Category: Robert McCammon update

Hello, all. I was contemplating calling this “My Silence”, because it’s true I’ve been silent for a long while, and it’s time to break that silence. Which I’m doing now. With this little missive, which is titled “I Travel By Night”.

Confused yet? Hang on, it gets better.

I recently finished a novella for Subterranean Press titled I TRAVEL BY NIGHT, which I think will be out next May or so. It’s set in the 1880s and is about a gunslinger/vampire/adventurer who seeks to reverse his state of vampirism and rejoin the human race. How he can do this is—at least in my mythology—to drink the “ichor” from the vampire who “turned” him. This creature being a beautiful woman called LaRouge, and protected by the Dark Society of vampires and shapeshifters who populate the underworld around her. A difficult task for my hero…and maybe an impossible one, at this stage of his search. So we’ll see where his story may go from this hard-fought and darkly-tainted tale.

The truth is, I do travel by night.

I believe most already know I do my writing at night, starting around ten o’clock or so and going until I’m “done” for the night, or for the early morning for that matter. Why is this? I’ve always had a fascination with the night. As a kid I listened to radio (dating myself here) late until the small hours, hearing the distant voices slip in and out as I roamed the airwaves. Later, I got airline schedules from the Birmingham airport and when the night flights passed over my house I could tell where they were going. Funny…there were more night flights then than there are now. Something has slipped…has regressed…and I’m not quite sure what it is.

But the night remains constant. A comfortable darkness, for me. A satisfying solitude. A time when I can travel, unfettered by daylight and the cares of  the daytime world, into whatever world I choose to create. The night, for me, has always been about creation. Or exploration, going inward across a land best  travelled by night, because the silence has always called me to go seeking what I do not yet know I am searching for.

I have had a difficult year. More than that, I can’t say. I will say, in passing, that the life of a writer can be harrowing. It demands. It does not rest. It burns very hot, and that fire can easily destroy as well as create.

I will quote here a line I found that may be of interest. It’s from the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. And it is: “What gives light must endure burning”.

And another, also from Viktor Frankl: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.

Both of those quotes have great relevance and meaning to me. I have always had great hope that my work would “give light”, but producing it—keeping it whole and true—has burned me, and continues to burn. And the second quote…there are many situations in my life I cannot change, and thus I am challenged to change myself. I hope I can rise to this challenge, because it’s a vitally important one.

Now…the kinda confusing part…

I started work on my big science-fiction horror novel and decided I wasn’t ready to do it justice. So I put it aside to work on I TRAVEL BY NIGHT. Then I needed an “up”, and for me Matthew always does that. He brings me great joy, and I have such a good time living in that world and playing with the language. Okay. So I did about fifty pages of the next Matthew when the science-fiction horror novel began to call to me again, and this fits into my schedule of doing a “Matthew book” and then a “contemporary novel”. So I am back working steadily on that, which means there may be a little while before the next Matthew book sees the light of day.

And yet…

I have an idea that may allow me to finish both books by next summer. I’m not promising, and the next Matthew book may not be what you expect, but still…Matthew may make an appearance next summer, but it would still be another year before that one is published.

I will tell you the truth, guys. The New York publishing world has little use for Matthew. They see that I am a “horror writer”—and kind of a “has been” at that—and Matthew is not “horror” but some kind of  boring “historical piece”, so what do I think I’m doing?

Well…I think I’m aiming at a target that no one can see but me. I trust myself. I will hit that target in the space of ten books, and you can count on it.

Getting back with a New York-based publisher means cultivating a wider audience. This is very important for any writer’s future. I have a loyal and steady audience, it’s true, but my contemporary work is more appealing to “New York” than the Matthew series, so this is why I really do need to alternate Matthew with the contemporary books. Those books have the greatest chance of getting promoted, reviewed and noticed, and put into bookstores…whereas Matthew, for all his charm and worth and manners, is not welcome in very many Barnes & Nobles. One might say the era of the brick-and-mortar bookstore is  coming to an end, but my work must be on the shelves of as many bookstores as possible, or I will find myself laboring at a “hobby” instead of having a “career”.

