Hickory County

I was a young man and worked in a program funded by the Department of Labor that took me to several work sites in Hickory County, Missouri. Sparsely populated and home of Pomme de Terre Lake, it is like a small slice of America. There are rolling hills, high wood-covered hills, and prairie. I have had deer jump across the road in front of my car, fished clear running panther creek, and attended family reunions overlooking the lake. When the idea for Rainbow Lake came to me, I instantly thought of Hickory County. Although my family came from neighboring Polk County and it is in the book, Hickory County was my choice.

Lucas Buchanan’s house was patterned after a distant cousin on the Pitts side actually lived. The abandoned farmhouse was the same house on my cousin John’s farm that I used in The Possessor. The hotel in Preston, Mo is from my imagination. The house where Mrs. MacKenzie lived was my memory of a house in Bolivar where my brother lived. Sometimes you have to put a face to your characters and Mrs. MacKenzie was Frances Bavier from the Andy Griffith show.

So, my writing includes old fond memories and that is why I had so much fun writing Rainbow Lake. Later, I’ll write about my characters.

What's In A Name?

Everything!

When I begin writing a novel I usually give my characters common names like Bill, Bob, and Mary. As I proceed through the first chapters the names come to me. I am about 10,000 words into a new novel and one of the characters I named Brad Parker. I could never get excited about Brad although he had a large part in the novel. My wife and I were in the car one day and she was making up names for pets when she saw the red Max bus in Kansas City and its destination was the Waldo area. She immediately chimed up Max Waldo. Let's change our name to Waldo! Instantly, I knew Brad had his name change and it changed his whole character so there will be some rewrites. Brad was supposed to be a crime reporter but I found him boring. Suddenly, everything about Brad changed now that his name was Max. He became tougher, more abrasive, and someone who took chances. I like Max Waldo.

Two Novels

I am in the process of writing two novels: a new experience for me. For years, my friends have asked me to write a series instead of individual novels. I find that very hard to do because it seems so confining as a writer but I've finally acquiesced and I am trying my hand at writing a series. The hard part is defining your protagonist. Should it be a policeman, reporter, etc. which I find to be the most difficult. I am still working on it and have a couple of trial manuscripts out (few chapters) to see if it works. My target audience has always been women age 45 to 65+. My other novel, The Frog Pond has been a joy to write but it is in familiar territory. We'll see what happens.

The Frog Pond

The Frog Pond is my latest book and I'm happy with my progress. My wife doesn't like the title and wants me to call it Miller's Pond or something with a name, but the name fits. It's another coming of age story featuring Haley Thomas who spends the summer helping her Aunt Margaret who has suffered a broken arm and needs help until she mends. She's adjusting to life on the farm but everything changesvwhen she finds the body of a missing boy on the bank of the frog pond.

Write What You Know

Write What You Know (Share if you like)

Sometimes when you write you can never find that comfort zone that allows you to write without agonizing what comes next whether or not you have an outline. The old adage "write what you know" came to me late in life. I love writing about the memories of places, people, and things of my childhood whether in Kansas City or southern Missouri. When I wrote The Possessor and Rainbow Lake the setting was at an earlier time. The Possessor takes place during the 1950s which some people call boring, but my childhood had a freedom that the majority of people in the United States can never experience. Although I wasn't born yet when Rainbow Lake takes place, the individuals of my childhood and their experiences are an indelible memory and easily fill the page as I write. I enjoy writing about southern Missouri because it 's like visiting an old friend. I see and feel the characters in my mind.

Rainbow Lake

It has been a long five years since I started Rainbow Lake and any promises I made that it would soon be finished were dashed by three hospital stays and two operations. I feel fine and Rainbox Lake just became available on Amazon in paperback and ebook. I return again to the past to pre World War II in southern Missouri where simple people find themselves entangled with evil.

I heard a story once about a small lake in middle Missouri close to the Lake of the Ozarks. The Lake of the Ozarks was started in the late twenties and fast became a draw for people to hunt, fish, and build a cabin to stay the weekends. It was primitive. I have pictures of my granddad at a cabin in those early days of the lake. This other lake was built by blacks because they weren't allowed on the Lake of the Ozarks. I don't know how big it was (or is) but my storyteller told me it was built by blacks who taught at Lincoln University in Jefferson City. They couldn't buy anything near their lake or on the way, so they had to bring everything with them from Jefferson City in their cars. The lake was hidden by trees and couldn't be seen from the main roads. I didn't have enough information to write about the lake but I could incorporate it in a book. I wouldn't begin my book at Rainbow Lake, but it would end there.

Click on the Rainbow Lake cover and go to Amazon to find out more. I always appreciate reviews.

Ma Jackson

You will see a lot of my family in my books.  After all, that’s who I know best. When  I first started writing Stalked By The Devil, I imagined an elderly couple trying to save their pregnant  granddaughter from an evil monster.  As I thought about the grandmother, Cordelia McIntire, I knew I wanted a very strong, highly principled woman. My mind immediately thought of my great grandmother, Harriet Jackson McNabb.  I didn’t know my great grandmother, but my mother told me stories about her, and in later years as I took up genealogy, I read other people’s accounts of her.

Harriet Jackson was a unique woman for her time. She was a Jackson and came from Marshfield, MO. Harriet Jackson met John McNabb in Marshfield and they married, but till the day she died, she was known as Ma Jackson. It was quite confusing when I was younger hearing my mother  talk about Ma Jackson when she was talking about her father’s mother. Eventually the McNabb family moved to Bolivar, Mo, which is often in my books. Ma Jackson was quite a character.  She chewed tobacco, smoked a pipe, and spoke her mind, once telling a newspaper reporter, she’d never vote for a yellow dog democrat.

I have pictures of Ma Jackson, and as I wrote the first chapters of my book, I could visualize her sitting by the bedside while her granddaughter writhed in pain waiting for the doctor to come. The doctor had been delayed by a blinding snow, her granddaughter is getting ready to deliver, and Cordelia McIntire never shows any fear. If the doctor doesn’t come, she’ll deliver the baby.  My mother use to say, “Yiou do what you have to do.” Since Ma Jackson raised my mother until age fourteen, I’ve often wondered if she heard Ma Jackson say the same thing.