When my childhood friend, Isa Rock, read and reviewed my novel, Streets of Rage, he wanted more.  A few mornings ago, I started to think about more, and thus the process began in my head.  My process as a writer of fiction begins with the end in mind.  Where is the final destination I want to take the reader?  Then I work on the beginning.  If I can begin, with much thought and scribbling on whatever is at hand, a napkin, an envelope, a sheet of paper, then the process begins in dead earnest.

This is me teasing out the process for more: “There was something liberating about killing a white man.”

How’s that for an opening line?  Now maybe you’ll want to read Streets of Rage in preparation for the second act?

There was something liberating about killing a white man.

In this day and age, a writer simply doesn’t write; a writer also needs to help with marketing his or her work.  (I came up with the idea for the book covers for all four of my books and wrote information for the dust jacket.)  This is what would appear on the dust jacket for Streets of Rage Redux: “As a teenager, he got away with murder.  That murder changed his life.  Instead of going to prison, he went to college.  Forty years later, looking back, he tells his story after that fateful day when he became a god.”

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In my next blog I’ll discuss the process of writing my award-winning epic poem, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present.