E-book is out!

If you e-read, check for YU: A Ross Lamos Mystery at Smashwords.com. It should download for any reading device.

Price is $2.99 at Smashwords and at Kindle.

A Stargazer's Ecstasy

Today is Monica Wilson's 61st Birthday and 49th day since her passing -- in the Buddhist tradition, this is the completion of her journey through the Bardo realm.  Next stop, rebirth somewhere!  And I know she will stay with me to guide more writing.

So, in her memory, this link to an awesome astro-video.

View and rejoice.

Literary at Last

I have my first in-print, by-ghod literary journal publication.  The fogey part of me is tickled by this milestone; my other literary publications have been online.

The journal is BACOPA, out of the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Florida.  It's an annual book and really very good, high quality poetry and fiction.   The story is "The Stronger," set in Southern Indiana in 1910 and based on my grandfather's life as a bookish farm boy.

"The Stronger" is the title story of a four-story collection, all based on memories and family legends from my grandfather's life,  reaching from the 1870s to the 1950s.  Hopefully the next story will soon find publication, too!

Aw, tell me what you REALLY thought!

My friend Don, from the Seattle area, bristles at the requirement that he actually buy something from Amazon.com in order to be able to post a review there.  He got YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY as a Christmas gift.  So, I'll put his remarks right here:

"I started to read it like a book ... then I inhaled it like some kind of addiction. I usually only read for fun on vacation or business trips on airplanes. Ask Bev (my wife) how many mornings she found me in my chair reading your book before digging into email!!!!

I told Bev that she needed to read it. She inhaled it too.

I totally cannot believe that this is the first book you have written. I can't say what I enjoy more, the story line, or the jumps back and forth through time to tell the story."

Thanks, Don!

OMG You Guys!

I just read through this page at the web site of A Room Of Her Own, sponsors of the writing retreat at Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM, that I am honored to attend in August. Yes, that Ghost Ranch.  Georgia O'Keefe Ghost Ranch.

 I cannot beleeeeeeve that I will be sharing a dorm-style bathroom with many of these ladies!

I have a lot of homework reading to do.

Here and Gone

At 4:44am, on 4/11/11, Monica Wilson passed beyond the veils. Monica was the great, majestic friend who showed me her Han Dynasty jades and told me the story of her life and tragedy in the Chinese Court more than 2000 years ago ... and I knew this was a story that was mine, too, and I had to write it as a novel.

She touched thousands of people in the Pacific Northwest with her energy and charisma; she steered her complicated, extended family as matriarch and anchor of passionate good sense;  she bore and raised four exceptional human beings, helping each of them understand their exceptional past lives; she guided children of the Sakya Monastery sangha through the beginnings of Dharma practice in Buddhist Sunday School.

She read cards and astrology charts for a huge clientele, helping people find balance and hope, while divining the World's Changes in their struggles.  She was a glutton for information (oh, Gemini!) and snacked on conspiracies. (We got off on challenging each other.)

Monica's wild intuitive talent was grounded by expert critical thinking, and her leadership of spiritual discussion groups (aimed at really raising consciousness) transformed the strange into the straightforward. For so many people, hanging out with Monica raised our tolerance threshold for weirdness into the stratosphere.  

She changed us, her friends and clients, collaborators and onlookers.  The space left empty by her passage out of this world into the Other is large.  

We will fill it, by becoming the people she taught us to be.

Vale. 

 

Who's That Girl?

A new review of YU is up at the blog "Culinary Carnivale," a delightful melange of reviews, recipes, and reflections.  And the reviewer, who it turns out lives here in my town, is the wonderfully-named Dhympna DuMaurier.  I just had to say.