How Will I Pay for All this Glory?

 In Chicago last week at the Annual Convention of the American Library Association with Jennifer Szunko of ForeWord Reviews

I just got in from Chicago via Atlanta via visiting grandsons. Nice to be back home and catching my breath after a whirl-wind week away. Of course, next week, we're off again, this time to Seattle and yet another grandson.

In the mean time, I have to make sense of it all. Brothers of the Fire Star, my new novel, was selected as a finalist out of some 1,300 books from 700 publishers nation wide. It is all wonderful and I'm very excited and now I get to put this really bright gold sticker on all the covers while I figure out how I'm going to pay for those airline tickets and three nights in a fancy hotel.

Meta Dreaming and the Writer's Bliss: The Controlled Dream of Writing Fiction

Writing at the Kitchen Table: Bacon and Eggs and Literary Fiction

After all my travels and wandering and jet lag, I'm trying to settle in again to my personal space--my home, my bliss. There a certain hangover quality to all this. I can't get my grip on it. Bliss is, after all, illusive.

A writer's routine is a fiction writer's life blood--no routine, no writing. Routine is responsible for the warp and woof of good fiction, for the depth of the knap of the word-woven carpet. The brain/body duality loves routine. But I don't know why.

Something about brain waves, I suspect. I do notice this: During the process of writing hard and close and uninterrupted for a few hours, my brain switches gears. Then, when I stop and move on to something else, like say, driving to the supermarket, it's a struggle. I'm in a sort of fog. Easy, habitual physical acts don't work right. I forget where I'm going, have to think about simple, reflexive movements and decisions. My poor wife worries that the old man is losing something important.

After a few hours, things are back to normal. The writer's brain surrenders. The practical, non-dreaming brain takes control again. Tomorrow morning, early, I will try to summon the dreaming brain again by settling into my writer's routine. In the early dawn, as I drift slowly up from deep sleep, I've learned to allow myself to float along with the rising of consciousness, of increasing awareness. But then I can stop at a place where the dreaming continues but the awareness of the dreaming is real: I know what is happening, but the mind is taking me places I would not be able to go later when fully awake. I call this meta dreaming.

The secret then, is to bring this state of mind with me down to the place where I write. To drink my coffee and sit back in my big, soft chair and continue the controlled dream of writing fiction.

June 2nd, 2013, and the Writer is Getting Along Just Fine

All at sea: Sailing as a Metaphor for the Writing Life

We live, of course, with curve balls, sinkers, sliders, and high inside fast balls coming at us, unannounced. But that's just the baseball metaphor for life. As a writer, a husband, a father, grandfather, and a sibling, I prefer the life-as-a-voyage, cruising sailor metaphor. To wit, here I am, last month, all at sea, and happy about it, holding a freshly caught mahi in two hands and sitting behind an equally fresh bunch of bananas. (Yeah, I know; I used this photo in the previous post, but it is just too cool.)

The fish we had just caught off the stern rail, the bananas were a last-minute gift of a friend who was seeing us off on our voyage. Both were pleasant surprises, and both were consumed in good time and both made the 1,250-mile voyage from Guam to the Philippines all the more memorable.

You really can't beat ocean voyaging as a metaphor for serendipitous happenings that make life, at least momentarily, wonderful. Then comes all the other parts of the metaphor, if you extend it out, as we must: the squalls, the rain, the long, cold night watches, and the accompanying sudden jolts of fear, etc. etc.

Now, back on the East Coast and land-bound on this, a particularly fine late-spring morning (let me describe it, briefly--a quiet country setting, cloudless blue sky, green grass and leafy trees all around glowing in the soft morning sun, the air a marvelous 70 degrees, carries a small breeze and bird chirps, and then, my wife, sleepy-eyed and soft, comes into the kitchen in her wonderful pink-striped pajamas.....), I take the dog and the cat for a morning walk across the field to the wood line and back and then I feel like reading a short story and some poetry on the Prague Revue and posting something to this blog.

It's times like this--the calm-seas, mahi-banana times--that, if we're smart, we wallow in and, through the magic of mindfulness, extend for as long as possible.

(Brothers of the Fire Star, my novel about two boys, WWII, and the secrets of the ancient Pacific navigators, has been selected as finalist in the 2012 Book of the Year awards. I will be in Chicago on June 28 for the announcement of the winners. You can also see more of my "creative non-fiction" on the Prague Revue: WWW.praguerevue.com)

Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea

Crew member Roy Olson took this as we approached the Vasayan island of the Philippines at dawn after eleven days at sea.

Home Is the Sailor

Home is the sailor, home from sea:

     Her far-borne canvas furled

The ship pours shining on the quay

     The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:

     Fast in the boundless snare

All flesh lies taken at his will

     And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,

     The starlit wave is still:

Home is the sailor from the sea,

     The hunter from the hill.
 

A.E. Housman

Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scotsman, sailor, and writer, used the essence of this poem in his own Requiem, the last lines being used as the epitaph on his tombstone where he died on American Samoa. It's a fine sentiment for the sentimental and I admit to being one of those.

Anytime a sailor, particularly a small-boat sailor, completes an extended voyage, it is a cause for some celebratory relief for the sailor and those who love him. In our case, we were six senior citizens who, between April 15 and April 27 2013, made a successful, nonstop, 1,250-mile voyage from Guam to Cebu island in the Philippines. 

This is Carpe Diem, a Tayana 42, ready to sail. She has the lines of a race horse but our average speed was about 5.5 knots.

The author with the essentials of proper tropical voyaging:  A mahi caught from the stern rail and a stalk of slow-ripening bananas.