It is true, I have many more Matthew books ahead of me. It is equally true I have many more ideas for contemporary novels. I must alternate them in this way, as my best chance for success…and, actually, the wider reach of the contemporary novels will hopefully bring more Matthew readers into the fold. So it can be a win-win situation if I stick to my schedule.

Anyway…I am not only travelling by night, I feel I am babbling by night.

I will ask you, my readers, to do one important thing that many publishers do not do for their talent, and this oversight winds up with a lot of broken dreams and unrealized ambitions.

Trust me.

This is the greatest gift you can give me. Trust me, that I am doing the right thing both for the growth of my career and the future of Matthew Corbett. I am going to work very hard.

You know I am. I always have. Trust me, that I will hit the target only I can yet see…and you will see it happen too, in time. And this I promise you…it will be amazing.

About the new science-fiction horror novel…a worldwide scale, a big cast of characters, a lot of action and some creepy stuff…actually, much creepy stuff. But this is an idea I’ve had brewing for some time, and now it’s ready to be born. I am ready to travel by night, into this wild, frightening and challenging realm.

Matthew has to wait awhile. And gentleman that he is, I think he would take a seat at the Trot Then Gallop, play chess with Effrem and drink with Hudson, ponder Professor Fell’s whereabouts in the world and pine for Berry, and then say to his creator, “Sir…I trust you, too.”

What more can I ask?

Matthew’s candle is burning on his table, there at the Trot.

Never fear.

It won’t burn out. And it will continue to give a very warm and merry light.

Thank you for your patience and for your listening ear.

All best to everyone,

Robert McCammon 

Hello everyone. Thank you for checking in on my website and Facebook, and of course for reading my books and supporting my work.

Supporting “my calling”, I ought to say, and I’d like to talk a little bit about that today and what it means.

As most of you may know, I did “retire” a few years back. I thought I was done. This was not really my decision, but a set of circumstances that led me to the conclusion that I was finished as a writer and there was no point in going forward. At that time, I figured I would just kinda coast and find out what else life had in store for me.

Well…it happened through another set of circumstances that I was “called” back. Yes, really. I heard that calling very clearly. Things happened that brought me back into the field of writing. I am not the same as I was and certainly not in the same place I was. It’s interesting to me that after ten years of being “back” many people who read my earlier work have no idea I am back writing. If they find out, it’s usually a big surprise to them. But I am working, and working very hard, and I believe my best book is still ahead of me.

I have always been very blessed to be able to “see” something in my head and write it down as I see it. I have been blessed to be able to put stories together, create people, and essentially build worlds that did not exist before. The creative process to me is still amazing. It’s mystic, really. A mystic journey into the unknown. I still don’t understand it, but I surely do appreciate it.

I am asked—as most writers are—where I get my ideas. There is no one answer to that. I just know I am “open”. Only recently I got a story idea from an old photograph in a book. The wheels started turning. As will happen, my mind will work this idea like a Rubik’s Cube over the next year or so, while I’m working on another book. There will be a place in my head where this book idea will be “tested” for strengths and flaws, and slowly but surely I’ll decide if it’s a viable subject and if I will remain interested enough in it for the seven to nine months it takes to get the story written. This is how it happens. An overheard comment…a photograph…a dream…a news story…a wish or a fear: the book may be born from all those, and more.

An important thing, this is…I want to be able to write what I feel I want to read, but I can never read it unless I write it. It of course has to hold my interest over a long period of time. It has to have a depth that fascinates me and keeps me going. I have said it’s like a painting that comes to life, revealing all sorts of  colors and layers that you didn’t know were going to be there where you made the first brushstroke.

It’s a long journey, to be sure. Each book has a different personality. Each has its own problems to be solved and offers its own rewards. I’ve worked on books that posed tremendous problems of timing, in that characters had to “be” in a certain place at a certain time. I’ve worked on books that worked on me in my sleep, causing me to try to solve their problems in dreams. I’ve worked on books where characters resisted the actions I wanted them to perform, and seemed to “correct” me or take off on their own.

Oh yeah…the characters. I’m working on something now where I’d planned the lead character to die in what would have been—hopefully—a very  wrenching scene. Well, this bad boy says “No way, Mac! After what you put me through, I ain’t goin’ out!” So there you go…he refuses to be killed as a reward for his bravery, and so he will live to fight another day.

