Bonds of Kindness

His Name was Bond, Part Three

I missed only one summer afternoon when I was supposed to clean. Mr. Bond telephoned early that evening; it was still light out. Had something happened? Was I okay?

I was off with my boyfriend somewhere that day, and the time (ahem) had run away from us. “I’m so sorry!” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

Mr. Bond had to go to the store, so he said he’d swing by and get me. When I came out to the road, he stood in the driveway talking with my parents. The three of them were laughing. I bet it was something along the lines of, “Teenagers, what can you do…”

I hadn’t thought about Mr. Bond in years. But I’d open my old photo album and every once in a while I come across his photograph.

I’d remember that for a time I’d known this kind man.

In these last few weeks I sat down to write about him, and both memories and words rushed out. An avalanche of elements from long-ago strike me. Some details are so clear. The heavy gemstones in the baroness’s jewelry. The frank eyes of Mr. Bond’s daughter. My astonishment that my simple notes had such a huge effect.

We communicated via those notes. I had a key to his home, that I used to let myself in the door on the days I cleaned. We didn’t see one another to talk often.

But I recall the ease I felt with him. Young people are unsure of themselves. Mr. Bond was a thoughtful conversationalist and I never felt foolish, or too green. And that is a remarkable thing. It’s a rare adult who can make a teenager feel like he sees and hears without being condescending.

Leaving notes was second nature; I can easily imagine that I told him I wanted to write. Let’s leave aside the fact that it took another 40 years before I actually made that wish a reality.

I can’t remember what the notes said. I probably scribbled things like, “Dear Mr. Bond, enjoy the salad greens. I’ve already washed them. I hope you’re having a good summer. PS: Have a nice day.” “It’s autumn! I brought carrots and zucchini. They’re in the crisper. PS: Have a nice day.” Or maybe, “I have Spanish Club after school, so I’ll be late coming to clean on Thursday. PS: Have a nice day.” I just don’t remember.

How I wish I’d asked Mr. Bond’s daughter if I could see his manuscript! At the time I assumed it was an autobiography, but how can I be sure? Maybe it was fiction – maybe he was writing a novel – maybe I was a character in it somewhere. I’ll never know. I was too startled by the information that my notes had inspired him to write a book, and I was definitely way too surprised and shy to ask anything further. I was sixteen. I had zero context for even one single part of this experience.

His passing was my first direct experience of the loss death brings. A few months later one of my best friends died in a car accident, and then a classmate’s father died. I’d never been to a funeral before. During that hard autumn I went to three. I was suddenly forever aware of how terribly fragile our hold on life is. For the longest time when I thought of him, I thought about dying.

I have two last comments to make as I close my album of ancient memories. I’ve discovered a gift in here. All these years later, when I look back what strikes me is a realization: sometimes my heart was in the right place. Those thoughtless teenaged years contained moments of generosity, and grace.

And, finally, this story about Mr. Bond and me has turned itself into a story about the living.  When I write about Mr. Bond now I think about life, and living; what we give to others; and what lasts in what they give us.

PS: Have a nice day.

© Jadi Campbell 2019. Photo property of Jadi Campbell. To see Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

My Sister & Maurice Sendak

NOTE: Illustrator/author Maurice Sendak was born on 10 June, 1928 in England. In his honor I am reprinting the post I wrote upon hearing that he had died. —Jadi

Our first experiences learning to speak seem to involve rhymes. [Twinkle twinkle and Dr. Suess, anyone?] We recite as children, loving language’s sing-song chants.

One of the very first pieces I memorized as a child (to this day I can recite it) was ‘The Cow’ from A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods by Robert Louis Stevenson, printed in 1913.

                                                           The Cow
The friendly cow all red and white
  I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
  To eat with apple-tart.
She wanders lowing here and there,

         5

  And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
  The pleasant light of day;
And blown by all the winds that pass
  And wet with all the showers,

  10

She walks among the meadow grass
  And eats the meadow flowers.

Can’t you see her?? In my child’s brain she was white and a funny shade of red (who ever heard of a red cow? I mean, really.) And she was named Flossie, or Maisie, or Bessie. Placid Maisie meanders in a huge field, chewing her cud and surrounded by fairy rings of little flowers.

