I’ve been working on a crime novel for four years. It’s fiction, of course. True crime is too scary. I started reading Stephen King when I was in fourth grade. My mother didn’t approve but also embraced the fact that I was reading a four-hundred-page novel at age eleven. What’s a parent to do? The books didn’t scare me and the actual story, not the words or the writing, enthralled me. So, technically, Cujo was the first “real” book I read. After a while, horror novels became boring. I read, at some point in my youth, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. That was it for me. Crime, serial killers, and capers were my solace. I do still enjoy an occasional horror novel but it’s tough to scare me these days — a good science fiction novel might occasionally be seen on my shelf. And Yes, I’ve read the cannon. I have a BA in English Literature from Portland State University. I get it. I love William Blake’s work; he was the crime fiction writer of the romantic period. Not really, but man he had some wild stories.
So, I’m on my fourth rewrite of a novel in as many years. It’s not a hobby. I’m busting my ass at the new career path I have chosen. Blind faith tells me I will succeed someday, and if that means I lay on my deathbed and say I wrote the books I wanted to write then so be it.