As I say, it’s a mystic journey. I don’t work from an outline, so sometimes I am very surprised as to how things develop. I think the work is more difficult and slower because I don’t use an outline and haven’t solved all the problems beforehand, but to me the work stays fresh this way and I always am excited to come back to it.

Someone asked me if I ever get “stuck”. No, I don’t. Here’s my secret: when I finish writing for the day, before I get up from my desk I always type one letter for the next line. The letter is random. D…H…K…B…whatever. So when I come back to work, I begin the next sentence with that letter. Might not work for everyone, but it does work for me.

My calling. I’ve often thought what else I might have done or been in this life. I always come up thinking that, for better or for worse, I am exactly where I need to be. I don’t think I chose writing as a career, I think it chose me. Does that sound strange or pretentious? I was writing short stories in the first grade. I was “seeing” things that I wanted to express and describe at a very early age. My calling. It called me, even when I thought I was done. Especially when I thought I was done. It reached out for me and brought me back.

Now, it didn’t and does not and never will promise an easy road. I will tell you that this is one of the most difficult callings a person can have.  Imagine…you have a story to tell and you must tell it, you have characters to birth and worlds to create and you must—you must—do this to be true to the fire that illuminates you…yet you must do this alone. No one can help you define and refine these visions. You must be apart from other people, for such a long time. It is a very lonely calling. No one can do this for you. The mystic journey cannot be shared by anyone else.

It is a solitary trip, with an uncertain destination…because how can you be sure when this book is finished that any publisher will want it or anyone will want to read it?

But if it’s your calling, you have to take the risk. As a matter of fact, your entire life becomes a risk. How long do you devote to a project, if it’s not immediately coming to life? Is the breakthrough on the next page? In the next chapter? Would you be better off working on something else? But…if you give up…are you a failure? Or are you a failure if you keep on working at some creature that you thought would come to divine life only to find that it is a half-life, an artificial life, a forced life…and you should have known a hundred pages ago to let the creature sleep?

Risk and rewards. Or risk and no rewards. But always risk.

The book must be my Paradise. It must be a place I want to visit and revisit, and live in for not only seven to nine months but for the rest of my life…because it’s going to have my name on it. It may have gone through many hands…some tender and caring, some dumb and rough…but in the end, it always has my name on it and so I take responsibility for every word and every thought.

There are not very many other professions where one person signs their name to the work. One person. Opening yourself up to whatever may come to praise you or to bury you. So toughness is also part of this journey. That, and understanding you will never be perfect. You will never write the perfect book, the book that has no error (or typo!). But still, even knowing that…you do have to try.

And that I guess is the heart of my calling. The eternal effort. The trying and trying, as much as someone might try many keys on a difficult lock to open the door to a room that entices and beckons yet promises nothing. What is beyond that door? I don’t know…but I have to find out.

The eternal effort and the curiosity. The risk, the toughness, the work that can only be done alone. The feeling that no book can ever be perfect, yet the next one might be. The drive that says if you wish to read this, you must write it…because no one in the world, no one who has ever existed or ever will exist again, can create it in the same way that you will.

So I embrace my calling. I embrace all of it, the highs and the lows…the past, the present and the future. I am, as with every other writer, part of the heart and soul of the world of creation. We are the night workers, the daytime dreamers, the fighters in the trenches for so many things that lie on the edge of being lost. Our calling is huge, vital and important. Without the voice of the writer, who could sing? Who would speak for those who often can’t? And who would dream for those who have lost faith in dreams, in our troubled and very uncertain age?

I embrace my calling. And though it does not and never has promised an easy road on this mystic journey, I am sure without a doubt that it embraces me.

Thank you for being here, and thank you so much for reading my work.

 

Best Wishes,

Robert McCammon

It is a grim, gusty and rainy day here.

I’m writing this as we near one week since the devastating tornadoes and storms ripped through my home town and my home state.

I wanted everyone to know how much I appreciate your well-wishes and voices of concern. I was out of town when this happened. My family is fine. My home is fine. Everyone I know made it through. But I wanted to post some pictures and talk a little bit about what I’ve seen, what I’ve felt, and what I think.

My God. Why?

