Rainy Sunday, Great Sail Yesterday, McCarthy's THE ROAD, Moving Back to VA?

Today in Guam its raining like a mug, as my son used to say. Rained all night, hard, on the cabin top of the boat, and it was very fine to wake up to the sound. Yesterday we sailed on a friend's lovely Tayana 43 and while out there, got caught in the shear line that's now over us. The leading edge of it caught us off guard as there didn't appear to be much wind in it as we watched it come over the island and descend on us. Nearly knocked us over before we could get the double-reefed main out and de-powered and the jib rolled up.

Never mind. It was all good fun and a nice small adventure. Back to reading/writing. Just finished Cormack McCarthy's The Road. Advice: Don't start it if you're depressed about the state of the world--or anything else, for that matter. More advice: Read it anyway. McCarthy is one of my favorite wordsmiths for a lot of reasons that don't include his use of humor to lighten things up a a bit once in a while. Hell, even Shakespeare did that.

No, the reason I admire McCarthy's writing is the haunting quality of the prose. He doesn't abide by the usual conventions of punctuation. No quotation marks, few commas, and lots of incomplete sentences (no subjects, just a verb and a prepositional phrase, maybe). The text is presented in short burst of paragraphs separated on the page by a few empty spaces.

It all works. You always know which character is speaking and the plot moves along, quivering and gripping, as the father and son move with painful slowness and uncertainty through a savage, ashen, cannibalistic, post-apocalyptic world.

I was into so deeply that when I left my first copy on the airplane when I flew back from the Mainland last month, that I bought another at an airport bookstore, price be damned.

I haven't written anything but blog entries since last summer after finishing A Drop of Wizard's Blood, the third book in my Eye of the Stallion fantasy trilogy. It is hard leaving a book after spending a year with the characters and their adventures. Most writers report a feeling of loss or loneliness and that goes for me, too. I wonder how McCarthy feels.

Today's rain will allow me to take the time to finish filling out my retirement paperwork. Once June rolls around (three months to go--an agony of waiting), I'll have all the time I need to write. I'm especially interested in the virtual book tours (VBT), now all the rage for writers to peddle their stuff on the Internet. Meanwhile, you can still order the first book, The Face in Amber on Amazon.

Last: We're getting ready in our minds for a possible move back to Virginia. We own a home in Onancock, a town that time forgot, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. Perfect.

A Winter's Tale: Revisiting the Summer Walk

I'm now relaxing in my room at the Sheraton Hotel at Bradley Airport listening to planes take off.

Just finished with being home in Massachusetts helping out. Cold, cold, cold. Tried to get walking in on a regular schedule, but did not have much luck. The weather (snow, freezing rain, temps in the low teens and twenties) and an unpredictable schedule kept me from my appointed rounds except for some rare times when I could squeeze one in.

On one of those occasions, though, after a light snow, I carried my new camera and caught these raccoon tracks, fairly fresh, in the long driveway that meanders through the forest. There are some more pix, too, of my sister's house on the pond in the forest, and some roads and fields.

More than just taking pictures with a camera, I've been taking more interesting mental pix and integrating them into the general idea for a novel. I'm excited about it. Another New England story with all the salient New England stuff-- family, gray skies, dirty snow, then blue skies and fresh pure air and frigid air, the grinding sameness of every day as the winter wears on, interminable and forbidding.

Now its back to Guam for the last four months of work before I retire. Can't wrap my brain around that idea. Reading: The Road by Cormack McCarthy. It is a fitting book for a New England winter, all ash and bitterness. This past few weeks, while living on a pond in a forest, I also dipped into Thoreau's Walden. His scolding, finger wagging wisdom, while sound enough advice, can get a bit tiresome.

The Dogs and the Detritus of War: When Will We Ever Learn?

Ah, the dogs and detritus of war. Here on Guam, it's everywhere, the rusty, the broken, the remnants of the late, great struggle between Imperial Japan and the Allies. And we live, on our sailboat, in the middle of it. In the middle of an old battlefield, in fact--the battle for Orote Point was fought all around where we now live so peacefully. Above is the memorial to the twenty five dobermans who died working with the Marines and a Japanese midget sub, designed to carry two lucky sailors and couple of torpedoes. It was found washed up on a local beach.

On the right, we have some anti-aircraft guns, or what's left of them. You can see the first one is still pointing up, just as the Japanese gunners would have left it as they died blasting away at American planes.

Below are the remains of the house where a family lived that manned the overseas telegraph cable station. It stretched across the Pacific and was a prime target of the Japanese when they invaded on December 8, 1941--the same day (it was December 7th on the other side of the International Dateline in Hawaii) that Pearl Harbor got hit. There's another house in pretty much the same shape as this one, back farther in the jungle.

Ever wonder what is inside those caves the Japanese were famous for dying in in the Pacific operations? Below, is one view of one of them.

And to the left is the inside of it. Probably a storage area for munitions. Just some Marine graffiti from 1977 in there now. Now that I think of it, the soldiers who left there mark here were fighting another American war at that time. Barney and James Cagney, wonder where they are now. Would be my age, probably.

In any event, there is peace here now. To the right, is Terry and her black cat, Zeke, in the cockpit of our boat, VATNA. Behind her, up in that green you see, is where the caves are. This was all a hell hole in July 1944 when the Marines took it back from the Japanese.

The Agonies of Aging: 61 in Paradise

When it came down to it, facing 61 years wasn't too tough, really. Terry and I got off the boat for the weekend and went to a nice hotel on this beautiful bay on Guam. Had a too-expensive dinner accompanied by a nice Scotch, a good bottle of Cab, and then a great night's sleep in a king-sized bed (the berth on the boat is queen sized and tapered at the end). In the morning we lounged around in the room drinking coffee, eating chocolate chip cookies, and reading on the small balcony off our room (I got into an article in Psychology Today about dream research that says we dream to rehearse our defensive moves on potential attackers, which is why most of our dreams are violent or involve running or escaping, etc. Can we escape aging? I'm running hard, but, dream on, Dougie, dream on).

