New Novel

I have begun to work on a new novel and have decided to follow John Steinbeck's advice. Steinbeck said that it is much easier to write a novel for a specific person than to write a novel for the vast, anonymous public one imagines will read one's book. So I have decided on my audience. I am writing this book for Mikhail Bulgakov's Texan cousin, an odd, almost feral scholar of medieval rhetoric who spends his nights at a corner table in the local honky-tonk and privately plays the dobro on his back porch. He finds Proust a bore, Kafka riotously funny, and Bukowski a better reader than writer. He likes to read Rumi late at night while dipping snuff and drinking beer, and his music collection includes albums by Ray Wylie Hubbard and Hildegard von Bingen. Granted, this reader is a figment of my imagination, but since I am writing a book of fiction, why can't I write for a fictional reader? So here come's a novel for my ol' pal Bubbakov.