I was never much of a reader as a boy, yet vividly recall saying more than a few times that someday I was going to write a book. Amazingly, last weekend, while I was autographing a copy of my debut novel, Tools of the Trade, someone asked, When did you start writing?
In my mind’s eye I visualized sitting at my desk, gazing out the porthole at the end of my Navy career. It was October 26th, my sister’s birthday, and cold and rainy outside as I put pen to paper. Nineteen eighty-eight, I said.
That’s the year I was born, he said, which immediately prompted someone else to ask: Have you been writing all your life?
Not yet, I said, remembering the advanced fiction writing/poetry class I’d taken at a small community college fifteen years before. I’d decided to write a poem because the poets in the class had far less homework than the novelist: six-to-eight lines of poetry versus a 1,000 word story. I’d entitled my poem, Sympathy vs Respect:
I got no sympathy turning 30, 40, and 50
from those already 60, 70, and 80.
Now, at 90, I haven’t got
the respect of Willard Scott.
It’ll take another decade I suspect
to get both sympathy and respect.
I think I had a midlife crises when one of the poets said, You’re ninety, man? I can’t believe you’re ninety. I reminded him, somewhat sarcastically, that we were also in a fiction writing class.
These days when my wife comes home and asks whether I’ve eaten lunch I’m often surprised that it’s suppertime and, once again, the day has evaporated into my make believe world. Perhaps a better question for me would be: Do you plan to write the rest of your life?
All I can say is that I will keep writing until it becomes unenjoyable. It is something I’ve like to do far longer than anything else and there are many unpublished stories and poems in my files. I’ve had great fun writing them and, hopefully, one day others will have great fun reading them.
Trademark of Murder is the second Chip Hale handyman mystery in the series and due to be published next. It was more enjoyable writing than Tools of the Trade as the characters had taken on lives of their own. I expect that it will also give you more reading enjoyment.
Read more about me at: www.brucerolfe.com and/or sign up for my mailing list at: chiphale99@gmail.com for information about upcoming Chip Hale handyman mysteries.
