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        As a real writer now (that first book review, which calls me an accomplished novelist is defining) I’ve been asked a variety of questions(varying degrees on depth charge scale). As a centrist and Universalist Unitarian (I take those on-line psychological tests all the time. They keep popping-up and arriving in my over-protective mailboxes. If my mother was around, I’d never be hard copying, like right now, the fact I’m one of those UU people. She wouldn’t understand that fact and also the third chapter in my novel which gently touches (as in a handshake and brief kiss) the verboten topic of inter-racial curiosity. Imagination with real sound effects: my cell phone rang (Nessun Dorma tone) and my mother is yelling at me. Where did all that come from? And I want you to tell me the truth, I’m your mother. Did you ever take an African-American girl to the Shark River? Meanwhile, I’m thrilled, my mother, actually used a politically correct word. And I answer her and my cousin from Texas who also called, lest ye all forget, this is all pure fiction.

            Questions from the loneliness and abandon of an exercise bike abound on a Saturday morning, whilst my teacher wife attends to the extra-curricular activity of grading papers(and I fear new politicians expect working from the house 20 hours a week is all part of the new job description). Moments ago, pondering the fact that Ponce De Leon searched for the fountain of youth and I’m sitting on it and pedaling, I asked myself how important is becoming a novelist. It’s my life now, a reason to believe (an old favorite folk song) and one of those pure existence justifications, being put on this earth to write. And I believe that. Wow( a wonderfully youthful word. How many card carrying AARP members use it regularly? My wife complains, who says that?)  I believe that spiritually, I’ve arrived; so much so, it could very well be novel number two, the journey to arrival.

            So the question of the day (dripping in salty sweat, the best kind; you can taste with your tongue, which means you’re burning real calories) does my family and world understand the huge importance of my novel, man child in a new promised land? So many expect free hand-outs and too many don’t bother to order my child which took me ten years to deliver. Talk about long gestations. Baffling and smothering is the disappointment. It sweeps me back to sophomore year in college when my room mate, fraternity brother until the end of time, forgot to fix me up for homecoming. Six months later we still weren’t talking to each other. What about fraternalism and purity and body(sounds like an old beer)? I finally realized in 1965 that it really didn’t exist.

            I realize in 2010 that man is an island and there is no family(except for a random few on either side of the yellow brick wall) Would I ever love to hop on H.G. Wells ‘Time Machine’  and go back and meet the person who defined family(not going back to meet George Washington, Albert Einstein, Dr. King or Ghandi) It’s not a real word or concept but perhaps an excuse to leave an estate to the person who shares the same blood that grabs a white puffy shirt forever and never leaves.  Family across the breadth of the planetary home doesn’t exist. Life has been filled with road signs all along which you never bother to read or pay attention to. Arriving as a caring novelist, riding the exercise bike, I just saw a road sign (life at sixty plus, no longer infinite, helped me spot the sign) which was colored traditional black and white, “No More One Way Streets” An arrow points in three different directions.

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           Firstly, an excerpt from a poem I memorized in fifth grade at Maple Avenue School in Newark. The poet was John Greenleaf Whittier, “Snowbound”

            “The sun that brief December day rose cheerless over hills of gray, and darkly circled, gave at noon, a sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky its mute and ominous prophecy. A portent seeming less than threat, it sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, of homespun stuff could quite shut out. A hard, dull bitterness of cold that checked, mid-vein, the circling race.  Of life-blood in the sharpened face. The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east; we heard the roar of ocean on his wintry shore and felt the strong pulse throbbing there. Beat with low rhythm our inland air.”

