Another Novel Rises from the Soil of the Mind

The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms. - Muriel Rukeyser

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

                                                                               - Anonymous

It's a stomach-lifting thrill to finish writing a novel. And that's because it sneaks up on you. When you sat down to work that morning, you knew you were near the end of it, but of a sudden, there it is. There is no place left to take your characters. The plot line has lived itself out, the arc completed, the denoument drawn out and sewn up neatly.

So you sit there and let the shocks of the thrill wash over you, one after another. It's done, over. It's like graduating from college or winning a prize. And it's a rare enough delight to cause you to get up and bother your wife and call your daughter with the news and plan a small celebration of some sort involving champagne and a good meal.

A feeling of loss? I've heard of that before and I've experienced that before, too. You will miss the adventures your characters have taken you on, the vicarious wonders you were experiencing sitting in your writing room alone all these months---no, make that two years on this one.

But still, there is a lot to be done. The first draft is such a rough-cut creation. I need to expand some scenes, add even more action, make sure the characters are complete and true to themselves. In other words, I've got a couple of months of re-writes ahead of me and then a trip to Guam and have the book read by my friend, the master traditional navigator from Puluwat. And then another re-write and then, maybe, a professioinal editor will give it a go-over. Then, maybe next winter, say sometime in February, it will go out and find a publisher.

But the essentiality of it is done. I've written another book. Imagine that.

Book II Has Gone to Press; Hard at the New Novel: Have I Been Sailing?

                   The Steaming Volcano on the Island of Pagan, CNMI

No battle is ever won.... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

WILLIAM FAULKNER, The Sound and the Fury

This is the island of Pagan (pronounced PAH-gun and meaning something like "place where it smells" and having no connection to the other word). And this is the setting for the final chapters of my new novel that is moving along nicely, though, after doing some more research, I'm going to have to do some re-writing. Seems that after the Battle of Saipan, the American 7th Air Force began bombing and straffing Pagan to eliminate the lightly garrisoned Japanese naval base located here. I was able to find the actual list of dates it was attacked by P-47s and B-24s and they were at it pretty steadily right after Saipan was conquered.

When we sailed to Pagan, I guess it was eight or so years ago now, island was uninhabited and the volcano was quiet, but we found the place pitted and pocked with bomb craters and there was a bombed-out Japanese Zero fighter and a small bomber sitting  on the sides of the old runway. The old bomb shelters where the generators and such were located were still intact and now home to feral pigs. There is also the site of the crash of an American Hellcat fighter/bomber that was shot down. The young pilot, Lt. Roy Bechtel, was killed and his remains, such as they were, were located recently by a team of WWII MIA investigators. The report indicates that there were signs of human remains that had been "liquified" by heat in what would have been the cockpit of the aircraft.

In any event, my characters, my "boys," having sailed their traditional canoe, or proa, up from the Carolines and having survived the final Japanese bonzai charge on Saipan, are now on Pagan and will have to deal with yet another hellscape before it's over. But they are keeping a promise, so they need to be here.

Meanwhile, just got word from my publisher this morning that The Mirrors of Castaway Time,  Book II of the Eye of the Stallion series (it was a  trilogy, but now, what? A fourth book?) has gone to press.

If you want to see some pix of Pagan, go to my website: douglasarvidson.com. It was a fine adventure we had up there in the far reaches of the western Pacific.

Memorial Day Weekend: Family, Lottsa Water Time, Lottsa Seafood, Lottsa Wine. Question: I Thought I Was a Writer?

With my son, Eli, and his Sig. Other, Bailey, Wachapreague, Eastern Shore, VA

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it. Oscar Wilde


Hadn't seen my son in almost a year. He's a yacht captain and his significant other, Bailey, is the on-board chef. They've been on the west coast making runs to Mexico but now, after a winter skiing in Colorado, they are in Ft. Lauderdale looking for a bigger boat. So, they came up to the Eastern Shore of Virginia and we spent the Memorial Day weekend getting reacquainted. This involved a lot of wine and seafood and a lot of on-the-water stuff in either our skiff (out to the beaches on the barrier islands on the sea side of the Shore, or in the sailboat on the Bay side). Had fun. A lot of it. Here are some pix.

Today, Terry is off to Camp Lajeune for a meeting tomorrow. I'm going along to help with driving and for the company. Maybe I'll be able to get back to writing someday.

Exit Hemingway's Ill-Fated Paradise: Back to My Own

All things truly wicked start from innocence. 

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. 

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

                                                                                                   Ernest Hemingway

                  In honor of Hemingway and his fools (and mine), I have a drink at the new bar in the Key West Airport.                      

They weren't fools, really. Except for some of them. Most of them were just tourists down in Key West to have some fun, to see the sights, to get tropical and feel romantic and free for a while. Key West is a good place to do that if you have some cash to throw around. If you don't it's still a good place to that that if you don't mind hanging out dirty and sweaty on street corners wearing strange clothes and stranger hats

My time in Hemingway's ghastly, tourist-infested hangouts were over, at least until August. With the wind blowing stink and the tarpon in a torpor, we gave up on fishing and went into Key West to wander the gaudy streets, play some pool, and have a couple of cold ones.

