When my professional writing career was just getting under way, I was eagerly pursuing book contracts, building my name, selling stories to the major magazines, clawing myself up one step at a time. A hot new author exploded on the scene with a universally celebrated first novel, which won a bunch of awards; everybody read it, everybody talked about it.
And we never heard from him again. No second novel that I knew of, no short story publications. The guy had achieved the pinnacle of success that so many of us longed for … and then he just disappeared. Why would anyone do that? The question obsessed me, and I still don’t know the answer.
“Rough Draft” explores that question, and I think it’s one of my most powerful stories.