My name is Andrew Joyce. Some of you may know me … most of you, probably not. But I’m sure you all know of my ex-dog, Danny the Dog. He left me for greener pastures a few months ago (like six months ago) and I was kinda sad. Still am, but that’s another story.

What I’m trying to say is that without Danny around, I got bored. He used to keep me entertained (and on my toes). Anyway, about then I got to know an interesting character. I had seen him around the marina for years, but I had never said more than a few words to him.

For a long time now, some of my friends have been coming up to me and telling me I should write a book about him. They told me he had led a remarkable life and I could sell a lot of books telling his story.

I was always polite and said, “Sure. Just let me finish my current book.” But I had no intention of writing word one about the guy. I write fiction, not biographies!

I don’t know about you folks, but people are always asking me to write about this or about that. Mostly it’s them they want me to write about. To this guy’s credit, he never asked me to write about him.

Without Danny to inspire me to write something, I’d sit there staring into space day after day. So, just to get out of the boat and get some fresh air, I’d peddle my bike over to this guy’s boat and sit and talk with him for hours at a time. I think it was grief therapy more than anything else. I still wasn’t going to write a book about him.

Well, guess what? I wrote a book about him. His life was just too damn interesting. It’s a biography; however, I wrote it like a novel to keep people turning pages. But every word in it is true.

I did not write the book to make money. I wrote it for him … and for me. Writing it was a sort of a catharsis. I’m now banging out my new novel at an incredible number of words per day. It was hard for me to pull myself away from that Word document to this Word document to write this post. But here I am.

The book is now up on Amazon for $0.99. (What a deal!) It’s a short read, only 146 pages. There were a lot of things he wouldn’t let me put in there. Maybe in the next volume.

By the way, his name is Ellis Hodgkins. And my name is Andrew Joyce … just in case you’ve forgotten my intro at the top of the page.