writing

Chris Knight's avatar

Keeping the Tryst came out a little less than a year ago.  I’m still hoping that it might be picked up by a real publishing house someday, but in the meantime I’ve been happy with it.  It’s sold enough to make a bit of money, but more important than that it seems to be appreciated and enjoyed by the kinds of people I was especially writing it for.

Toward the end of Keeping the Tryst I allude to what else I want to do with my life.  For the past many months I have been bogged down by a number of crises that have kept me from doing anything toward those.  Thankfully – and I truly believe that God has been at work in these matters – I have emerged from that in a better position than I’ve ever been in my life.  I can now throw myself fully into ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Earlier tonight I was checking some things on Facebook and there was a memory that popped up, from a year ago.  Usually I don’t look at those, there have been just so many things I’ve shared over the years.  But for whatever reason I went down the rabbit hole and took a gander.

Here is what it pulled out from this day in 2025.  A few things: this references the time I spent at the nearby Whataburger (the first location in the state of South Carolina).  I was there for awhile, earning some supplemental income to the artificial intelligence training I’ve been doing a few years now.

And at this point Keeping the Tryst had pretty much gone through editing and revision.  This was heading toward the final stages in getting it published.  This was also the time when I had started designing the cover.

 

I went further.  It turns ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I haven’t written anything in the way of an op-ed piece in quite some time now.  I’d honestly wondered if I have lost my touch.  Like, was getting my book published the peak experience I will ever have?  I don’t want it to be that way.  As I wrote in the final pages of my book, I have spent half a lifetime fighting something that has taken so much from me.  Getting that back matters an awful lot.

This morning American Thinker, a site I’ve long admired, published my first essay for a wider audience since January of last year.  “Holding the Media Responsible for the SPLC Scandal” is something that I must confess I had some pleasure in writing.  For decades I’ve watched too many journalists cite Southern Poverty Law Center as a legitimate source of information.  I can only imagine the looks on the faces ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s been almost six months since the release of Keeping the Tryst.  It’s reached a nice sized audience already yet I’m still tinkering with it behind the scenes.  Finding small places that can be improved, etcetera.  Nothing drastically major: it’s still the same story that was published in early October, just cleaned up in spots.

There is one detail that has irked me though: the text of the back cover.  It’s easily the one thing I wrestled most over.  The back cover text should be something that readily sells the book, without saying too little or worse, too much.  Keeping the Tryst is such a wild book though, it was always going to be tough to synopsize it into a digestible packet.  So it is that the back cover description hasn’t really been something I’ve been satisfied with.

So with some hours to spare last night and into ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

The sad news is coming out of Asheboro, North Carolina this evening that Jerry Bledsoe, the prolific author who among other things hit the bestseller list with his true-crime book Bitter Blood, has passed away at the age of 84.

In my formative years, Bledsoe’s columns for the News & Record out of Greensboro were must-reading.  It seemed that there wasn’t a subject that he couldn’t write about and make it a rollickin’ good respite from one’s typical daily life.  He was a gifted humorist who brought with him fresh insight into practically everything he wrote about.

But Bledsoe’s biggest claim to fame had nothing to do with humor.

In the summer of 1988 came the publication of Bitter Blood.  It remains one of the most disturbing true-crime books ever written.  Bledsoe’s book attempted the impossible (something he admitted in its final pages): trying to make sense ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
My book Keeping the Tryst has been out for a little over a month and a half now.  It’s been doing pretty well sales-wise.  Okay it’s NOT a bestseller by any stretch.  But enough people have been buying and reading it to make me pretty happy so far.  Maybe there will come to be some word of mouth and knowledge about it will spread around.
People are reading it.  And their comments have been rather kind.  One of my friends said that it’s a real page-turner that he’s barely been able to put down.  A number of people have praised its readability, saying that it doesn’t come across as a 500-some page volume.  I’ve also gotten good word about the design: it’s page color, the font size… so it’s something comfortable on the eyes.  Considering that I had to design everything about this book, hearing those things makes me smile.
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s been a little over three weeks since my first book Keeping the Tryst was published.  It’s been selling fairly well, considering that I’m a first-time author who’s been pretty under the radar for awhile.  I’m happy with it and I’m hoping still more people will come to discover it.

Since it’s now “out in the wild” some people have had a number of questions about it.  I’m going to be answering those as they are asked.  Who knows, but I may add a “frequently asked questions” to a future edition of the book.

Here’s the latest question about my book:

“How is Uncle Frank in 2014 after he died in Florida fourteen years earlier?”

I really should have clarified this in the book.  In my life there have been two Uncle Franks.  One was Mom’s half-brother.  He’s the one who moved to Florida and had a family there. ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Following the first question a few days ago,  I’ve received another query from someone who is reading my new book Keeping the Tryst. And it’s a good one…

“What was the ‘most disturbing visual aid’ that anyone in the argumentative writing class had ever seen, that involved a jar of tea, some aluminum foil and three or four balls of Silly Putty?”

Ahhh yes.  That.  It was January of 1993, when I was at Rockingham Community College, when I did that little stunt.  Involving nothing but items found at the average grocery store or Walmart.

Listen: I’m not sharing that with anybody.  It’s something you HAD to be there to experience.  Twenty-some innocent souls including Mr. Conte the instructor were there to witness it and I doubt any of them have spoken about it either.  I doubt they’ve even wanted to think about it.  It was just ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Okay, someone just asked the very first question that I’ve been given about Keeping the Tryst.  This is from a person has finished part one.

Here’s the question: “What was the joke that you told your uncle?”

If you’ve been reading the book, scroll down past the spoiler space and you’ll find the answer…

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

The question pertains to the joke that Mom asked me to share with my Uncle Frank, who was Dad’s brother-in-law, late that night after they got back from the hospital following Dad’s accident earlier in the afternoon.

I had heard this joke at school earlier that afternoon.  And I admit that at the time I thought it was pretty funny, though I hadn’t grasped yet just how ...

Read more