Reader's Favorite Five-Stars for The Road Behind Me (The Lie of Hannah)

Reader's Favorite Five-Stars for Dream Lover and Other Tales

Born just two days before the arrival of summer, RjCook considers himself a child of the sun. Welcomed into a large, expanded family, nevertheless he experienced a lonely childhood. RjCook had questions but no one had answers, he was accused and guiltless, ambitious but thwarted. Life was a challenge to understand, and towards that endeavor he put pen to paper.

Above all else, writing was anathema, but was also healing. A young man thrust into a world tougher than he was found the power of words - combinations on paper he created - to be the motivation to move forward, to succeed. Young ladies were smitten by his poetry, presented as a gift. Fellow musicians (for that was another path he chose) were enamored of his prose used as lyrical accompaniment to their compositions. Employers discovered his gift of clarity in the general text in product descriptions, instructional formats, etc.

But these weren't RjCook's ambitions. He perceived himself as a natural-born story teller, a "bullshitter" his friends called him, so he wrote and wrote, but soon discovered a drawback to this passion: he despised his writing!

While still young he knew his lack of talent would not pay the bills and with his own family to care for he searched for another life's calling. Forklift operator, truck driver, photographer, real estate salesman, advertising, layout artist, telephone company administrator: numerous careers that offered no more than a temporary fix to a wordsmith junkie. In each pursued career path, rising to the top was easy, often too rapid. Each management position, each supervisory role RjCook held would self-destruct, mostly, by his own admission to his own restless ambition.

But there was always the writing. Countless short stories, poems and random, besieged thoughts put to paper, stashed away, never to see the light of day again. He hated his writing, loathed it even. What RjCook heard in his head he could not get from his pen. But wasn't that the idea of good writing? To never accept anything as your best?

Whatever it was supposed to mean was not relevant to his accrimonious disposition. Writing was necessary, it was the opiate of his soul, the thread to his needle. It wasn't until years later his work would find its place in a memoir of his earlier years, and as a monthly column in an online Internet magazine. But it still evoked a bitter pill RjCook swallowed to let others read his work.

It is for his children, his grandchildren, and the Mrs. It is a legacy he will leave behind for them. The reason and the chosen path forward are clear: RjCook needs to write. These days, he finds much of his time engrossed with his monthly column, The Life Around Me, featured in the online magazine hREALITY Land. www.hRLand.net.

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