Capers With Carroll

(This will make more sense by beginning with Part 1.)

At this point in the story, the 40 year clock on writing my novel hadn’t even started ticking. I wasn’t even a writer. When Caryl Chessman made the cover of TIME, I’d probably only been a serious reader for about two years. However, I was devouring biographies, TIME magazine, and grown-up fiction in The Saturday Evening Post.

In a sixth grade class production, I experienced that magical moment of seeing my name in print over something I’d written. It hooked me. I was a writer. My father offered me a deal: If I would teach myself to type over the summer vacation, he would let me take creative writing as my elective in 7th Grade. From that class, I gained my chilhood best friend/critique partner. In 8th grade, I held a check in my hands, eight dollars for a short story sold to Three/Four, a Methodist Sunday School handout. Writing for the junior high newspaper, I finagled an interview with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, then a candidate for President. By twenty, I would certainly have a Pulitzer, by twenty-five, perhaps my Nobel.

Somehow, though, in place of the Pulitzer, I had to settle for second place in the short story contest of a national teen magazine.

Then, about 1966 or 1967, I read the books by Caryl Chessman, all three of them.

Today’s milestone: David Anthony Durham, chairman of my thesis committee, emailed to say he had received the first 212 pages of my novel, and will begin working on it. David was new this semester to the CSU Fresno faculty, so I wasn’t able to take any of my coursework with him, but I am excited about working with him one-on-one. His new novel, Acacia, his first effort in fantasy, has won numerous year-end-recognitions. As time allows, I’ve been enjoying his previous book, Pride of Carthage, about Hannibal.

Go to Part 3.