Occasionally I bump into people in their 60’s and 70’s who tell me they always wanted to be a poet or a novelist. I just can’t help it. I almost always ask, “What’s holding you back?” And I want to add, “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” I don’t, but I want to.

The excuses vary, but when I hear, “I’m just too old,” I think of Albert Schweitzer who said, “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

(I know. Schweitzer didn’t have the benefit of our gender awareness, so feel free to substitute “person” for “man” and “a person” for “he.” I’ll let you work it out.)

The point is: It’s never too late to chase the dream of being a writer.

Write on! Write on, McDuff!

Just a short note to let readers know Spider Silk print copies are now available through Amazon. Next up: Stone Fly

My thanks to readers everywhere!
Rod

Bookstores are not always the best place for self-published authors to display their books. Spine out, surrounded by other books, the purchase of even a few of books in a year’s time is unusual. The clerk in one little bookstore in a local tourist town could not even find my books. No sales at all is the norm.

But Lise at Mohawk Paperbacks in Springfield has been unbelievable. Each month for over seven years she has promoted my books and made sure her customers had a chance to see them. I’ve said “thank you” to her over and over again, but I thought it was time to share that thanks in a more public way.
Rod

I labored to write the management book What Do I Do When I Get There? in a gender neutral fashion. (I mean, how awkward after all is “he/she,” and/or “he or she?”) In the process of putting the book together, I became sensitized to useful gender neutral words, which is why I’ve become so very fond of “y’all.”

Think about it. Is “y’all” singular or plural? Male or female? It just depends, and rather than risk offending anyone by careless gender reference, I simply say “y’all.” It just rolls off the tongue. Try it. It’ll grow on y’all, guaranteed.

Rod

Millions of words and a few thousand books later, my attention is arrested by one word in Josephine Fey’s charming novel, A Shilling for Candles: “refutal.” What an interesting word.

My Google internet search is met with the question, “Did you mean ‘rebuttal?” So I’m not the only one to wonder if “refutal” is an English word or a typo. But, further down the screen, I also find, “Refutal” the act of refuting,” and I have to believe the word is simply a quaint but charming usage by one of our English sisters.

By the way, do you think it’s re-futal with a “you” sound, or a re-futal with a “cut” sound?

And now on to the next million words.
Rod