Day: March 21, 2026

It wasn’t the moment I received the letter from the publisher that they had accepted my manuscript, nor was it the moment when I held the newly published manuscript in my hand.

“Condo Joe” was the first official novella I had written. It was also the first novella I had written that I had actually felt something for the main character, in this case Condo Joe. It was a major moment in my journey as a writer and a moment I know I will never forget.

The inspiration for “Condo Joe” came from Charleston, SC, more specifically The Morris Island Lighthouse of Folly Beach, James Island, but I had not actually begun the novella until I had returned to my home town New Castle, PA.

We are all familiar with Dickens’ “The Christmas Carol” or “The Grinch that Stole Christmas”. The more I wrote “Condo Joe” the more it reminded me of “The Christmas Carol” and it could easily have been entitled “The Grinch Who Stole Folly Beach”. Titles are everything. Things changed when I flipped the title from “Joe Condo”, a title with not much of a ring to it, to “Condo Joe”. Much better.

Anyway, I had finished “Condo Joe” and immediately sensed a sequel. It was a sequel that I had not anticipated, but nonetheless, it was a sequel I had felt very strongly about writing. I would call the sequel “Condo Joe: King of Carnival”.

In “King of Carnival” Condo Joe is elected mayor of Charleston. One of Condo Joe’s major accomplishments is completely restoring The Morris Island Lighthouse. The only thing that had gone wrong with the project involved the lighthouse’s windows—one had to be slightly relocated. The citizens of Charleston were not too thrilled about it at first until engineering had explained that the window had to be relocated to preserve the lighthouse’s structural integrity.

At the time Charleston is on the verge of bankruptcy—Condo Joe used his own money to restore the lighthouse. The only hope Condo Joe has of saving Charleston was found its history with pirates, in this case Stede Bonnet, the “Gentleman Pirate” who had been hanged in Charleston in White Point Garden.

Condo Joe had heard a rumor that Bonnet had buried treasure on Folly Beach. The problem was no one knew where he had buried it if it was, in fact, buried there.

Well, Condo Joe knows the City of Charleston does not have the funds to dig up the entire beach for the treasure chest, so he has to explore other options.

Well, I am not going to go into the entire story, only to say that it involves Condo Joe, of course, the Charleston Mermen minor league baseball cheerleaders, and Condo Joe’s angry ex-wife who wants to destroy the lighthouse with a missile.

Well, the missile reaches the shores of Folly Beach and The Morris Island Lighthouse, but, due to its trajectory, the missile actually misses the lighthouse, going right through its windows. The missile does leave a huge crater on Folly Beach, which in turns uncovers an object of what Condo Joe and the people of Charleston think is the treasure chest.

Condo Joe, too excited to think, ventures down into the creator, discovering that the buried object is, indeed, the treasure chest. Unfortunately as he tries to climb up out of it its walls begin caving in.

This is where I had my moment as a writer. I could not believe how attached I had become to Condo Joe. There was a strong possibility that Condo Joe would not make it out of the creator, and I did not want him to die! It was a very emotional moment for me. I had not planned it, but I had become attached to Condo Joe, which meant I had done something right as a writer.

Now, I am not going to tell you how the sequel to “Condo Joe” ends, but I will say that the moment he is climbing for his life from the creator, I had a choice to make, and I wondered if it would make or break the story.

I had first encountered the semicolon in classic literature in college. It seemed to appear in short stories like Barn Burning by Falkner. It seemed to turn what I thought was prose into technical writing—which I was not a fan of.

But back then I didn’t really understand the semicolon or its function in punctuation, but, once I had understood the semicolon and its purpose in prose, I got very comfortable with it. I thought it made my prose look so intellectual, so sophisticated. I used it whenever and wherever I could, and soon my prose spiraled out of control until the semicolon took over me.

I remember a critical paper I had written for a college literature class. Even though I had gotten a decent grade on the paper, the instructor, after I had asked him, pointed out in the paper where I had gotten a little too happy with the semicolon.

But even after that moment with my instructor, the problem I had with the semicolon still hadn’t quite sunk in yet—that is until it really mattered—just after I had published my first work of fiction Jamaican Moon and Other Stories, a collection of three novellas.

I had taken it for granted that the publisher would take care of all the proofreading—until I had received a telephone call from a good friend who had bought the book.

Although she had read and enjoyed the book, “The book,” she informed me, “was riddled with errors!” but luckily for me, she didn’t hold me responsible—even though I really was. The “suspension of disbelief” in fiction is one thing—but asking the reader to suspend their belief in bad grammar is an entirely different matter. Inexcusable!

I went through the book. Typos were everywhere, on every page. They were very distracting! An average of three typos plagued every page. Very unacceptable! What is acceptable—an average of only three typos—per book! And clearly I had not used the semicolon in moderation.

I immediately telephoned my publisher in Texas who had informed me that proofreading manuscripts wasn’t their responsibility. The price you pay for a non-traditional publisher.

But thank God it wasn’t too late to correct all the typos. Page by page, I corrected all the typos and wherever possible replacing a semicolon with a period.

I guess that process—going through the manuscript and getting rid of all the unnecessary semicolons—was time I spent in semicolon anonymous.

Having gone through semicolon anonymous, I am, by no means, an expert on the semicolon, and I am by no means cured. I still use it—sometimes more than I probably should—but I do try to use it in moderation.

If there is one author I think uses the semicolon correctly, it is mystery novelist Carl Hiaasen. Not only does he begin each novel with sentence with the preposition “On”, he also uses the semicolon quite sparingly, but I’m sure there are many more authors who do.

I don’t know what rule Hiassen uses with the semicolon, if he even has a rule, if he even needs a rule, but the rule I have now with the semicolon is that if I can eliminate the semicolon all together, I do, splitting the sentence up into two or more sentences.

This may sound a little extreme—may now I am suffering from semi-colon shock—but this practice with the semicolon has led me to believe that a perfectly clean sentence with exception to, of course, the period is a sentence with as little punctuation as possible, including the comma, yes, even the comma.

Using short simple sentences, at least for me, is the way to write. Short simple sentences will keep you out of trouble like the trouble I had with the semicolon.