Where is the serious fiction writer to go for source material? Particularly material that is not politically or socially charged and divisive? And then there are the old stand-bys, Love and Death. They need to be reworked, or at least re-examined. The tired suburban demi-myths of Cheever and Franzen no longer hold appeal, and seem to write themselves. Drinking and infidelity, the tiresome themes. They have long since run stale. What of something new, a purer vein of spirit, where people don't hide behind human frailties, but rather face them with honesty. I have been at the lit game for over thirty years now, forging tales with words, meeting editors and writers of all literary persuasions, from New York, to California to London, welcomed at their tables if not in their publications. Thirty years is a long time to get "almost but not quite" rejection letters from editors and agents, until fairly recently, out of a desperate rebel yell into the darkest night, I started independently publishing my own books. At least now, someone, somewhere, long after I am dead, will have access to my words, the only evidence, besides the breath of my wife and stepsons, that I was ever here, or made any mark anywhere.
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