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



Monday, June 2, 2008

Adrift, Sailor, Adrift!


I've got two weeks until I'm cut adrift from the safe harbor of full-time teaching. Blessed be he who floats free on a tranquil sea, all sails full and by, to determine his days only day by day, such as he pleases. For example, take these lovely blossoms floated across the cove last week. They found refuge under the stern of our boat for a brief time and then, turning slowly brown as they absobed the salt water, passed on. Of course, their time will be all too brief before they join the mud at the bottom of the cove....
Things left to do? The LIST: Fumigate the boat, get the truck ready for shipping, finished packing up my classroom, party with friends, and a myriad of other details. But, the stress is pretty much over. Thirty-two years worth of it. All those special kids I helped (or didn't), some of them now middle aged and paunchy. Makes me shudder. Think of it. Mr. Arvidson's Opus.
Then, on to the plane for the grueling trip, lubricated with scotch, from one of Earth's hemispheres to the other. Settling in to a small-town, Chesapeake Bay idyll. My life, as I plan it, will be filled with reading and Red Sox, scribbling and scrimping, long happy-hour afternoons, etc, etc. and then, one day, I, too, shall turn brown and sink into the mud at the bottom of the cove.

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