E.F.

My father, Eucebus Filando Owen Jr., was born 100 years ago, on Aug. 6, 1921, at his parents’ home in White Oak, in North Carolina’s Bladen County, the ninth of 10 children. 

He has been gone for more than 37 years, but he will not be forgotten by those who knew him. He was a poster child for the Greatest Generation. He never finished high school, but he was an accomplished man. The things he could do greatly outnumber anything on my résumé. 

 He could go fishing (cane-pole or surf-casting), clean the fish and cook them up for breakfast the next day. He and his beagles loved hunting. He could shoot a rabbit or squirrel, skin it and cook that, too. He could wade hip-deep in a swamp and come back with a bucket full of huckleberries. He played the guitar on the porch at night. He was partial to “Will There Be Any Stars?” “Ain’t We Crazy?” and “Jambalaya.” He tended a two-acre “garden.” He plowed those acres with a mule. He grew corn, tomatoes, squash, okra, bell peppers, peas, butterbeans, watermelons, cantaloupes, peanuts, cabbage, collards and other things I have forgotten. Some of it was eaten, some of it was canned and a lot of it was given away to friends and family.

 He did this in his “spare” time, by the way, before and after working 40 hours a week as a bookkeeper. 

Whatever broke at our home, he usually could fix, from the roof to the hot-water heater to the lawn mower. He cooked our breakfast every weekday morning (bacon, scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast, with pancakes on Saturdays). He also made a mean liver and onions. He served his community. He was a deacon and then an elder at Sunnyside Presbyterian Church. He sang in the choir. He pitched for the church softball team until he was in his early 40s. He was the church treasurer and also the treasurer for the local volunteer fire department. 

Despite a devastating injury that more or less ended his high school days and left him with a permanent limp when he ran, he served his country. In the war, he was with the first U.S. troops to reach the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. I have the photos he brought back. When he returned, he never wanted to travel again. The Depression and World War II consumed much of his life through 1945. He knew hunger on a first-name basis. He said the Army was the first place where he was assured of three meals every day. 

He was a man’s man, but a kind and gentle one. He did not administer corporal punishment. He loved a good joke and little kids. I would give anything to hear him laugh again. He would have been happy if his children had stayed in Vander for the rest of our lives, but he was happy to see us happy. He was always there for my mother, my sister and me, for his seven brothers and sisters, for his parents, my mother’s parents next door and anyone else who needed his help. 

E.F. Owen never made much money, but he gave me more than I could ever repay. Today, and every day, I remember and try to honor him.

Jordan's Branch

Dear readers: The 10th Willie Black mystery, Jordan's Branch, is out, available in bookstores and on Kindle. Here's how it begins:

