A Matter of Time

John Ramsey Miller



The world is so connected now that a film taken seconds after a bomb kills civilians in Nigeria is on our computers minutes after the event––perhaps before the bodies have been lifted into ambulances. A purchase can be made in Europe using a credit card stolen in California minutes earlier. It is flat amazing how connected we all are. The faster things happen, the more I want to write about a time when a war could be at full tilt and most of the world be unaware of it for weeks, months or years. Hard to imagine a time when fingerprints were all but useless in connecting people with their actions. I long to put my mind, my writing ability, in a slower world.



I write this blog every other week, and I don’t always write about writing, because my life isn't about "How To-ing." Although connected to authorship, I'm not ruled by writing. Life takes up most of my time, and I can go weeks without writing anything but this fleeting missive.At the moment I am waiting for my daughter-in-law and two of my grandchildren to arrive from Wilmington, NC fleeing from a Hurricane Irene and my dear friend Dr. Phillip Hawley, who wrote STIGMA, a few years back is coming to visit. Phillip is a pediatrician from LA, who had a business degree, before he went to medical school. And he is a talented writer, who writes when he has time. His book is now available on KINDLE, and it’s a great thriller.



I have decided that, with the time I have left, I am going to adhere to a tough schedule and write the books I want to write, and to publish electronically from here out. I ain't at my first rodeo and I can probably sell my books as effectively as a publisher can. I will have to find an editorialista who wants to work with me, and I am going to control my own future to the extent we can control anything. If I chose to write over the top, here and there, I will do it. I won’t care if my characters are not PC, or if they are more graphically violently inclined than someone else thinks is proper for the readers they think I have.



I also want to write my favorite continuing characters, and my publisher didn’t think the number of people who bought the books were adequate to keep the series going. The writing is what I love. The publishing part of the business has often gotten in the way of the creating.If forty thousand people read Winter Massey’s adventures, that is worth the time it’ll take to write. Starting on Monday I’m going to start polishing a standalone novel I completed last year so that it should be available for e-readers in six or eight weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes as it goes.



I think I’ve got time for a dozen books in the next three or four years. Then maybe I’ll take some time off.