Like you, I saw the destruction from a distance. I saw it in the news media. The worst of the storms hit at least an hour away from where I live. Tuscaloosa, of course, was mangled beyond recognition. Other small communities, like Pratt City, have been nearly removed from the map altogether. But when I got home on Saturday night aroung 10:30, I undeniably felt the silence of the shock. It was an eerie feeling that even a horror writer cannot describe. It was the edge of something. It was the end of something. It was awesomely and horribly final.

I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and found huge logs piled up. I found crushed cars, as you can see in the photographs. Evidently fifteen or so massive trees went down, and many cars were demolished. My place is absolutely fine, no wind damage at all. And this is the weirdest part, and the random nature of destruction: I left two cigar butts in an ashtray on my balcony, and in all this maelstrom from Hell and the falling of trees those cigar butts did not move one inch.

This morning I took my camera and went out. I could have taken hundreds of pictures like the ones I’ve posted. These were taken in the parking lot of my complex and within two miles of where I live. Old trees were uprooted and the root systems eight and nine feet tall. Roofs were shattered. Cars slammed down so hard their tires exploded. Tangles of power lines fell to the earth, and had to be reeled out of the way so people could get to these communities to help…and let me tell you, guys, that if you don’t believe in miracles you need to wake up because the death count was way low from what it might have been and should have been in all this destruction.

Interesting picture from a local church. “Was God In The Storm?”

I will not begin to set myself up as someone who could answer that question. All I know is, for all this suffering and death and broken hearts and broken bodies…people are still moving forward with hope, even in the silence of the shock.

As I understand it, people staggered into local hospitals carrying dead children, and with their own arms and legs broken. People are still missing. The atmosphere has changed. Cell phones are not working correctly…the signals are erratic, and the voices float in and out as if you’re speaking to someone underwater. In an instant, lives were forever changed and destinies altered. And remember…I am an hour away from the main scenes of horrific carnage and absolute destruction, where entire blocks…and neighborhoods, really…were scooped from the earth and scattered before the storms.

Last night I lay in bed and listened to the wind. A soft breeze, then. In it I could distantly hear a siren. I wondered if someone’s heart had not finally taken too much, and stopped beating in the silence of the shock.

I understand also that many, many household pets are missing. Just gone. And many pets wander the streets searching for houses and masters that are no longer there.

Please pray for the people of my home town and my home state. We are suffering here, in so many ways. But in so many ways also we have come together and are starting to dig out of this. Things are forever changed, yes…but people move forward because there is no going back.

I will remember this for the rest of my life. This, again, is beyond the ability of a horror writer to describe. There are no words for this. There is no way to adequately express this, even between people who have seen their homes destroyed and their children and loved ones taken from them in an instant.

There are no words.

There is only silence.

God bless you for your help.

Rick.

(Click on the images to view larger versions.)

Back from my Christmas trip to Cozumel, Mexico. Guys, I can’t say enough about this place. It was fantastic. I stayed at a resort called the Fiestamericana…yes, I know it ought to be the “Fiesta Americana”, but it’s the way it is. Anyway, it’s a great resort with fabulous people. I told the manager that I thought the biggest plus about the resort was that the employees had the gift of making guests feel like family…and it was so true. So if you have a vacation coming up or you just need to get to a place that’s sunny, where the sea is beautifully blue and clear and the atmosphere just as sparkling, then the Fiestamericana at Cozumel is your place. Believe it!

I wanted to check in with the arrival of the New Year. But first…I can’t resist talking about Cozumel just a little bit more. You know, I want to thank everyone for the greetings and well-wishes. I was by no means “fishing” for sympathy in my tale of the unkilled cat. I was simply stating in a straightforward manner the trials and tribulations I’ve been facing if not in the past several weeks then in the last few months. But I do appreciate the comments and well-wishes.

Having said that, I’m here to say that I do feel great after my trip. I got along fine on my “wounded” ankle. It got a little stronger every day. As a matter of fact, one day I took a cab from the resort to downtown in search of some Cuban cigars and decided to walk back (after I got a small tattoo on my chest…henna, not permanent, but thinking along those lines). Well, I walked away from midtown through neighborhoods and local shopping areas, and all of it along the oceanfront. It was warm, the sun was high, a soft breeze was blowing, the sky and sea were awesome shades of blue…ahhhhh! I went into a local department store and scoped the place out. I investigated an area of nice houses going up that evidently had been abandoned for lack of money, but it was an interesting excursion anyway. I went into the terminal at the dock where the cruise ships come in. I walked and walked. Until at last I had walked seven miles, and I was standing in a pasture scratching behind the ears of a solitary horse. It showed its pleasure by thumping its hoof on the ground…whichever ear was being scratched, that was the hoof that beat out a little counting rhythm that I found very charming.

