Since my mobile and turbulent childhood my head fills with the events and movements of the days, the emotions that come and stay with me until I write about them from some subliminal heart/mind connection the words flow onto the screen of my laptop. I accept them and allow them entry on the page – as though they were destined to be there, an outlet for the subtle joy and pain of the soul…it is my belief that all artistic endeavors come from that similar sort of tingling.
As some subscribers to my blog posts might allow, most of my writing has a ‘Romantic’ cant, from my murder mysteries (some taken from actual crimes) to genres with historical essence, love, poetry, murder, and current events. My writing heroes of the past are many – …Hemingway, Steinbeck, Crane, DeMille, Grisham, to name a few. For Poetry, my favorite is an ex-Priest named James Kavanaugh.
I have written twenty books, their ‘buy sites’, 375 blog posts written over the years, plus poetry and tribute pieces to Arnold Palmer and other notables. That Website/Blog site address is:
You sleep while riding a ‘mare’ or ‘dreaming peacefully’. You awake in a ‘bad mood’, snack on quick and easy ‘coffee and toast’ (too much coffee!), and drive to your job – while your kidneys insist on your quick attention…
You sit at your desk, work menial tasks and have your fanciful day dreams and ‘Romantic Thoughts’…
You think of where you and your soulmate will vacation… perhaps a great resort in Aruba or an Ocean Cruise…
Work ends for the day, and you go for cocktails at your favorite pub with your favorite lady…
At home, feeling guilty, you open your laptop and resume writing the manuscript for your new novel…
You take a break, check your E-Mail. There is your new blog message: “5-Star Reads in most genres – 20 books, some based on true crime, Short Stories, Flash Fiction – some books are related to true criminal events: https://brchitwood.com – Also, Romance and Suspense…”
Ah, c’mon! Take a ‘tour’! There are some great books and writing at this website…
If you are a reader, avid or not, you will enjoy the books’ synopses, blog posts, short stories, flash fiction, poetry.
We drink coffee, eat, go to work, or, retired from the ‘bee buzzing’, we read. go to our computers to display our ‘genius’ and/or idiocy, write blog posts or books, watch crazy news, read, settle into our favorite habits, find boredom preference in our routines…
After all, we are retired, no longer fighting AM and PM traffic…
We become habitual and wary of our existence…
Some political scenarios make us feel so uncertain about our world and day-to-day lives…
I look out the big windows by my office and see a clear blue sky, an inviting sun, a mountain, a pool, a relaxing seating area, and debate with myself whether or not to finish this post – actually, forgetting the original purpose for the post, other than more railing about our unpredictable political structure, the build-up of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine…
Easy decision…
Actually, the world has not changed all that much since I once cared to debate the political stature of our governments, their leaders, and the political tendencies of neophytes who would make our world so much better…
Hell, I’m poolside, not that anyone will be contacting me about anything I care about…
I look at my lovely wife! “Hey, milady, you going to read, play with your laptop, or you coming poolside with me?
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BR Chitwood – February 3, 2022
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Anyone interested can check out my 20 books, each book with synopsis and buy site, my 275 blog posts, my many Flash Fiction and Short Stories…
So, it seems I shall be ending this fascinating life adventure as I entered it, confounded by the sounds of jubilation and tears, yet, without a kindly grandmother slapping my rear end to bring the breath of life to a reluctant new birth in a small clapboard house in Appalachia, a saw mill hamlet of dirt roads and a railroad spur for bringing logs to the primary employer of most of its scant population of farmers, most of whom were in a prolonged ‘Great Depression’.
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As a man ready for his final destiny, a man with precious little of consequence for the reader who might chance upon these few words I write here, the words will have little historic value or any other kind of value that would perpetuate a useful understanding except for some amusing and pathetic experiences. At best, the words herein have been written by many others facing their final breaths of air on this orbital craft that ended up with the name of ‘Earth’.
