Category Archives: Decatur Clary

Decatur Clary, Florida Panhandle, Fools, Georgia, Trains

Decatur is back

It is hard to get back to life after a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching tragedy. Dark thoughts have prevented me from writing because every time I start to I write the word ‘why’ and then stop. Imponderable and unanswerable, that simple question is impossible to get around. Only time can wear it down to a size I can maneuver around.

Still waiting for her ship to come in.
Still waiting for her ship to come in.

And then I see these young fools …
When you’re at a railroad crossing and the bar comes down with all the lights blinking, most folks would take note and become more alert to their surroundings. When they see the bright headlight coming down the track and hear the blaring air horn, most people will pay attention and move away from the train tracks. Most folk would.
But when three young men, accompanied by three young ladies of a rather silly disposition, encounter the same set of circumstances, this somehow triggers the idea that playing chicken with a train will improve their chance of having sex with one of the young ladies.
It isn’t long before one fool steps over to the others side of the bar, tentatively at first, then more confidently when he realizes the train isn’t going to leave the track to get him. He breaks into a shuffling dance and clowns for the squealing young women.
You know where this is going, just like I knew where it was going. Once the first fool returns to the safe side of the barricade, grinning sheepishly, a second fool decides he is not going to be upstaged and crosses over to do his own dance.
I have lived in this neighborhood for many years and in my youth I would use the train tracks for a straighter, less congested, path across town than the roads and sidewalks provided. In my excursions it was not uncommon, at least once a month, to come across an animal that had lost its race with the train. There was not as much blood as I expected, even when the animal had been bisected across the juicy midsection. I suspect it is because the train wheels pinch the edges closed as it slices through. The coolest one I ever saw was a possum that had been decapitated right behind the ears, his head on one side of the rail and his body on the other.
I wondered how long their game of dare would last before someone put a foot amiss and lost his toes. I resolved to laugh heartily and walk away.
The third fool was not about to be outdone by any other fool. Instead of a silly dance, he begins touching the train as it goes by at about 20 miles per hour.
“Here we go,” I said to Georgia. “The only thing missing is a beer and a ‘y’all watch this’.”
Fool number three starts acting like he is going to swing up on the rail car, until he catches a handrail wrong and finds out that 20 MPH can hurt. He hops back, shaking his hand. He says something to the girls and the other fools egg him on, probably secretly hoping he will screw up and make their actions appear clever in comparison.
At this point, I must confess my shame: I am sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I shouted out “Idiot!” But in my defense, I wasn’t the only one yelling. Our young fools had attracted other mature attention and they were expressing themselves too.
Young fool number three did not respond well to the teasing from his friends. He says something challenging to one of the other young fools and turns with a determined look on his face just as the last car of the train goes through the crossing. Disappointed and relieved, fool number three returns to his friends bragging about what he would have done, but, judging by the girls’ reactions to him, I suspect they were keeping him around strictly for his entertainment value and he was not getting laid tonight.
It’s like the old fellow said: we don’t need more laws against idiots; we just need to pull off the warning labels and let the problem sort itself out.

Decatur Clary

What am I doing here?

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Okay, so I wrote these books, three of them. What am I going to do with them? Publish them my wife says. Easier said than done, it turns out.

I have an English degree from a good university, but still can’t spell for spit (see?). If I had stuck to writing out of college, I would have paid my dues writing crap I hated and built up a portfolio of work and achievements. That would have been the easy way, but I never could see past today.

Instead, I went to work to feed my family, owning my own business for twenty years before walking away from it with my sanity intact and little else. For reference, I had just finished the first draft of ‘No Free Air’. It took almost nine years to get back to it.

I told myself I would not publish anything until I had completed three novels, to prove to myself that I was serious about another career change. For seven years now I have shut myself away for an hour or two every night and four to six hours every weekend and worked on my books. Why? Hell if I know.

Writing is like an illness with me, a subconscious itch that grows and builds inside my mind until it festers, unless released. The people in my stories are as real to me as the ones I have to work with every day, more real in some cases, because I know more about my characters. The stories have become memories from the repetition of rewriting. I have sat here, staring at a single sentence for minutes while I try to get it to sound right or I have typed as fast as my fingers would move to keep up with the flow of words coming from my brain. It has been the best of times and the worst of times, the agony and the ecstasy, and my struggle, with apologies to Charles Dickens, Irving Stone and Adolf Hitler.

Once I had written three novels, mostly (because you never really stop rewriting a book), I faced the dilemma of: what to do with them now? The Internet is filled with warnings and horror stories of the trouble that awaits the inexperienced writer, along with list upon list of agents, publishers and clearing houses. I found people making money off authors, not just vanity publishing, but contests, classes and volumes of advice for sale or rent. W.T.F.? I don’t have time for this.

E-publishing was the answer. Decatur Clary books are now proudly available at Smashwords: Decatur Clary, a literary sampler (Free E-book), No Free Air , The Lady Lu , and 7 Crows, A Secret .

When you buy a Decatur Clary book, you know you are getting the finest product, hand crafted and fermented over years to bring out the full flavor of the words. Meticulously edited by the lovely Mary Clary, who also took time out from her restoration of Civil War photographs to create the covers. I think they’re beautiful, but I acknowledge a prejudice.

Please take time to read the samples at Smashwords and tell your friends about Decatur Clary’s work. Every purchase is deeply appreciated and feeds the dream.

Who knows, I might find more time to write this blog if I didn’t have the 8-5 taking up so much of my life. I would definitely put more time into my next novel, ‘Black Veil’. I’ll tell you more about that soon.

Decatur Clary, Florida Panhandle, Northwest Florida, Writing

Decatur Clary – a simple man in complicated times.

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Born into a family of storytellers, I learned early that the first liar doesn’t stand a chance and an entertaining fabrication was sometimes sufficient to distract an adult long enough for them to forget how mad they are.

I started writing at a young age, the alphabet mostly. Gradually, I learned to assemble words and form sentences, … somewhat. Imagine my joy upon discovering I could write my stories down! Consistent creative re-imaging was within my grasp.

I was toiling my life away, providing for my family and myself, until one day my wife asked me if I was ever going to do anything with all of my scribblings. I had never considered actually doing anything with them; outside of pleasuring myself and making her read them. Why don’t you publish some of them, she asked. D’ya think? I said. Yep, she said. So I did, and here we are. What do you think?

My stories are mostly about Florida, the way it probably never was, but the way I remember it. The characters are composites of people I have known or heard about, and the settings are familiar places in the Panhandle of Florida, the armpit of the South. Any truth is accidental and I disclaim any liability.

In my youth we traveled a lot, but we always came back to the Forgotten Coast. The tourism bureau doesn’t like to talk about it much, because of the heat, humidity and hurricanes that swirl up from the Gulf of Mexico and the mosquitoes, biting flies and gnats that swarm out of the swamps, across the sandy soil that supports scrub oak and pine forests and damned little else. If the truth were to be told, most of us prefer it that way, forgotten.

I like to listen to the small voices of everyday people because  there I find the common humanity that binds us together, no matter how strongly social loyalties pull us apart. This common humanity interests me because i have seen it appear in the most unexpected places and it always reminds me of how much alike we are.

I hope that you will find some enjoyment in my stories. I hope that someday soon I can quit my day job and write all the time. Wouldn’t it be a lovely world then? I think so.

-RDC