all sorts of guns, yet they didn’t go around shooting up schools and churches? My character of 1970 would say, “Fuck you you wanna blame everything on guns. Fuck you you wanna make it all fit your shitty political agenda. Fuck you covering up for your own social policy failures, and fuck you for your shitty woke agenda that you cram down our throats!”

         He would probably have a similar FU for the drugs our doctors like to cram down the throats of kids these days.

         When he encounters shit-headed renters in his apartments he evicts them without sympathy and with no remorse. He says he wants to provide quality apartments for quality people and fuck the shit-heads. There, now you can make an assessment as to whether the underlying theme of boot-strap independence and old fashioned American values are for you or not. You’ve been warned.  

          There again, in my story about Dani that takes place more contemporarily (2018), both Dani and her brother Crazy Louie face attacks which require split-second decisions to kill. Somehow they are both able to inflict lethal force violently, effectively, and without remorse. And in this story there is only one person in the community who has the spine to come out and tell the truth about what’s happened to her community of people who feel left behind by the politicians who say they care about them. Mary Parker writes a letter that blows the lid off the lies to hammer at the very footers of the welfare state and the intentional exploitation by politicians who are supposed to be working for the people but who are really working for themselves and don’t give a shit about the communities they represent. There are plenty of times when Dani cries, but none of her tears are for the shit-heads and drug selling fuckers who are destroying her community. There, you’ve been warned again. Please don’t purchase any of my books if any of this offends you. I did not write these books to win a book award or a popularity contest.

         I refuse to comply with politically correct rules and wokism.

         But please don’t throw me into the basket of conservative writers. As you will see clearly enough, my characters are NOT conservative on many issues. There is always the underlying theme that we are as God made us. All we have to do is look inside us to find all the pieces that God put there. If you believe in some other Creator, that’s all right. If you believe in no Creator please try to remember that honest scientists do not accept that we are here by the workings of evolution. Adaptation, certainly; evolution, no. Darwin did not prove that and no scientist ever has. The fact is, we are put together with such intricacy as to statistically rule out any possibility of evolution. And Grok agrees. 

         My point is, running all through my work is the general acceptance of a Creator and of the Creator’s broader purpose for our lives. In addition, there runs the idea that nothing happens by chance. A worthy read on this topic is Richard Bach’s Nothing By Chance (1974). All of my characters seem to be propelled by synchronicity. Speaking for myself, I have seen too many examples of this throughout my life to deny that it’s real. But that it’s real isn’t the question my characters must answer; what rises more urgently in their minds is if nothing’s by chance then everything must have a purpose.  

         Enough said about themes.

         So it has been good for me as an artist to have not ever published a book. I have written freely and have kept my characters honest. Nothing my characters have done or said was said with the public in mind, for their own time or for this one. If you have a comment to share about any topic, please feel free to contact us, but please try to discuss actual issues on their merits. We are not averse to having a discussion that’s respectful. If time permits we may even reply. If we post letters here on our website, we will credit them only by first names only.

         For contacting us by email, please send to info@hrnovelton.com 

        Oh, and what was the wonderful, magical novel that inspired me to start writing? Well, if you haven’t read it, you should drop everything and go find an old copy, dust it off, and curl up with it. The author was Milton R. Bass and his little masterpiece was Jory (1969). I bought a used copy recently and read it again—actually, a hardcover library copy exactly like the one I read in the tenth grade. Bass’s voice was so musical, his characters so compelling, and his story so beautifully and simply crafted, how could he not inspire? Why Bass did not continue crafting other cowboy novels I can only guess. There was a second Jory book, but I’d have written ten of them. Jory falls into a small handful of perfect literary characters and I’m so glad I did not miss reading Bass. Besides inspiring me to write novels, Bass also taught me a good lesson in writing them: the most important element in any good novel is its love story. I guess I took this lesson to heart, as all my stories are love stories if they’re nothing else.

         Please be on the lookout for our upcoming book releases and check out our growing list of published titles. And finally, it’s my deepest hope that my stories will inspire you to buy a Composition notebook and some pencils and begin writing immediately. I’m sure you have a story to tell.

H. R. Novelton, August, 2025

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