People ask me all this time — well, not all the time, but often enough to cause me to wince:

Is Ed Earl Burch you? Or, are you Ed Earl Burch?

I suppose it’s my own damn fault because when I conjured up the main character for my five hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers more than a few decades ago, I gave him some of my physical features — he’s bald, bearded, has bad knees and wears specs — and a lot of my character flaws and endearing quirks and qualities.

We’re both cynical and surly. Fairly smart but not brilliant. Don’t take shit off anybody. We’re also terminal smartasses who don’t know when to shut up. We’d rather deliver the wisecrack and get smacked around for it than keep our mouths shut.

He’s still a saloon sport; I hung up the bar rail spikes more than a decade ago. He still chases women smarter than he is and likely to drive a spear through his heart. I’m a retired rogue, happily married and content to let him have one more ex on the books than me.

We both love our bourbon — Maker’s Mark in Ed Earl’s case, which used to be my on-the-road-again pick. These days, I prefer George Dickel Tennessee whisky, which is a very close cousin. Ninety proof, please. And no mixers or candy-ass infusions. In a rocks glass with a few cubes thrown in and a tall glass of ice water to back it up.

He still fires up Lucky Strikes with a Zippo lighter, blowing through a pack of unfiltered nails a day. I still have the Zippo but gave up the Luckies twenty years ago and shelved the cigars after triple-bypass surgery that left me a zipper scar on my chest.

While we both have an abiding love John Browning’s most famous firearm, the 1911, I’ve never been a devoted follower of The Way of the Gun. I’ve never killed anybody and hope I never do. Ed Earl lives in a violent world of murderers, cartel gunsels, neo-Nazis, Kluxers, bikers and gunrunners and has to rely on his Colt 1911, his fists, a blackjack and his wits and a little bit of luck to survive.

He’s a violent man, a killer when he has to be — not out of blood lust and never for money. He’s seen death up close and personal. Has the scars to prove it — on his skin and in his soul. And the nightmare demons he had to hose down with pills and bourbon to make it through the night. And the day.

Burch is battered and warped in a way you and I will never be. He talks to his dead partner, who answers back. And he lives in the stark desert mountains of West Texas where the horizon is a long ways away and you can see the demons and devils long before they get close.

That’s a little bit about the difference between Ed Earl Burch and me. He ain’t me. And I damn sure ain’t him. No matter how much I’d like to be.

EXTRA, EXTRA, EXTRA!! We’re about two weeks out from the release of the fifth Ed Earl Burch hard-boiled Texas crime thriller, THE FATAL SAVING GRACE. The paperback and Kindle versions will drop on Amazon December 15 at https://www.amazon.com/author/jimnesbitt. They’ll also be available at Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Google Play and Apple Books.