 CHAPTER ONE Monday, Sept. 2 Stick is deader than a doornail. Not much doubt about that. From all appearances, he’s been that way for a couple of days at least. Other than the fact that I am the local daily’s night cops reporter, what has me somewhat interested in his demise is the fact that he owes me money ¬¬–– fifty thousand dollars, to be exact. Well, that’s not quite right. He did give me 5K up front. Still, it’s a loss. And I guess somebody somewhere will miss Stick, too. I knew something was wrong when I rang the doorbell and then, getting no answer, tried the door, which opened. I almost called the cops at that point, but fools rush in. It was personal, from what I can see. The shot to the chest and one to the head should have done the trick. The other five or six just seem like piling on. Not much chance of salvaging that faux-Persian carpet. The first wave of cops just arrived, wailing up Patterson Avenue and turning on to Glenburnie and then to Stokes Lane like there was something here more urgent than the corpse of which I informed them via 911 maybe 10 minutes ago. The first ones in the door have their weapons drawn. I am very careful not to reach for a Camel, scratch my balls or do anything else that involves lowering my arms below parallel. Still, they put me on the ground. They don’t cuff me, but they are deaf to my attempts to explain that I’m only the bearer of bad news, not the creator of it. “Do you think I would have called you to tell you I just killed somebody and then wait here for you?” I ask. “Shut the fuck up,” a white, bullet-headed bouncer-cop advises. It’s about half an hour before the chief, Larry Doby Jones himself, arrives, no doubt mildly irritated at being dragged from a Labor Day picnic to a homicide scene. “Here’s trouble,” he says, apparently referring to me instead of the other body on Stick Davis’ living-room floor, the one that isn’t moving. The chief sighs. After he walks around the crime scene for a minute or two, he reluctantly tells his boys to let me up. “What are you doing here?” he asks. It seems like a fair question. L.D. seems to take offense at the way I always appear to “poke my nosy ass” into what he considers to be police business but which, from where I live, is part of the job of a diligent quasi-professional journalist. He doesn’t like it much when I’m at the homicide scene not long after his minions have descended on it. Being the one to actually find the body seems, to the chief, to be stepping over the line. I explain my relationship with Stick Davis. “He wanted you to write his life story?” “Something like that. Do you mind if I smoke?” L.D. shrugs. “I don’t suppose Mr. Davis is going to mind too much.” I tell the chief and his detective what I know. I was supposed to meet Stick at the Continental yesterday morning, where we were going to go over the draft of the latest chapter of his would-be autobiography and see if he wanted any changes. When he didn’t show up, I wasn’t overly concerned. Stick Davis has a long history of not showing up when he’s supposed to. But then he didn’t answer my calls yesterday afternoon and evening. So, this morning, I drove out here to Westwood to see what the story was. “And you found him like this?” I promise L.D. that I haven’t touched Stick’s body or anything around it. We’re about two blocks inside the city line, in a neighborhood most folks don’t know much about. There are a couple of other Westwoods around Richmond, but this one has some resonance to me. The late Philomena Slade once schooled me on it, expressing shock that I didn’t know more about the struggles of “my people.” Since I’m an Anglo-African American, Westwood is kind of the story of half my people crapping on the other half. It was started by freed slaves after the Civil War. There used to be a creek running through it, Jordan’s Branch, but it’s now buried under the Willow Lawn Drive median. The place was annexed during World War II. It took the city several years after that to get around to providing water and sewer service, and civic-minded individuals in adjoining white communities did their level best to have it razed for a park nobody wanted or needed. Even the editorial pages of my paper, famous for afflicting the afflicted, fulminated against that idea. And so Westwood survives, although in a diminished state. The old church that was its centerpiece is still there, but businesses and a post office have chewed away at it. It is, by Richmond standards, a peaceful little pocket these days, as much white as black. I seldom have had to visit it to report on a dirt nap. So, Stick’s violent demise is not just a loss to him but also a stain on a part of Richmond that usually encounters such activity by seeing it breathlessly reported to them on the evening news. A few of our residents still read my version of the carnage in the next day’s newspaper. “You’re not going anywhere, are you, Willie?” the detective asks. I am offended that this pup, about half my age, is using my first name. “What’s it to you?” I inquire. The chief steps in. “We got a very dead man here. You seem to have been the last one to see him alive. From what you say, he owed you some money. Do the math, Willie.” I have known L.D. since we were teenagers, playing ball against each other. The fact that he would consider me a suspect in what is obviously a homicide kind of stuns me. “L.D., …” I begin. “You might want to get a lawyer,” my old acquaintance says before he and his smirking detective turn and walk out. “Don’t go anywhere,” the pup says. I give him the finger. He seems to want to continue the discussion, but the chief grabs him by the elbow and escorts him into the next room. I am in the odd but not unprecedented position of reporting on myself. How do I write, under my byline, that “Willie Black, a local reporter, found the body”? There seems to be one, rather unpalatable solution. I go to the contacts page on my iPhone. “Hello, Leighton,” I say when she answers. “I think I have a story for you.” *** Leighton Byrd, one of the two young reporters our penurious chain has let us hire in the past year and a half to make up for six it laid off, is here in 20 minutes. She is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Drink Up Bitches.” It comes halfway down to her knees. “Pool party,” she explains. I apologize for spoiling her holiday fun. “Are you shittin’ me?” she replies. “When you told me what happened, I damn near forgot the T-shirt.” That would have been a pity, I observe. Leighton, who is six years younger than my daughter, does justice to the shirt and no doubt the swimwear underneath it. I don’t intend to permanently cede my byline on this story, even if it was me who found the body. It would be wise, though, to let Leighton break the story. “So this guy, you were writing his autobiography, and somebody killed him before you could finish?” She asks me what he was paying. When I tell her, she whistles. “Wow, he was going to pay you more than I’ll make all year, working my ass off 50 hours a week.” “Welcome to print journalism,” I tell her, looking about for an ashtray. The cops are still hanging around, waiting for the medical examiner. Leighton manages to get a few words from the chief, who seems to give preferential treatment to attractive young women in pool-party attire. He does me the kindness of not mentioning to her that I seem to be his prime suspect. Then she interviews me, one of the weirder experiences I’ve had in my ink-stained life. I realize how the interviewee feels, certain that my words will be mangled or misinterpreted. “Hey, my eyes are up here,” she says when I glance down at her notepad. Then she laughs. “Don’t worry, Willie. I took shorthand in high school. I won’t misquote you.” We leave just as the TV trucks start rolling up the tight little street. This will give some otherwise quiet holiday newscasts a caffeine jolt. I get the hell out of there before the kids who got stuck with weekend duty at the local stations start shoving cameras in my face. I can handle being a nominal homicide suspect and having to forfeit a hell of a breaking story, but being scooped by the good-hair people would be too much to bear. “Be sure to post it, now,” I tell Leighton when I walk around to her car. She has the laptop between her lovely knees. “Already on it,” she assures me. *** I’m home by 1:30, in time to take Cindy to a swim party of our own, at the Philadelphia Quarry. The text message I sent her was short on details. She wants to know more than “Stick dead. Waiting for cops.” I tell her the story. She knows I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time the past few months working on Stick Davis’ life story. The promise of a big payday salved the pain of not getting to spend more quality time with me. “So he was just lying there, dead on the floor?” I explain that he was indeed deceased, and had been for some time. “Did he bleed a lot?” “What?” My right ear’s not been the same since part of it was shot off last year when I got a little too close to a story. “Bleed. Did he bleed a lot?” “Fuck, I guess so. I mean, that carpet’s never going to be the same.” “That’s a shame,” my beloved says. “About the carpet, I mean.”

