I wrote a PI novel once, only instead of
private investigator, PI stood for post-
inaccrochable. What you write when you can't
sell what you write. It was more postmodern than
Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. What was it called?
BLACK HARVEST. A play on Dashiell Hammett's
Red Harvest. I liked it. I serialized it in my column in
Old Sparky as I wrote it. "Balmy Breezes."
I don't know what the correctional officers
at the prison thought. I had a bad guy
burn down my shed with my life's-work in it.
And my trailer. I was retired. I lived on social security.
This gave me time to drive around and have wild, screaming sex
with bored housewives. Nye Willden discovered Stephen King.
Charles Bukowski used to write sex stories for men's magazines.
I'd buy the magazines to read the fiction, jack off to the pictures,
and throw the magazines away, so my wife didn't find them.
My husband's secret life. He thinks he is a paperback writer.
He thinks he is Erskine Caldwell. "A man walked into a restaurant,
through the front door, and ate all he wanted to eat."
Just write good stories.