Notes from a New England Writer

  What Lies Ahead

The key to success is consistency and the key to consistency is determination and the key to that is enjoyment--have fun or it won't last (like love, like marriage and, yes, like writing.) So, I shall spend the winter writing doing that as well as reading, walking, and working out at the local Y. 

Have written the rough drafts of four new novels and they are hanging out here on this laptop. I'll be happily tweaking them during the cold months ahead and plans are to hammer them into some kind of publishable shape.

 Having a personal "brand" is important for a writer. I have a friend who brands herself as a Southern writer and, as I grew  up as a farm boy in the remote Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, I am a New England writer. That is, a writer who is a child of the long New England winters, deep, steep forests, and flinty farmers. 

As I am now an old man, my next book will be about my personal experience of aging and the great adventure of dealing with death. Yes, an adventure. 

More later.

 

A Farewell to Youth and a Hello to Adventure

I've been advised not to "broadcast" my current age, so here I am an undisclosed number of years ago. My wife and I had just moved to the Florida Keys where I got a job as a broadcast journalist, she a job waiting on table and tending bar in Key West. 

Looking back on it, though, the most important thing we did as soon as we arrived was buy our first boat--a 12 foot skiff with an 18 hp outboard. It was ideal for the shallow back country of the Keys, where we snorkeled, spearfished, and explored the maze of small mangrove islands. 

We had no idea that our two years in the Keys would be just the first step in the huge adventure of living, teaching, and travelling literally around the world for twenty-five years. This adventure would include living aboard a sailboat on Guam for ten years while studying the secrets of the ancient Pacific island navigators. I eventually wrote a book called Brothers of the Fire Star, an national-award-winning adventure novel about two boys struggle to survive World War II while learning to navigate a traditional canoe among the Marianas Islands. And yes, the book is available on Amazon.com.

This is the S/V Carpe Diem, a fine boat indeed, that belonged to a friend and  aboard which we spent eleven days at sea taking her from Guam to the Philippines.