Ben and the Dragon! (new book excerpt)

 

Ben hopped off the stool and went over to the side of the stove where he placed one hand on the stove’s edge and one hand on the counter top above the silverware drawer. He pushed himself up, doing body lifts like a gymnast on parallel bars.

“Ben!” his mother said. “The stove is hot. Be careful.”

He did a few more lifts, and then hung with his feet swinging. “Mom, do dragons exist?”

The woman tapped a spoon on the edge of the bowl. She wiped her finger on the spoon and licked it. She was accustomed to questions of this sort from her younger son.

“There are stories of dragons in history,” she said. “In Great Britain, France, of course, China, Ireland and many other countries. They all have legends that describe these creatures.”

Ben frowned. “Yeah—but do they exist?”

“I’ve never seen one,” his mother replied, “yet.”

“Okay, Mom. Thanks!”

Ben dropped to the floor and ran into the living room where he’d been playing with Charlie, their neighbor, who was visiting before dinner. Charlie would go back home as soon as the Weimers began to eat. He lived two houses away. Charlie’s family already ate their supper.

Having played for a while with their Lego City, which dominated the family's dining room, Gui asked his mother for permission to toss the football outside with Ben and Charlie for a few minutes before dinner. Once in the front yard, Ben took the opportunity to ask his brother whether or not he thought dragons were real.

“No,” Gui said, quite sure of himself. “Maybe Komodo Dragons, but real dragons don’t exist.” Gui was twelve, and felt sure about what he knew.

Ben and the Dragon coming!

I've been saying this forever.

I wanted to let this fledgling book--written for my younger son last Christmas and illustrated by my artist wife--fly away in March, and here it is August!  Time flies as swift as a dragon.

Ben and the Dragon is now uploaded to my actual printing company, LSI.  Once I get the hard copy proof from them, I'll be able to give a thumbs up and, then, this newest work will be available on Amazon as well as from other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers around the globe.

When this happens, I'll post an excerpt from the finished book and make an announcement.  And that should happen before the end of this month.

Until then--

Ben and the Dragon -- first proof copy on the way

Upcoming book update:

I've sent Ben and the Dragon to Lulu, my proof copy (first real hard copy version) printer.  I finally have this story in just-about-publish-ready form and now I await Andrée's (my wife's) painting of the cover to be finished; it's on her easel in her studio and she's getting the dragon, Ambroise, filled in with crystal scales.  

The cover image here is her painting-in-progress (I wanted to send something for the cover to the printer for formatting so I could get the proof back within a week).

In the meantime, a friend is making a final proofreading pass.  When I get the first physical copy back from Lulu, I'll be able to make any corrections to the interior and upload the final cover image of Andrée's painting.

Whew!

Then I'll begin work with my real printer, LSI, to have their "final" proof copy sent to me for approval before production.  When I give the go-ahead, my newest book, a story about a boy and a dragon, will be available on Amazon (like the rest of my books), as well as being orderable from any other bookseller.

Writing and editing is work.  Self-publishing is a lot of work.

I'll give an update when LSI starts the first printing run.

Until then!

A poem written on the Delaware shore of the Atlantic during a recent cold, rainy beach vacation

The Disintegration of Me

The disintegration of me

is easy to see.

Oh, me. 

The sand beneath my feet

wears my feet

Smooth, wears the shells and rocks, wears everything 

of everything, and me

watching.

I am a shell under the feet of the sea.

My defeat whispers

softly.  My feet

push through warm sand and heel into the coolness below,

into everything.

The disintegration of me is easy.

I stand sideways, and waves push and pull, crash and recede,

smoothing,

polishing,

wearing me

free.

Ben and the Dragon (upcoming book excerpt)

This is from a book I wrote for my youngest son, Benjamin, for Christmas last year.  Since then, I've been polishing it and getting it into printable form--between house renovating and the myriad of surprises that life brings daily, weekly, etc.  

Andrée, my artist wife, is working on the illustrations.  Hopefully, this book will be a solid reality within the next month. -DW

Uh oh…

Ben slowly turned back to the water. The shadow was closer now. He looked at the cloudless sky. The boy was standing where the grass came up to the water. There were no overhanging trees here; only a “No Swimming” sign stood nearby. The strange shadow drifted closer. His hoped-for guess dissolved; it couldn’t be the sign’s shadow.

The sun sparkled from a multitude of places within the darkness. On the surface of the water, and without substance, it didn’t look like oil or anything floating but just seemed to extend a little into the water, like a… well, like a shadow.

Ben looked for the minnows. They were gone.

