Sometimes I am embarrassed that I’ve been working on this novel, working towards its completion, for over a decade. I had ambitions to become a novelist (a famous Black one!) when I was a teenager, shortly before I entered college. I arrived with a handful of characters and a few chapters of my first novel, a YA detective novel titled, “Love in the First Degree.” I chuckle every time I think about it, the title, the writing itself. I lost interest in those high school characters as I moved through my freshman year. I was flighty and my writing reflected it.

My second novel, “The American Courtesan,” was my first attempt at more adult themes and complex characters, including a struggling jazz musician and an bloodthirsty up-and-coming US Senator (was i really going to do anything with these threadbare stock characters?). I struggled to write it between classes and student org meetings. But I wrote for pleasure and so the motivation was always there. My first real mentor, Pam Wilson, was the Director of Multicultural Affairs at my alma mater, and she encouraged me. She was a budding novelist as well. I would pop into her office during the day and we talk endlessly about what were doing with our characters, what impossible choices we’d presented them with. We reveled in our writerly comradery. I loved her dearly. But when she died suddenly, I lost interest in finishing that story, the threads which seemed so tight only a week or so before, now began to unravel in my mind. Nothing made sense. I left writing for a while, noveling away. I began or completed a few short stories, tinkered with poetry, but the novel eluded me.

Once I grieved her passing, the urge to write a new novel began. But I was rudderless. I graduated college moved back home, back to Pinetops, a small quiet town in rural North Carolina. This was the last place I wanted to be. I felt like a failure. I was working at the Sprint as a 411 operator. It was hellish, like most telecommunication jobs I’ve had. But it was a steady check. During one of my breaks, I happen to pick up an issue of Jet magazine. Inside there was a snippet of a story that caught my attention, a murder to be precise. I’ve read Jet many times during my waits at the barbershop, and I can not remember another instance of them discussing murder. The details were so sparse, my imagination began to fill in the gaps. It was then that “The Crooked Mile” began to take shape. I began writing during my breaks. I wrote at home. I wrote while I drove (don’t ask…).

By the time I began my Masters program the following year. I had a substantial manuscript. And then life happened: the demands of graduate school, a long courtship of my high school sweetheart, our subsequent marriage, full-time jobs, my doctoral program, and the arrival of newborn boy. I struggled to keep writing, but I eventually put it away for several reasons. First, find the time work on a novel began such a hassle. I dabbled here and there, picking it up periodically to reminisce about the by-gone era of pleasurable writing. Now I wrote emails, letters of recommendation, the occasional academic article: job-related writing. Second, my novel began to feel so tender, with each alteration, each addition, I felt so naked and vulnerable. A lot of first novels are semi-autobiographical. Mine is no exception. And I was tackling topics I was not really prepared to completely confront. There were a few other reasons I put the novel down as well, but they are painfully trivial compared to those two.

Well…I picked up “The Crooked Mile” again this week. And I’m determined to finish this time. I will be blogging portions here. And I’d love feed back.

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