Willie Black goes to Italy

The first Willie Black mystery, Oregon Hill, winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize in 2012, was launched in Italy in November (NN Editore). The second one, The Philadelphia Quarry, will come out it Italian next year. In the meantime, Willie Black No. 10, Jordan's Branch, launches in the U.S. (Permanent Press) in February or early March. And, I've done the first draft on the one after that, which I'm excited about. It is set in Richmond in 2020, with Black Lives Matter, toppled monuments and the pandemic as the backdrop. In the midst of a pandemic, what are you going to do except write, right?

The next Willie Black mystery, Belle Isle, comes out this month. It was supposed to launch in May, but the publisher wanted to wait until the pandemic had passed. Well, that didn't happen, but Belle Isle is out anyhow. Promoting a book these days is a little different. I'm doing a couple of virtual book talks and one live one, socially distanced. And, it's on Kindle and as an audio book and on Audible, and somebody's doing the Willie Black books in Italian. The next one, Jordan's Branch, will come out in 2021, which has got to be a better year than this.

The AP likes Willie

The Associated Press review of Evergreen, the eighth novel in the Willie Black series and my 18th novel overall, came out yesterday, and it was very pleasing. With any series, there is the fear that the latest installment will be met with something less than enthusiasm. It is my hope that each of the Willie Black mysteries will be a good read on its own, even if the reader has no previous knowledge of Willie. There is the fear that reviewers will not pay it much attention, being, in this case, the eighth book with the same protagonist.

That is why Bruce DeSilva's review for the Associated Press (which has a pretty big audience) is so encouraging. Bruce is a great mystery writer, much respected in the journalism and mystery writing communities.

