Good Morning: A Convergence

Good Morning: A Convergence is the last book I wrote while I was still an English teacher. I called it rage writing at the time because I was so angry over being assigned to teach eighth grade that I became incredibly productive as a writer. The anger needed somewhere to go. I knew I was leaving the classroom but didn’t yet know what came next, only that I had to have some escape and some kind of mental release to sustain me until I could leave. This novella was the final book of that period. It came out June 9.

For years I’d wanted to find a way to bring together Milton Agnew (Amara’s Prayer), Andrew Clausing (The Teacher), and Donnie Nelson (The Lost Pages Bookstore) into one story. But I couldn’t think of a plausible reason for the three men to meet. So, I sat on the idea, mulling it over from time to time. Milton with his OKC soup kitchen, Andrew off in Steinbeck Country, and Donnie happily writing sword-and-sorcery novels in the tiny town of Sagebrush, Oklahoma.

The answer came suddenly, when I wasn’t really thinking about it, the way most of the good ideas do. Donnie, once again a famous author, is at a writers’ convention in downtown Oklahoma City. He steps out to get away from the crowds and is beaten and robbed by two desperate strangers. Andrew, now living the van life that I almost chose, has come home in an attempt to reconcile with his daughter. He sees the attack and leads Donnie to the soup kitchen where Milton, of all people, is the one who tends Donnie’s wounds.

And there it was.

But … what are these three middle-aged men going to do once they meet?

Talk.

Yes, that’s pretty much it. You see, I absolutely love the film based on Cormac McCarthy’s play The Sunset Limited, in which Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones argue over the value of life. There’s no way to describe the movie that doesn’t sound boring, but watching it is fascinating. I wanted to create something like that.

I lack McCarthy’s skill with the language, and I’m not as pessimistic as he was. McCarthy gives us two men in an apartment arguing whether life is worth living, and the play ends in failure — one man walks out the door, the other collapses in failed prayer. Good Morning puts three men around a table arguing about what’s owed to the people who hurt us. It ends differently. I won’t say how, but the ending is the thing the book is actually for.

I loved revisiting each of these characters, seeing how they have changed and grown since their stories finished. Andrew, I think, is the one most changed from the man he was at the end of his novel. That’s not surprising considering I gave him some of the real-world trouble his story brought into my life. Anyway, I got to watch these men grow a little more during the long night they spent in contemplative argument with one another.

Amazon has not yet linked the paperback and the e-book versions of Good Morning: A Convergence (MoonHowler Press 2026), so I’m providing links to each. The paperback is also available at Barnes and Noble or any other online bookstore. If you’re in Oklahoma, the best version of this book is the signed copy at The Lost Pages Bookstore in Shawnee. It’s the same paperback Amazon sells, but I’ll write your name in it, along with a message specific to this story, shake your hand, and you’ll be holding the last book of my teaching years in the bookstore I built after I left the profession I once loved. That feels like the right place to read it, and you can sit by my fireplace to do that, if you want.