Fiction by the seat of my pants

I am making the final edits for my first novel, "Walter's Searchlight." It is a tale about education, race, politics, sex, drugs and parenthood, all told through the eyes of a homeless father who loves his daughter. I plan to self-publish this fall.

Let's rewind to May 2012. I was returning from my grandfather's funeral in Ohio when I heard that Walter Backstrom died. Few people in my life have fascinated me as much as Walter, who wrote a column for my current newspaper.

Anyone who knew the guy knew there was no such thing as a little bit of Walter. He was as volatile as he was brilliant. He was a scholar, a saint and a sinner.

The book is not about Walter, per se, but attempts to capture the essence of what a human like Walter is all about. It is neither a biography nor a roman-a-clef, nor is it a memoir. Just a story that needed to be told without any intention of making money - and those are the best kinds of stories to tell.

I plunged into this project without any fiction writing experience beyond a few silly newspaper columns. The process has been liberating, but also difficult and lonely work. Sometimes it felt like swimming into a dark ocean with only my instincts as a compass.

I have invested hundreds of hours into this project. I hope people read it.