>Former Garrett County Home Builder turned author:
Hyattsville author talks about his latest work.
By Sarah Nemeth
In a room in his apartment overlooking shades of blue and green swimming below, Hyattsville novelist Richard Morris thinks.
Although the beauty outside is inspirational—arrow straight trees slice the sky while chirps call the mornings out of their dark shackles—what flows from Morris’s pen comes from inside.
“I had a lot of things I felt I wanted to say,” he said of his books.
Morris’s first novel, Cologne No. 10 For Men, is a satire about war.
“There were a lot of things that were funny, ironic we had about the war,” he said. “[It’s] kind of an anti-war book.”
Between the covers, Cologne recounts the habit of one soldier, who found that a drop of cologne under his nose was all he needed to mask the stench of war. Eventually, the character decides that he doesn’t want it anymore—he wants to smell the odors.
Morris, who lives with his wife Barbara in Ward 4, is originally from Pittsburgh and grew up in Cleveland. He was a custom homebuilder in Garrett County and later moved to Prince George’s County where he conducted research for the National Association of Home Builders Research Center in Upper Marlboro and later with the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C. With the NAHB he traveled, wrote articles and books. He retired in 2004 while living in Bowie.