I have to be in the right mood for poetry, but I still have the used copy of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry from my college days of long ago. (How long ago? Decades. A couple of ’em.) My edition of Robert Frost’s complete works came to me when my mother died. When I read Frost, his poems of New England keep me linked to her, too.

Emily Dickinson still knocks me out, and every word Shakespeare penned is poetry in exalted form.

Poetry is emotion and experience expressed in crystalline shapes, no matter whether it’s metered or free verse. Prose works by poets betray themselves through the beauty of the writing. Think of The English Patient. I read that book slower and slower, and found myself rereading pages over and over, savoring Ondaatje’s mastery with language. Or anything by Ray Bradbury: each of his strange magical visions contains a goodly dose of poetry.

Hmm. I just went back and read what I’ve got here so far… Scratch the comment about needing to be in a certain mood to read poetry.

The Muses pay a very special visit on those they gift with the ability to speak through poems. For me it’s the hardest of all forms of writing. Sadly, the poetic Muses Erato (love poetry), Calliope (epic poetry), Euterpe (songs and elegiac poetry), and their sister Polyhymnia (hymns and sacred poetry) just don’t knock on my door more than once a decade or so. An impulse to even attempt a poem is the sighting and citing of a rare bird. The last time, and it came over me in a total rush of surprise and inspiration, was the death of Maurice Sendak.

File:Sendak illustration.gif

(Photo from Wikipedia)

Mr. Sendak accompanied my childhood and probably yours too, and he was particularly part of my sister Pam’s early years. I remember his Nutshell Library books, extra small to fit the hands of children. There were 4 of them: Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup With Rice, One Was Johnny, and Pierre (A Cautionary Tale). Pammy read them repeatedly, relating especially to the contrary Pierre. A few years ago I spotted an interview with Sendak in The New York Times (click here for the interview).

The article brought back those little books and how much my sister loved Maurice Sendak. I promptly sent the link to Pam and we spent several weeks emailing back and forth about his wonderful art and our childhood memories.

In May last year, Maurice passed away. My sister was teaching in Japan; had she heard yet? For some reason I wanted to be the person to break the news to her. I debated how to contact Pam and gently let her know.

The next morning I awoke preoccupied with way too much to do. I began my tasks with the radio on. NPR mentioned that Terry Gross was doing a special Fresh Air show in honor of Maurice Sendak’s passing (a much older interview with Sendak and a more recent one recorded not long before his death). Despite really having no time to spare, I sat down to give 5 minutes to Sendak.

An hour later I still sat. By now tears were streaming down my face. Sendak’s wise, sweet old voice came over the airways, speaking of the secret fears of children, of his inability to believe in God after the horrors of the Holocaust (he lost his entire extended family), his more than half a century with the man he loved, Dr. Eugene Glynn, a NYC psychoanalyst his parents never knew about… Sendak told his story as the tears continued to pour.

I forgot everything, the chores that had seemed so important that morning, the things I had wanted to cross off my to-do list that day. The interview ended, I got shakily out of my chair, found some tissues and blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and sat down to write my sister. “Pam,” I said, “I just heard an incredibly moving interview with Maurice Sendak. He’s died, and I wanted you to get the news from me…. but really you need to hear this interview and listen to his voice.”

And as I sat, a Muse spoke. I wrote the first version of the following poem in one take.

Maurice

Maurice Sendak

Your words and drawings,

depictions transcribe

the soul&depths

of my sister, Pammy.

You died yesterday,

83 years old and not a day

older than the children now grown

adults weeping, mourning

your passing theirs passing

something of childhood gone beyond

retrieving.

Maurice.

I listen to recordings of your voice

You speak, the New Yorker

in you       so     obvious

I love your sense of place

your first generation voice

of Polish immigrants

of your humanity

your humility

your atheism

your embrasure of

a definition of the world

in which God is

everywhere

in the Wild Things

where they are

My Wild Things salute you.

My Wild Things weep.

Gnash our teeth.

Our King has left us.

Our island, and not just New York

is so much smaller with your passing.

