Now that I'm editing my novel, I can't help but wonder what's next. Of course, the dream is to never write another word again, but that likely won't happen. (Secretly, I'd rather be a photographer, go back to Porn Valley and only shoot girls' faces, but who knows.) I'd imagine I'd likely get shanghaied into writing another novel, although if this one's good, I doubt I'd ever write anything else as good. That's the way it goes when you live the story, I think.
Lately, I've been toying with the idea of doing a nonfiction book, returning to some ideas I had a few years ago, something about men (the whale), that would involve a lot of traveling (unmoored), and perhaps be called CAN'T HOLD BACK THE DEMONS, which was written across the back of a pornographer I met one night in the Valley (a long time ago). Now there's a story not all that far from here. The same themes. A different way of getting at the truth. My Yoknapatawpha County, writ large, across America.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be Oriana Fallaci. ("... Fallaci never left her subjects unskinned.") Maybe this would be an upside down version of that. Wisdom proffered during prison visiting hours. The addict baptized in the river. The pornographer unmasked.
