Launching, September 1, 6PM at Longfellow Books: Hard as a Headstone and the reissue of The Last Altruist
And so on . .
Celebrating a big-number birthday this year and I’m strangely calm about it, though there are many days when I feel like I’m like careening down the back side of Mt. Monadnock on a bike with no brakes. Things going way too fast.
Mostly, though, another birthday is a number.
For some reason, twenty-five (which is not this year’s big number . .) was the most difficult birthday for me. I hadn’t made much progress on the grandiose plans for my life and that worried me. I was convinced that opportunity, success, had already passed me. What I didn’t realize what that I was writing the first draft of what my life would be.
Fiction-writing graduate school at forty only made things worse. I studied with, read with, wrote with people decades younger who were better writers and had had more publication success. Generally I was encouraged to believe my time had passed. Second draft? Third draft?
When I do events now, especially if the crowd skews older (which readers often are), I make it a point to tell people my first book wasn’t published until I was sixty-five. 
Decades of sad stories and blind alleys contributed to that fact but when I say it, I will see some eyes light up. I hope it helps.
More recently, I’ve noticed people at events looking at my aging countenance and, I think, wondering at the fact that I’m past retirement age—whatever that means to a writer—and still writing books and publishing and promoting them. I’ve had at least two people ask me explicitly how long I’m going to keep doing this. As if I had a choice. They seem to think a book, a creative life, ever gets finished.
But this year I have a new publisher, whose people are busting their asses to make me and their other authors successful, people as engaged as I am in bringing the news that stories 
carry. Two books are coming out in September, one new 
and one a reissue. It’s invigorating as all hell and I’m here to tell you that seventy-five doesn’t look too damn bad.
Leonardo said that art is never finished, only abandoned. Good work is the same way. I’m giving up nothing.
Happy upcoming birthday, and as they say, write on!
Happy to read this post. I am 72 and working on books 2 & 3. My timeline started at 70. Writing at 50. Many pot holes along the route of my writing. Like to meet you. Happy birthday and safe travels.
Happy everything, Dick – birthday, upcoming publication with Islandport, your continued (and growing) success. You’ve worked hard for it, and deserve to enjoy it.
In a perfect world, we’d age to fifty and then grow younger until we reach age zero.
You mean we don’t?????? Yikes 🙂
You trailblazer you! I’m 74 today and am looking to you for the signposts.
My publishing journey – well, it’s been stops and starts, but it’s only now, this year, that I feel as if it’s possible to build a career.
Happy Birthday, Dick. Wondering if you are a Crab or a Lion. Talk soon. Gabi
As my mum used to say “You’re on the right side of the grass!” Glad you’ve come to grips with the whole-My position in the scheme of things compared to others.-illusion. We are where we’re meant to be, and you are creating out-standing work where you are at this moment. You’re stories are a joy to read. Looking forward to the new material.
Good for you and happy birthday and happy writing! I am right there with you!