My promise to the Reader:
1. I promise to be clear, honest, and concise.
2. I will write with a sense of humor, even the piece is frightening, scary, or strident. On second thought, I’ll throw in some jokes then, too.
3. I will write with a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, and sense of the phantasmagorical if at all possible, and sometimes, even when it’s not.
4. My influences include The Three Rays: Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, and Ray Bradbury. They also include novelists like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Garcia Marquez; screenwriters like Bill Goldman, Kevin Jarre, and the Coen Brothers; and even advertising copywriters like Michael Masterson, and Bob Bly. They’ve all been great teachers. 5. My Journalism School training taught me the value of What Makes a Story, Dog Bite Man… No Story. Man Bites Dog… now THERE’S a STORY.
6. I will not limit myself to one way of telling a story. If a new story demands I fresh approach, I will do what I need to tell that story in a new way.
7. I promise to use a diversity of voices to tell these stories. I will create multicultural cast of characters, especially in a my Western stories.
8. I write Fiction… including Mysteries, Science Fiction, Westerns, and Literary Fiction. I write Web Content and Blog Posts. I write Direct Market Ad Copy, Reviews, Comedy Material, Memoir, and Personal Essays. And I will write whatever else the Universe sends my way.
9. I will write some of the above… Web Content, Blog Posts, Ad Copy, Reviews, Comedy Material… for money. I’ll write the rest of it… Fiction, Screenplays, My Comedy Material, Memoir and Personal Essays… for love and fun. If any of those works start paying off, bonus!
10. I promise listen to my readers, to hear what moves or doesn’t move them in my writing.
11. I promise to help newer writers if I can, to encourage them to keep on writing, or to offer a few tricks of the trade
12. Finally, I promise to Keep On Writing.
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