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Newsletter
Newsletter # 1
Welcome to the I G. Cummings Newsletter.
February 2024
I’ll put this out from time to time so my readers can keep up with what’s going on with me and where I am in writing novels and short stories about relationships.
Readers can ask questions through the igcummings.com website.
I’ll answer as soon as possible.
In this first newsletter, I begin introducing myself by revealing what drives my writing. What makes me do this?
Though I’ve had a life-long love affair with spoken and written language, I only turned to fiction writing a few years ago after a 35 plus year career as a practicing lawyer (I know, cue the lawyer jokes). I’m actually proud of my years as a lawyer, but as scripture says, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). The season has come for me to write and I’m leaving the practice of law behind (whether I’ll stop thinking like a lawyer remains unknown).
Lots of things drive my writing, i.e. what makes me do it.
First, I enjoy story telling. Having spent those 35 plus years in courtrooms, storytelling has become ingrained in me. Court cases, and life in general, revolve around people telling each other about what’s happened in their worlds. We wouldn’t have very interesting lives without stories.
A prominent college football coach helped me get this point when he was asked some years ago, on national signing day, about top notch recruits he DIDN’T sign. He said, “There’s a story with every one of them.” Then, I understood, stories are life and I love telling them.
Second, I thoroughly enjoy telling stories about people with superficial differences but who are alike in ways that matter much more. Many relationships in my novels and short stories occur between people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Sometimes a big age gap divides them.
Sometimes, as in my debut novel A Love for the Ages, both race and age separate would-be lovers. I’m fascinated by how people in such relationships do or don’t navigate their differences and how society reacts to them.
Many ways now exist for commenting on the state of the world. Today’s media tools make that possible for more people than ever before. Once upon a time gatekeepers -- newspaper editors, literary agents, large publishing houses – controlled completely who could speak and what got said. Not anymore. Blogs, social media, other internet-based platforms, and independent publishing through vehicles like Amazon let virtually anyone with an idea and a laptop speak and be heard.
The opportunity for participation in that broad communication landscape drives my fiction writing because I know I can get what I have to say into the stream of commerce.
So, we’re off.
Sign up for this newsletter at igcummings.com.
Read my novels and short stores.
Comment on them. Join the conversation. I speak and I listen.
What a great world in which we live!
Newsletter #2
March 7, 2024
Now that I’ve put out my first novel, some might ask if I feel any different about writing than before. After all, the debut novel marks a milestone in the life of a writer. You can’t write 50 novels, as some have, without writing the first one. So now, I’ve written one – A Love for the Ages, released in February and now available for sale online in paperback and electronic formats.
I’m proud of Ages. but it’s just the start of this journey, not a destination that means I’ve reached the promised land. I have more stories to tell and more to say about relationships that may seem out of the ordinary. These relationships happen between people who are often very different on the outside, but inside, they have the capacity to share their lives.
My next novel, Weeks in May, scheduled for release in early May, will highlight two people generally in the same age group -- what we’d call middle age – but who come from different racial and cultural backgrounds. After a chance meeting they find a great attraction for each other and much in common. But then the fun starts.
Some of their friends and family members are not nearly as enthusiastic about them being together as they are. Rather than keeping their reservations to themselves, these friends and family members make trouble. Though society seems more accepting of such relationships than it once was, not everyone is on board. Weeks explores how such couples sometimes still have battles on their hands about just being together.
Later this year, I’ll return to the subject taken up in Ages, relationships in which one person is much older than the other. My third novel, That’s Different, considers how family members (and others) may look differently at relationships between older men and younger women on one hand and older women and younger men on another. I’ve had a lot of fun writing it and I’m anxious to see how readers respond. Watch for it later this year.
As I said in my first newsletter, the opportunity to tell stories drives my writing. I keep finding stories I want to tell and I hope readers want to read.
RLW March 7, 2024