I went snorkeling, I went on a sunset cruise, I swam and swam, I had a fabulous seafood feast, I did karaoke for the first time in my life (and did better than I thought I would because I sang with a guy named Joe Bargo from Kansas City who actually is in a jazz band and can carry a good tune), I drank liters of Coke Zero and smoked Cuban cigars by the pool, I partook of a fantastic tequila bar where there were about thirty different bottles of variously-flavored tequila, I drank my favorite Johnny Walker Red, I met all sorts of people from everywhere, I laid out on the beach, I watched the moon set and the sun rise and then the sun set and the moon rise, I went on a submarine a hundred and ten feet down to the edge of The Shelf, I rode on horseback through the jungle, I heard a GREAT band do their Steppenwolf set, I ate cactus and enjoyed it, and I have vowed to return to that place in April after I finish The Providence Rider.

So, yes…I did have a good time.

And the New Year approaches, and may be here before what I’m writing is on my website. I am looking forward with great anticipation to 2011. Aren’t you? I mean, really… 2010 was a tough year. A year of change, not all of it wanted and not all of it good. A year of bracing yourself. A year of taking it on the chin. Or sometimes getting kicked in a lower area, and having to grin and bear it so nobody knows the pain you’re feeling.

Yeah, that kind of year.

But that kind of year, it seems to me, has its value. It teaches you discipline and toughness. It teaches you to depend on yourself. To know you can handle whatever happens… because you have to. And to handle with grace and style the difficult things, the things that a few years ago might have put you down for the count.

Nossir. I ain’t goin’ nowhere now. I’m here to stay, so go ring the bells and tell ’em, the best is yet to be.

And it is, guys. I have some tremendous projects ahead. Much more Matthew to come, and many more surprises. Some things, I think, that will even surprise me. And one project in particular I wish I could tell you about, but it will happen when it happens…and when it does happen…and it will…wow.

So hang in with me. Enjoy this ride into the future we all are on. Trust me to guide you. I will take you to some wonderful places, and introduce you to some amazing characters. There’s a lot ahead for all of us, and I can’t wait to get started on that journey from here to there.

Ring the bells, my friends. Ring the bells and tell ’em.

I’m here to stay, and the best is…

Yeah. It’s comin’.

Happy New Year to all, and thank you for believing in me.

Best Wishes,
Robert McCammon

I have come to relate a strange tale, as is my wont and my talent in this life. Many things around us are not to be understood. We just can’t grasp them. Maybe on the other side of the dark glass we will, but in this realm…forgettaboutit!

My tale involves the night I was driving at fifty miles an hour, the legal speed limit, along a major highway here in Birmingham. Everything was just peachy! Driving along, listening to The Clash on my CD player, looking forward to dinner…peachy. Suddenly I see a police car sitting in the median ahead. No problem, I’m going the speed limit. So I don’t even take my foot off the accelerator or touch the brake. No problem?

Ah, the problem.

Suddenly from my left a black cat squirts out of nowhere and directly in front of my car. There’s a lot of other traffic on the highway, and I realize that if I swerve suddenly the police officer in that car is likely to light ’em up for me, or I might bash into another vehicle. So before I could slow down a single mph, I have hit a black cat. I hear and feel the thump on my right tire. I glance back in my rearview mirror and see the cat stumbling off the highway, so I know I’ve not killed it—let’s just say it’s not yet dead—but it seems to be badly injured.

Okay. Life goes on, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. In the last couple of months I have had a virus winnow through my anti-virus program, destroy my hard drive and nearly destroy part of The Providence Rider, as well as mangling other important programs I need to keep. I was able to transfer some work to a second computer. Within several days of working on that rig, the hard drive crashed. I luckily have a third computer tucked away in a closet. When I plugged that in, the power pack instantly blew up. I’m not talking a quiet pop, folks. I’m talking fire and smoke shooting out of the vents in the metal box.

