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, March 4, 2013

Writing, Traveling, Sailing: The Ego of This Fine Adventure

As a 35-Year Old News Reporter in Key West

I don't look like this anymore. Put on a bit of weight, gotten old, gray--and I'm much less sure of myself. That's the big difference, I think. When this picture was taken, in the Florida Keys, I was so damned sure I had a key to something big. Imagine shooting a four-foot barracuda with a spear gun. Killed him instantly with a shot to the head.

Thing is, there was no reason to kill him. You really shouldn't eat a barracuda this big--ciguatera poisoning is a nasty business--and he was not interested in doing me any harm. It was like Hemingway killing lions and elephants. There is no reason to do it other than to feed your own ego. I suppose, metaphorically, there is a poison in that kind of eating, too. Ego feasting gives you gas--turns you into a gas bag.

In any event, I shot him and was proud of it. A moment later, I threw him into the shallow water of the canal that's there, off to my right. It took a couple of weeks for him to rot away, in full view of anyone passing by.

A Fuzzy Photo of the Motorcycle Newsman in Key West, 1982-83
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