This thing we call writing, like any calling, might well be defined as a “need” servicing competing interests. Speaking strictly for myself, this means that the act is more than the sum of hours spent over a sticky keyboard; more like a cycle that never ends…like laundry.

My journey began with a basket full of interests and observations thrown together in a heap without a cupboard large enough to house them. Cocktail party chit chat, a glib observation over a newspaper article, or an off the cuff toast to the bride and groom sometimes led to choice comments like “is that yours?” or “that would be funny on T.V.” or most super elegantly “you should write that down.” “Why, thank you,” was the happy reply every time. But where? And how should I put this down?

Maybe I just had to put in a few more years, because the answer came fast and unexpectedly with a gaggle of badly behaved characters and a crumbling funeral parlor to stuff them in. “Write what you know,” the sages whispered. And so I did. The first novel, HEUER LOST AND FOUND, is hardly a memoir: it is a fiction consisting of composites spewing forth all the cocktail chat from ghosts of parties past. The glib comments, the sparkling jewels of language that had no place to go suddenly hung themselves up on this beautiful thing called The Novel. One year later, I did it again with SCOOTER NATION and a year after that with SHELL GAME, POOR UNDERTAKER and THE HEUER EFFECT.

The needs served here are readily identified: at last my thoughts were tidy; at last my thoughts were free. How fast I can get them down; how many people read them; and how many more will take something away with them depends on how fast I can work and how relevant and fresh I can be. No time to worry. There is much laundry to do. Pass the soap.