We also made a short visit to Hemingway's old house. I used to go here when I was a radio news journalist in Key West thirty years ago. As a member of the press corps, I would get an a invitation that went something like this:  Mr. Tennessee Williams requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Garden Party at the Home of Mr. Ernest Hemingway, etc, etc.

So, I put on my Key West formal attire (flowered shirt, shorts --clean ones) and hopped on my motorcycle (Honda Nighthawk 650) and skittered my way down through the traffic to Whitehead Street. The parties were at night and the old house and grounds were always lit up with torches and there were drinks aplenty and food, too. It felt magical because of the darkness and the thick, dank foliage, and the lights and the tropical air and smells and the nice breeze off the ocean that came in through the trees. We could wander around as we pleased and it pleased me to imagine Hemingway himself standing around in a sweat-stained guyabara with a drink in his hand. At that time, Tennessee Williams was still alive (as I remember it, he choked to death on a medicine bottle cap in New York City while I was working in Key West) and I saw him once at the theater that bears his name. He was staggering and very carefully negotiating the stairs to the upper seats. I wanted to reach out and grab him to keep him from falling backwards. Drunks, fools, and genius--there's that fine line.

A descendant of one of Hemingways's six-toed cats adorns the stairway to the second floor. It all still looks lived in and homey.

Curiosity and nostalgia sated, we went to the airport and had a drink before I got on a small, twin-engine Cessna for the short flight to Ft. Meyers and connecting flights home. Was fun, then, to sit up on the right seat next to the (very) young pilot and keep and eye on things. What was even better, was getting home here to my own small paradise on the Eastern Shore where there are good, clean, well-lighted bars, and no tourists and my boats and the Bay and the Ocean on the other side.

I flew right seat from Key West to Ft. Meyers. These were my controls just in case the pilot had a heart attack or food poisoning or something, and I had to land the plane and be a hero, like in the movies or in Walter Mitty's imagination. Except this pilot was not about to have a heart attack.

When I was a kid, like this guy, I tried my hand at flying, too. Hard to imagine, now. He was all business; a real professional. Impressive.

In Hemingway Country This Writer's Adventures Continue: We find a Giant (Dead) Green Turtle

We found a tag on this dead turtle. Turtle experts said it was the biggest green turtle they had ever seen. Is a cash reward for us on the way?

He was a big one--350 lbs. by official weigh in, and 50 to 75 years old.

We were cruising up the coast of the Keys, on the Atlantic side, when we espied a large brown object floating near by. Investigation revealed a huge, dead sea turtle. Sea turtles being endangered, we call the authorities and reported it. They asked that we tow it in so they could examine it, which we did. What we thought was a loggerhead turned out to be a green turtle and one of the biggest the experts had ever seen. They estimate that it was between 50 and 75 years old.

We've been tarpon fishing without success. Trying again this afternoon. The wind is blowing stink (20 to 30 kts).Yesterday our mullet bait died in the baitwell we designed and built for it. Back to the drawing boards. More tomorrow.  By the way, Papa's ghost still rattles and hums around these islands, for what it's worth.

Gone Fishin' but Still Writing: Watch This Space

Fishing is boring unless you catch and actual fish, and then it's disgusting. Dave Barry


Progress on the novel, The Spirit of the Voyage:  I'm just at 200 pages now and I've got the boys and the ancient navigator sailing their frail outrigger into the middle of the Battle of Saipan, during WWII. With that in mind, here's picture of an anti-aircraft gun from WWII. I took it on the island of Guam last year while I was there researching this book. It was on this beach, right here, that thousands of U.S. Marines waded ashore in the face of killer enemy fire. The courage? Where does it come from? They say that when soldiers do things like that, it's not for their country, but for the guy next to him--his buddies, his friends.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the Florida Keys today for a week of tarpon fishing with my bro. I'll try to blog some stuff here while I'm there. Maybe some bigga fisha pix.  Gotta run. Watch this space

Back From Sailing All Weedend; Very Happily Exausted

Our Alberg 30 sloop, Seawind

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.                                                                           (From Moby Dick by Herman Melville)


Yes, sailing about a little is a way I have, too, of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Take this weekend just passed for example. My lady--who is a brave and excellent sailor--and I, took our lovely sloop--pictured above anchored in the river off Onancock, VA--out for a bracing spleen-reducing and circulation-regulating sail. The wind was perfect, 15 knots from the WSW, and the day sunny and just warm enough. We had her healed over to 25 or 30 degrees as she clipped along at up to 7.1 knots. Pure and simple and wonderful.

Writing, too, can be all about driving away spleen and regulating circulation. For me, the emotions experienced after a fine day of sailing are pretty much the same as after a fine morning of writing. Like a sailboat reaching into the wind, everything full and by, when the words flow freely and graciously onto the page, when the workings of the imagination carry the mind's intentions effortlessly along the chosen course, writing becomes part of some natural element as perfect wind and water.

So now, back to it. I'm at my desk/bar and I'm warmed up and ready. I'm 190 pages into this adventure novel about traditional seafaring in the Pacific. I've got my characters arriving on their outrigger canoe on the island of Saipan just at the end of the horrific battle fought there during WWII. Let's see where the winds of my mind take us today.