Audacity
21/06/23 04:02
June 21, 2023 (Vol. 17 No. 27) - In this, my 71st year on the planet, I have reinvented myself - again. Upon graduation from college just before Christmas 1973, I set out on a career as a broadcaster. Over the next decade, I was a disc jockey, ad salesman, reporter, anchor and play-by-play announcer. I eventually reinvented myself as a public relations practitioner, first for a small private college and later in several roles in North Carolina state government. Because I knew that my government job was totally dependent on the man or woman sitting in the governor's office, I reinvented myself again. I earned a master's degree from the University of North Carolina, a move that made it possible to change my career path for a third time and to become a college professor. In addition to being a teacher, I was also researcher with much of my focus on public relations history. That's a role I filled for nearly three decades. Now that I am retired, I have spent much of my time reinventing myself yet again. I have become a writer of historic fiction. I recently published my first attempt in this genre, a novel about a school shooting in an imaginary Missouri town (above). How successful is it? I have no clue. I've only received one quarterly sales report to date, one that doesn't reflect any of my marketing efforts. To be truthful, I didn't write the book to make myself rich. I wrote it because I have great interest in the subject of tragic gun violence. That passion for a subject is the same reason I wrote an earlier book, the history behind the construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952. Now, I am in the long, tedious and often frustrating process of finding a publisher for my second attempt at historic fiction, a story about growing up on Maryland's Eastern Shore during the 1960s. It is not autobiographical. However, it does reflect the times, events and places where I spent my formative years. I admit that trying to become a fiction writer in one's 70's takes a certain audacity. I like my newest novel. But there is absolutely no guarantee that others - especially publishers - will agree. But you don't know until you try. And, if this doesn't work, I have enough audacity left in me to reinvent myself again or, to put it another way, to keep on keeping on. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.