Foreword

Foreword

You are reading my first novel. Not my first book-- I’ve several in print already-- but after writing hundreds of short stories and thousands of poems, I finally decided to write a full-length novel. As a matter of fact: Shaggy Dog is based on a poem I wrote by the same name. I’ll give it to you near the end of the book as to not give away the big ending.

Shaggy Dog is the book that almost wasn’t. It was in February 2002 that I began writing Shaggy Dog and March of 2002 that I finished writing the first draft. As I do with most of my work, I put the manuscript away for a few months so the story would be cold before I began the editing process. Only problem was, I put it away on my hard drive instead of putting it on paper and a complete failure of my hard drive meant the story was hopelessly lost... or so I thought.

What I had forgotten was that I had placed a copy of the manuscript in online storage, but with all my prompts being lost in the loss of the hard drive, I was no longer able to access the online storage even if I were to remember it was there. Which I didn’t.

Through what was bound to be sheer luck I stumbled across a long lost note with the information I needed to access and retrieve the first draft. Sure, I could have rewritten the story but it wouldn’t have been the same story. People change with every passing day and the Billy Jones who first penned Shaggy Dog wouldn’t be the same Billy Jones that he is today. It’s possible that the story might have been better, but also very possible that it would have been far worse. Thankfully, I didn’t have to find out.

Shaggy Dog is a work of fiction in that the story didn’t come to be the life of one man, but the story isn’t all fiction. You see, Shaggy Dog is an amalgamation or conglomeration of lots of true stories that happened to lots of different people I’ve loved, known, and imagined. The hero, Danny Johnson-- that’s me in that I’d like to think I might react in the same way Danny reacted if I were ever confronted with the same circumstances. Fact is: I probably couldn’t be that strong. The heroine-- she’s a dream to Danny Johnson, me and millions of men just like Danny and I.

The story takes place in the Southland-- the place I call home-- in a small town that could be any of a thousand small cotton mill-towns located in the Piedmont regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Which small town does Adamsville represent? I’ll let you decide.

I never imagined writing a romance story. Oh sure, I write poems when I’ve got it really bad, but a romance story-- well, I guess there’s really no telling what sort of book you’ve in you until you choose to let it out.

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