Midnight at the Jet Lag Hotel

It's witchy-witchy time here in Albuquerque where I'm at the Southwest Book Fiesta. I fell asleep at 8:30, wide awake at Midnight, my body-mind still lost in a time zone somewhere in the vast Pacific. One week ago I was in the Philippines, five days ago in Guam, four days ago, Honolulu, two days ago Virginia, yesterday, here.

This global soul is tired but happy. Bustling about the World, I am, after all, self-actualizing at the top of my game, and I'm not about to complain. My new novel, Brothers of the Fire Star, is the engine behind all this, my artsy-cognitive lump of literary gold. And this week I learn that it has been selected as a finalist in a Book of the Year competition, this one sponsored by ForeWord Reviews, an organization that seeks to find the best writing produced by independent and academic presses. From the finalists will be selected the winners in various categories, mine Young Adult. And the winners will be announced in Chicago on June 28th at the annual convention of the American Library Association. Nice. Just being a finalist is nice. Wonderful, in fact.

So my eyes burn, my mind fogs over, and my failing memory is worse than ever, but I know who I am and where I'm going and, most important, who I love.

Now I'm going to turn out this light again and try to sleep.

Note: My latest piece in the Prague Revue is all about knots: Elegant Tangles for Sailors, Sex, Hangmen, and Cowboys.  I had fun writing it: www.praguerevue.com

Talking About Writing and Life to Kids in Prison: How to Make Money and Be Famous by Telling Great Lies

We are all in prisons of our own making.

 

 

 

I'm on the island of Guam for two months promoting my new novel and teaching middle and high school kids about writing. Yesterday I had an odd and powerful experience. I visited a youth detention center where I spoke to young offenders--10 to 16 years old--about my new novel, Brothers of the Fire Star.

 

To say they were a captive audience is too glib, too easy, so I'll say there were a wonderful audience. Whatever demons lurked behind the smiles and the innocent faces were well behaved and kept quiet. These prisoners, in for anything from vandalism to drugs to rape, were attentive, they were inquisitive, they were insightful. They looked just like all the other young teenagers I've been teaching the past two weeks in the public schools.

 

This is how it came down: A friend of mine had spent a career teaching reading to these corrupted youth. She recently retired but when I sent her a copy of my new novel, she read it and later told me, "I just knew I had to teach this book to these children. It is so relevant to their lives."

 

So she did just that--went back into the prison classroom. The kids reacted enthusiastically to the book and so she invited me in so they could meet the real author.  I did my usual presentation. We talked about fiction versus non-fiction, about what genre is, about how to be a good writer you need to be a good liar. They liked that. I asked how many liars where in the audience. Hands shot up. I said that those who didn't raise their hand were real liars. They laughed.

 

I showed them my short video clip of men sailing an outrigger canoe--a proa--out at sea and catching fish. I shared with them the wonderful news that they--every atom in their bodies--were made of star dust, that they are part of the Universe and the Universe is part of them. And then I showed them, via slides, how their ancestors used the stars and the sea and the sky to navigate across the vast Pacific Ocean.

 

We talked about the characters in the book, Joseph and Napu, about how they first hated each other and how they realized, finally, that they needed each other to survive but it took a hell of a fist fight to understand that. These kids relate to this: fighting to survive.

 

When I was finished, I was left with the good feeling teachers sometimes get and writers, too: that I maybe I had made a difference in a young life, that some few of the corrupted can be uncorrupted, that there is hope.


Note: My new novel, Brothers of the Fire Star, is available on Amazon.com. I am now a regular contributor to The Prague Revue an online literary journal: www.praguerevue.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



A Day Off In Paradise: Re-reading THE HOBBIT

 

Under the lanai: I sat here today and watched butterflies, the breeze in the palm trees, flowers, and I got into THE HOBBIT

 

 

I decided to take a day off today--from writing, from sailing, from teaching, from book promotion. It's pretty warm and humid on Guam, but in this spot under the lanai, there is shade and a breeze, and so for the early parts of the day and into the first hours of the afternoon, it's a sweet spot to sit.

 

 

Hadn't read THE HOBBIT since I was in the Army back in 1969. I was in the Signal Corps and stationed in The Republic of China--Taiwan. After reading it, I started in on the rest of the series but gave up after two books of constant sameness--war and war and war. But THE HOBBIT was fun and it is now. It was cutting edge back then and it shows how derivative most fantasy is now: Full of dark lords and magic swords and ugly monstrous creatures. Not much new. But Tolkien started it all.

 

 

It's March 30th today. I've been away from my wife and home since the 4th and have moments of sadness and longing. Interesting experience. Like when I went away to Boy Scout camp for a week when I was a kid. Homesick, lovesick, whatever. But I've been working steadily. Sent another piece into the Prague Revue yesterday, this one an existential contemplation of knots. And I sold all the books my publisher sent here and I'm negotiating with someone who wants to be my representative here to get and keep the books in local shops/stores/museums/bookstores.

 

I've got two more school gigs left next week and I'm very glad to say I am enjoying teaching kids about writing. My break-through discovery: Kids love a good oral story teller.

 

 

In the end, I think I'm also discovering we need to escape our comfort zone now and then or we get soft, lose our edge. In a couple of weeks, I'll set out on a 42' sailboat for the 1,300-mile voyage to Cebu, Philippines. I'm dreading it/excited about it. Ten or more days at sea should get rid of the remnants of that comfort zone and then I can go back to my old life refreshed and hardened.

 



 

                 I'm living in a Garden of Eden, complete with serpents (brown tree snakes).

 

Note: I am now a monthly contributor to  THE PRAGUE REVUE. You can read my short stories and essays at: www.praguerevue.com