An email from a reader…

“Bill – Well I surely knew this book would be no Nicholas Sparks romance, and it wasn’t. 

I had to bail on the book early in, although you should not be discouraged about that.  It was the raw intensity of your work that was simply too powerful for me.

It’s a time in my life when I’m a bit vulnerable and going through some personal battles of my own.”

I think a writer’s job is to connect with his readers, to evoke emotion. According to this guy, I did my job.

#writing @amwriting #huffpost

Standing in line at the grocery store. A young woman with three young kids, panicking because she was $5 short buying groceries. It looked like food for her kids, not cigarettes and booze and movie tickets and the things  Senator Grassley thinks poor people spend money on – frivolously…

I gave her $10, she cried and thanked me.

I don’t know why she was crying. The Dow just hit 25,000.

I’m talking to these guys last week, bringing home $350 a week, drowning in credit card debt. 10-year-old car with bad brakes, no health insurance, hungry kids, and misery.

Damn near standing and saluting. Damn near worship, saying “yes sir, Mr. President.”

For the record, I’ll worship no man. Not today, not any day.

Like Brother Marvin said, “Make me wanna holler, way you do my life…”

Sitting across from you, that smile.

How does someone fill a hospital room beyond capacity, every day? Standing room only.

People moving out of the way to allow passage near your chair, where you hold court.

Some of us are simply your jesters. Joking, trying to keep it light while inside we all crash to the ground.

You are a magnet. You’ve always been a magnet. Continue reading Its all good, bro →

I think we should stop arresting people for drunk driving. People are going to drive drunk anyway, what’s the point in trying to regulate it.

And pedophiles, what is the big deal with pedophiles. A guy wants to look at a little kiddy-porn, Fuck a couple of nine-year-olds and everybody loses their minds.

Cancer, why fight cancer? Doctors and researchers have been fighting cancer forever. People are still going dying from cancer.

Heroin? Heroin has been around for thousands of years, what’s the big deal. Some people die, what’s the big fucking deal? People die crossing the street every day too but we don’t ban buses. Heroin doesn’t kill people, people with rigs hanging from their veins kill people.

Like Bill O’Reilly said, This is just the cost of being free.

At some point in the past decade, we completely gave up.

What has become the norm in America, what is become acceptable in America, makes me want to fucking puke

I had no idea at the outset of this writing experiment the level of help and support I would need. I was 3/4 of the way through writing my first book when I felt the chilling reality – What do I do with this mess?

People have no idea that the book publishing industry is so flooded with snake oil salesmen, flat out crooks and general creeps. It makes Washington DC look like a boy scout jamboree and  a Mensa meeting.

You could spend your life savings and get nothing but empty promises and dead ends.

I have been fortunate beyond words to have stumbled – literally lost and stupid – onto some really great people. If you ever venture into the swamp I’d recommend you reach out to these guys.

Continue reading It does take a village to make me seem less a jerk →

I never saw the movie, not once. Didn’t need to see a movie about it.

I love the sport, always have. Always will.

I had no interest in watching a movie about the sport. There have been so many movies about it. Not one ever showed me any understanding of “it”.

It used to be huge. Everything was huge. She didn’t have a party, she had events. Summer parties for a hundred of her closest friends and food and drinks for two hundred. If you were her friend you were a close friend.

The circle was huge.

There were no simple acquaintances.

Ringing the cow bell from the car, for every mile of a 200 mile bike race. And laughing. Laughing and ringing that bell for 14 hours. Every time she saw me she’d yell, “you got this bro…” Every time. Continue reading It used to be huge →

My baby girl and her girls and her husband, my sister, friends of family. Friends… people I have never met, but I speak with almost daily. All Floridians, from Miami to FloBama.

I just got a message from my sister. It was chilling. She’s in the south, close to Miami. Store shelves empty since Tuesday, no gas, roads jammed and stopped.

I hope I see my sister again. I hope I hear from her soon. Continue reading Hurricane Irma – Florida →

Nuclear war, any day, for several reasons.

I’ve been reading about the interconnected complexities of the world economy that rest on the shoulders of these two idiots, Trump and Kim.

China, South Korea, Russia all have a take, a position, a stake in this game. Putin – go ahead and hate him, I do, but at least he takes some time to examine the situation, not simply run his mouth – says the situation may be unsolvable. His economy in the north is very closely tied to North Korea. Continue reading Hot fiery nuclear death, not what I had planned at this stage in life. I was hoping to open a bicycle shop… →