I’ve been writing for a long time. I guess it began in grade school when I wrote thinly veiled fan fiction after watching my favorite TV programs. It didn’t matter if it was a Western or war story; I wrote something based on the show. It was even better if I didn’t like the ending because I was always the main character and I made things work to my advantage.

When it was college time, I felt an urge to major in journalism, like Hemingway. He was a famous writer, and I was too lazy to major in Creative Writing. My major didn’t matter very much because my college goals were to get drunk, fall in love, and lose my virginity—in any order it required.

After college, I bummed around—did some ghost writing and wrote an article now and then. Finally, in 1979, I published a fiction story in a literary magazine called Appalachian Heritage. Think I was on my way? Not so fast, amigo! I still bummed around the rest of the century but published my first book around 2019. (New century.)