The Author Guy Blog

8th January 2025.  Hello out there, Welcome back. My wife and I just returned to our Kentucky home after welcoming the new year at our South Carolina beach timeshare condominium. It’s been a magical place for me to vacation every yearsince 1985, and I look forward to our return in September. For most of those forty years, I’ve decamped with a full briefcase and laptop, either for work prior to my retirement or to nurture my literary pursuits that began in 2014. I’m happy to report that the computer has not accompanied my for the past few years and the freedom has been a wonderful change. My time is now absorbed with walks on the beach, dining out at restaurants during the off-season and, mostimportantly, reading upwards of a dozen books during the seven days we’re in residence. As a novelist, my interest leans heavily toward fiction, especially by the works of authors I admire and from whom I can learn so much. But at the encouragement of my son and other great friends, I’ve begun ...

4th October 2024 Hello out there, Welcome back. Today I rise in defense of my home state of Kentucky, of which I’m extremely proud and where all five of my novels, four published and one yet-to-be-released, are set in whole or in part. Recently there have been well-publicized exchanges about the “image” of Kentucky and its residents between our current (and one of the nation’s most popular) governor, Andy Beshear, and one of the two men in competition to become vice-president of the United States – a man who claims ties to the Bluegrass State yet represents neighboring Ohio in the Senate. I met Beshear last week, and I have to say, I was every bit as impressed as I’d anticipated. The other, less so, and we’ve never met. The other man wrote a bestselling book entitled Hillbilly Elegy, an unflattering and partially untruthful portrayal (yes, I read the book and disliked it immensely) of Kentucky and people who call it home. How easy it is to cast dispersions again and again as this man ...

  7th June 2024 Hello out there, Welcome back. The events of the past week put me to thinking about “force of nature” and how `we are almost always helpless if we find ourself in the path of one. Metaphorically speaking, a one-of-a-kind force of nature in the person of a former president (and his party’s presumptive 2024 presidential candidate) was just found guilty of thirty-four felony counts by a jury in Manhattan. That decision, and the reaction in the coming months by both the individual and his followers, and those aligned against them, most likely will be a force of nature thrust upon our country and the world, and we’re powerless to do anything about it except make our feelings known, one way or the other, at the ballot box on November 5th . A literal force of nature descended upon my hometown three years ago, and the resulting damage and loss of life was haphazard and indiscriminate. A house destroyed here or there; those surrounding it left untouched. The randomness of it...

15th March 2024 Hello out there, Welcome back. It’s been said (by whom the first time I don’t know) that the only thing permanent is change. That certainly happens to me seemingly all the time, and one example occurred a few weeks ago and reversed something I said in my very first blog posting back in December. Backing up a bit. For years, one of my writing goals has been to become a syndicated columnist, both for the writing pleasure it would bring, and as a means to promote my author brand and my books. I thought I was on my way when our local paper began publishing what turned out to be seventeen feature columns I wrote for their 6X/year, four-color lifestyle magazine. Then in 2023, cost-cutting measures changed (in my opinion) the quality of the magazine’s physical product, and they wanted my position (the inside back cover) for ad placements. I respectfully said “no,” so they asked if I would write a monthly column for the newspaper itself. I jumped at the chance.  I committed...

23rd February 2024 Hello out there, Welcome back. Last week, my son noted in an email reply to one of mine that he’d just noticed the hat in my signature line: I replied that it was a component of my author “branding” but I had hoped it wouldn’t be so subtle as to go unnoticed by a family member for the better part of three years. I am a proud member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, an organization here in my home state dedicated to doing important charitable work for those less fortunate. To become a Colonel, one must be approved by the Secretary of State before the certificate is signed-off by the sitting governor. I’ve been a member since the mid-1980s, so my certificate was signed by the only woman governor in Kentucky’s history – Martha Lane Collins. All by way of explaining the hat is a Kentucky Colonel hat. The Old English “G” (that also appears in my name on my book covers) holds special meaning to me because it’s how my late father signed his name. I recalled this...

  1 st December 2023 Hey, out there, Welcome back.  Today, I’ll explain a couple of things about this blog. I’m a huge admirer of the late bestselling author Pat Conroy (even visited his gravesite in a small cemetery near Beaufort, South Carolina cemetery). After his passing in early March 2016, a collection of some of his speeches, magazine articles and letters was published as A Low Country Heart (Reflections on a Writing Life).  In reading the book, I learned he began such reflections with the simple words “Hey, out there.” From all that I’ve read about him, including his 2018 biography My Unremarkable Life, I don’t think he’d mind this one tiny bit of emulation. Secondly, I live in a Southern town where residents know each other and their business … or think they do. When folks became aware of my books and my newspaper contributions, and I was introduced for the first time, because of the uniqueness of my last name, more than one person responded, “Oh, you’re the auth...

  24 th November 2023 Hey, out there~ Welcome to the very first Author Guy blog. And let me begin by saying I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. A bit about me. I’m a retired corporate executive who, ten years ago, began pursuing a lifelong dream of being a published author. I now have four novels in print, and you can read the first three chapters of each one at www.larrygildersleeve.com. My fifth will be released in early 2024. In addition to this blog, I publish a monthly newsletter (you can sign-up on my web site) and I’m a featured columnist in some of Boone Newsmedia’s sixty-plus newspapers across the Midwest and Southeast. For my weekly blog, I intend to remain focused on writing, combining my original thoughts with things like quotes and facts about other authors, books I’m currently reading or recommend to others, as well as the importance to both readers and authors of libraries, independent bookstores and indie/hybrid publishers. You have my c...