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.
