Robert E. Kimball

At fifty-nine, after twenty-five years as a department store executive, Robert E. Kimball gives it up to sign on as a reporter for the twice-weekly Nogales International in Nogales, Arizona. He went from good-paying management jobs to a minimum wage job as a reporter. Meanwhile, the International had purchased the Weekly Bulletin in Sonoita, Arizona. Kimball was named its managing editor. He was the only full-time employee at the Bulletin.

He did it to learn to write better, or as it turned out, to write much better. There’s nothing like writing to deadline day after day to sharpen your skills, he said. No more excuses, like I’m not in the mood, or can’t think what to write. And there is nothing more brutal, yet more helpful, than having stories come back covered with red editing marks. You learn fast or you don’t make it.

Kimball retired from the Nogales International in 2005. By then he was the editor and publisher of both papers where he earned bucks, did more editing, but had less time to write. Even so, as editor and publisher, he learned what not to write and what to cut.

Once retired, he could write his novel except that in 1980 he and his wife, Terry, had started building, by themselves, a house on ranch land fifty miles south of Tucson. In 2005 the house was still not finished. He had estimated it would take three years, it took thirty-two and was finally completed in 2012. From then on, Kimball wrote his first novel. He researched; wrote and rewrote; sent copies to readers; rewrote some more. Finally, he sent it to his editor and he rewrote some more. By February 2020 it was published.