Somewhere, somehow, I emerged up from a decade of dissipation and re-discovered reading. I also learned that I could write. So back to school I went and I graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Illinois and spent ten years writing for newspapers in Arizona and Illinois. I even met Alice Cooper.
But journalism was too limiting. It just wasn’t fun anymore or creative enough, so I went back to school yet again and earned an MFA in English from Western Michigan University. Short stories started tumbling down from my brain and taking form and I realized the kick I got from writing them was not all that different than the one from beer and the Rolling Stones. You can’t always get what you want, according to Mick and Keith, but I tried real hard and I got what I needed: an outlet for the need to create characters and scenes and to manipulate them into something people might enjoy.
Hell, sometimes I even think I have something relevant to say about life – often praise for things not modern: old buildings, old Chicago, old paintings (that Seurat at the museum in Chicago is a favorite), old books (Hemingway and Welty and not this latest crop of minimalist crapshooters), old cars (I just bought a 1974 Datsun 260 Z), and old (real) rock and roll – the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, the original Lynnrd Skynnrd with Ronnie Van Zant and Steve and Cassie Gaines (god bless their immortal rock souls), and a fondness for the stubborn genius of Neil Young. And by God the Beach Boys, too. They made some enduring and heroic tunes.
If you really are a writer, and not, say, one of those dilettantes who can afford to plop down thousands of dollars to lounge around some hoity-toity (I love this phrase and wanted an excuse to use it) writing retreat in Provence or Belize or Yuppieville, Montana, as advertised in Poets & Writers, then I think writing is a need not so different than the need to breathe.
-- Michael Loyd Gray
In addition to December's Children, a finalist for the Sol Books 2006 Prose Series Prize, Michael recently finished writing two new novels, Not Famous Anymore and Well Deserved, and is completing the screenplay version of Not Famous Anymore, which was awarded a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He lives in Illinois with his cats Moonpie and EH.
