Scott Carson's Blog

I’m at 30,000 feet when I get the update, relayed via text message and Wi-Fi, technological wonders that Bob Hammel could not have imagined when he filed stories from Munich, Maui, or Madison Square Garden:

He is ready to go.

I am not surprised. Hammel has been ready, and I know this – have heard it directly – but I’m not ready. If he were across the table during one of a thousand lunches, or in the basement of the Bloomington Herald-Times, where he launched my career, or even in the ICU where he saw me enter the room and threw up into a cup before grinning and saying not to take that response to my arrival personally, he would explain my writer’s dilemma: Get the perspective right. Remove yourself. You’re the storyteller, not the story.

That’s not easy for me when it comes to Bob Hammel.

Another of his lines involved Red Smith, his favorite writer in the sportswriting field in which Hammel was revered: There’s no cheering in the press box.

All those mantras, coming back to me now at altitude, although they were originally offered in that basement office. Show don’t tell. Omit needless words. Hard writing makes easy reading.

Bob Hammel was the hardest-working writer I ever met. That first meeting took place at the urging of Michael Hefron, general manager of the newspaper for which Hammel covered the Olympics and the Rose Bowl, interviewed the likes of Michael Jordan, Ted Williams, and Muhammad Ali, chronicled historic swimming, diving, and track teams, three NCAA men’s basketball championships, and, yes, Bob Knight. That was a more complicated situation than Hammel was ever credited with, and he sought no credit, even when clueless critics used the friendship to diminish his own hard work. He also never returned fire. Those critics are lucky. If he’d been able to take any pleasure in lowering himself into the fray, he’d have incinerated them. He never did.

He applied his highest standards to only himself. That’s challenging, particularly in a business in which passing judgment from a distance is often confused for insight, but Hammel wasn’t that kind of writer or man. He thought deeply, studied with gratitude, mentored with generosity, maintained curiosity. His favorite artists, athletes, and coaches were all of another generation, yet he never patronized the current one, not even at the end. His greatest concerns at that point were for the young and the voiceless, people he feared could be exploited by a “wasn’t it better when…” contingent who understood nothing of Jim Crow or the Marshall Plan, cared nothing about the courage of a Rosa Parks and the hope of a John F. Kennedy, dismissed the genius of a Robert Montgomery Knight.

How dare I conflate so many topics in a single sentence? Because Bob Hammel was a man of nuance. (I promise you they existed, once upon a time.) He had strong opinions but never allowed himself the easy intellectual out. He delighted in debate over his own positions – and changed some of them. Mostly, though, he loved telling stories of other people. Bill Garrett, Indiana’s segregation-breaking basketball star; David Baker, the world-class jazz musician; Bill and Gayle Cook, the entrepreneurs who restored towns when governments couldn’t or wouldn’t; Doc Counsilman, swimming savant; and, of course, Sweet Julie, his wife of 67 years. Readers felt like they knew him. He was a voice in the kitchens and living rooms of thousands. He was gracious to everyone who approached him with comments, although he rarely knew who they were, and indulged their recollections and arguments even though he’d forgotten more about Indiana sports than anyone else ever knew. Actually, that’s both a cliché and incorrect: he never forgot any of it. He corrected me on a game score from 33 years ago in one hospital room conversation, while a blood transfusion settled and monitors beeped at the bedside. I knew he was wrong, but given the circumstances, wasn’t about to debate it. Even Hammel was bound to slip at some point.

Then I went home and checked. A full-court heave had dropped in at the horn, irrelevant to the game but counting in the scorebook. He was right.

Another thing he never forgot: how it could have gone differently for him, a 17-year-old college dropout who found his way to the hometown newspaper in Huntington. Too often, it’s up to the biographer to mention the role of luck and timing in the life of a successful person. I can’t recall a conversation in the last years of Hammel’s life that didn’t detour to the impact of his family, or English teacher (Jennie B. Wilson, who taught him the memorable phrase “gross illiteracies”) or Perry Stewart, Bill Mallory, so many others. He was in awe of his luck and timing.

He was not wrong. He was lucky and timing helped. I owe him that acknowledgment. What he did with that timing, though? That’s hard to put into words. There are the numbers: 17 times he was recognized as the state’s finest sportswriter, five times inducted into a national or international hall of fame, on and on. He didn’t care about statistics. He cared about stories.

