Tony Bowman's Page on Redbud Revue

Being in writing mode is the most euphoric feeling in the world. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration - but, for a writer, it ranks up pretty high. When you're writing down the bones, rattling off dialog, and plowing through the chapters, you hit this point like a runner's high - I'll call it a writer's high. However, invariably something comes along that knocks you off the rails, blows the engine, and sends you rolling and tumbling like a cartoon coyote.   At about the 30,000 word mark in Nine Fingers, I had a run in with the flu that left me on my back for a week. I didn't write a word, heck I didn't even keep up with my email.   Which is why I didn't know until late last night that my story, Night Train, had been chosen for an Editor's Choice Award by A. Henry Keene in the excellent anthology "Terror Train".   Terror Train is available from Amazon.com in both Kindle and Paperback versions.   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KYW...

I can remember back when I first started writing with even a hint of seriousness sometime around 1993. It was so hard to find time and keep my focus. Weeks would go by when I wouldn't write a word, culminating in an almost eight year hiatus starting in 2006. We moved to Raleigh in the summer of 2006, and I threw myself completely into work. I literally wrote nothing from Spring, 2006 to January, 2014. That isn't to say the ideas weren't running around in my head - they were. I just wasn't writing them down. Over those years, my health began to deteriorate. Now, I won't say this health downturn was entirely because I wasn't writing - I had high stress jobs, sometimes more than one at a time. All I can say is this: as soon as I went back to writing, my mental and physical health improved dramatically. At this point, I can't imagine even slowing down on my writing. If I don't write at least a page every day, I get irritable. If I can spend eight hours...