August 4, 2014

A Work in Progress

Im grinding away at a novel that's taken me almost a decade to write. Its the true story of my childhood, living in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona.
Why has it taken me so long? Because its too close. Too personal. I have a hard time speaking the truth. I can fictionalize the hell out of the truth, but the real truth scares me.
So, I think I'm being a brave little toaster for actually sitting my butt down and writing it.
Here is a very short excerpt (its a first draft work in progress).


This was not the first money making idea Daddy had come up with. He was forever trying out new business ventures. None of them had been very successful. Most of them involved child labor. The last scheme centered around Nini and I going door to door selling Roach-Be-Gone, a product guaranteed to get rid of any cockroach problems you might have. Paul Harvey endorsed it on his radio show and said that it worked great.
The problem was that it sold for twenty dollars a can and the people who actually had roaches couldn’t afford it and the people who could afford it didn’t have roaches.
Eventually, Daddy set up a booth at the local flea market. He left it unattended one afternoon to use the bathroom and someone had taken the opportunity to steal all of his product. According to Mama, we lost over a thousand dollars that day. That's when Mama told him he had to hang up his entrepreneurial hat and get a real job.

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