We will cook a meal

Eat a supper and

wish

You were still with us.

(In loving memory of Maurice Sendak, June 10, 1928 to May 8, 2012.)

Copyright © 2013 Jadi Campbell.

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

In Search of Inspiration

If you troll blogs and the Web, there are untold numbers of suggestions on how to find the inspiration to write. Here are my ideas for how to get inspired… all tried, tested, and true. [1]

#1. Lock yourself in a room. More importantly, lock everyone else out.
#2. Leave the room only when the whining of the family dog takes on that frantic the-puddle-that-is-about-to-hit-the-floor-is-going-to-be-your-fault whimper. If the writing is going well, you’ll be dragged out of your writerly trance. If you’re slowly dying in front of a screen that remains blank, this is rescue from your flailing “I am such a loser” writer’s misery.
#3. In either scenario, head outdoors and think about writing while you’re walking. I walk in our village’s Schrebegartens [2] when I need to think through a plot knot or to stretch my legs. Or to get some fresh air finally! Usually I pass people with actual dogs, but if I’m lucky I have the dirt path through the gardens and orchards to myself. A loop takes me about 40 minutes to walk. One very cold grey winter morning, I first heard and then watched a pair of green woodpeckers. They flew from tree bole to tree bole. I stood enchanted and didn’t move.
#4. Find people who actually write. A group that sits and talks about writing and books and movies and culture is good. My group saves those acts till 5:00 p.m. when the drinks are ordered. And then the second round. And then….

#5. Wait, where was I? Oh – find people who write. The clackety clack of a friend’s fickle fingers of fate as they fly over her laptop keys will force you to bitch-shame yourself. Soon you will be outlining, typing, scribbling, anything that makes it look like you’re composing art.
#6. Do the Vampire Energy Suck. This is the same scenario as #5, but now position yourself across the table from your annoyingly prolific writer friend (and did you ever really like him?) Stare as he writes on, oblivious. Imagine an energy transfer taking place across the table, from his creative cloud to yours.
#7. Find someplace impossibly, wildly, improbably inspiring. Find that place – and GO there. While you’re there, WRITE. I’m president of a monthly writers’ group; we meet regularly in a turreted building. I climb up three flights of winding stone steps in a tower. One day a week I go to a café in the medieval square of a nearby town.

The café’s interior has exposed timber beams and archives date the building all the way back to 1566. I want to pinch myself when I am in both spots: I write here! How lucky can I get? Other days I’m more severe: If I can’t get inspired by views and surroundings like these, I’d better hand in my writer’s badge now.

the bells in the clock tower ring every 15 minutes

#8. At least the rounds of drinks always taste right….

… as does the Flammkuchen we always order (thin crust pizza with onion, créme fraisch and bacon)

NOTES: [1] Results from writer to writer may vary. [2] German Schrebegartens are areas designated for gardens and orchards. You can own or rent, and may have a garden house complete with a cellar. But you can’t have electricity or live in the hut. © Jadi Campbell 2017. All photos © Jadi Campbell. To  see some of Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

In Your Shoes

I watch the world from my little corner of things. Lately it feels small indeed. Some days, I am very sure I don’t want to leave it for any reason. Some days, I catch myself wondering how to put myself in someone else’s place.

But I’m a writer, which means I need the ability – the imagination – the empathy – to understand how other people think and feel.

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, according the old saying. But the Cherokee suggest, Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. That pithy statement brings back two memories. The first memory goes back decades. It was a time in my life marked by a strange loneliness. I walked around in a world of hurt with that loneliness as my only companion. I’m not kidding: it had a grip on me that just wouldn’t let go.

I went with some friends to a concert. Outside the theater, we ran into a man out of the past of one of my friends. He hugged his old sweetheart with glee and then shook our hands. As he held that hand he looked into each face, made eye contact and held it.

I dropped my gaze almost immediately, too seared inside by my intense depression to be able to maintain eye contact. I was shocked when he pointedly ignored me for the next twenty minutes that we sat and talked with him. He wouldn’t look at me or acknowledge a single thing I said. How in the world had I managed to offend a stranger? What the hell had I done wrong? As I sat there, suddenly I knew what had happened: the man was black, and the held hand and eye contact were his way of checking who was racist inside.

