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



Sunday, June 15, 2008

Welcome to Your Next World: Reinventing Oneself in Retirement




Oh, the indignities of old age; they are first visited upon us at retirement parties. Here I am bedecked with diapers and coke bottle glasses and a clock to measure out my last hours. It's a comic vision of an all-to-real possible future as anyone who has cared for elderly parents knows. Yet, we're not ready for that yet. Today we move off the boat and go to the Hilton for a night and tomorrow morning we're on the 6:30 flight to Honolulu. Then to Houston, then to Norfolk, then across the mouth of the Chesapeake on that great tunnel-bridge and on up to Onancock and our new lives. I'm planning on a self reinvention of sorts. We owe ourselves a reinvention when we retire; a re-birth as something new, use the small wisdoms we're accrued over 61 years and make the last decades another fine adventure worthy of the one we just finished.
17 June 2008: At the Houston airport
A few hours ago I finished the longest part of the journey home--Guam to Honolulu to Houston. I'm now, with burning tired eyes, ready to walk from the Presidents Club to the gate for the last leg, Houston to Norfolk. I'll be glad to get there and meet up with Terry and make the hour-and-a-half drive across the tunnel-bridge and up the Eastern Shore to Onancock and home. Draggy stuff, this long-distance travel. Terry just called on the cell--she's in Newark.

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