The Author Guy Blog by Larry B. Gildersleeve (Dec 11, 2024)
Hello out there, Welcome back. With the Christmas season now upon us, I’m drawn as I am every year to O. Henry’s brilliant yet extraordinarily brief short story The Gift of the Magi , first published in a hundred and twenty years ago. O. Henry’s real name was William Sydney Porter, a man of various professions (pharmacist, ranch hand, draftsman, and bookkeeper) who lived between 1862 – 1910. My author journey, now in its eleventh year, was inspired over fifty years ago when I was in college and read the short novella Love Story that became a mega-bestseller for Eric Segal. Twenty years later, my desire was rekindled reading Robert James Waller’s Bridges of Madison County . With my two-book exclusive commitment to my new publisher satisfied with release of novels in mid-2025 and early 2026, I’m once again drawn to the brevity of essays, short stories and novellas. I’m anticipating my next book will be a short, Christmas-themed novella, following in the footsteps o...