Month: September 2022

Of lists and listlessness

I keep finding these lists I’ve compiled of books I want to write and/or release to the wild — you know, the books I hope will provide a revenue stream when my day-job days are over. I know (I know I know because I write this same thought from time to time) that I should devote a portion of every day to getting these books out there, and yet here is the list virtually unchanged from a year or two ago when I committed it to paper. I am an odd duck that way, knowing almost exactly what to do but pausing at the cusp of acting.

Every so often I take a baby step and inch forward. On Sept. 1 I finally started producing a little something with the USB microphone I bought three or four (five? six?) years ago — and now my daily blog has an audio component. Once I get more comfortable with the process, I aim to expand the experiment and return to podcasting and even audiobooks. I firmly believe my neglected masterpiece How to Play a Blue Guitar can find a life once the words are uttered out loud.

As I approach the day later this month when my 70th birthday will be closer than my 69th back in March, I am increasingly aware that time is a finite thing, and all those things I want to get done need to start getting done. It is all well and good to enjoy an audiobook by 86-year-old George Guidall and admire the queen of England for logging 96 years including 70 on the throne. The obituaries are filled with folks who did not have that much time.

My mind is still more or less cruising along, my voice is still more or less what it was, my body is doing its job except for the arthritis, so I ought to be getting on with all my big plans for them.

So what, then, is my problem? What is this monster called inertia – procrastination – Resistance? What a remarkably insidious demon it is in the end, behaving to the last as if there is no end and I have all the time in the world to waste. There’s a Proverb (6:9-10) that alarmed me the first time it sank in and continues to spring to mind whenever I ponder inertia:

“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest — and poverty will come on you like a thief, and scarcity like an armed man.”

When I remember those lines, I jump up from my slumber and reach for my list of projects. Sometimes, thought, the list itself is daunting — which one do I do first? Where do I start? I remember the sound advice, “Just pick one and run with it, gather some momentum,” but I settle back down, staring at the list, and fold my hands to rest.

Yes, inertia is that evil.

But every so often I, for example, plug my new/old microphone into the laptop at last, and start recording my daily blog, and I gain some momentum.

I never said this out loud before, but at the beginning of the year I committed to publishing at least one book a month. How am I doing? I have published three books in nine months, one that I authored and two in the Roger Mifflin series. Let’s see if, by saying it out loud at last, I can muster the energy to publish a book by the end of September. And then? I’ll work on the October book, and after that, November.

But first, let me see that list …

The new pup on the block

This is our 1-year-old, Summer. Today is the 363rd day that she has resided with us; Sunday is the anniversary of her coming home. Puppies turn into dogs so quickly, but yes, they are here and gone faster than you can imagine.

This is a stubborn beast. She absolutely will not respond to “Summer, come!” although she does look up when you call her name, so she understands that the word is a code meaning “me.” She just doesn’t care whether we want her to come. 

The good news is that when I feed the dogs, I sing a variation on the old song by the Jamies, “Summertime Summertime.” It goes “It’s … Suppertime, Suppertime, sup, sup, suppertime, Suppertime Suppertime sup sup supper time, Suppertime for Summer time, Supper time for Dejah too, Supperti-i-i-ime.” When she is reluctant to come in from the back yard, I sing the Suppertime song, and up she roars. Of course, I must give her a dog treat when she arrives, but it’s a small price to pay for her company.

She loves to tease her 9-year-old sister into a tug of war by literally nipping at her heels. Dejah is a good sport who usually gives a big sigh and enters the fray.

There have been dogs in my life constantly for about 40 years now, and retrievers have been in the mix for well over half of those years. They do love to retrieve; Summer is a stereotypical ball chaser and/or ball catcher, although she is sometimes reluctant to bring the ball back in a straight line or surrender it: see the above reference to “a stubborn beast.”

They teach us how to love. Summer is never very far away, and she has assumed the space on the bed that was usually occupied by her predecessor. In other words, she has come, she has seen, and she has conquered. It seems like Summer has always been here and always will be, the latest in a line of beautiful animals that love us at our best and worst, in sickness and in health, and are always willing to provide a pair of puppy eyes and a boatload of snuggly love to comfort us as needed.

So, Happy Anniversary, Summer. Come! or not.

[Note: Sharp-eared listeners will notice a discrepancy in the opening paragraph. When I recorded this I thought it was Thursday night already, so I said “364th day.” I plead temporary insanity, or a senior moment, or some such.]

W.B.’s Book Report: Hell and Back

Craig Johnson’s 18th novel featuring Walt Longmire was released on Tuesday, and I made darn sure that it was ready and waiting in my Audible account so I could start listening on the one-hour commute to my day job.

George Guidall, the wonderful narrator who has read to me all of the books, is back behind the microphone, his 86-year-old voice still unmistakeable and undoubtedly the voice of the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, with all due respect to Robert Taylor, who portrayed Longmire on television for six seasons.

After reading some opening quotes and an introductory acknowledgment by the author,  Guidall took a breath and said two words that surprised me by bringing tears to my eyes and a delighted smile to my face.

He said, “Chapter One.”

That was when I realized how invested I’ve become in the adventures of Walt Longmire, and especially as told by George Guidall. I love the characters who inhabit Durant, Wyoming — Walt, Vic Moretti, Henry Standing Bear, and the rest — and each new book is like visiting with old friends from the hometown again.

The level of anticipation that rose in my heart when George said, “Chapter One,” was breathtaking. I wanted to stay in the car for the whole eight hours or so that it’s going to take to “read” the book. 

There has always been an element of the supernatural in the Longmire books — he has been helped on an occasion or two by the spirit of a friend who is most definitely no longer with us, for example, and in last year’s story, Daughter of the Morning Star, we learned about a mythical soul-devouring entity known as The Wandering Without that may or may not be real.

So far Hell and Back doubles down on the supernatural element. The story opens with Walt waking up flat on his back in the middle of the road in a blizzard, with no memory of how he got there, where “there” is, what day it is, and, wait a minute, “Who am I?” He wanders into town, where he encounters a beautiful waitress who happens to have the same name as his late wife, Martha, a seven-foot-tall Native American carrying a spear, and other characters who bear a resemblance to characters known to have died in prior books. Meanwhile, we cut away to Henry and Vic long enough to know they’re searching for their missing friend, which has led them all to Fort Pratt, Montana, just over the border.

The mystery revolves around the Fort Pratt Industrial Indian Training School, one of the horrific facilities that a century ago were taking native children from their families and stripping them of their cultural identities. The school was destroyed in a New Years Eve fire many years ago. The fire began at 8:17 p.m. and killed 31 children. It’s not long before we learn that it’s now New Year’s Eve, Walt’s watch and several clocks have stopped at 8:17, there’s a power outage and electricity probably won’t be restored for 31 hours, and Walt manages to secure a room at a hotel — wait for it — Room 31.

Johnson’s introduction promises a genre-busting gothic romantic western with a touch of horror, and I can see the boxes being checked off one by one. This is going to be fun.