Then down to a very fine, all-you-can-drink champagne brunch with good friends. So, blood pressure problems, heart arrhythmias, colonic disorders--the disheartening fruits of living to 61--were forgotten for the day as were nagging questions about what to do with the boat when I retire in June (sail it back to the Chesapeake? Sell her here?), what about Book II in The Eye of the Stallion trilogy (the person at my publishing house in charge of producing the book is very ill and now the publishing date has been pushed back for at least a month, maybe longer), and what about the stress at work where I manage a special education program and have 30 students on my speech-language pathology caseload? We have talked all these issues through, over and over and over and finally, I think, come to some reasonable options which is a huge relief. Now it's Sunday night and tomorrow begins the four-week stretch to Christmas break, during which we'll fly to Tasmania for 10 days. Now that I write all this down, it seems pretty stupid to complain about anything as inevitable as aging when life is so rich.

Searching for the Next Book: A Sweet Sunday Morning

Here' s my study carrel last Sunday morning--the cockpit of my sailboat Vatna across whose combings I saw this scene of turquoise water and topical skies. I'm starting the reading part of researching my planned young adult adventure novel (working title: The Spirit of the Voyage). Here's a picture of one of the books I found in a local bookstore and I've got a small stack of other to work my way through before I start writing.

It will concern two boys of different backgrounds/races/cultures who struggle to survive among the Pacific Islands torn by war. To do so, they will need to cooperate and share their knowledge and skills. But they must get along, must be able to accept their differences. Sailing traditional canoes, navigating across hundreds of miles of open ocean using only stars and wave forms and sea life, and living off the ocean and what food the islands have to offer.

At first, I was a bit shy about attempting this project. I'm not a native-born islander and so, there will be some questions about authenticity/spirit/depth of understanding, etc., etc. But, I've put those concerns aside. Look at Stephan Crane who wrote the Red Badge of Courage. It's a fine and authentic war story and yet Crane never set foot on a battle field during a real battle. There are lots of examples of writers who did well writing out of their milieu or beyond their culture.

I have lived and sailed among these islands for the past ten years, and I was once a boy who wandered around the woods practicing how to survive by "living off the land." In a profound sense, the experiences are the same whether they be set in the tropical pacific, or the Bershire hills of Massachusets. So, we'll see how it comes out. I've got good friends who are native to this island experience and they'll help out.

World Series Watching On the Other Side of the World: A New Englander in Paradise

Finally, a break in the incessant rain, and just in time for a great Saturday sail with friends. Friday afternoon, we started getting the boat ready for a day out on the water, and this means taking off storm lines and scrubbing rainy-season moldy decks. Saturday morning, we finished up the preparations (the TV gets packed away, off comes the air conditioner and the rest of the lines, up went the sails) and off we went with very light winds but plenty of sunshine. In the photo above, Terry sits on the foredeck. I've got the big genoa, which is not designed to go to windward, furled up to about a third of its full size so that is doesn't smother the staysail and with this configuration we did just fine tacking back up the harbor.

Good timing, weather-wise, because the Red Sox are playing today, Sunday, and so we get the best of all possible worlds--a great day on the water, and a great day watching baseball (sixth inning, Lugo just snagged a line drive and ended the Rockies attempt at a rally).

Later, I'll cook a leg of lamb and we'll drink a bottle of pretty good red wine and enjoy another perfect day in the tropics while, back in New England, the rumors of winter being just around the corner persist (it's now the bottom of the seventh and the Rockies have managed to rally after all--yikes, this series might get interesting).

What about the writing? I'm still slowly working my way through the final edit of A Drop of Wizard's Blood, Book III of the Eye of the Stallion trilogy. No rush. Book II, The Mirrors of Castaway Time, will be out sometime in November (Red Sox just won--hot damn).

A Stitch in Time Saves a Blow Out at Sea

A torn sail is a good excuse to sit down and do something I rather enjoy: stitching things up. I guess it goes back to my childhood when my mother showed me how to thread a needle and sew on a button. I've never minded taking care of my own sewing needs as long as they were simple.

Repairing a small rip in our old main sail last weekend was done with a piece of sail repair tape and a few big (too big, my wife said) stitches with a sailmaker's needle and thread. Pleasant enough work when your in the harbor or at sea on a nice day running down wind. Here we are tied up on our seawall and were spending the day getting ready for our first sail in a long time--too long. But, VATNA is in good shape, her decks scrubbed, and now her sails are on. We should be able to get out this Saturday between World Series games (Red Sox are in and that make this New England farm boy happy).

As far as writing goes, here I am on the boat doing my usual evening thing: writing/editing. I'm about half way through the process of reviewing the edit my editor did on the A Drop of Wizard's Blood, the last book in the Eye of the Stallion trilogy. This is the third time I've used my editor, Linda Morehouse of webuildbooks.com. As usual, she very thorough and I'd recommend putting out the money for a professional reader/editor when you're preparing a manuscript for submission to publishers or agents. In any event, I'm now going though the manuscript line by line, comment by comment (I love the Microsoft Word editing feature), and mostly accepting her recommendations and learning, too, as I go along. It's slow going to be sure, but instructive to see the kind of grammatical mistakes I habitually make or words I over use and it takes an editor--another set of eyes--to find them.

In any event, I hope I'm a better writer than sail stitcher and I hope Josh Beckett, Big Poppy, and the rest of the boys get the job done this week.