Other Writing

Dreaming on Paper

By any objective standard, my life has been a long series of lucky breaks. I'll spare you the exotic travel on five continents—Antarctica included—bankrolled almost entirely by people other than myself; the full academic scholarships at Choate and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which I am increasingly, queasily, convinced were the result of some terrible twofer of a bureaucratic mix-up, a case of mistaken identity; nor will I wax grandiloquent but merely state as fact that I have loved every woman I've ever slept with, even those who no longer return my phone calls. Instead I will focus here on the lucky breaks that relate most directly to my development as a writer.

Read the full text of this essay at Crime Fiction Dossier's "Overnight Success" column.

Sean Rowe (left) and longtime friend Tom Jackson work on house renovation.