            I just recited one of my favorite poems, memorized fifty years ago (that hurts to say) and which is still floating around my synapses. There’s worry about the synapse thing. Have I remembered too much inconsequential minutia and is it physically taking up a lot of my free gig space?  For whatever reasons, I have not been able to remove this poem to trash. But that’s alright, I love snow, purity, silence, and sometimes, the aftermath of a solid meteorological Northeaster event is getting out of school or work the next day, and laying around with hot chocolate and a copy of Casablanca

          Back to the synapse– cerebral thing. Since I’m a real writer; my novel now published and being sold, I realize there is so much more to learn and write about, so I keep shoving things into all sections of my cerebral zone (perhaps a good name for a boutique book store). The zone seems to be expanding, absorbing and retaining. And there’s new research to help explain intellectual growth. Long telomeres (the tip of chromosomes are called telomeres and they’re like the tip of a shoelace). The older cells get, telomeres are shorter and offer less protection and cells die. Research suggests massive amounts of exercise keep them long. I do my thinking and proof reading on an exercise bike constantly. Enough said.

           Snowstorms yield cabin fever time which for me means introspective thinking. I love the song “Feast of Stephen.” I’m back in Newark, fifth grade, Eisenhower was President and I thought remembering Pearl Harbor Day meant thinking a woman named Pearl was brutally attacked. My mother’s best friend was a Pearl.

           This morning I whispered to myself, “I really am a writer now.” Last year I went to a lecture at a local University. This amazing political science genius, who writes, commentates and advises lectured, while in the back, copies of his book were being sold. Afterwards, I stood in line with just a program, hoping to get an autograph and ask a powerful question. I was next in line. He looked at my program and realized I did not buy his book so he walked away. I realized what I had to do and ran to the back, bought a book, jumped back in line, and I got my autograph and answer to the question, “If you advise and commentate, how come you never ran for President?”

           I got a brusque (nice word for a snowy day) answer. “Never, not for me.”  The fact that this multi-millionaire omnipresent personality wouldn’t sign an autograph unless I bought his book bothered me for a year until this morning. Now I understand. We’re both writers now. Although early on in my authorship, it seems there are folks in my world who expect my giving them a novel without payment(for a variety of reasons). I’ve been writing for ten years, longer than doctors need to be in medical school and residency for a specialty.

         So in my mind and heart I’m comfortable seeking payment and grateful that it snowed today, giving me introspective time, although I just got that sinking intestinal discomforting feeling that someone is going to have to deal with removing two feet of snow in the morning. ‘Someone’ has been me since I memorized that poem back in fifth grade.  

         Happy Merry Healthy Holidays and New Years.

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      Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of a first marriage; this curious remembrance takes place every year, admitting to my wonderful wife of thirty-two years, that I can’t help but recall pre-historic, formative years. Trying to extricate myself from low-level guilt, I’m quick to remind that without that first time we wouldn’t exist; a little determinism roasting in the holiday oven. Gosh, when my parents were married forty years, they were old.
      Forty years also means three careers ago. Now, instead of rocking in a chair on the porch, sipping prune juice on the rocks, I’ve become a debut, emerging author. Where is the cognitive slowdown that a prune juice aficionado is supposed to undergo?
      The passion for the written word is powerful. I want to write, tell stories, make people think, except now I find myself going to book expos, lectures on publishing, writing workshops, taking any kind of webinars designed to shove a wealth of information into mind. Last week, I took a webinar on using social media to approach generation Y; 81% of them respond to solicitations via social media. Redemption: I do play beer pong, do keg stands and socialize.
      Sentimentality reigns. Who would’ve ever thought that four decades later, I’d be immersed in a new profession as a writer? I wear the title with pride and accomplishment. Who would’ve thought I’d be doing nervous kitchen pacing two days before Thanksgiving and watching March of the Wooden Soldiers for the 57th straight time, waiting for my first book review to come out?
      Life is listening to In the Mood by Glenn Miller and Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, which just finished.(Thank you, You Tube). Forties music transports me on that wonderful drifting magic carpet back to energies which birthed my novel; a 1942 movie, Casablanca.
      Niche marketing, press releases, the widest of worlds and opportunities, dreams and synchronicity. My grandfather who passed in 1937 and is so much a part of life now. Knowledge to pursue dreams and extend life quality. My wife and son. The internet. Spirituality. Bounty(not Mutiny on) of America. The promise of America. All that is ahead in this literary journey. As if I were back at Maple Avenue Grammar School(today they call them Elementary), I’m thinking of some of the reasons to give thanks.
      Happy Healthy Thanksgiving.

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