Here it is:

By BRUCE DESILVA

The Associated Press

This cover image released by Permanent Press shows "Evergreen," a release by Howard Owen. (Permanent Press via AP)

“Evergreen,” by Howard Owen (Permanent Press)

When Willie Black was 15 months old, his father, Artie Lee, was killed in an apparent automobile accident. That’s all Willie — police reporter for a Richmond, Virgina, newspaper — knows about his dad. He’s never been curious about the man.

That changes when Willie’s aunt on his father’s side summons him to her deathbed. She’s been tending Artie’s grave in Evergreen, an abandoned cemetery, and now it’s up to Willie to inherit the chore.

Readers of Howard Owen’s underappreciated Willie Black novels already know that Willie’s father was black, that his mother was white, and that they weren’t allowed to marry in 1960s Virginia. But in “Evergreen,” the eighth book in the series, they’ll grow as curious as Willie about what really put Artie in his grave.

Finding out is no easy task.

Willie’s mother won’t say and urges Willie to drop it.

Artie’s old pals reminisce about his saxophone playing but clam up about his death.

The police chief says there were rumors that the car crash was no accident but has no details.

Old newspaper files are no help. The death of a black man didn’t merit a news story in 1961 Virginia.

Patiently, Willie squeezes a few minor details from townsfolk old enough to remember Artie. Each time he gets a scrap of information, he circles back, telling the witnesses what he knows and teasing out a bit more. He does this so skillfully that it is a pleasure to watch him work.

Eventually, he learns that Artie’s death was connected to a Ku Klux Klan rally, a car bombing and a series of betrayals by friends and relatives who were threatened by racist police officers unless they talked. The result is a conclusion that is both wrenching and satisfying.

Readers seeking the thrills of most popular crime fiction won’t find it here. Instead, they will find a textured, emotionally charged tale about coming to terms with growing up biracial in America told in the precise language of a writer who honed his craft during 44 years in the newspaper business.

___

Bruce DeSilva , winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”

More Willie Black

My eighth Willie Black mystery, and 18th novel overall, "Evergreen," comes out in late July. In this one, Willie is asked to take over the maintenance of his late father's grave, in an abandoned cemetery on Richmond's East End. Willie didn't even know where his father was buried, but when he starts digging, so to speak, he finds out that there was a lot more he didn't know about Artie Lee.

I've been doing the Willie Black series for about a decade now. A ninth installment is coming; I'm finishing up the first draft. I find that there is no dearth of settings around Richmond for Willie's adventures and misadventures and hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing them. I'm sure that I will occasionally step back and write something non-Willie, like the well-received "Annie's Bones." However, I can't stay away from Willie and his large population of friends, family, enemies and frenemies for very long. It occurred to me early on, as I was writing the short story, "The Thirteenth Floor," that gave birth to Willie Black, that a hard-ridden night cops reporter in the waning days of print newspapers was a gold mine for anyone trying to write noir.

Evergreen Cemetery is on the far east end of Richmond. It is an African-American cemetery that was abandoned after it was built out and is now a ghost land of tombstones overtaken by kudzu and greenbriers, overshadowed by full-grown trees and only recently the focus of a major reclamation project. All in all, not a bad place to set a mystery.

Review of Annie's Bones

My latest novel, Annie's Bones, just got a very good review from PW. Willie Black has only a cameo in this one. Willie will be back in Scuffletown, which is set to come out in January of 2019.
Here's the review:

Publishers Weekly March 16, 2018
Annie’s Bones by Howard Owen. Permanent, $29.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1- 57962-522- 1

In 1968, Grayson Melvin, the protagonist of this moving, well-crafted standalone from Owen
(The Reckoning), meets the love of his life, Annie Lineberger, when they’re both college
students in North Carolina. When Annie breaks up with him, he tells her to get out of his car. She
scrambles out and is never seen again. Grayson is the primary suspect in her disappearance, but
without any evidence he moves on—always followed by a cloud. In 2016, Annie’s bones are
found in Portman, Va., and Grayson’s nightmare begins again. He gets support from only a few
people, including Richmond, Va., reporter Willie Black (the lead of Owen’s The Devil’s
Triangle and five other mysteries). Arrayed against him are public opinion, seemingly every
lawman in the area, and Annie’s unforgiving brother, Hayden. The discovery of Grayson’s high
school senior class ring, which he last saw when he refused to take it back from Annie at the time
she left him, puts Grayson on a tortuous path that eventually leads to answers that may or may
not explain what happened. This tale of loss and redemption will resonate with many readers.
(Apr.)

