Here be the Bones of ‘The American Peasant’

She tried to give me a side quest for the book, but I demurred.

Writing a book without first writing a Table of Contents (TOC) is like trying to find the bathroom at your drug dealer’s house when all the lights are off. And you are naked. And you can’t remember how you got there.

Exactly. Like. That.

I went with the salacious lede above because TOCs are generally boring things for readers to see. Especially my TOCs. For me, the TOC is like a travel itinerary (ending at the drug dealer’s house). So the first night I stay in Peoria, Illinois. The next night is in the Quad Cities. And so forth. But what happens in each city? Hell if I know.

So I know my immediate destination as I write, but take only the back roads. I allow myself to stop at the weird gas station with the functioning 1940s pumps. And I peruse the magazines there, looking for possum skin mags. I sit on the bench out front for a bit and watch. If there are some burned-out houses up the hill, I might wander off toward them.

Not…