I was horrified to realize someone could think this of me, but too young and too caught up in my misery to say a word. And even more depressed by the idea that a perfect stranger had judged me – and found me wanting.

The second instance is more recent. Last year I met up with a group at a downtown brewery. Someone’s husband showed up later and took the seat next to me. I tried to make conversation, but he answered in short syllables. I couldn’t read him or his body language; he was “off” in some weird way. I chalked it up to the guy being an asshole or socially retarded and immediately forgot about it.

Months later I learned via the grapevine that this man was recovering from a medical condition that almost killed him. He’d been ill for over a year and was still struggling his way back to normal health and normal life. Boy, did that information make me revise my original opinion of him… and feel bad that I’d judged him so fast.

Will these quotes or experiences keep me from judging other people? Not always. But they do remind me to attempt to get all the facts (and to check that my facts are indeed facts).

Like the Cherokee say: You can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. I enjoy adding .…that way, you’re a mile away from them — and have their shoes.

And finally, this whole debate reminds me to keep my sense of humor. An ability to laugh at people’s absurd conclusions – and at myself and my own – has saved me more times than I can count. ***

NOTES: © Jadi Campbell 2017. ***I quite enjoy these quotes, too: A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. — Charles Spurgeon. Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world. — Marilyn Monroe. Read more pithy quotes at:

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/shoes.html

Click here for my author page to learn more about my books and me.

What a Year!

2016 was the Year of the Monkey. Wong Tai Sin Medicine Temple, New Territories, China

I’m a little slow sometimes. I recently realized that my new-and-improved wordpress website jadicampbell.com had a birthday in January and is now a year old. (Yes, I’m aware it’s already March!) So, what did I do with a year of blogging?

My usual bounce of topics around the world….

If you want humor, dance to the world’s oldest Beatles cover band in A Boogie With the Bootlegs and survive a terrible trip at The H(ot)ell in Dubrovnik. Mess with the wedding caterers in You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too and listen in as I gleefully confess to embarrassing my long-suffering spousal unit in The Honeymooners. Attend an office party that goes south with a whole lot of alcohol in Holiday Insurance 1 & 2.

I weighed in on current events with both outrage and compassion: Ending the Year Pregnant with Hope, Our House is on Fire, Outrage, Role Models and Positive Acts, and my continued thread on refugees The Long Haul. Helping Refugees: Part 5, 6 & 7.

Last summer I lost my mother-in-law, an old friend, and my dad Bobbo, all within a shocking three-month period. Those were by far the hardest posts to write. But I discovered something: the most personal blog essays are the ones my readers (i.e., all of you) respond to most.

Phew. And, thank you for your comments regarding Breath, Loss and Remembering How to Feel.

I wrote seasonal posts about Christmas Holiday Insurance 1 & 2, A Guy Goes to a Christmas Market…, the Hindu Nandi Purnima in Holy CowsBazaar/Bizarre, watching the World Cup from The H(ot)ell in Dubrovnik, and the (in)famous Oregon Country Fair.

Somewhere last year I managed to finish and publish a new novel, Grounded. Here are excerpts: Holiday Insurance 1 & 2, Holy Cows and Bazaar/Bizarre, The Reluctant Pilgrim, Save the Recriminations, History’s Loop 1, 2, & 3.

I took part in wonderful projects with NEAT (New English American Theater) involving Gershwin 1 & 2 and The Vagina Monologues.

I wrote about Nature’s waterfalls and snakes.

As always, I blogged about places we’ve visited on this incredible planet. Hong Kong, Laos markets & waterfalls, Hampi, India here and twice again in The Reluctant Pilgrim & Bazaar/Bizarre; Croatia and (the bus) to Canada.

2017 is the Year of the Rooster! Wong Tai Sin Medicine Temple, New Territories, China

What you can look forward to in the Year of the Rooster: a huge blog thread for my father Bobbo that I’m calling The Animal Kingdom. Occasional notes about my volunteer work with refugees. Lots more quirky posts about places Uwe and I visit. And on-going musings about life, the Universe and everything in-between as I deepen the process of saying goodbye to those who have left.

