My driver’s license and passport report my name as Gary E. Carter, and that’s true enough. And I guess anyone finding his or her way here expects to find out something about the guy behind it.

So, let’s say I’ve made a few trips around the sun, always in search of a place where pushing words around until they make sense seems to make sense—for now. I take pleasure, sometimes, in turning those pushed-around words into fiction and poetry that have on occasion found their way out into the world. There’s an early work, Eliot’s Tale (2010), which I describe as a “reverse-coming-of-age-road-trip novel” in which the protagonist hits the highway in a mid-life, looking-toward-the-dirt-nap attempt to deal with things done and left undone. Included are some sex, drugs and rock & roll (and blues, jazz and country), beneath which lies a nice little love story about a man and wife at the crossroads. The author remains convinced the novel should be Cameron Crowe’s next film project and is waiting on the call.

Short fiction and poetry have appeared recently in such eclectic journals as Nashville Review, Sky Island Journal, Deep South Magazine, Steel Toe Review, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Dead Mule, The Voices Project, Silver Birch, Live Nude Poems, Delta Poetry Review, Real South Magazine and Main Street Rag. A film based on an original screenplay, A Love for the Game, is rumored to be in pre-production limbo. Some samples are available for your reading pleasure on the “Published Work” page.

For immediate cash flow purposes, I work as a hired-gun marketing consultant and writer, having labored on both the corporate and agency sides of the world, as well as writing on a range of topics for a variety of publications and online outlets as a journalist and freelancer. Assignments are always welcome—it’s a tough world out there. So if you need articles, blogs, web content, branding and marketing, screenplays or ghostwriting, operators are standing by. And I sell a little real estate, which to swipe a job description from Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”—makes me something of a “real estate novelist.”

Otherwise, it’s just taking it as it comes, one day at a time, while always recalling Mister Vonnegut’s words of wisdom: “Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”