A MAGICAL MOMENT I’ve been fortunate to experience many wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime magical moments in my life. Many of those have been musical. But most of them happened in a natural setting. Probably the number one place I’ve experienced magical moments is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). I’ve been going up there almost yearly …
Vacation Report I just returned from what I call vacation but others would call masochistic torture. A five-night solo canoe trip in the BWCAW. That’s why I’m rested, refreshed, and exhausted. 😉 It’s a difficult way to relax. But for some crazy reason I still haven’t figured out, I LOVE the challenge, both mentally and …
BWCAW For writers, researching story ideas comes with the territory. If you want to write “authentic,” you need to experience a place. Sight, smell, sound, taste, feel. Sensations make the difference between mundane and “being there in the moment.” I’ve been to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northern Minnesota on about 30 …
My Straight River Book Tour has exceeded my expectations and has kept me busy almost weekly since March with signings and other events. I’ve had a much-appreciated restful, yet productive break of five weeks. I’m mainly working on the outline for the sequel to Castle Danger! (Almost done). I’ll be back in book-signing action with …
As a Neo-Renaissance guy, I believe that we learn the most by doing activities that challenge us to take risk, expand out experiences, put stress on us either mentally or physically, and in general, take us out of our comfort zone. Two of my favorite activities involve deliberately leaving my comfort zones. One is solo …
Good news for most writers comes, rarely at best. So I was particularly pleased and grateful to achieve two noteworthy goals in the past few weeks. Not quite Champagne-worthy (I’ll save the Dom Perignon for when my first novel is published.), but worth bragging about just a tiny bit. The small milestone was finishing the …
I’ve been married for 32 years. Pretty long by today’s standards, and likely to get much longer. I thought I knew my wife well, since we met in high school during our senior year, then dated for 4 years after that, finally getting married the week after I graduated from college. You think you get …
I had the great pleasure of paying back my father in a very small way for something he did for me almost 45 years ago. The payback was a weekend canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW, or BWCAÂ for short). What he did for me 45 years ago was pass on the …
