Do You Want to See My Legs?

That question came from a lady who was a regular customer in a feed store I worked at in Alaska. The year was 1980 something. And the question seemed to come out of nowhere.

Um, AWKWARD! I fought back the gut wrenching panic that wanted to surface.

Something was way out of kilter in my universe. A lady who was substantially my senior, and who was normally all about her pets, should not be hitting on me.

I looked up. Yikes! She was walking toward me!

There was no where to run and no way to hide. I quickly tallied the odds of keeping my job if I had to jump through the window to escape.

“Look, here's the picture. Those are my legs.”

I'm a married man! My silent plea echoed in my head.

“And this was So-and-so, a such-and-such breed that won first place in …”

My blood pressure dropped back into a measurable range. My alarm was alleviated. The picture was in a book about show dogs, and the lady, whose name has long escaped my memory, had a winning dog in a show way back when. That her knees were visible in the picture was only noticed because she pointed it out.

“That's my claim to fame there,” the lady remarked with chuckle. She then went into great detail about what a great dog that was.

I don't really remember much of that monologue. My mind was busy being relieved to have the universe spinning in the right direction again.

Some days, I think it must be really weird for regular people to be around me.

The Secret Life of RV Hodge

The house lights go down and the audience's indiscernible din of chatter suddenly becomes a collective cheer.

Then, as if on cue, there is intense silence.

The anticipation is explosive.

The spots suddenly illuminate the platform and the show begins!

The crowd goes wild! The noise is deafening!

Are we at a rock concert?

No! It is so much better than that! It's a collaborative duet!

The two performers yank the veil, revealing the book cover.

Shawna and RV play the audience like a reunion of ageless rock stars …

The Real Life of RV Hodge

I am excited to reveal the the delightful collaborative work of myself and the very talented Shawna Apps! Here is a sneak preview of the cover of the first book in a series of children's stories!

I hope you all love it and will share this with your friends who have children or grandchildren. Please stay tuned for more announcements.

Be sure to check out Shawna's other work as well.

http://backtothedrawingboardart.com/

At Last, I have Found the Fountain of Youth!

Ponce de León is alleged to have “discovered” Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth. I don't know if he was really searching for the fountain or not. Some historians believe that was a posthumous attribution. I don't know that either.

Logically, it would seem like a waste of time to go rooting around in the jungle for a “secret” fountain rumored to possess youth giving powers. It seems to me it would have been much easier to ride through the villages. When you notice a village has no old people … voilà! The fountain of youth has to be nearby.

Yet an easier way to search would be to Google it. I realize good ol' Ponce may have forgotten his password in all his wanderings. But surely he had some fourteen-year-old servant that could have hacked his iParchment and gotten him back in.

Considering his level of technological challenge, I suppose Ponce did alright. They probably would have burned him at the stake for pulling out a laptop anyway. Go figure, because they surely would have basked in the magical powers of the fountain.

Well, enough picking on people who have been gone for half a millennium. When I do a quick search, I find Florida has the highest percentage of seniors over sixty-five in the USA. I'm thinking the Fountain of Youth thing isn't there. So, where in the world is it? Inquiring minds want to know!

I have found it. It is in my kitchen, on the counter. And it cost me less than twenty bucks at Walmart.

Yep, according to a recent study, and this one is the right one, the more coffee a person drinks the longer he or she lives. I like that. My Mr.Coffee is the fountain of youth! Talk about music to a coffee drinker's ears.

I suspect there is a limit to the life expectancy thing. If, for instance, you were to drink one thousand gallons of coffee in one day, you would drown. That is not working in your favor. Also the article did not mention immortality, just longer life statistically. Let's not get carried away in our excitement.

So, there are many scientific theories being bandied about for this fantastic brew of good news. There will, no doubt, be the politically correct people who want tea to have the same effects. But I don't think that is actually possible. I know the real reason it works for coffee drinkers. Seems obvious to me. Coffee drinkers live longer, because they want to.

Children's Series ... Book 2

Today I have officially finished Book 2 in the series of children's books I am writing.

Finished means different things to different people. To some, it may indicate ultimate finality. To me, in this case, it is more like a major milestone. Finished means the fun part of writing the story is completed and the first round of mop up edits have been accomplished. Now the real nitty-gritty of editing is ready to begin.

This is when my copy editor, who happens to be my wife, sharpens her nasty red pencil and lacerates my masterpiece. I am being metaphorical, of course, we do all of that on the computer now. This is when I discover I have read a comma as a period many times in a row. This is when I, once again, learn the misplacement of words such as that for than are invisible to the spell checker. Finding incomplete sentences. And this is when I make the frustrating discovery that a brilliant rewrite of a favorite passage has somehow vaporized. Most likely that happened when I hit a wrong button somewhere along the line.

But I digress. I really do love every part of the writing process. And I am totally loving the illustrations that Shawna is making. There will be a public display soon, I'm sure. I do hope each of you is following her blog or facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/backtothedrawingboardart                                      http://backtothedrawingboardart.com/             

P.S. If the incomplete sentence in this missive was like a fork between your teeth, congratulations.

The Tyranny of Facts

“Weak ink is better than a strong memory in a court of law. Write everything down.” That tidbit of advice was dished out on a regular basis from a man I worked for many years ago in Alaska. He was a retired Alaska State Trooper. That advice has proven to be invaluable many times over the years, especially when it comes to remembering complicated things like passwords.

One place it has not been helpful, however, is writing stories, true stories, like about my past. Once I commit an event or detail to writing, it loses its dynamic nature and can no longer change itself for the convenience of the story. Fact morphology is one of the greatest writing tools available. Hard facts can really cripple a good story. Photographs have the same negative effect. I'm really glad I don't write true stories for a fishing magazine. Or, maybe they don't require too much truth in the stories in those publications.

Fiction writing, on the other hand, is great fun. There are no rules. The writer is free. I can call something historical fiction and the only part about the story that must be factual is the date. And for that matter, it only has to be in the past. Five minutes ago was the past, by the way.

There is, of course, the intentional misrepresentation of facts in writing. In the news, it's called … news. In non-fiction, it's called lying. On my Meet the Author Page, it's called fun. In fact, my page has four “author bio's” to choose from. One of them is pure fiction bordering on fantasy, the other three are actually true. In the interest of not messing up a good story, I'll leave it to your imagination to determine which is which.