I’ve worked from home for more than forty years.  As a consequence, one day tends to flow into another.  That makes “three day weekends” particularly troublesome.  That’s why, this morning when I crawled out of bed, it was a shock to realize that I was already a day late in writing the blog.  So here goes.  

When I started out as a writer of “genre fiction,” I often told people that I wrote books “with no socially redeeming value whatsoever—the kind of books you could buy at better bus depots everywhere.” (Question:  Do bus depots still sell books?)

I believe I’ve mentioned before that forty years’ worth of fan mail correspondence has resulted in any number of email-based relationships and, in some cases, valued friendships, too. (Don’t expect me to apologize for calling for a welfare check on a blog commenter who went quiet for more than a week.  Turns out I wasn’t wrong.  She was actually in a hospital at the time.)

In those notes, people tend to share things with me that they might not discuss with the folks next door.  This week I heard from a gentleman who spent more than twenty years in AA.  After his beloved wife passed away a number of years ago, he lost his way and started drinking again.  He wrote to me this week saying that he was back on the right path and had just earned his two-year chip. When you’re living life one day at a time, earning a two-year chip or any chip, for that matter, is a big deal.  

He told me that after he purchases and reads one of the Beaumont books, he drops it off at the free-to-good-home shelf in the church basement where his AA meetings take place. Then he asked me an interesting question—do I ever hear from people whose lives have changed due to reading my books.  The answer to that is YES.  That’s especially true of After the Fire, the book of poetry which recounts the story of my 18-year journey with a man who died of chronic alcoholism at age 42, a year and a half after I divorced him.  One woman told me straight out that reading After the Fire had saved her life. Another told me that reading ATF had shown her for the first time what she’d put her family through.

But for some people, saving lives is true of the Beaumont books as well.  His stories are told in the first person.  When I first encountered him, back in 1983, he was a divorced homicide cop living in Seattle. He couldn’t work all the time, so I had to have him do something when he WASN’T working.

Writers are supposed to write what they know.  After spending eighteen years with a problem drinker, I happened to know a lot about drinking, so I had Beau do that.  In my mind, his downing the occasional McNaughton’s was nothing more than a bit of stage business.  By book number four, however, my readers began to ask me if Beau had a booze problem.  Eventually they got my attention enough to realize they were right. (The denial that had once been present in my real life ended up being just as much a part of my fictional one!)

Book seven was the beginning of Beau’s having to come face to face with his problem.  Book number eight had him in treatment, and he’s been in recovery ever since.

I was still writing paperbacks when I did a book signing at a Fred Meyer in Seattle.  Most of the people at the signing were there to do grocery shopping, but I noticed one guy lingering in the background who seemed out of place.  He was dressed in worn Levi’s, was tattooed up and down both arms, and had a pack of Camels tucked into the sleeve of his T-shirt.  Eventually he came up to the table and told me his story.  He’d been a bartender all his life, but when the doctor told him he had to stop drinking or die, he ended up losing not only his job, but also all his friends.  So he leased a vacant, down-at the heels tavern  and opened a non-alcoholic bar.  He wanted to know if I’d be willing to do a signing there, and I was.  The people from the Seattle Mystery Bookshop who handled the book sales said it was the scariest place they’d ever seen, but the customers who were there were glad to see me. By the way, the wall behind the cash register featured a collection of dishonored checks.  Sad to say, I don’t believe they stayed in business very long.

Then came a visit to the Texas Book Festival which was held in Austin.  As I was signing books, I noticed a young guy who was standing in line.  He had a toddler on his hip and was grinning at me from ear to ear.  When it came time to sign his book, he told me his story.  He was someone who had a developed a serious drinking problem from a very early age.  Eventually his mother got him started reading the Beau books.  In watching J.P. deal with his issues, that young man learned to deal with his own. When I met him that day in Austin, not only was he a reasonably new father, he had also just signed on as a cop with one of the smaller jurisdictions in the Austin area.  The last I heard, he had been appointed chief of police.

So when I tell people that I write books “with no socially redeeming value,” I know that’s not really true.  Some of my readers have shown me otherwise.