More Willie on the way

My next novel, Annie's Bones, only employs Willie Black as a walk-on character. The protagonist is a man, an acquaintance of Willie's, who has lived under a cloud for almost half a century, suspected of murdering his girlfriend the night she dumped him in 1968. Now, with Annie's bones dug up by a backhoe operator in a small town on the Virginia-North Carolina border, Gray Melvin must deal with the past at last, taking a trip down a memory lane he'd just as soon have bypassed.
The next Willie Black mystery, Scuffletown, should come out sometime in the next year or so. Like the other Willie books, it takes its title from a real Richmond setting, in this case Scuffletown Park in the Fan. It's all fiction after that, of course, but I guarantee you it will entertain you, whether you know where the Strawberry Street Cafe is or not.
The series keeps getting praise and picking up readers. Grace was a finalist for Killer Nashville's Silver Falchion award. The Devil's Triangle got a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
I'm working on something else Willie-ish. Probably will start writing, as is often the case, on New Year's Day.

20, 40, 60 …

Here's something I submitted for the Permanent Press blog run by Martin Shepard. A few insights into turning into a mystery writer.

My professional/public life has tended to run in 20-year cycles.

In my early 20s, I became a sports writer because the idea of getting paid to go to ballgames and write about them seemed to me to be a pleasant way to spend my adult life. Maybe I wouldn’t change the world, but, like a diligent physician, I would do no harm.

Then, just before I turned 40, I started my first novel, because I had managed to get promoted away from using the main talent I thought I brought to journalism: writing.  I needed to write. That first novel, Littlejohn, was bought by The Permanent Press after a dozen large publishers had turned it down. Martin and Judith Shepard’s judgment was rewarded when the book got great reviews and word-of-mouth support from independent booksellers, and Random House purchased it from them/me and republished it the next year.

That made writing novels in my free time (I was still working as a newspaper editor) easier, because I was fairly confident someone would publish my work. Over the next 20 years, I wrote nine literary novels, some for The Permanent Press, some for Harper Collins and Random House.

Then about the time I turned 60, still working as a newspaper editor, another fork in the road appeared, and, like Yogi Berra advised, I took it.

A friend, Tom De Haven, an outstanding novelist who teaches creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University, asked me to write a detective noir short story for a collection that would become Richmond Noir, one of a series of noir collections published by Akashic Books.

I had never written a mystery anything. I didn’t even read that many mysteries, but I’m always game to write something that people might read, so I gave it a try. That short story, “The Thirteenth Floor,” was the birth of Willie Black, a night police reporter for the Richmond daily newspaper who drinks too much, smokes too much and marries too much, a man with a good heart and bad habits.

I knew right away that Willie’s first-person voice was something I could use in a novel or two. Even before Richmond Noir came out, I was working on the first Willie Black mystery. That first one, Oregon Hill, won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for best crime literature in the U.S. and Canada. The fifth one, Grace, is a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for Best Fiction Adult Mystery. The sixth one, The Devil’s Triangle, with a starred Publishers Weekly review, came out in July. I’m polishing the seventh one now. The first six have all been published by The Permanent Press as will, I’m hoping, the seventh.

What have I learned? Basically, writing is writing. I found that the things that carried me in literary fiction—a good plot, intriguing characters, quality writing—worked just as well in mysteries. And when I needed professional advice (What kind of gun should the bad guy use? What’s it like at an execution? What’s the procedure between the arrest and the trial?), there was always an expert, either in person or online, who could tell me what I needed to know.

The important thing is simply to have a good story and write it well. Genre doesn’t matter. The bonus, with mysteries, is that you have a protagonist and a setting already. If you have a likeable, compelling protagonist, you can use him or her over and over. And the setting doesn’t usually change. All you need is another story, and the world is full of stories.