On a more personal front, there are things going on I can’t even begin to relate. One thing I will say is that I very much enjoy running. I run every day if I can. Well, someone advised me that I’d been running wrong for years and I should be running “heel to toe” instead of “toe to heel”. Good enough. I go out and buy two pairs of very expensive running shoes. I’m ready to go. I decide to run on an indoor track to get used to my new running style. Yeah, let’s go!

Four strides in, I take a curve, my right foot crinks to the side on the new tread of my exprensive running shoe, and suddenly all my weight is on my ankle and my foot is turned beneath me at a right-angle. I flew toward the railing and nearly brained myself. The upshot of this is that I wound up limping into my neighborhood pharmacy at about eight that night to ask if I could rent crutches. No, I was told, but I could buy crutches if they had them…but they did not, and I might try another pharmacy several miles away.

Bear in mind, I am walking now by dragging my right foot and my speed is somewhere between snail and death. I never knew pharmacy parking lots were so huge. Okay, I should have gone to the doctor but I didn’t. I’ve had sprains before and gotten through them, but this was Pretty Ugly. I recall breaking out in a cold sweat when it happened. Anyway, major damage has been done and…guess what…I am supposed to go for a trip to Cozumel, Mexico over the holidays…and I’m leaving Tuesday the 21st, and I’m writing this on Saturday the 18th and my foot is still mucho swollen. So the time is ticking.

Anyway, I get my crutches and I go on from there. My situation does get a little better. I’m able to get off the crutches, though now the pain is so severe I can’t drive. Do I hear a black cat laughing? What would that sound like? I think I know.

Okay…I have run out of food. Did I tell you I am separated from my wife and I live alone in an apartment now? Another tale…but I have to make myself drive and get some food. So I force my foot into an old beatup running shoe and I head to the grocery store, where while I’m tottering around trying to choose a jar of grape jam for my peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches an elderly lady asks if she can hold my basket.

Fun…knee!

Well, I relate all this in a late night conversation to a friend of mine in Vancouver, the excellent writer KC Dyer. She says, “Rick, this is the curse of the unkilled cat. You have to appease the Cat God to have this curse removed.”

“Okay,” I say. “And how is that going to happen?”

“You go to the grocery store…”

OMG! Not again, I think.

“Go to the grocery store,” she says, “and buy the most succulent seafoody catfood you can find. Then you take that catfood to the nearest animal shelter and donate it. I think it will work, and I think something will happen to show you it’s worked.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

I go.

Well, that day becomes one of the most stormy and rain-filled days in Birmingham history. I have a small car—a Pontiac Solstice, long live Pontiac (sob)—and I’m fishtailing around in the rain like crazy. No way I can get way across town to the nearest animal shelter!

Another call to KC. She says, “Take the food to the nearest vet, and make sure it goes to the cats or kittens that need homes.”

Okay. The nearest vet is right down the street. I take the catfood and I tell my story to the people at the front desk, and thank God I know them because my story is weird. But they listen and they understand because they, too, have some black cat stories. Anyway, the time comes to feed one of the needy cats and see what happens.

This particular cat has run into the bathroom, where it drinks water from the faucet yet they tell me it doesn’t like to have water dripping on its head. So I cup water in my hand and lo and behold the cat drinks from my hand. And…and…after all the water is gone it continues to lick my hand. A sign? I don’t know. But I do know that cat enjoyed its seafoody lunch. It almost ate the plastic dish. So I left feeling lighter, and feeling that a unkilled black cat’s curse might be loosened from my shoulders. A little bit, maybe. But in this case a little bit is a lot.

Now…you may be asking how in the world this is a Christmas story?

I have had a very difficult and tough last few months. Well…last few years, really. Okay…ever since I wrote Boy’s Life things have been tough, because I walked away from genre horror work and I wasn’t supposed to do that, according to the corporates. They were investing in a horror writer. That’s what I was supposed to be for the rest of my life, no matter what else I wanted to write. And guys, the corporates can make life Hell for you, in ways that an unkilled black cat could never imagine.

But I’m here. In a different place now. I’ve been in my apartment since August. I’m pretty much on my own.