Here’s a story: Bob Hammel was a Huntington, Indiana, kid in the 1940’s when his parents invited a Black tenant named Gilbert Carter to stay with them. The experience shaped his politics, which he scrutinized until the end, a relentless student of American history. He despaired over Donald Trump and was exasperated by his own Democratic party but set out to study the Supreme Court rather than settle for complaining. He also despaired over the NIL and open-transfer policy in college athletics, a system that seduces with the dollar and ignores the education, but he rejoiced in a shocking, wonderful 2024 Indiana University football season, and was hopeful for IU basketball under Darian DeVries. The new head coach paid him a visit shortly after his arrival in Bloomington. (I may be the only person who is aware that Coach DeVries made that visit on his 50th birthday. DeVries certainly didn’t mention it. There’s plenty of Bob Hammel’s humility in that choice.)

This meant that Hammel met every IU basketball coach since Everett Dean, whose tenure began in 1924, 101 years ago.

Think about that. Institutional knowledge, redefined. And gone.

Hammel appreciated that DeVries visit but wished he’d asked the coach more questions. A man who spent decades watching a generational icon coach teams that include the nation’s last unbeaten champion wanted nothing more than to pick the brain of the new man on the sideline in Assembly Hall.

Not enough people appreciated how tough he was. Hammel was so kind that you could miss that. He loved sports, yes, but that was only the public surface of a man who quoted Montaigne and Voltaire and had a personal library filled with thousands of books, mostly history. He cherished that library. Having so much knowledge at his fingertips, right in his own home, he told me once, made him a rich man. I can promise you he wasn’t exaggerating his feelings. Last year, he donated that beloved collection to raise money for the Hoosier Hills Food Bank.

His mind was remarkable. The first time I gave him my phone number, he observed that it was easy to remember: you cubed the first digit, then squared two more. As for his work ethic…I’m currently en route to Atlanta, the city where his career ended, and he published six books, including a New York Times-bestseller, after that “retirement.” His last assignment as sports editor was the 1996 Olympics, the fifth Olympics he covered, which is five more than any other reporter from Bloomington had ever covered.

In Munich, in September of 1972, the reporter from the smallest credentialed newspaper at the Olympics got the only exclusive interview with Mark Spitz when seven world records were shattered, seven gold medals won, all while antisemitic terrorists held hostages and patrolled rooftops with rifles. The London Times and LeMonde in Paris were among the newspapers who sent multiple writers, then ran Hammel’s interview because, well, it was the only one.

How did he get it?

He worked harder and cared more. I’ve never known anyone who took more joy in the opportunity to simply do his job. He was so grateful for the work.

Let me also say: he worked smart. He lost his sunglasses early in those Olympics, an absent-minded slip – anyone who knew him will know this was surely true. I once sat with him in a parking space while he complained about the traffic, listening to him gripe that the cars in front weren’t moving, never noticing that they were also empty. While attempting to find the sunglasses in Munich, he realized the security guards would let him pass by to the closed-to-media areas in his quest. He took advantage. The Olympics, Munich, Mark Spitz, seven world records, and one reporter from Bloomington, Indiana, searching for his sunglasses.

How I loved hearing his laugh when he told that story.

Another tale he laughed over: the time he nearly drowned after falling in a fountain outside of an Atlanta hotel at the 2002 NCAA men’s Final Four, the last one Indiana has been to, a championship-game loss to Maryland under Knight’s first successor, Mike Davis. The brush-with-death story was always funnier to Hammel than to me, because it was after nearly drowning that he sent my first novel to an editor who would never have considered it otherwise. Hammel neglected to mention my age. A mere oversight, he pretended.

I was 19. That unsolicited submission gave me a book deal, which sent me to a writing conference in Florida where I met my wife and made life-altering friendships. One writer I met down there was Stephen King, which delighted Hammel, though he’d never read a word of King’s fiction. He admired King’s book On Writing, pleased that King acknowledged Strunk & White, authors of the worn volume Hammel handed me in our first meeting, a guide he considered the pinnacle. Later, afraid his gaps with fiction would hinder his ability to help me, Hammel offered me the King book, which he’d vetted carefully.

