Before there was the Internet, there was the Bookmobile. Every fall as a kid, I waited expectantly for the return of a trailer full of paperback books pulled up next to the school cafeteria. There was money in my pocket, put there by my Mom, hoping that I would find something to occupy my time other than television shows and Saturday morning cartoons.
Mostly I read war stories and science fiction. I visited many “off worlds” in the pages of Andre Norton. And there were the inventive stories of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. And the war stories? Well, being born a Boomer, my Dad was (and still is) my hero, he having been wounded in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest. Like the mythical St. George who slew the dragon, my Dad took on the evil Nazi hordes and survived after a full year in the hospital spent recovering from serious battle wounds.
My writing career began in earnest in eighth grade with a short story that was barely three pages long, set in ancient Rome, and scribbled in my unique brand of cursive. Dozens more stories followed in high school and college. Some got published. Most did not. (Some you will find here on this website.) I still have most of them in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet.
In 2021, I decided to take on the “long form” and try my hand at the novel. Out of that time, came a vampire story, Late Risers. A 361-page mystery. A friend just recently asked me how long it takes to write a novel. My answer was and will always be: “depends.” Writing, particularly good writing, develops at its own pace. Hemingway famously said: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” And I agree.
That first novel, like that first day behind the wheel of a car, proved to be a lot to handle all at once for a newbie. But, I persevered, listened to criticism from several trusted friends, rewrote and polished until it sparkled, publishing the final draft in 2022.
A novella, The Night Fisherman, followed in the fall of the following year. A classic ghost story in the style of an Alfred Hitchcock tale, it taught me something about writing quickly and was completed in less than a month. A theatre group in Philadelphia contacted me about producing The Night Fisherman as a one-act stage play. Over Christmas week of last year, I hobbled together a script and met with the cast and producers on April 6th in Philadelphia, and we did a table read. With some modifications to fit the time allotted, the play will open in mid-July 2026.
In May of 2024, I started a coming-of-age story about a young girl born with scoliosis titled The Shelf Life of Angels and spent the last few weeks polishing the final draft.
Then, something unexpected happened in July 2025. I found an old folder of song lyrics that I had put together with the hopes of working with my younger brother’s country/rock band. He had been active on the C and B music circuit in New Jersey, before completing an engineering degree. The songs never got made and a thick folder languished in a file drawer. Then AI popped onto the scene. At my disposal was a complete musical entity that allowed me to finally finish songs that have been in my head for a long time.
YouTube recently granted me an Official Artists Channel [https://www.youtube.com/@douglaspaulhargroveBBC21]
But, my first love is still the story.
Ordinary people challenged by life, challenged by their circumstances, and rising or failing to rise to the occasion. They have much to teach us. They have much to teach me.
I’ve long admired authors who are “producers,” like Stephen King and James Patterson. To me, they harp back to the long lost day of the “pulps”, when fiction was turned out at a breakneck pace. Sounds crazy, but it’s an art that few can do successfully. And to me, the challenge of it – is everything.
I am grateful now that with each piece that I write, I learn something new, and I get closer to that ultimate story. Thank you for sharing the journey. With love and some luck, we’ll be together for many more years to come.
— Douglas Paul Hargrove