With literary fiction, I had to invent a new world every time out. With the mysteries, I always have Willie (he’s 10 years younger than me, so I can ride him for years to come), and I always have Richmond, a city with a history, with a wealth of nooks and crannies that you don’t find in most cities.

The down side, if there is one, is that the characters have to stay real and fresh. Willie can’t be fully redeemed, although he tries to be good. There’s not much of a market for Detective Blanc.

So, I’m seven novels into that third phase right now.

Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Can’t wait to see what 80 brings.

Devil's Triangle comes out this month

The pre-pub reviews for The Devil's Triangle, which will come out this month, have all been in the good-to-excellent range. The starred review in Publishers Weekly was especially gratifying. I'm doing a couple of events in Richmond so far, one at Chop Suey on July 12, 6 p.m. and one at Fountain Books on Aug. 3 at 6:30. I'm also going to be at the Killer Nashville mystery writers event in Nashville Aug. 25-27.
Meanwhile, I'm about two-thirds of the way through the first draft of the next Willie Black mystery, and Annie's Bones, a completed novel that only peripherally involves Willie, will come out in 2018.

A starred review in PW!

The sixth Willie Black mystery got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which makes me very happy.

At the start of Owen’s superior sixth outing for Richmond, Va., reporter Willie Black (after 2016’s Grace), a twin-engine Beechcraft plane crashes into the Dark Star bar, killing 22, injuring 29, and fueling wild speculation about the cause of the crash. Was it a terrorist act, suicide, or an accident? The pilot is identified as David Biggio, a former Richmond resident who was once arrested for stalking his former wife; the plane belonged to James “Chopper” Ware, who owns a hardware store in a tiny town on the Chesapeake Bay. Black uses all his journalistic resources, including such strong supporting characters as Peachy Love, the police media relations person, and elderly Jumpin’ Jimmy Deacon, who gives him a lead to Biggio’s ex-wife. As usual, Black finds himself at odds with police chief Larry Doby Jones and with his newspaper’s publisher, Rita Dominick. An unexpected insurance policy, the discovery of a murder victim, and a man’s hidden past keep Black digging. Owen’s informed treatment of Richmond and its declining daily paper is perfect. (June) 

Lovin' Richmond

There's so much to do here, I don't know where to start. Yesterday, we went to the opening of the French Film Festival at the Byrd Theater, our fabulous 1920s era movie palace (it'll be even more fab when they replace the seats) to see Himalaya, a wonderful movie. Going back Sunday to catch another feature.
Tomorrow is the Monument Avenue 10K, with 30K runners. I'll just have time to shower afterwards before we go to the UR-UVA lacrosse match and tailgate picnic at the University of Richmond. After that, who knows?
Got the first review of The Devil's Triangle yesterday. Here's the kicker: ."Owen produces another grim, tightly woven, and resolutely professional piece of work with a memorably nightmarish payoff."

Be a sore loser

I have heard a lot from gloating Donald Trump supporters since Nov. 8 about "sore losers." Bullshit. If you tiptoe around the enormity of Trump's election, afraid of being a poor sport, don't. This isn't a football game. It is way more than OK to oppose him. In fact, it is patriotic to be a sore loser when what you've just lost is the assurance that you won't be living in a Fascist state in the near future. They aren't handing sportsmanship trophies for graciously accepting the theft of the First Amendment (you know, the one that doesn't involve guns).  Be a good sport when your favorite team loses the big game. This is not a game, and Miss and Mister Congeniality will wake up one day and discover, as Leo Durocher once said, that nice guys (and women) finish last.
Good sportsmanship is a laudable thing––in sports. In real life, it doesn't always work, especially if the winner can't even avoid being a poor winner. Do not engage in magical thinking and believe that the strutting, lying, bullying, racist, sexist, xenophobic, pussy-grabbing Donald Trump, the guy who thinks it's fun to make fun of the disabled, was just kidding, that he'll turn into a sensible and responsible president. Face facts. He is who he is, and he is a threat to every one of us, from the basis of individual rights to the ability to cause World War III.
Make America Great? Hell, we ARE great. Our unemployment is half what it was when Obama started dealing with it. Tens of millions have health care who did not have it before. We are less dependent on foreign oil than we have been in decades. Home prices are soaring. We have the largest, greatest military in the world. Our recovery from the Great Recession greatly outstrips that of Europe. The rest of the planet envies us.
This isn't Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush, or George W. vs. Gore, or Obama vs. McCain or Romney. This is new and dangerous ground.
Trump is the president, but he is not our emperor (yet). Oppose the tyranny he wants to impose. Work for justice.

