Sunday, May 15, 2016


Michael Burlingham, an old college friend, sent me this photo. It's probably from 1973 and I'm working on my first novel, Angel Dust Blues. The desk was a door I found somewhere and propped up on cinder blocks. To my right is part of a manuscript I'm probably revising for the 100th time. Tacked to the wall on my left are taped-together hand-edited scenes awaiting re-typing. Just to the left of the typewriter on the desk is something called The Word Book, which contained 10,000 correctly spelled words for people like me who couldn't, and still can't, spell. The Smith-Corona is long gone, and the author is a bit older, but otherwise, very little has changed.