“He knows what he’s doing,” he said of the man who was then the world’s best-selling novelist. It seemed like an understatement to me, but didn’t I tell you he cared little for statistics? He was impressed by King’s approach to sentences, how he revised. How hard he worked. Hammel admired talent, but he adored effort. When those intersected – Jordan’s 1984 Olympic performance, say, or the 1976 Hoosiers – he rejoiced.

I’m rambling now. Thinking of thousands of conversations. Of so much red ink spilled from Hammel’s editorial pen on my amateur pages. “It looked like he nicked an artery,” Michael Hefron observed once. He edited even a thank-you note I put on top of those pages. I viewed that as a challenge. I’ve got enough distance now to understand that it was only, and always, generosity.

From the mentorship came the friendship. Of that, I can’t yet begin to articulate my thoughts. Time to log off, the flight attendants tell me. Impossible, because there’s so much more to say. Also appropriate, because there’s a deadline. Nobody ever worked better on a deadline than Bob Hammel.

He is ready to go.

How many times did editors and pressmen wait to hear that line? How many thousands of Indiana families anticipated the result? Bob Hammel gave us the details of the wins and helped us understand the hidden grace in the losses. He was so much more than a sportswriter. He was our storyteller.

We’re descending now. Time to file this one. —30— If you know, you know. Apologies for the cliché, Bob.

No cheers in the press box, no tears on the plane.

He had so many good rules, not always easy to follow.

Michael appeared on Noon Edition LIVE on WFIU & WTIU News from Viewpoint Books: Chapter Two to recommend books. You can see the whole show below, and here are Michael’s suggestions:

THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES by Amy Tan

Her illustrations are gorgeous. The text is gorgeous. I think it’s just a really nice gift book.

THE LAST ONE AT THE WEDDING and HIDDEN PICTURES by Jason Rekulak

Jason’s a wonderful writer. ‘Hidden Pictures,’ make sure to buy that one in hard copy. The pictures, the drawings, are actually very crucial. It’s a nice, spooky read that you kind of dip into, and then three hours go by and you just can’t put it down.

THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED and upcoming EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS by John Green

At next year’s Oct. 24 Bloomington Book Festival, we have John Green coming down from Indianapolis. John is just an incredibly gifted writer. He’s probably best known for his young adult novels that have sold millions of copies ��� ‘The Fault in Our Stars,’ ‘Looking for Alaska,’ ‘Paper Towns.’ Just a brilliant guy.

Author James Alexander Thom

I think it’s important to remember writers who are no longer with us. Back in his day, when he would drop an 800-page historical epic, those were publishing events. He was both a really kind, wonderful person and an incredible writer, so I would urge people to go back and find him.

THE BROTHERS VONNEGUT: SCIENCE AND FICTION IN THE HOUSE OF MAGIC by Ginger Strand

While researching the book that I’m working on under the Scott Carson name, I ended up doing a lot of research about Kurt Vonnegut. I didn’t even realize he had a brother. I found (this book) completely fascinating. So if you’re a Hoosier and into nonfiction, I recommend that one.

THE PLOT and THE SEQUEL: A NOVEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz

It’s a satire of the publishing industry, but it’s also a great mystery. The sequel follows those events, and at one point there’s a murderer who’s thinking about a town where she could disappear. She thinks, ‘What is that little town in Indiana that’s famous for its beautiful architecture?’ I love that reference to Columbus.

Bunnicula series by James and Deborah Howe

Some of my favorite books as a kid. I thought those books were just so funny. I gave them to my niece a few years ago. She loved them. They hold up across time.

WHEN THE NIGHT COMES FALLING: A REQUIEM FOR THE IDAHO STUDENT MURDERS by Howard Blum

If you’re a true crime person, he’s writing very elegantly and well about those terrible murders in Moscow, Idaho.

Author Megan Abbott

People are aware of her now, but the more people read her, they’re going to end up being immediately impressed.

Author Ross Gay

We’re really excited to have Ross Gay involved (with the Bloomington Book Festival.) A wonderful writer, essayist, poet, just a wonderful person.

LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry

In terms of quick, deft character development, nobody ever did it better than Larry McMurtry. I reread ‘Lonesome Dove’ this year, and it is this big, sprawling epic with so many characters, so many points of view. He could come into a scene late, and so quickly you understood the dynamics through dialog and choices. That’s how you hold a reader.

Author John McPhee

He is just a wonderful journalist, and he gets down in the weeds. Everything he does is fascinating.

COMEDY COMEDY COMEDY DRAMA: A MEMOIR by Bob Odenkirk

He had such a bizarre career, starting as a writer for a Saturday Night Live, and then becoming the star of Better Call Saul, doing a lot of different things along the way.

THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe

LIVE FROM NEW YORK: THE COMPLETE, UNCENSORED HISTORY OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller

It’s really quick, it’s funny, but it’s also it shows the drama and tension and the crazy stress of (that show.) And the film adaptation is coming out here shortly, so I’m excited to see that.

“A conversation about earthquakes made me decide it’s time to tell the truth.” That’s both the opening sentence of my novel LOST MAN’S LANE and this ground-stop inspired confession.

A frequent question when one adds a pen name after writing 14 novels is: why? In my case, the answer may surprise: I intend to limit climate disasters.

The literary efforts of Michael Koryta have been subject to varied responses over the years, but the book tours have not been. There is one constant reaction, and it is authored by God and delivered to me by either my publicist or the good people of Delta Airlines.

My book tour is cursed.

I felt prepared for everything it could throw at me, a sentiment I shared confidently with my first editor. We were in an elevator in the Flatiron Building, the old offices of St. Martin’s Press, and my first novel was about to come out when he asked if I was ready to handle a book tour event where nobody showed up. This was, he warned, a scenario the debut novelist needed to consider. I assured him I could take it.

And you know what? I think I could. No-shows aren’t that bad.

One-shows are where they get you.

An event where exactly one person shows up, is, I assure you, decidedly worse than zero. The humiliation grows exponentially when you’re at a wonderful indie store whose delightful employees have not only put out 50 chairs, but also hung an impressive banner featuring your book cover, a banner sized appropriately for an inaugural address. In the face of such failure, there are two goals for the touring author: maintain graciousness, and make a quick exit, although not necessarily in that order.

Following the fifth or sixth intercom announcement of my event that boomed through the store without summoning a second audience member, I attempted to laugh the awkward situation off with my single fan and suggested I would be happy to sign his book and release him to the better things he could be doing with his time.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I still want to hear you read.”

And so I did. My first public reading was given for a solitary man who wore a fedora with a feather in the brim. I anticipated that my humbling had reached its crescendo for the evening, reading for a single person while shoppers carried on all around us, but alas, we weren’t quite to the climax. Upon the end of my reading, and the answering of quite a few questions from the man with the feathered fedora, my audience asked me to sign a galley copy of the book, and then made his way into the night, meaning I had somehow managed to do a reading, a Q&A, and signing without selling a single book.

I’ve heard a lot of tour horror stories over the years, every writer has them, but I’ve yet to encounter anyone else who has put up that particular hat trick.

At the conclusion of the event, the store employees took down the massive banner, rolled it up, and presented it to me as a gift. I could barely fit it into my car. I was still in college at the time, and my roommate absolutely delighted in the story of my night of woe, and promptly claimed the banner for himself. To the best of my knowledge, it is still somewhere in his garage, a trophy of my humiliation so sweet that he simply can’t bear to part with it.

It rained the night of that signing, which didn’t feel symbolic yet, but only because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. The universe had noted Michael Koryta book tours. The rain was merely a warmup. It took me a few years to notice this. While I once barreled through a freshly leveled Illinois town after a tornado, and on another occasion put a rental car into a full 180-degree spin on ice outside of a Hertz booth in Cleveland, I never perceived these events as a personal message. I was younger and duller in those days.

For my sixth novel, I changed publishers. I was at a crime-fiction conference known as Bouchercon when I spotted a lovely young woman listening to our panel discussion with unusually rapt attention. Finally, I thought, I was delivering the vaunted young-reader demographic! It turned out that she’d been paid to be there, and I remain in search of the younger-reader demographic. At the end of the event, she introduced herself and told me that she was with Little, Brown and Company and would be handling publicity for my next book. She was very confident that things would go smoothly. So confident that I didn’t have the heart to warn her.

