About Me

Richard L. Fricks is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and Fictionary Certified StoryCoach Editor from Boaz, Alabama.

He is the author of fourteen novels, all rooted in the people, places, tensions, and moral questions of his hometown.

His first nonfiction book, The Pencil-Driven Life: Letting Go of Purpose and Learning to Live by Attention, grew from his own experience of questioning inherited beliefs, releasing the need for certainty, and learning to approach life with greater curiosity, humility, and attention.

Richard graduated from Auburn University in 1976 with a degree in accounting. He began his career with Ernst & Ernst, now Ernst & Young, before establishing and managing his own CPA practice.

In the 1990s, Richard returned to school, earning a Master’s in Public Policy and a law degree. After passing the Alabama bar, he opened a law practice and devoted much of his career to defending people charged with serious felonies, including capital murder.

Although Richard discovered fiction writing while attending law school, he did not publish his first novel, God and Girl, until 2015, when he was sixty years old. Since then, writing has become the thread connecting the many chapters of his life.

Today, Richard writes and publishes through The Pencil-Driven Life, where he explores truth through fiction, essays, reflection, and conversation. He also helps beginning and developing novelists strengthen their stories through coaching and developmental editing.

Richard believes a pencil is an appropriate symbol for both writing and living: it allows us to question, revise, erase, and begin again.