May you find something here that makes you laugh, creates a spark of connection, and moves you enough so that you reenter your own life with a sense of touching upon mine. That would make the new year of blogging – and all the years to come – worthwhile. As Mae West says, “Come on up, I’ll tell your fortune.” [1]

266080joqn_w.jpg

I’m now posting once a week!

NOTES: [1] Quoted in She Done Him Wrong (1933). Photo of Mae West courtesy of Worth1000.com at http://jeanrojas.tripod.com/ Copyright © 2017 Jadi Campbell. Photos Copyright © 2012 Uwe Hartmann or Jadi Campbell. More of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

Bazaar/Bizarre

Kim’s view was simultaneously filled and obstructed. The front courtyard and Hampi Bazaar Road were crammed with bodies. Worshippers raised their arms to touch Shiva’s massive chariot. Mandapams, porch-like structures once used for commerce or the homes of wealthy traders, lined the sides of the street. Pilgrims claimed spots in them, trying to find shade.

Women in brilliant saris walked past. Old crones with henna-patterned arms carried small children. Turbaned men sampled fruit from a pyramid of dates. An all-white cow rested serenely on a pile of garbage. A painted bus had parked in the dust; a pilgrim dozed on one of the seats with his bare feet sticking out through the open window.

Kim peeked in a shop selling cheap clothes and plastic sunglasses. When she turned, she banged her head on a string of water bottles hanging in the doorway. Sunlight reflected off the mirrored insets of embroidered bags and shirts in the next little shop.

She pushed on through the crowds, trying to spot her group. A couple in a patch of shade looked up as she walked past. Their oxen leant against the cool stones of an ancient wall. The bovine pair had their forelegs tucked under them. Their curved horns were painted crimson and capped in metal. Magenta pompoms with orange and blue tassels hung from the tips; a pile of cow shit steamed.43220_Ind_04_06_j_036

In the middle of the road a clump of pilgrims whispered among themselves, pointing. A man crouched in the dirt. He was perhaps thirty years old, mustachioed and handsome. Thick hair brushed across the white bands smeared on his forehead. He wore a peach-orange cotton shirt and pants. The man knelt, barefoot, on all fours on a rug. A big copper pot dappled with white streaks and red dots balanced on his shoulders. A string of beads wound around the pot’s lip. A long cobra slid clockwise over the beads, flicking an orange tongue. Hands darted out from the crowd to touch the snake and drop coins into the pot.42740_Ind_04_06_j_031

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Kim forgot the snake handler and the crowds.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

She forgot the coiling cobra.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

© Jadi Campbell 2016. From Grounded. Go to following link to order my books: https://www.amazon.com/author/jadicampbell

NOTES: Go to my earlier posts The Erotic Architecture of Khajuraho, Travel Karma, The Reluctant Pilgrim, and Remind Me Again: What Are We Doing Here? to read about our visits to India. Photos Copyright © 2014 Uwe Hartmann. All photographs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image. More of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

Grounded

Grounded_for_web

My new novel Grounded is finally in print and available as an eBook! Use the following link to see it: https://www.amazon.com/author/jadicampbell  

Grounded is the story of how two people react when cyberattacks lame the world. It’s also the tale of a father’s love for his son, a woman’s search to feel alive again, and what the Arctic Circle and a temple in a remote corner of India reveal.

I wrote the first draft in 2002, worked on it for over a year, and put it aside for a decade. I returned to the manuscript last year and reworked and rewrote. This book has had a very long gestation period, and I believe it was worth the wait. Please read it and let me know if you agree.

 

 

 

The Reluctant Pilgrim

When Kim had told her friends back home about the tour, everyone was excited. “Wow! India! You’ll have incredible adventures! It has the most powerful spiritual energy. They say you go to India and come back changed.”

She’d responded with vague remarks; Kim was a reluctant pilgrim. She didn’t trust people who talked about India as a portal to enlightenment.

