brianrayfiction.com Blog

Finally posting after a helluva week. I’m in Myrtle Beach now after reading to a room full of voracious readers at a fancy country club kind of restaurant on Pawleys Island. Not too shabby. Accumulated some interesting stories, including that of one woman who’s gathered a nightstand drawer full of book lights – trying to find just the right one.

Getting to Pawleys Island wasn’t terribly hard, but finding which version of US-17 would lead to my hotel was. And so I arrived at Litchfield having not slept, having given up on finding my hotel buried in the neon magnificence of the Carolina coastline. Next time I come here, I’ll ask my hotel to shoot off fireworks near my ETA.

Many more interesting tales gathered at the NC Lit Festival, where I was this last weekend. Learned that John Hart, for example, quit his job for a year so he could write his first novel – and did so with the full support of his family. This is quite something. I’m not sure I’d even want my own kids, in the future that is, taking a year off to write their novels. “Don’t be such a sissy,” I’d tell them. “Just sleep less.” But it actually has paid off for one of us.

Being back in SC, however briefly, has got me thinking once again about Carolina politicians. We’ve wound up in the news at least twice this summer, thanks to our reps. Just recently, U.S. rep Joe Wilson shouted spontaneously “You lie!’ to Obama as he addressed myths and information about health care reform. Obama took the heat pretty well, and Wilson apologized later. But, if you ask me, people should ease up. He was just trying to take some heat off of Sanford. He was also speaking up for his beliefs. And, furthermore, he was doing his job! In the country! Now if he’d issued those marks from Argentina or France we’d have a different story altogether.