Fifteen years later, a cursory review of emails from the book tours she handled for me turns up the words “blizzard” “hurricane” “heat record” “flooding” “power outage” and “ground stop.” Gmail is overmatched when I ask it to find references to canceled flights. There are simply too many.

I began to feel badly about accepting invitations to speaking events, knowing what I troubles might deliver to unsuspecting, innocent people. In Paris, there was a heat wave that crushed records. In Perth, Australia, a group of writers who took a boat trip to an island were encouraged to remain on the boat after the discovery of a troubling number of snakes sunning themselves on the shore. In Amsterdam, the signature tulips of the Keukenhof could scarcely be seen through the fog.

“This isn’t normal,” my Dutch publicist told me, and I tried to pretend that I agreed.

Even as the disaster trends that followed me began to gather some attention from others, I persisted in tempting fate. Once, leaving my home in Florida for a media lunch in New York, I decided to leave my laptop behind because I would be there only one night and wouldn’t have time to work. I also opted to brave the Manhattan March weather with only a light silk sport coat. Again, we were talking about only one day.

24 inches of snow fell in New York that day. The media lunch was cancelled – a fact I discovered only after making my trek through the snow in my sport coat, never once thinking that perhaps I should check my phone to ensure that plans remained intact. This was New York, I thought; nothing ever stopped, the city famously never sleeps.

The Michael Koryta book tour, however, had brought it to its knees. There was good news, though: with my flight home obviously cancelled, I had plenty of time to work. A shame I hadn’t packed my laptop.

Gradually, these things became easier to predict. By the time my plane returned to the jet bridge at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix because it was too hot to take off – yes, that is a thing, and I have since learned that it has to do with air density – I was generally sanguine about the developments. Last year, when sent to a writer’s festival in Toronto, I even called my shot, like the Babe Ruth of Disaster, warning both American and Canadian publicity departments that this would be a risky endeavor for them. There was some laughter over this – right up until the first million acres in Quebec and Ontario began to burn in wildfires, and the New York City skyline turned orange. Bear in mind, I was only connecting in New York.

Or at least that was then plan. A series of delays led to a missed connecting flight and left me in an absurdly overpriced yet equally terrible hotel near LaGuardia, awaiting a 6 a.m. departure for my second effort at reaching the festival. The morning flight was also delayed, but at least it took off, which was exciting progress, and it landed of the pilot’s volition, which never fails to delight me. I caught a cab to my hotel, thinking there was just enough time to shower and dress before my reading. This plan likely would have worked had the hotel not canceled my room the previous night when I failed to appear. There would be no shower or change of clothes while they sorted that out. Nothing if not resilient, I was content to take the stage at the outdoor venue in a T-shirt and jeans. And what a stage it was: this was a true concert venue, with speakers that towered like Stonehenge, overlooking a stunning waterfront park. Pearl Jam might have played there. It was perhaps the most beautiful spot I’ve ever had for a reading.

And a challenging one, because while the park was gorgeous, it was also quite active. Families were picnicking, a game of soccer was being played in one corner, and a man beside the stage was busking quite successfully – and loudly. I needed my A Game to grab the audience, and thus I went to a piece that I’d had good luck with previously, a comedic scene involving rock climbing.

Let me just say this of the Toronto effort: I’ll need to read that scene again somewhere else to create tiebreaker in wins and losses. It was the first, and I hope only, time that I’ve ever stopped reading to say: “Is anyone still following me?”

I’m proud to say two hands went up. I also do not think it matters in the least that one of them belonged to the publicist who was paid to be there with me, or that the other belonged to her daughter.

By the time the Canadian festival ran down, I was beginning to feel the fatigue of airport delays, sleepless nights, and abject failure. My flight home was departing at 7, which meant an early car from the hotel, and I was exhausted. I have received various bits of advice about how to handle a book tour over the years. The best I ever heard was: stay hydrated. More questionable was: get an Ambien prescription.

But insomnia has been a problem for me, and I now have an Ambien prescription, one that has generally treated me well while slowly eating my brain from the inside out. On my last night in Toronto, mentally and physically spent, I needed a good night of rest. I took the Ambien and turned the lights off.

