I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I was a little boy growing up in Northeast Texas. My imagination has always been wild and carefree. My first typewriter was a little plastic blue toy typewriter when I was 10 years old. I wore that thing out writing stories and screenplays, even though I didn’t know the first thing how to do so. When I was in high school, I told myself and my friends that I would write a novel one day, and then life happened. All these years later most of those friends are gone, even a friend or two who inspired characters within these pages. It took me 14 years to write my novel, Hale County, the only thing in my life I never truly compromised. While I was writing Hale County I also wrote many other books. So, to that young me sitting on the hardwood floor those many decades ago, typing away, letting that imagination soar, I just want to say, “we did it.” 

There are many more stories to tell.