Racino: Book 3 in The Michael Butler Saga

PETER P. SELLERSBrevity here is key. But, brevity is often a subjective thing.I want my biography to read like I was telling a story to a stranger on a long train ride. To begin such a self-serving exercise there has to have been a reason why my listener showed an interest in such an aggrandizing exercise. In my fantasy about the character motivations and biographical references I might mention to my stranger-on-the-train, the listener has read one of my books and enjoyed it; and he, or she, wants to know a little more about the characters, the why, the how, and, some stuff about me. That's exactly what I'd want to know if I ever got the chance to share an overnight commuter with Walter Farley, Len Deighton, Phillip Kerr, Ian Rankin, Raymond Chandler, or John D. MacDonald...you get my point.Any author's bio ought to enlighten a reader to his or her family life, schooling, living environment, education, relationships, and how they affected the choice of genres, settings, characters, themes, and point of view in their writing. Every author who endures includes or alludes to some of their roots in every story they tell. If you came from poverty, were born to wealth, had teachers for parents, or was a working member of a police department, those impressions and memories can't help but surface. That's the case with me. Why hide it? Embrace it. It's all about moving a reader with your own "bio" and your own characters.I had four siblings. We grew up in rural Western New York. We rode a school bus to a central school. I was unruly and disruptive, regularly punished for being overzealous. I was routinely disciplined with "detention" in the school library. The librarian was an elderly lady (probably early forty's) who was put in charge of our small group of repeat misfits. As we would gather to serve our "sentences" she would point to stacks of un-filed books and with a slight wave gesture start the process of us returning books to the shelves in compliance with the Dewey Decimal System. I liked holding hardback books.Mrs. Cummings liked me. She made me an offer one day during my freshman year of high school: "start reading books while your here, write me book reports, and I'll let you out early." I vividly remember the first book she suggested...Walter Farley's Black Stallion. Nothing before or after (except girls) had the effect on me that that book did. I became obsessed with the dreamy perception of horses...