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



Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Hi, My Name is Douglas Arvidson and I'm a Communicaholic.


This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me. Colleen Wainwright, communicatrix, 03-23-2006

What is a communicatrix? Colleen Wainright is one--according to her. Apparently she coined the term (go ahead, Google her. I'll wait).
 
If a communicatrix is a woman who communicates (wildly?desperately?dangerously?) then what does that make a man who writes compulsively and has taken up writing on his bar/liquor bench? A communicaholic? I suppose. Close enough. But I really hardly ever touch the hard stuff anymore. I got too old for that. But, as I mentioned in my last blog, I did brake the hinge on my laptop and can't write anymore with it on my lap sitting snugly in my recliner in my man cave/study. I found that it props up nicely right here, against the distilled spirits. There's got to be something meaningful there for a writer. Besides, it's a wonderful sunny room and with all this spring stuff going on, it's a pleasure to be out of the dark.
 
And I think I'm on to something. This morning, I was up early, had my Zone Bar and decaf for breakfast, watched the news, and then sat down at the bar and got to work. The picture above is what it looks like here, right now, as I write this and as I wrote for three hours this morning. The exciting this is that I had great luck. The stuff was flowing, the scenes developing essentially on their own, the words pouring forth. Today I hit 194 pages, more or less, considering the stuff I'm cutting out. I see the end and better yet, I see the wonderful road that leads to that end: the denoument, the climax. Good for this communicaholoic.
 
The nice thing about writing is that by 12:00 Noon, I'm done for the day. Now to get into some work clothes and go and get a load of top soil for the back yard. Gotta get it ready for some grass seed. Perennial rye, I think it is.

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