BLOG POST HIATUS EXPLAINED

 The Church of the Open Road gets Published!

 

Our last post to the Church of the Open Road was last April.  You may be wondering why.  

 

Was it COVID-19?  Nope.  We didn’t travel as much but that doesn’t mean we didn’t travel.

Was it that cancer diagnosis?  Nope.  Radiation ending in June seems to have cleared things up.

Was it a lack of motivation?  Nope.  I’ve been writing away, just not bloggy stuff.

 

And that gets to the big announcement:

 

Eden, Indeed: Tales, Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy, a compilation of my growing up stories has been published!  

 

When I was just a little kid, I used to love it when Dad would sit at the foot of my bed ~ I still recall his weight pulling the covers snuggly around my feet ~ and tell of his adventures growing up in the Mojave Desert.  Fast forward a few years and I was married with a lovely child but soon divorced.  It immediately occurred to me that I would not have the opportunity to sit at the foot of her bed and tell my growing up stories.

 

While the pieces in the collection are arranged roughly in chronological order, the first piece I wrote was about a little old lady that lived down the street from us.  Initially, I composed it when while assigning my fourth graders the task of writing a short biography of someone they know “…but it can’t be a relative…” one little boy said, “You do one, too!” And the class chorused “Yeah, Mr. D!”  Thus, I was stuck.

 

What now exists are my hazy impressions of growing up on five semi-rural acres during the tumultuous late 50s and 60s and beyond, building tree forts, catching poison oak, crashing canoes, surviving a pre-teen crush or two and remembering some dark national times from which me and my gang of friends were pretty well insulated. The target audience is my grandkids.  Implicit is the desire that they have an impression of my youth similar to the impression Dad gave me of his own.

 

The stories have been critiqued and vetted by members of the Cloverdale-based writers’ group with which I’ve been engaged. It was designed by Personal History Productions LLC in Santa Rosa so it looks much more professional than anything I might have imagined on my own.  https://www.personalhistoryproductions.com  The CEO of Personal History, upon reading the text (many times) said that she grew up in a small town in North Carolina but that my stories reminded her of home.  With that generous comment in mind, I’ve asked the company that prints the volume, IngramSpark, https://www.ingramspark.com to add it to their wholesale catalog.  

 

 

At 230 pages, the cost is twenty bucks. Available by ordering through your independent, local book seller (also online from Amazon, but the Church of the Open Road always prefers you shop with the local guy.)

 

While I don’t want to commercialize my blog, I hope you will consider ordering a copy. 

 

 

Now, for 2023, the Church of the Open Road resolves to return to the Open Road, take a few photos, write a few words and tell folks about it here…

 

© 2022

Church of the Open Road Press