Dear friends,

Thanks for stopping by. Because I'm in rebellion against anything slick, you won't get much razzle-dazzle-I'm-in-a-suit-look-at-me-author-as-glossy-picture stuff. No thanks. Writing novels-- my kind anyway-- are definitely not glossy experiences. Writing novels is a messy business at best; your ideas are somehow hindered and changed on the way to the page and-- if you're lucky-- you get a small something of what you were after. A little beauty, or a little truth, a snippet of dialog where the character is talking and you have very little to do with it. That's when it's best. Writing novels is like being caught in one of those waves near Mazatlan that suddenly yank you under and rough you up. You pop up exhausted near the beach; there's some stuff on the page, but you couldn't really say exactly how you got there.

Right now, because I have a new book, I feel like I did when I played high school football and we were riding in the Patchett's bus to the game. It was quiet -- our coach didn't allow talking during the ride, which was probably a good thing. Our uniforms were clean and our helmets were on our laps. You would look out the window and think about doing your job well. Mine was to knock someone down and get to the quarterback. Like an idea you're after in a novel that is easy to conceive, but hard to accomplish. There were obstacles. Some bigger than you and mean as hell. But I always liked that ride, seventeen, full of trepidation and hope. The ride back-- if we won-- was raucous as everyone-- mud covered now-- told their game stories, and for days afterward you could recall every detail from those violent seconds when you broke free and "connected".

I hope I've connected with this new book. Who knows? You, the readers, will have to be the judge of that. The books are shiny and new right now and ready to go into your hands to be read on a subway in Paris, or out on a deck in Cincinnati, or maybe in a maternity ward, or a train satiation in Addis Ababa, by someone on their way to a marriage, or funeral, or on the way to war.  Where ever you are when you start it, know that I tried my best to tell the truth if nothing else. That's the novelist's job.  No matter what. Sometimes people don't like the truth, but that's part of the job-- to at least try and break through and tell it.

Someday -- if I'm lucky-- we'll meet. Perhaps in a funky used bookstore on the corner in some noisy big city. The book will no longer be new by then but dog-eared, well read and well traveled. A hundred people will have held that copy you just picked up and passed it on to you. It would have seen babies born and people buried and heard trains rattle through the night. And we'll shake hands and then you will leave. And later, I'll slip out the door onto the busy street, and I'll know it has all been worth it.

Kent Harrington