So, skipping over my apathetic problems with school and teenage acne, some good buddies, and a couple of young ladies I was too dull and dim-witted to approach, and an early entry into the United States Navy, marriage to a ‘Navy Wave’ with her own confused history, college, teaching, and emotional experiences that not only paralyzed me but would put me on the path of unrighteousness…yes, alcohol and lovely women of the night – indeed, a shameful and wonderful foray into an almost every night ‘Whoop-de-do’.
Mistakes of a shameful quality?
A ‘big time’ Uh-Huh! Years of willful neglect to career and inner peace. Still, it was fun and disaster – now, you know where the phrase came from, wait for it! ‘Honkytonk-Heaven’ or, ‘Neon Madness’.
So much time wasted?
I suppose – but it was my life for a time. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias wrote and performed the lyrics and music For All the Girls I’ve Loved Before. It is a song I should have written. In other words, I could not have written a better epilogue for my life.
My good wife of nearly forty years has encouraged me in my writing efforts, always steadfast and loyal. She also with her love and unselfish nature brings a smile to each new day.
Somehow, in the aging process, I found the gift of writing, much of it venting moments of my life.
Twenty books– some based on true crimes, some in different genres, give glimpses into my life…Romance, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Sci-Fi, Biography.
Short Stories, FlashFiction., Poetry and over 375 Blog Posts!
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Perhaps, I have atoned for some of my ‘low spots’ in life… Regardless, my writing speaks ‘Truth’, and it is my hope that readers can find in my books not only the joy of reading but some essence of inspiration. All my writing can be found at: https://brchitwood.com complete with synopses and Amazon Buy Sites.
Wishing everyone a happy and frustration-free 2022, with the scourge of Covid and Omicron all in our rearview mirrors.
There has always been for me an aura of magic, an arcane sense of urgency in writing, perhaps a natural and innate inclination to share something about my life that has caused fear, joy, pain, regret, sorrow, aches that must have palliative affirmation that can be a cathartic experience and perhaps cause some soulful searching.
So, that sense of urgency has been with me all my life but became reality on an eighty-acre ranch in southeast Arizona called ‘The Lazy Rabbit Ranch’.
There was a lovely library, fireplace, large mahogany desk, walls of books, views all the way to the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico to the South. To the East were the long stretch of the Swisshelm Mountains. To the West were the Dragoon Mountains, over which some thirty miles was the historic ‘town too tough to die’, Tombstone.
In that setting, I wrote six mystery books called the ‘Bailey Crane Mysteries – 1-6’, each book based on true elements. Many of my books (twenty in all) were written about actual crimes (two of those crimes are still unsolved today.)
In that setting, I also wrote of a mother and daughter who went missing while on a walk to a country store some three miles from their home. The title of that book is “Stranger Abduction.” The disappearance occurred years before we moved to the area, but the locals told us what they knew about the ‘still unsolved case’ which occurred in 1983.
(My wife and I often shopped at that country store – some four miles away from our ‘Lazy Rabbit Ranch’.) The disappearance of the mother and daughter would not leave my mind, and I wrote a fictional account of the case
On the beautiful ‘Sea of Cortez’ I wrote of a Northern California mother who tortured and murdered two of her daughters and an ex-husband – “Mama’s Madness” – many 5-star reviews of this book are on Amazon.
There are other fictional books that deal with Romance, History, Mystery, Suspense, one Science Fiction book – “Serpent Rock” … my first effort with that genre.
Writing has been ‘my love’ since my humble beginning, and I believe I’ve written some good books over the years. My problem? I have not invested in marketing to any great extent. With that admission, I would still proudly put my books alongside any of the books in the genres I have written.
If you are interested, you can find all of my books (with synopses and ‘buy sites’) at:
A good title for a song and an excellent title with which to blow your mind when you spend days and sleepless nights pounded with the news of our homicides, our robberies, our Wall Street accounts, our meager bank funds, our Cities’ daily decay with riots in the streets, and a state’s malfunctioning government are where so often its leaders find malfeasance and corruption their easy games to play, our kids left to form their own games to play, boy/girl body explorations, and ‘toughies’ bullying the timid and weak among them, no adult supervising and/or the ‘Sitter’ busy with her own pleasures.
