Hello and welcome, reader.
As ever, it’s my pleasure to have you join me here.
Though I must tell you that, because the server doesn’t track it, I can’t tell if anyone ever visits the website. Or, like my books, even reads these damned things.
I mean, because of recent spam attacks, I’ve now had to turn off comments, here. Which, though rare, I also much appreciated.
If only to confirm that the website is, in fact, up and running.
Likewise, while nowadays living and working according to a series of strict and careful plans, I still prefer the winds of chance decide the fate of me and my work.
And if that’s not irony, then I don’t get it.
Truth is, I had a friend who claimed Harwill was most adept at avoiding success. Well, I didn’t deny it to him or anyone else. There’s only so much of that shit a man can stand before it makes a mess of him, after all.
In no time, he’s either a practicing addict or a fat man in a tailored suit.
Either way, he devotes himself to bending the world to his will. While destroying anything and everyone that gets close to him.
And yes, that’s again the voice of experience talking.
It’s always worth recalling, too, how I speak only for myself, and limit myself to experience, besides. You should beware, as well, that I didn’t get into this racket to make either friends or money.
See, I’ve always known everything is most okay if few other than me likes what I do. That’s because I’m not doing it for approval. I’m doing this because I can’t not do it.
From any other perspective, it makes little objective sense. I know that, too.
I have, after all, spent most years of this life doing my thing for an audience. From my early days in the ring through all the decades of touring as Harwill, the roar of a crowd fuelled the pursuit of my dreams.
For some, that becomes an addiction. Well, to me, it’s always been more of a nightmare made necessary by survival.
Because chasing the dream of authoring even a single great novel is a literal pursuit. It’s not some romantic notion. Such a writer must move himself despite the world’s desire to hold him close. No matter the comforts found only in either private or popular embrace.
Disco inferno. I learn by suffering. So, burn baby, burn. That also means if you’re seeking comfort and wealth, you’ve found the wrong line.
A good friend long ago taught me how those things are byproducts. While work of lasting value is that which honours the people with whom one lived.
To me, that’s always what a writer must seek. After survival, that is. To endure, after all, is the writer’s first chore.
Likewise, though a man trains for its own sake, it’s only the ever-present threat of posterity which adds tension to a writer’s practice.
No matter the subject to which his muse might lead.
If that’s not the case, you’re jacking off. And, despite recent social media claims, that’s best kept private.
The great concern, of course, is that one day, someone might read the work.
Thus, a man needs be a harsh judge with himself. While, likewise, a writer must demand not only the truth, but a readable picture of it, from himself.
That makes two things inevitable. One; accepting you can’t know what you don’t. And two: not making things up to compensate for your shortcomings.
Whether what’s leftover aligns with either popular or personal tastes isn’t up to the writer.
Anyway, I’m sharing yet another funny story with you this time. Even if, as often turns out, I’m one of a precious few that thinks it so.
Well, lucky for both of us, it’s a short one.
See, last month, while dealing with early fallout caused by my latest flop, I realized the entire affair was taking place without much of an audience.
That’s despite a crippling bout of angst, before it published, too, by the way.
Talk about putting a cart before the horse’s arse! Poor little rich boy? What? Again? How’s that for a story?
Anyway, despite a strong start, A Whippoorwill Called has yet to make the leap from hot new release to national bestseller.
And did I tell you the one about keeping results at arm’s length?
Well, rest assured, I care about such things. I do. Far more than you might imagine. Too bad if knowing that shatters your illusions.
So, don’t let the lackadaisical marketing of my novels fool you. That’s a result of limited resource, not desire. Because I wouldn’t publish a word if I didn’t want it read by the whole damned world.
I sure don’t publish them to protest placing the demands of profit above the writer, either. As few know better, the terrible price of business failure.
My respect for the world’s few remaining publishers is therefore immense.
Anyway, despite the fiscal limits faced by every small shop, the underdog role has always appealed to me. Which is lucky, for one born on the wrong side of the tracks.
Besides, the truth is long shots come in all the time. Likewise, luck is a thing which happens when preparation meets opportunity. That, my friends, is why we play the games.
It’s also why most things are always within reach of all people. Both experience and books taught me that. In the same order, too, as near as I can tell.
That’s what I tell the owners of Solitary Press when explaining the failure of a novel to make the leap to the bestseller’s list. You know, while begging for a little more time to finish the next manuscript and take another shot.
For as usual, in these parts, we endeavour most to persevere.
So, until my luck shows up, I’m sticking with hard work and dedication.
Maybe that’s why I owe my greatest debt as a writer to Raymond Chandler, too. That’s how I see things, anyway.
Because I grounded what some call my matter-of-fact prose style in the hard-boiled detective novels he wrote in the thirties and forties. I first read them while still a boy.
School introduced me to many other novel writing giants, of course. In my day, we studied works by Conrad, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Steinbeck, among others. In time, I came to admire and appreciate their genius, too.
Years later, I read many of those same writers again, for pleasure, while living on the road. But I also reread many of Chandler’s detective novels. To my surprise, I enjoyed reading all of them as much again, if not more, than I had when doing it the first time.
For they had reassured me.
I understood something else, at last, too. What I had sought was to reflect the people and the times in which I lived. In a style both readable and unique to myself. Nothing else had ever mattered more to me than that.
For there live the immortals.
In their own way, each of those writers had done it. So too, then, must I.
The years of misery and privation were in pursuit of little more than one confounding, but simple goal. Despite a search of imposing length, as yet I haven’t found a better why to explain all this.
So, blame me for the literary aspirations. Likewise, blame the attempt to reflect our times using a minimalist and episodic vibe on me, too. I wanted most to combine the simple with the complex and make something just as good no matter how you came at it.
After all, there’s always more between the lines than meets the eye. You know, c’est la vie. Its theme is more often found in an oblique reference or a recurring motif than revealed by a direct statement.
Not only that, but books don’t come with instructions. Though all of them must make pictures appear in a reader’s head using nothing but words on a page.
While also delivering a message from an unknown to the anonymous.
The best of them somehow take you somewhere, too. No matter how many times you might read them. Most times, it’s to places you couldn’t have gone, while doing things you wouldn’t ever be able to do.
And, far more often than that, you’d rather imagine such things than live through them.
Well, that’s what I call magic. I found it there, between the pages of a book, when just a boy, living in a wilderness. Not much later, I made a deal with myself to devote my life to making more of it.
Since then, I’ve done my best to keep that promise.
For me, that’s enough.
Because I found my way, thanks to novels written by writers who died before I was born. And though we won’t ever meet, I hope to return their favour by doing the same for a writer I’ll never know.
To see how it’s going, click the cover embedded below here and enjoy a free sample.
So ends the latest rumination.
Before wrapping this one up, though, I must send a serious message. It’s for everyone who has ever bought one of my novels. Thank you. Your continued support makes it possible for me to keep writing. And that means more to me than most anything else, outside of family.
So, here, as well as there, I practice hoping to get better, so you can look forward to reading the next one. While I work at authoring more stories about forgotten people in obscure places who struggled for survival, and sometimes toward some dream of salvation, in our times.
I’m forever honoured to share these stories.
Until we meet again, thanks for being here, and for sharing this with anyone who might like to read it.
TFP
May 31, 2025