William M. Barnes

I recently turned 81 and had never smoked a joint in my life. A friend of mine finally got tired of hearing me bitch about never enjoying the experience so he brought me a bud and some papers for my birthday. Over my wife's fearful objections, I furtively locked myself in the bathroom and clumsily rolled an illegal cigarette. I turned on the exhaust fan and,feeling like an evil felon, I lit up. Gradually, I began to wonder just what the hell all the fuss was about. I must admit, I was a little disappointed.

After three years of research and reading a dozen or so books on the subject of marijuana's pro's and con's, I had reached the conclusion that the plant's medical possibilities as well as the industrial potential of its cousin, hemp has been greatly mistreated and ignored by the sanctimonious and the unenlightened.

I try to address this tragic error in my second novel, "The White Cockroach," in which a 40 year-old divorcee is in danger of losing her ranch. The DEA approaches her and offers to pay off her mortgage. All she has to do is seduce a dangerous Mexican drug lord. No problem, right? Not until she falls in love and finds herself on the wrong side of a moral issue.

I earned a B.S. degree in geology at Sul Ross State in Alpine, Texas. After 35 years in the oil industry, I took up writing at the tender age of 65. I wish I'd started sooner. My sweet enduring wife, Margaret and I live in Conroe, Texas where she occasionally drags me from my computer to scrub me down and feed me.

My first was a book of short stories about my hometown - "Nonesuch Chronicles." My first novel was "Running on the Edge," about a Tarahumara Indian girl who immigrates to the US illegally.

I recently finished my fourth book, "Nonesuch Boom." It's about a tiny west Texas town that the oil boom by-passed for years. But when the boom finally does hit Nonesuch, it almost destroys it.