Sure, I know you’ve read about these sordid things before. The newspaper, radio, and television reports are rather common. I, too, was once a young pre-adolescent and played some of those unhealthy games…intuitively knowing the parents were not to know.
Now, I have lived a lifetime, seen our world grow and become modernized with knowledge piling on knowledge so fast we can barely keep up, and I can tell you – but, then, you already know – life in those faraway days was not so wholesome but not so suffocating as it is today, life managed and accepted more readily.
Today, I see a government warped with minds that would take away our Freedom and Liberty and move toward a world without form or shape, more impersonal, more chaotic, more dangerous, more demanding, a world without Democracy. Governments exist for the people and there are those who are ethically too few to admire and trust, thus worthy proposals for society often go to closed ‘Document Files’.
I look out my large window each day to the sky and go through my litany of thoughts: Where are we going as this gray world of doubt and confusion does its orbits? Is it my old age that makes it seem so? Am I listening to too much news, listening to opinions of people I have little respect for? I think of my children, my grand-children and ask myself: “What kind of world will they be living in years ahead?”
With an old man’s tears beginning, I close the laptop, lower my ‘Lazy Boy’ and take in long breaths of air.
I’ve written over twenty books, over 375 blog posts, short stories, flash fiction, and poetry, all found on my website and blog: https://brchitwood.com.
The books cover most genres, some crime novels depict the author’s factual accounts with some fiction to enrich the drama. There are romance novels, a ‘Bailey Crane’ six-book mystery series, some of which inspired by true events, one science-fiction novel, memoirs that perhaps tells too much about the author’s life.
THE CRACKED MIRROR – Reflections of an Appalachian Son is a narrative about my life, and I use a character – Prentice Paul Hiller – to depict me. In this memoir I use a two-track system for conveying the action taking place: PP Hiller (me) on a ‘Nursing Home’ track, PLUS a track that covers my life. I believe the reader will find THE CRACKED MIRROR an excellent read…of course, my selfish-side believes all my books are excellent.
In my Website – https://brchitwood.com – you will find all my books with cover pics, synopses, and Amazon Buy Sites.
The Cracked Mirror – Reflections of an Appalachian Son
(A fictional memoir – 90% + TRUE)
BR Chitwood
About a Tennessee boy who ate some emotional soup and spent a lifetime trying to digest it. It is the story of a young man leaving east Tennessee and going in search of himself, unprepared for the adult world he is about to enter. Behind him, and, within him, is the emotional debris of his childhood: abuse, broken family, and a substantial part of his soul. Searching for his identity in isms and bars, he stumbles, gets up, only to find in the end that legacy and meaning are elusive, a ‘white buffalo’ always somewhere in the shadows.
“The Cracked Mirror – Reflections of an Appalachian Son” is largely a true story of the author’s own life, a mirror of his past, cracked with the stress of all his memories: a family broken apart by their Appalachian circumstances and the ‘great depression’; a childhood tainted by a father’s abusive nature; an impetuous marriage and a sorrowful divorce; a subsequent search of ‘isms,’ for love and meaning in California and Arizona gin mills; a tableau of horrible events, including a senseless family murder, suicide, and a desert survival.
“The Cracked Mirror – Reflections of an Appalachian Son,” is the story of fictional Prentice Paul Hiller (Billy R. Chitwood) his life, his heritage, his mistakes, the events that have come to shape him, and the demons within that he cannot dispel. Along the way, he gives his passionate and provocative views on criminal justice, love, politics, religion, war, and his favorite writers. In the end he finds a new love, some hope for redemption, some semblance of meaning and legacy.
The author’s own family roots trace back to the eleventh century in Chetwode, a lovely hamlet north of London… 5-Star reviews on Amazon. Amazon BUY SITES:
Thank you for previewing and reading my books. Any comments you might have can be left on this blog or my Web site or at my E- Mail: brchitwood@gmail.com
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