It started off as a rough week
for writing. I put out a book that had been serialized on the internet about organized
crime in Connecticut. This insane, crazy woman named Anna Maria Ferro didn’t like what I wrote about her boyfriend, a
mob guy named Grasso that was so crazy his own men killed. She followed me around the net taking cheap
shops, which I don’t really care about but then she wrote two nasty reviews for
the book on Amazon.
I work hard on these books,
hours and hours and hours researching and writing. I get upset and stay upset
over these cheap shot cowardly remarks. I least I use my own name when I write.
Anyway, about two weeks
ago, I gave two of my books, “No Time to Say Goodbye” and “Short Stories from a
Small Town”, to the gardener who gave
them to his father. This evening the father called me and introduced
himself. He said, “No Time to Say Goodbye” moved him tears and laughter, “once in
a while at the same time” and that “Short
Stories” made him drive back to his hometown that left in 1955 and think about
the people he knew there.
He said “You made me happy.
I enjoyed what you wrote”
I have been very poor and
very rich in my life. I know the value of a dollar. I’m no one’s fool. But if I
were given the choice between ten million cash or keeping what he said “You made
me happy. I enjoyed what you wrote”
I would take the words
every time. They define my efforts. They recognize a superhuman effort. That’s
what good writing is. Money comes, money goes. Believe me. But those words are
mine forever and ever. You can’t buy that.
