Once, in Max Steele's fiction writing class at UNC Chapel Hill, a student said he didn't want to write about his family. It made him feel guilty. "Then you shouldn't write," Max said. I think this student was the now prominent author Randall Kenan, but I could be wrong.  I'm the only one who took to writing in my family. My mother was a children's librarian, my father the general manager of a corrugated board factory.  Both of my older brothers are physicians.  

I knew, growing up, that what I could do with words was like magic.  People didn't believe it came from me, whoever I was.  It gave me intense pleasure to write a story, and power.  It was like having access to a mind greater than my own.  I was willing to work like a slave for that connection.  I was going to say dog, but as much as I love dogs, I've never seen one work that hard.

I used to say that my family didn't read my work, but they must have heard that, so now they are reading The Ghost of Milagro Creek.  My mother came over last night and reported that my eldest brother, who was off vacationing in some place I could never afford, reported that my book was for intellectuals.  "Is he an intellectual?" I asked.  My mother replied that she thought he had some sense.  

She had brought with her a pile of notes, questions she had about The Ghost of Milagro Creek.  All the questions concerned the names of the characters.  My seventy-nine year old Mom thought there were an awful lot of names to keep up with, including nicknames.  To make things even more difficult, the names were Hispanic. She pronounced "Jésus" as "Jesus." I have strayed far from my Southern Baptist upbringing, and I was afraid this was going to be an issue.  But no, she just wanted to clear up the names.

Then she told me her dream.  My mother has always been a colorful dreamer; at times, she has even been psychic.  In this dream, we are in the town square of her hometown, Columbia, Kentucky.  An airplane circles overhead, broadcasting the words of my new novel, The Ghost of Milagro Creek.  Soon, a uniformed man approaches my mother.  He is not a policeman.  He asks her, "How could you let this happen?"

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