Good reviews

The reviews for The Bottom have been heart-warming. I hope readers will like it as much as the reviewers have so far.
I'm off to Morgantown, W.Va., this coming week for the West Virginia Writers' Workshop and look forward to interacting with promising writers working on their craft.
The next Willie Black mystery is written and edited by the lovely Karen. When I get back from West Virginia, I will do the final editing before sending it on to the publisher. This one should come out in 2016.  It is (quelle suprise) easier to write when you don't work an eight-hour day at the newspaper and drive two hours a day.
Among other projects, I have succumbed to the siren call of Ancestry.com. Took a one-month subscription and find that, when I sit down and start digging, I look up and three hours have gone by. Trying to track down all your ancestors is somewhat impossible, since you have twice as many in each generation. But it's fun. The Owens in my family, mostly farmers in eastern North Carolina, apparently weren't keen on keeping writtten records.
And, it's time to start on the next book. I'm at that point where I'm promoting one book (The Bottom), tweaking the next one and getting started on the one after that.

The luxury of time

Since 1988, I have written before work, after work, on weekends, whatever. I retired as editorial page editor of the Free Lance-Star in April and am doing my best not to squander the gift of time. It's weird not to have a deadline. Before, I'd maybe get up, shower, write for an hour, wolf down some cereal and  run out the door to work. Now, I can cogitate. I can ruminate. I can be lazy and still get in two hours a day. And, honestly, I think two hours a day of creating fiction is enough. That's 700 hours a year. I'm not sure I have enough readers to justify more than 700 hours a year.
My 13th novel comes out in August ("The Bottom"), and it's got some good prepub reviews already. I am close to finishing the first draft of the next one. I'm trying to write a mystery novel a year now (and have done that while working the last four years). Not sure there's a market for TWO books a year.  Plus, I hope to get back to literary fiction, which is what my first nine novels were.
Anyhow, it's good to have time to write, and work out, and spend time with my lovely wife, Karen.
And even to blog.