My first book, St. Peter’s Monsters, is set in and around St. Paul and Castlewood, my home towns. When

people from the area find out, they say “nothing ever happens here.”

I say, “Something is always happening.”

Your duty is to take the time to notice it.
 
Think about it. At any given moment, a woman is giving birth (or a man is working on the conception). Someone

else is dying. Another person is lying or stealing or – not very often – killing. Down the street, couples are

worrying about the kids and the bills. Families are enjoying dinner. Boyfriends and girlfriends are fighting.

Businesses are making money . . . or losing it. A mother is crying. Teenagers are gossiping, texting, sexting.

Children are playing. A wife has been hit. Another has been hugged. A man is praying. A baby is laughing. A

young person is studying.

The very fact that we’re breathing means something is happening!

Yes, my book is fiction. The things that happen in it are not real. That doesn’t mean real life in my town is any

less dramatic than the stories I’ve created.

It seems we believe that what happens to each of us every day is not noteworthy because it happens to US . . .

EVERY DAY. We find our own lives boring.

I challenge you to take the time to notice what’s happening within you and outside you. Notice life!

My Town

This is my town. At St. Paul’s edge, ducks flank the downy banks of Oxbow Lake. Poplars, maples and cedars

shade its mile-long trail. On this Friday evening, the sun touches only treetops. I find a rock outcrop and soak up

its heat like a lizard. In late September, the mountains hunch down around us and spread their blue shadows

until the air grows cold.

Summer’s weariness is apparent here. A drought has left foliage brown. A single withered leaf floats on the

lake’s current, spinning in the wake of a line of ducks. They paddle by me, their tails jacked up in the air, their

feet pumping the dark water. The leader quacks orders and the sound makes me think of old men laughing at a

dirty joke.

The birds waddle toward a family perched on a bench. The man removes his baseball cap and shoos them away

from his child. The little girl tosses a piece of bread to the ducks, screaming with delight when they gobble the

treat. When her mother tries to pull her to the car, she cries.

“I’m going to drag you if you don’t come on!” the woman threatens. The father stumps up the wooden stairs

swinging his arms slow and wide. For a moment, the scent of cigarette smoke lingers in the air, before a gentle

wind whisks it into the mercury sky.

In the distance, a coal truck’s Jake brakes punctuate the air with a shrill ellipsis. The driver is shifting gears as

he prepares to drop his last load. That coal will go out of Wise County’s hills on a train, the one I hear sounding

its horn now. The clatter of its wheels drowns the chatter of a squirrel somewhere above me.

I cruise through St. Paul. Many of my town’s thousand residents appear outside. “Better enjoy these last warm

days,” a heavyset woman calls out. I shiver at the thought of coal-blackened snow.

Three teenage boys rib each other as they walk toward the high school grounds. They look like a small army:

black t-shirts, cargo pants and dog tags. The football field’s loudspeakers echo across town as the announcer

prepares for the game.

Some of us forgo Friday night lights for other pleasures. An old man carries his guitar into a storefront church.

Across the street, a woman sells apples from her truck bed. The golden fruit blushes, looking pretty in stiff white paper sacks. An old woman worries her collar as she negotiates price with the vendor. She rests her hand on her paunch as if she is pregnant.

I pass a clump of political signs posted in an empty lot. A discarded lottery ticket flutters in the street. On a
backstreet, kids congregate in muscle cars. As I pass, I hear the low, lazy laugh of a young man. It’s a sound full of desire and life and audacity.

I wonder if he’s ever known defeat or the frailty of the soul at 2 a.m.