My New Book

From the introduction:

“What do you know for sure?” is my favorite
American koan from Richard Rose’s “Lecture of
Questions,” a long list of deceptively obvious
questions we never think to ask ourselves. My
second favorite is “How many full hours do we
spend analyzing our thought processes?” When
I first heard him ask this, I was surprised to realize
I hadn’t spent a single full hour in my lifetime
analyzing anything!

I was inspired by these questions and others, as
well as by Rose’s life example, to do the seemingly
most stupid thing imaginable: make a promise to
pursue the ultimate meaning of existence until I
found it. Others have their own prime questions;
mine was, “What is the meaning of life?” I didn’t
mean my life. I meant the meaning of everything.

I wanted to know, What? What? What? What
is this all about? When I told myself I will do this
thing, I felt a sinking certainty that I was throwing
my life away…. But what else could I do?

Available on Amazon and on the TAT Foundation Press webpage.

Happy New Year! Here's a poem:

Hollow houses

Widows sit in wooden chairs

By windows looking nowhere.

Empty nests built up, accumulated,

Repaired, settled into, aged.

I drive past houses I know are empty,

Empty.

You Will Leave (excerpt)

This is an excerpt from a short story, You Will Leave, that may appear in an upcoming book I'm working on, tentatively titled Situations of I.  

Sorry I haven't been here lately.  Busy.  

*

A boy finds a bottle on a beach.  The surf washes its cadence into the shore and interacts with itself, grinding shells and flotsam in eternal repetitive movements.

A bottle.  An empty Pepsi bottle.  He picks it up from the sand.  Contentment flows through him.  He squats and sets the bottle upright on the damp sand just beyond the waterline.  A handful of sand, held over the lid, lets granules sift onto the rounded top and cascade down the sides in a musical shushing hollow sound.

First sand fills the bottle, then is poured out to form a pile.  Again..  Again..  The pile grows. 

Later, small shells alone fill the bottom portion of the plastic cylindrical container.

The boy holds one hand on top of the bottle and shakes it.  This, and the resulting sound, go on for some time. 

The Writer or The Gazebo

05/18/2012 

Is a story action and adventure?  Activity?

We fight.  Mainly to kill each other over what we want.

But a cemetery is so calm.  Grass grows over a memorial granite stone and birds sing in a wood surrounding a quiet sun-dappled clearing featuring an ornate eight-sided gazebo which is lighted at night.

Stately firs, oaks and maples stand sentry in this pleasant-looking glade.  A high-ceilinged, gable-roofed, single-level library rests on a hillside opposite the wooded gazebo background.

Ants toil in their nests below volcano-like mounds in the mortar cracks around the octagonal stone set in the center of the gazebo.  This writer walks to the steps leading down, stepping over different-sized black ants to squat down to read the date on the memorial stone.  Sept. 30, 1979.  A couple had paid to build the gazebo, it seemed.  The writer wondered if they lived yet.

Born to Wonder

This is from a friend who ordered my book when it first came out.  I told her a few days ago in an email that I hadn’t sold a million copies yet and she replied:

“It is a rather large book Dave.

What is your main objective in writing it? For you own benefit, as a road map for others, as a teaching tool on spiritual ways and means??”

My answer (what I actually wrote to my friend is different) might have been:

I don’t think I’ll prune any more branches from my epitaph.  I haven't found many people to relate to in this life, but I have found them.  This book is for them.  My mind is an unusual tree, but it’s me.

Portrait’s title is as close a description of what this book is about as I can make it: a portrayal of a person who was born to seek life’s meaning. 

A portrait is not any single blob of paint.  So my book is all of the things you mentioned; it is for my own benefit, of course, as well as a roadmap for others and a “teaching tool” on spiritual ways and means.

I don't think people need others like they think they do.  Many people seem to need an example.  Monkey see, monkey do.  When we finally see something that matches us...

I wanted to show how I was inspired to follow the beat of my own drum and to offer encouragement to others who are seeking their own ultimate answer.

Portrait is absolutely imperfect because it reflects something eternally susceptible to improvement—me.  Yet I think these prints of mine in the snow are at the same time perfect, because they're mine and they tell my story.

If I ever find I want to write something blatantly instructive, I'll put together one or two pages and post it.  I’ll invite anyone to email me and this is what I would invariably say:

This is your life.  None of us matter in the end to you, and none of us are right about your life, but you.  I know an answer exists for me; and because this is true for me, I suspect it is possible for you.  I hope that you will try to find out.

I wanted to make Portrait a reality while I could; too many years had gone by with just the idea of this book bobbing around in the back of my head.  I know that most books, like the proverbial captain, go down with their ship.  Steer your own boat.

I think certain people will read Portrait.