I’m told this week is for introductions, and my day to postis Monday, so here goes:
Hi, my name is Mike. I’ve been a writer for 32 years. Wow,that sounds like I’m at an AA meeting, doesn’t it? I suppose it’s appropriate—writingis a tricky addiction. It gets into yourveins and even when you don’t want to do it, when every word makes you shakeand sweat and want to rocket out of your chair to scrub the bathroom floor—whichdoesn’t need it—you keep going because you need that high of the perfectsentence, the beautiful paragraph, the well-crafted chapter close. Or maybethat’s just me.
Here’s the weird thing about writing an introduction formyself: it’s unnatural. If I wanted to write about myself, I would have writtena memoir, not a novel. I’d rather hide behind the cloak of fiction, to embedpieces of myself in my characters—in Alex, Darla, and even Target—but not totake responsibility for denuding myself to an audience of thousands.
I even resisted writing the flap copy for the back of mydebut novel, ASHFALL. When I finally forced myself to task, I evadedresponsibility by writing the silliest bio Icould. My publicist insisted that we needed a more serious biography, soI tried again. That still didn’t satisfy her, so I wrote thisstaid version. Luckily, I was able to convince my publisher to use thesilly bio on the book.
So that’s me. My name is Mike. I don’t like writing aboutmyself. And I wrote a novel called ASHFALL. It’s out now. Buy a copy so I cankeep writing, would ya? Because I need another fix.
p.s. If you want to know more, ask in the comments. Or letme know what you’d like me to write about on this blog. I’d appreciate thehelp. Because I have no clue how I’m going to come up with 35 more posts thisyear.