But Goa was too Western for her tastes after all. After ten days on the beach, she hungered for the real India… whatever that was. She wouldn’t experience more than a small chunk of the subcontinent. What did she expect, beach parties or yoga in ashrams? Goat curry, or moguls and the Taj Mahal? Ayurveda medicine, or Kashmir shawls? Nonviolent resistance, or gang rape and murder on a public bus? Castes and slums and hovels, or India’s headlong advances as a BRIC nation?

There was surely more than the mutilated saint of Goa’s Catholicism. “There are as many religions as there are people on the planet,” Gandhi had said. India was Hindu and as easily Muslim and Buddhist and Zoroastrian and Christian and Jain and Sikh and Baha’i and….

And, Kim reminded herself, India’s a mirror. Travelers who expect poverty and squalor find both in spades. Visitors seeking enlightenment find that, too. What am I here for? If I stay open minded, what’ll I find? She chewed the tip of her pen. 02420_Ind_03_25_011Goa was Portuguese, she considered writing, and gorgeous ocean views, the rave scene and meals eaten in beach shacks. Every sentence sounded like factoids from a travelogue.

Kim put away her postcards unfinished.

© Jadi Campbell 2016. From Grounded. Go to following link to order my books: https://www.amazon.com/author/jadicampbell

NOTES: Go to my earlier posts The Erotic Architecture of Khajuraho, Travel Karma, and Remind Me Again: What Are We Doing Here? to read about our visits to India. Photo Copyright © 2014 Uwe Hartmann. All photographs can be enlarged by simply clicking on the image. More pictures from India and of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

 

Save the Recriminations

Keith starts a new conversation now that Glen has left the table. “So, you two have children?”

“Glen has a son. I have three kids of my own: two girls and a boy. They’re somewhere camping with their father this week. I’ve been going insane not knowing where they are or if they know yet. I can’t stop worrying about how my children will hear the news.

“I can’t even get them on the phone. We’re supposed to meet in Seattle, but since planes or trains are out of commission Glen and I are driving from California.”

Keith’s look travels from the wedding band on my hand up to my face. “I see,” he says slowly.

His wife’s next words surprise me again. “I don’t know the particulars (and I suspect I don’t need to) but clearly you and your young man love each other. That’s not a bad thing, Nicole. You’re right: the main thing right now is to reach your children and be with your family. Save the self-recriminations. The rest will sort itself out.”

I can’t speak. I want to thank her and can’t force any words out of my throat.

She’s standing beside my chair with a hand placed on my shoulder when I can bring myself to look back up. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Nicole.”

Joley and Cass watch us without blinking. They stay silent, listening intently as if they know something important is transpiring, as if it’s important that they understand.

We all watch Glen come back in the room. His eyes glitter and I can’t tell if it’s tears from missing Petey. Or being moved by the connection to these four people at the next table. Or a perfect storm of the lives and choices and events that led to Ocean Beaches and a candid conversation about the last time someone believed it could be the end of the world.

Keith smiles as Glen reaches our table. “After eighty plus years on this earth one thing I’m confident about is that answers are seldom pat. And they’re never what we first think. If only life were simple…. And if this is my last night on earth, I’ll have spent it with good people.”

We stand and everyone shakes hands, then hugs. “Don’t skip dessert. You have to try both the cheesecakes. Nectar and ambrosia, I’m telling you. That’s how this lovely evening’s conversation with you two all began,” his smile grows wider. “Life begins and ends happy when it involves food options!”

And with that grounding comment the four of them leave the dining room. Cass hands her grandfather his cane and takes his arm.

© Jadi Campbell 2016. From Grounded. Go to following link to order my books: https://www.amazon.com/author/jadicampbell

Good Things Come in Threes

There is an old saying that ‘good things come in threes’. Right now this is true for my writing at bookoftheday.org ! I am in the unique position of being featured 3 times around the site. Broken In: A Novel in Stories is one of the books of the day. Tsunami Cowboys stayed on the ‘Trending’ list for weeks, and remains on the The Trending Jumbotron Top Ten page (http://bookoftheday.org/top-ten/). And I have an author page.  It’s not often that a writer gets to share news this good! Please take a look at the site and explore the pages. In our electronic age, clicks add up.

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