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 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 Ardenne 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 2020, 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.
In January of 2024, I started a love story titled The Shelf Life of Angels and hope to spend the month of August [2024] expanding and polishing a final draft, with the hope of publishing it in the early part of the fall.
Yes, it is a cliche, but writing to me is a labor of love. Each piece is stand-alone and presents its own set of challenges, but 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