Ambien is a rapid-onset drug, but its peak concentration in the blood occurs at around two hours after being ingested. I took mine at 10 p.m. It was almost exactly midnight when the hotel’s alarms blared to life and an employee thundered down the hall, pounding on doors, and shouting “EVACUATE, EVACUATE!”

I woke with the blend of focus, calm, and illusion of absolute alertness that have put Ambien users in tabloid headlines before. Part of this may have been the drug; part of it may have been my sense that, at this point in my travels, the latest development felt perfectly logical, if not inevitable. Of course we were evacuating a hotel in the middle of the night. It was the only progressive complication that remained for the narrative.

I’d already packed my bags for the early flight, and so I got dressed, donned my sport coat, and stepped into the hallway with my backpack on and roller bag in hand to discover a confused crowd in pajamas and bathrobes waiting on the elevators. What they needed, it was clear, was a leader.

With a calm decisiveness I would never be able to match with an unaltered bloodstream, I spoke up and announced that the elevators would not be functioning while the fire alarms were on, so we would need to take the stairs. Somehow, I came across as compelling, because the crowd followed me quite readily. I led my newfound flock directly to the stairwell. I was aware of its location thanks to a childhood of travel with an electrical engineer father, an experience that turned me into one of these people who looks at the maps in hotel rooms to locate the nearest exit. It probably doesn’t reflect well on my family’s hotel preferences that my father always felt a fire escape was worth finding early in your stay, but the habit lingers.

On this night in Toronto, I had no trouble finding the stairs and leading my contingent down them. By now I was feeling both the uniquely confident buzz of the Ambien and the adrenalized euphoria of having followers. I directed my pajama-clad battalion into the parking lot, where we were greeted by numerous fire trucks and police cars. While the emergency responders were going in, the hotel employees were coming out, and one of them turned, looked up, pointed at a high-floor window, and shouted: “there he is.”

Indeed, there was a figure silhouetted in one of the windows. It is perhaps as much a reflection of being an American as anything else that when a few people worried aloud that the man in the window might be someone preparing to jump, I encouraged them to back away in case he had firing angles. My first thought was of Mandalay Bay.

A lesson learned: If you want to reassure a crowd, the phrase “firing angles” is not the best way to go about it. The crew from my floor began to scatter, with three women heading for shelter in the parking garage that made up the bottom floor of the hotel. Someone else said that was a good idea. My response to this man?

“It won’t be a good idea if the building collapses.”

It was around this time that I inexplicably began to lose the support of my followers. Having retreated alone to a place well out of sight, near the water, I decided to text my wife some reassuring words. This is the actual text message I sent to her after explaining the evacuation: “I feel safe – there’s zero guidance but I’ve eliminated firing lines and put myself near the water. I don’t want to get in the water unless I can shake the Ambien. I’m not anticipating anything but a night of lost sleep, but if anything changes and you lose contact with me, reach out to Richard in the morning and take his advice.”

The Richard mentioned is Richard Pine, my literary agent. I hope he feels properly appreciated in knowing that, in the event of my disappearance in another country, I would instruct my wife to contact him first. Who needs police when you have InkWell Management? If ever there were an endorsement of faith in agent, it is contained in that text message. If ever there were an indictment of Ambien, it might be shared in the same words, but, hey, at least I was reluctant to enter the water, although what possible gain might have come from that action eludes me.

My wife, of course, was sound asleep for the whole ordeal, so that message didn’t reach her until 5:30 the next morning, at which point I was already in my Uber, headed to the airport. Reading back through that exchange, I see this one from her: “I think you should do only Zoom events from now on.”

It is probably a benevolent idea, considering that within a week of my visit, Toronto had the worst air quality in the entire world. I feel badly about that. They had no way of knowing what my visit would cost.

When I was back home, the wonderful Canadian publicist who arranged the whole affair e-mailed me to request Uber receipts for reimbursement. I never sent that one in. It seemed like I should pay for something, considering the havoc I’d brought to her fair city. Koryta had taken to the road. The results were predestined.

And yet I love book tours. What to do?

Enter Scott Carson. We’ll see if the universe can be fooled by name alone.

