Transient by me Milton J Southerland

I never went to writing school. It wasn't because I didn't want to. Life just kept me too busy and I do not regret spending my time providing for my family.

Writing, however, is something I love to do. I get involved in a story. I involve my wife in the story. We talk about the characters. When I am writing a story, I am standing with the characters (in my mind of course but it does not seem so). I go to sleep thinking about what might happen to them next. I hope they find their way. I even hope the bad guys reform and I don't have to kill them off. Of course, I'm in control of all this but not completely. As the story develops, certain things just seem right to do with the characters. Also, my wife loves some of the characters so much that she won't let me let anything happen to them. So, yes, my stories take me over for a while. I could not write horror stories because I would be right there being sucked into the abyss with my characters and that causes nightmares. It is bad enough when I am in a shootout.

Transient is such a story. I actually lived some of the things in this book. I know what it is like to clean out the barn and put the contents into the garden with my hands. I know what it is to hoe cotton until my hands would not straighten.

Leeuna Foster said of Transient: "I was so scared that Smog was going to shoot him (Tommy) there at the end - almost got mad at you." "I also loved the fact that everything was totally G rated. I hate to be reading a good story, then suddenly come upon a paragraph filled with 'cuss words' as we say here in the South." Then in a promotional page for Transient she wrote: "Milton's vivid imagery and his excellent use of dialogue pulls his readers into the book and makes them feel as though they re watching the scenes unfold instead of reading about them. His characters are so multi-dimensional they come to life on the pages."

Well I ain't no good at honkin' my own horn. I like the stories but I always feel that I should have done better. I always feel that I lost patience with the story and finished it too soon. It is the nature of life. We see other people at special times, good and sad, but they must go home and live the minutes of their life that we are not privy to. We can but tell the part of the story we know.

I hope you will buy the book and excuse my human faults and shortages in abilities. You don't necessarily have to love my style to love the characters. They are you and me and the people around us. Go here.

I am presently working on another book that I have been stuck on for several months but I finally got a direction and will continue as soon as my health allows me to think clearly for longer periods of time which is necessary to keep continuity in a story.