Taking the Road
Welcome to The Speakeasy.
The gravel shoulder is jagged underfoot. The hole in your right shoe lets sharp stones bite down hard on the ball of your foot as you step. You shift your weight and it helps, but not too damned much.
This lonely highway winds through the Shield, through sumac and pine and gnarled, windblown maple. There hasn’t been a car down this road for hours and your legs are tired. But you can’t stop yet.
You have to get to the Sunrise Motel on the outskirts of Forge by sundown. After night fall, when the wolves wake up to hunt, it won’t be quite so lonely anymore.
That's what it feels like sometimes. Writing toward something you can't quite see yet, one foot in front of the other, hoping you’re on the right road. Hoping you make it before dark.
Forge City Noir. It’s a milestone, not my final destination. It’s live now. It took a while and a lot of hard work to get here, but I’m pleased with the result. I tweaked the background and a few other things.
This is my first piece for The Speakeasy, a private booth in the basement of Worthy’s Tavern where I can talk to you directly, and given it’s a couple days past launch, I thought it was time to make an appearance, introduce myself.
You know my name, but at this point that’s all you know. Relax. I’m not going to bore you with 1,500 words about how I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since Grade Four when my first story amazed all my classmates, or about how I fell in love with crime fiction after discovering Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective. You’ll learn all that over time, if I choose to share it with you.
The Speakeasy is where I can write as myself about this long journey, not as Burback or any of the motley crew of cops and robbers that scheme and scurry around Forge. It’s my voice, writing to you about the things that go into being a writer, and growing it into a second career. Taking the road, if you will.
(Writing isn’t my full time gig. Not yet. Yours truly has a day job that eats up a chunk of my day, but maybe one day this thing I’m building can carry me into retirement.)
If you’re a writer you already have a sense of what it takes—solitude, silence, and determination. But every writer’s journey is unique and maybe you’ll find something that resonates with you. Perhaps you’ll find something that eases that solitude just a little.
If you’re a fan of crime fiction, it’s my deep hope and desire that these stories of mine will, at the very least, provide a happy escape from the bank queue, the crowded waiting area at your airport gate, from the tedium of waiting in the laundromat for the end of the wash cycle.
But it’s more than story telling. There’s a vision behind all these words that extends beyond mere entertainment, and the real work is finding a way to translate the vision on the story board in my head into the silver screen in yours. The Speakeasy is where I can share my frustration and victory.
So I hope you stick around. Invite your friends. I’ve got enough stout and whisky for everyone.
Kev
Nice to meet you, officially, Kevin!! Love these vibes