I’m an audiobook lover, and Corey Brill, actor in THE WALKING DEAD among others, did a beautiful job with LOST MAN’S LANE. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun writing a scene than I did with a moment in this book where Marshall Miller sets out to impress his secret crush at the climbing gym where her boyfriend works. When I received my file of the audiobook, this was the scene I wanted to hear, and I applaud Mr. Brill’s work. You can listen to this scene below. It contains no spoilers, but I think it will give you a sense of how much fun I had with the writing.

LOST MAN’S LANE is coming out on March 26, 2024. You can order your copy now!

A conversation about earthquakes made me decide it is time I tell the truth.

Let me explain the lying first. That started in 1999, when I was six- teen years old, and became the coconspirator of a murdered man. I turned forty last summer, staring down the barrel at middle age, and much that once seemed as distant on the horizon as a mirage now feels welcome. Professionally welcome, anyhow. Nobody���s referring to me as the ���next��� anything these days, no more wunderkind talk���though it���s already been a long while since I heard that one. Maybe I���ll miss those predictions someday, but I���m not sure, because the predictions were born of the truth that I refused to tell.

I had my reasons to avoid the truth. Ego was one of them. It was nice to be viewed as a natural talent. When it comes to motivators, though, I don���t think anything trumps fear.

���Vain and afraid��� doesn���t have the same flair as ���talented and hard- working,��� does it? But you could make your peace with it.

What about lying, though? Could you make your peace with that? Probably not.

Is refusing to tell the truth different from lying? Most would tell you it is.

I���m not so sure.

All I know is that when it comes to telling ghost stories, people tend to regard the storyteller as a liar or a fool. Except, of course, for the hard-core believers. In nearly two decades of book tours, I���ve determined that there���s a disconcerting correlation between ghost stories, close talkers, and halitosis. Keep the skepticism close and the Listerine closer before you tell someone a ghost story, I recommended on one television appearance. It���s always easier to make a joke of the experience.

Now I���m going to find out what it���s like on the other side. I���m going to find out what it���s like to be the wild-eyed man with the hushed voice and the hand on your arm to prevent you from turning away, imploring you to listen, please, really listen, because this is how it happened. This is the truth! You believe me, don���t you?

With a ghost story, it���s always easier to turn away than it is to believe. I���ve done all right telling the made-up ones. I���ve published a dozen books, made a living, even had a couple movies made. The people who liked the books hate those movies, but most of the people who watched the movies never read the books, so I guess it���s a wash. The books that sell the best aren���t the novels about ghosts. The bestsellers are the true crime stories. They please the critics, who sometimes use words like ���prescient��� and ���perceptive��� to describe my reporting. They never use those words with the ghost stories, which amuses me on my better nights, and keeps me awake on the bad ones.

I���ve made it this far with my secrets. I could keep going. But here at the proverbial crossroads of midlife���supposing that my body holds off illness and my truck���s tires hold on to the pavement���I���m at that point where you���re supposed to look back. You charge forward in your twenties, you strategize in your thirties, but somewhere in your forties you���re sup- posed to look back. To develop a taste for nostalgia that you didn���t have before, as you realize that you���re going to have plenty of occasions to stare into the past whether you want to or not. Time has a way of forcing that. Sometimes the looking back is sweet and sometimes it���s bitter, but in my experience it is almost always involuntary.

The past calls you, not the other way around.

I can hear it knocking now. Can feel it beside me on the porch on this unseasonably warm spring evening, with that glorious humidity that clings even into darkness, like summer is sealing winter out and taping the seams. We���re bound now for the sun and the heat, the swelter of dog days, and then the first crisp night when a cool wind rustles brittle leaves and reminds you that it was all a circle, dummy, and there���s only one way off this ride, so stop wishing that time would pass faster.

All of this brings my mind back to 1999, as did that conversation with the geologist. He told me there are twenty thousand earthquakes around the globe each year, or fifty-five each day. Think about how common that is. How natural. It got me to thinking about an old crypt, and what lies beneath, and what had better stay buried.

What must stay buried, if what I���ve heard is the truth, and I���m confident that it is. Dead men tell no tales, they say, and they are wrong. Dead men tell plenty of tales.

But they do not tell lies.

LOST MAN’S LANE is coming out on March 26, 2024. You can order your copy now!