Douglas Arvidson is a past winner of the WICE/Paris Transcontinental International Short Story competition. His short fiction has been published in Paris, Prague, and in literary magazines in the United States and he was recently invited to be a staff writer for the Prague Revue, a cutting-edge, online literary journal (http://bit.ly/1mMT6ZC). The novels in his fantasy series, The Eye of the Eye of Stallion, include The Face in Amber, The Mirrors of Castaway Time, and A Drop of Wizard's Blood. His new novel, Brothers of the Fire Star, was selected as a finalist in the ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year national awards and as a finalist in three categories in the 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards: Action Adventure Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Young Adult Fiction. It has become part of the pantheon of Pacific literature and is now included in school literature programs. Brothers of the Fire Star is an adventure story set in the Pacific during World War II and concerns two boys of different races and cultures who escape the island of Guam in a small sailboat when the Japanese army invades. They must then struggle to survive as they master the secrets of the ancient Pacific navigators. Appropriate for young adults as well as adult readers, Brothers of the Fire Star is available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/1j3axVk) and Crossquarter.com. Visit the author's website: douglasarvidson.com



Thursday, March 26, 2009

Watch Out! The Galloping Horse of History May Pass You By!


This is not your average galloping horse, either. This is the one that will kick-stomp the (I'm trying to watch Young Frankenstein whilst I write this, so bear with me) contents of your ego all over the public media and make your life irrelevant. You may as well never have lived if you don't become famous--even for at least fifteen minutes or so.

Or at least that is the common, American Idol mentality. Fame or the dust bin, fame or you are worthless, fame or you are fine example of what's been called pretty poor protoplasm. You didn't make the grade, you are merely average. You needn't have bothered being born. No wonder we all struggle to make the ends of our egos meet in the middle.

So, back to this galloping horse--history, that is. Lot's of great horseback riders have been on it. Names like Cesar, Churchill, Hitler, Captain Kangaroo, Sarah Palin---Frankenstein---come to mind. We would all like to be on it, wouldn't we? I would. Sure I would. Despite my clinging to the cold rice and hard beds of Buddhism (it is the things we cling to the make us suffer), I can't kick the Occidental habit of clinging to the desire to be rich and famous.

Yet, 99.9999999% of us won't be--we won't make it. We will be the lower life forms that the rich and famous (R&F) tread upon. What to do? Snivel in our suburban hovels and watch the R&F on TV? In movies? Scribble away on ten million blogs all over the Internet world?

In a word: Yes. *
*This is what watching the raging egos in politics every night will do to you.




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