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Around December of that year, 1997, I began to be hounded by a certain thought, which was this: You have not given it your best shot. On January 1, 1998, as a New Year's Resolution, I started over. I sketched an outline of a proposed story. I came up with characters, and a timeline. (She has to be this old when this happens, so she had to be born in...., etc.) I delved into the history of oil in East Texas. I learned about oil rig operation. I read up on the building of Grand Coulee dam, and the Hanford plutonium plant. About 11 months later, I had in my hands an ambitious 140,000 word novel. It began with the words at the right. |
In his youth he was restless, and the restless boy became a restless man. Like other restless men caught up in routine lives, he sometimes looked for signs that he should act on the impulses that tempted him. For Walter Robertson such a sign was the arrival of the new century, in his twenty-fourth year. |