The Beatles were my first musical love.  It’s not that unusual, of course.  Lots of folks claim the Fab Four as their favorite band.  They’re one of the most popular bands in history, with scads of #1 hits, platinum albums, and a sound that, while it evolved from album to album, was always clearly and definitively them.

The first song I can remember singing is “Yellow Submarine.”  I couldn’t have been more than four or so, singing along with my dad while he strummed his guitar.  I’ve memorized their lyrics, listened to their albums over and over and over until they are etched upon every fiber of my being, watched the movies…hell, even Magical Mystery Tour, and that thing is difficult to watch.  I tear up at the end of Abbey Road with those final lyrics from “The End.”  And I’m a little bit obsessed with “Paperback Writer.”

Is “Paperback Writer” the reason I want to be a writer?  Maybe.  I’m not entirely sure.  But it doesn’t really matter, honestly.  It’s a bit of a mission statement for me, at this point.  I’m building up quite the backlog of written work now.  I’m well into book 5 (I know, book 1 isn’t going to be published until December, but hey, why wait to get ahead?), figuring out how to get the short stories back out there so folks can read them, and thinking ahead to what I can do in the future with Hazzard and maybe even some other characters and settings and genres.  Maybe I’m getting too far ahead of myself.  I still don’t know how well the first book will even sell, if there will even be a market for what I write.  But I kinda hope and think there might be.  Everyone likes snarky protagonists, right?  And mysteries that have actual, genuine clues scattered throughout, so the twist feels earned instead of just being a, “Haha, the killer was this character who had never even been mentioned until just now!”

I guess I’m saying I think I’m a pretty solid writer, and I think folks will like what I do.  And it’s probably all because of a song about a guy writing novels in his spare time.