A Christmas story? Well, listen to this.

One night I was sitting on my balcony and I had a thrill of happiness. It just came on me. It was a thrill of happiness that I haven’t felt for a very long time. I recall feeling that kind of thrill on Christmas morning when I was a little boy, with the tree and the presents waiting under it to be unwrapped. I felt that thrill, and I knew…the world is my present, waiting to be unwrapped.

I have determined to travel more, to get out in the world and enjoy life more than simply being a solitary hermit creating fantasies. I will certainly continue to work because I love to work and I love the family of my characters…but nothing beats real life, guys. Nothing beats getting out in the world, meeting people, going places and having new experiences. That’s why on Christmas Day I’m going to be swimming in the clear blue water off Cozumel. It will be my baptism into a new life.

I have experienced that thrill of happiness several times since. It is the kind of happiness that can not be bought. It can not be manufactured. It can not be written about. It must be experienced to be known. I intend to find more and more of it, as time goes by. I think at long last I have earned it.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I wish you happy times with loved ones. Never take them for granted. Never.

I wish you peace and kindness, and I wish you freedom from black cats of all kinds.

Your friend,
Robert McCammon

Well, the time has come to say goodbye to summer and to prepare for another autumn and, beyond that, another winter.

I always feel a little sad at the end of summer. Or wistful might be the better word. There were so many plans for summer that never happened. You know that drill. You meant to take this trip to the beach, and something got in the way. You meant to stand in a woods and watch the fireflies—we call them “lightning bugs” down South— light up the night, but it never happened. You meant to go to a baseball game and kick back with the taste of a hotdog and the smear of mustard on your mouth, but somehow another thing seemed more important. Maybe you meant to just lie on a hilltop and watch the clouds move in their slow and stately progression, but somehow that didn’t seem important enough. I know all about this. It happened to me, too. I had plans that didn’t work out. Doesn’t everyone? And the thing that gets in the way? That’s called “Life.” Ah, well.

There’s always next summer. And plenty of time to dream about what might be, next time around.

Thank you for your comments and your readership. As always, if you didn’t read my work, I would cease to be. So thank you again for hanging in with me, and travelling with me over the many roads.

For anyone close enough to Birmingham to make the drive, I’m going to be speaking and reading at the Hoover Library on Tuesday, October the 5th at 7:00. It’s free, books are going to be sold there, and it’s a nice venue with a cool stage and very comfortable seats. The kicker is that I’m going to not only talk about the Corbett series and The Five, but I’m going to read the opening chapter of The Providence Rider and of course talk about that book too. So if anyone can make the drive, please drop by for the reading.

I’m going pretty well on The Providence Rider. Usually the toughest part for me is getting everything going, and then when the engine is started—so to speak—the machine sort of starts running itself. Lots of characters in this one and it may be a long book. Not sure yet. Well, okay…yes, it’s going to be a long book! Let me restate that: it will be as long as it needs to be to get the story told. Aren’t they all?

Speaking of long books, The “Ultimate” Wolf’s Hour comes in around six hundred and seventy pages, including the new novelette. You know, I look back on some of those and wonder how I wrote such long books. But then again, The “Ultimate” Wolf’s Hour is everything it needs to be. Story told. But story finished? After I did The Hunter from the Woods this summer, I enjoyed it so much that I immediately started thinking about doing more Gallatin pieces. This really was a fun book to write, and probably the most “fun” I’ve ever had doing a project. What was cool about it to me was that instead of writing one book for nine months, here I could finish a short story in a few days or a novelette in a week or so and then go to an entirely different locale and plot-line. So I really did have a lot of fun doing it, and maybe there’s more Michael Gallatin in the future if you guys like it.

Just wanted to check in briefly this time and give you an update. Writing this in the middle of the night—of course—so I’ll be getting back to Matthew and The Providence Rider.

But before I get back to work I may walk outside to my balcony, sit down and just listen for a few minutes.

You know, it’s still warm and the crickets and the night sounds are still out there. It’s really still summer, so maybe that goodbye was a little premature. The moon’s up, the world feels calm, and in the peace of solitude there’s still plenty of time to dream.

So yes, I think I won’t say goodbye to summer yet.

Not just yet.

Best Wishes,
Rick