Welcome!

Thanks for finding your way to my new website, and a great thanks to Doug Simms for creating it with great care and doing such a beautiful job. Thank you, also, for reading this, my very first blog post ever.

My name for this blog, Blue Ink on Yellow Paper, is meant to be ironic, I suppose. After all, one doesn’t write a blog post by hand with pen and paper, but while writing is an intellectual undertaking, beginning in the mind, it is to some degree a visceral act. You have to put down words through the ends of your fingers in some shape, form, or fashion so that ideas are recorded, brought into existence. Maybe the name of this blog helps to underscore that notion. Also, I’m one of those writers who does still write by hand-not everything, but always when I write fiction. And yes, I use a blue, medium-point ink pen and yellow, college-ruled paper. Without these I don’t know if I could write fiction. I figure there are still other writers out there like me, and if I’m part of a dying breed, well, that’s okay with me. Just so you know, I do type my handwritten drafts into a Word file, and by the time I type the last word, I have a second, and hopefully stronger, draft.

What I propose to do with this blog is write about books I’m reading, whether they’re classic works by famous writers or brand-new works by writer friends. (And after writing for more than 30 years, I have a lot of writer friends.) I may also have a few thoughts now and then about the current state of the literary world, including the literary world of Alabama, of which I’m proud to call myself a member.

So check back in with me from time to time, see what’s on my mind. Or maybe there’s a better way to say that. The southern comedian Brother Dave Gardner once said, “What you got on, your mind?” So check back, see if my mind’s on.