About Me

Pearl City, HI, United States
Husband, father, grandfather, friend...a few of the roles acquired in 68 years of living. I keep an upbeat attitude, loving humor and the singular freedom of a perfect laugh. I don't let curmudgeons ruin my day; that only gives them power over me. Having experienced death once, I no longer fear it, although I am still frightened by the process of dying. I love to write because it allows me the freedom to vent those complex feelings that bounce restlessly off the walls of my mind; and express the beauty that can only be found within the human heart.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

My First Book, and the World Created Therein


Copyright © 2017
by Ralph F. Couey

"Writing a story about a place 
calls that world into existence."
--Alan McCluskey

About six years ago while crawling through the impossible traffic that inundates the Washington DC metro area, I allowed my mind to wander a bit.  In that short-lived ramble, an idea came to me as a sort of a formless, nascent presence.  Over the next few months, I allowed that idea to toss about my mind, kind of like a sock in a dryer.  Eventually, the idea took a more substantial form from which a myriad of possibilities sprung.  About nine months later, I sat down at my computer and began to give life to those possibilities.  Five years hence, that promising genesis has grown into that most difficult of enterprises:  My first book.

This past week, after two months of invaluable therapy provided by my editor, the incomparable Dr. Gayle Herde, this long-awaited accomplishment went live on Amazon Kindle, under the title "Tales of Barely, Missouri."

In my late professional life, a big part of my job as an intelligence analyst was taking a simple idea and shepherding it from birth through analysis to completion.  It always felt like an accomplishment, particularly since the subject matter was always excruciatingly difficult.  But this was different.  This was personal.