You should write a book, Matt...

"You know, you should write a book...."

Well, that's what I'm doing.

In addition to using this blogspace to post chapters of "Hometown News" I've decided to also post my thoughts during the writing of the book. I've set a goal of having a first draft completed by the end of 2015, if not a publisher and/or agent who is interested and hopefully pushing me to finish a project that at times seems like it has no end.

The stories, much like in a newspaper, just keep coming.

Anything related to "Hometown News" must mention the late, great, Marc Madow. Without him, I'm not sure this book would have ever begun. Years ago Marc was editing an alternative news website and I began shamelessly shilling Johnstown Breeze stories to him to link to to try and boost web hits. On Thursdays, when I would send him links to stories, I would entertain him in the email with little vignettes about my week at the paper.

"You know, Matt," he said, "you're wasting this stuff just on me. You should write these as stories. I'll publish them, and then eventually you'll maybe have the chapters of a book."

That's the way, and possibly the only way, that "The Ballad of Ray and Rose" got written. I've never been much for writing for simply writings sake. Call me a word whore. I want to see the things I write published, and if I think someone might do that, I'm much more likely to start banging on a keyboard.

Marc's site stopped posting regularly, and again, call me a word whore, he and I lost touch to a large extent. It had probably easily been a year or maybe even two since we had talked in the summer of 2011, when I was randomly sifting through my cell phone one Sunday morning, restless for the kind of wide-ranging talk on everything from journalism to cars to rock and roll that Marc and I used to have, when I happened across his number and hit dial.

He answered. Shocked to hear from me. I was quickly shocked back to hear he had cancer. We talked about his cancer, and cars, and journalism, and a myriad of other subjects over the next hour or so.

A week later he was dead. And now, he will someday have the dubious honor of being part of the book, and how his death in part set me spinning down a black hole that I still don't know where it'll eventually find me landing, or what or who will be there when I do, or who or what I will be. I guess he and I will both find out if I ever finish the damn thing.

There had been been plenty of people before Marc who encouraged me to write something about what it is like to own a small independent weekly newspaper in These Modern Media Times. It was his encouragement, however, and giving me a place to begin to write it, for which I will always be grateful, and which truly lit fire to all the piles of newsprint stories I had been gathering over the years. I will also always be grateful to whatever hand of grace it was that led me to call that Sunday morning.

Sitting her tonight, already so many years later, I can still hear Marc's voice on the telephone saying, "You should write a book..."