Seeking Fellow Travelers

Do you like to do the difficult? Is intellectual adventure your middle name? Are you a thief looking to steal enlightenment and brave ancient darkness? Do you like to drink coffee and eat baked goods while discussing the important stuff in life? Then here's the deal, I'm looking to set up a Great Books reading group that meets once a month around 3 o'clock, on the first Sunday afternoon at the Barnes and Noble in Muskegon. We'll set up our own reading plan or borrow the original version or a friendly neighborhood list off the internet(see two versions below). Once that's decided we'll do our reading and discuss it over the aforementioned coffee.
A side note, Gandalf would have carried a nook with him I'm pretty sure. Think of all the obscure lore he could fill it with and in many cases for free. I'm working on laying out a guide to collecting the Great Books on a nook. I'll post it later. If you're interested I'm on facebook and you can send me a message there. If geography makes your participation impossible, perhaps we could set up some kind of internet meeting.


ten year reading plan
four year reading plan

It's Electric!

My friend Dan is a talented man. He first wowed me with a sci fi/fantasy piece which he found difficult to sell, so he wrote something else entirely, a historical mystery written at the time when the automobile was new and rapidly transforming American society. The characters of The Detroit Electric Scheme are fascinating and carefully drawn and nothing about this book is typical. True history and imagination are carefully blended to thicken the soup. The book was only launched a few days ago and a second edition is already on order. Get your first edition quick so you can say you were there from the beginning of this excellent series. (I've read bits and pieces of the second and I can say that it only gets better as you go along.)
It's also available as an ebook for you nook, but I can't ask Dan to sign those.

Every Day Gift

I'm a bit death
Life pulses through my ear
everyday fades

the Rustle I didn't make
Soprano Voices waking
Mechanical Humming of slaves
Collective Sigh of the well-fed
Peaceful Silence

it's hard to hear
the stop watch in my ear

Nothing Fancy

One of the reasons we chose this house was that the basement would make a perfect classroom and it was for a year or two. I decorated it to the nines and we had everything from bulletin boards to computers to used school furniture. I loved it, except I didn't. Going down to the basement was always a tad discouraging. I couldn't figure it out, but I finally brought school up to the main living level and enjoyed it's windows and squishy furniture.
It was a reasonable solution, but that whole year I walked by the basement and wondered why the school mess was upstairs. After a year of thinking, I've solved the riddle. I hadn't made any place for me. Granted, I had my rocking chair--the first piece of furniture I bought myself--but that was more about the babies than it was about me. This year I took over a corner and set up an office. If there actually is a minute when they are doing their own work, I'm ready to work on my reading, my children's stories, or my novel. All the pens and stickers and stuff that I use to motivate them and check their work are in special boxes in Mom's corner where they hopefully won't get spread around and lost.
I'm enjoying a workspace that isn't tucked in with the water heater and furnace. I feel like I've brought my special interests out of a closet and made them a home. It's nothing fancy, but it's mine.

Happy 2/5 Birthday to Harriet!

It has been a long journey. Section One is an inch or so thick. Section Two is a solid three inches, maybe more when I finish typing things up. The discoveries along the way were worth every frustrating delay to the plot. The relationship between two of the main characters has been radically intensified. Another character invented himself and is shouldering some of the darkest and brightest days in the novel. A third voted himself off of this section and onto the next. Some plot points literally caught fire. It is an awful mess, but a mess with potential. The temptation to sit down and tidy up the obvious problems is nibbling away at my inner ear, but I worry if I do there will be so many other obvious problems, I'll never move on. I've promised myself to have a complete draft that I would consider at least "good" by the time our third graduates from high-school. Eight years is probably generous, but then again my real priorities do slow down my work significantly.
Section Three feels like it will be easier to write with only four important events and fewer characters. One can always hope.