I’ve written half a dozen chapters of my new book, The Temple (No. 8 of my Bell Mountain series) and so far, so good. My wife and my editor think so, at least.
It’s so much more pleasant and fulfilling, doing this, than writing about the slow murder of my country at the hands of her ruling class. I sit outside in the springtime, with my pen and my legal pad, birds singing, flowers blooming: say a prayer, get to work, and before long, I’m in the land of Obann. Later my wife will ask me, “Didn’t you see, didn’t you hear” this or that–and I’ll have to admit I missed it. I was riding with Lord Chutt’s wagon-train full of gold, or following Helki as he spied on it.
Now, if only people would buy and read these books! Books can’t accomplish anything without readers.
Let me take this opportunity to angle tastelessly and vulgarly for readers’ comments on my books. Have they done anything for you at all–the few, the proud, who’ve actually read them?
I know–I sound like John D. MacDonald. Hundreds of thousands of readers loved his Travis McGee books; but at one point in his career, MacDonald didn’t know that, and went to the trouble of setting up a special post office box in hopes that his readers would write letters to him. His career turned out all right, didn’t it? But he was some time waiting for it–time which surely seemed a lot longer, to him and his wife, than it really was.