I've just finished editing changes to The Devil's Triangle (June 2017, The Permanent Press) and am about to tweak one after that, Annie's Bones (2018). Then, it'll be on to another Willie Black project. Retirement has afford me more writing time than I ever had before, but I still only spend a couple of hours a day actually writing, if that. After 44 years of newspapering, I find that I have to have self-imposed deadlines--a certain time of day to write.  Journalism might not teach you to write well, but it teaches you to write something, and do it in a timely fashion.
The Devil's Triangle is my 15th novel. This stuns me sometimes. When I sat down to try to write a novel in 1989 right before I turned 40, carving out an hour a day from my newspaper job, my dream was to write just one book worth publishing, eventually. Sometimes I sit back and think what my life would be like right now if I hadn't taken that step off the cliff almost 30 years ago and tried to do what I wasn't sure at all was possible.
As with our outgoing president, whom I would miss even if he weren't being succeeded by a demented joke, I am a big  believer in hope.

Many thanks to the lovely and talented Jane Nardone for the poster of the first five Willie Black books, including Grace, which comes out in October. Number six should be out next year. Willie and I are working away.

Poster by Jane Nardone of the five Willie Black books, including Grace (Oct. 2016)

Here's the Kirkus pre-publication review of Grace, which comes out in October. Feeling good about it:

 GRACE, by Howard Owen
Publisher: The Permanent Press $28.00, 246 page hardcover, pub date October 31 ISBN 978-1-57962-434-7 Category: Fiction Classification: Mystery
Proof positive that despite the title of police reporter Willie Black's fourth appearance (The Bottom, 2015, etc.), things can indeed get worse for both the city of Richmond and its daily newspaper. No wonder Belman "Shorty" Cole, the paper's own security guard, is angry enough to come to work with a gun he uses to threaten Willie, temporary publisher Rita Dominick, and whomever else is within shouting and shooting distance. Shorty's 10-year-old nephew, a good kid named Artesian Cole, has gone missing; the police don't seem to care; and his uncle is sure the boy's dead. Soon enough the discovery of Artesian's body proves Shorty to be right, and Police Chief L.D. Jones rouses himself enough to arrest Sam McNish, who ran Children of God, an after-school program that had given Artesian some hope of pulling himself out of the city's East End. The evidence against McNish is pretty much limited to the fact that he was the last person to see the boy alive, supplemented by a steady drip of insinuations about his inappropriate behavior toward his charges dispensed by teacher's aide Stella Barnes, who turns out to be his spiteful ex-girlfriend. Willie's inquiries suggesting that Artesian may be only the latest in a series of disappearances of young black males stretching back 20 years are suddenly eclipsed by the discovery of an even more recent victim, Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-city council member James N. Alderman, whose distinguished career of mentorship for people like Sam McNish ends when he's tortured to death. This second murder clarifies things for Willie, but in ways that don't sit at all well with Rita Dominick, and the race is on between his attempts to gather new evidence and her attempts to shut him down for good. Owen uses his reflective, self-destructive hero to illuminate both the racial problems of his hometown and the ongoing death of the newspaper he loves, even though it doesn't love him back. 

Fascism defined

This excerpt from a piece by Adam Gopnik, writing in The New Yorker, sums up why I'm not willing to accept Donald Trump as a harmless clown:

What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.

Hillary Clinton is an ordinary liberal politician. She has her faults, easily described, often documented—though, for the most part, the worst accusations against her have turned out to be fiction. No reasonable person, no matter how opposed to her politics, can believe for a second that Clinton’s accession to power would be a threat to the Constitution or the continuation of American democracy. No reasonable person can believe that Trump’s accession to power would not be.