Amy Minato Interview

    My guest today on The Novel Road didn't just talk about chucking it all and leaving the hustle and bustle of society behind, she actually did it. Amy Minato chronicled her time of societal disconnect in her novel, "Siesta Lane"

    A poet at heart, Amy rejected her life of consumption in her native Chicago to go back to nature—specifically, to a commune in Oregon, where she rediscovered herself.

    She originally moved to Eugene, but that wasn't quite simple and green enough.

  "But though a hip college town, Eugene is still a city where buildings obscure land," Amy writes in "Siesta Lane: One Cabin, No Running Water, and a Year Living Green.

My soul pinches and pinches at me until I search the classifieds for a way to live more rural ...."

    Amy found a place in Rainbow Valley, about 10 miles west of Eugene, off a road called Siesta Lane. It was a cabin with electricity but no water and heat, on eight acres with some other cabins and a main house. Sort of private, sort of communal, and very rustic.

She loved it.

   "I felt like stepping out of society and renewing my personal values," she said. "I wanted to live a more healthy lifestyle and create a life that was more grounded."

    

    Amy didn't want to go all the way back to nature, though. She loves camping and
backpacking but is a social person who values a sense of community. She found that
on Siesta Lane and found while keeping a journal that she was able to develop her writing.

  

   "Siesta Lane" includes poems, reflections, anecdotes about the year Amy spent in the cabins. She also cops occasionally to the pretentiousness of her mission, and laughs along with the reader at her attempts to be both environmentally-friendly and sane, considering the fact that she’s moved in with a bunch of strangers in a remote locale.

 

   "It's really a call to live a simpler life," she said. "I wanted to see if I could pull it off. I didn't have any kids and I wasn't on some sort of career path -- I know not everyone can do that -- but it really worked for me."

   One benefit of living at a slower pace in a rural setting is learning more about flora and fauna and the rhythms of nature. There are all kinds of birds and animals in the woods of western Lane County and Amy eventually has to face an ethical dilemma: What effect does an intelligent, aggressive cat have on the local bird population?

   All good things must come to an end, and life in the cabin on Siesta Lane ended when
the property was sold. Amy fell in love and got married and became a poet and writer and teacher and mother. She lives most of the year in Multnomah Village, which she enjoys for its feeling of community within a city, and part of the year in Joseph, at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains.

   There are more writing projects planned, more worlds to discover, but only one Siesta
Lane.

  

   Jan Muir, a relative of the great environmentalist John Muir, lends her beautiful black-and-white illustrations to the book.

  

   Siesta Lane is both a practical case study in living green, and the heartwarming story of a modern idealist who dives head-first into the fray and discovers just what it takes to live a year unplugged.

I'm honored to welcome Amy Minato to The Novel Road...

Amy Minato

Me: I became quite attached to the tenor in your writing style. Did you love of poetry influence your writing voice? If so how?

Amy: Poetry is my religion. When I read it, the best verses resonate within me like a temple bell.

Any creative writing I do is poetry, even when it’s not. Even when it’s a letter or a story or an essay. I’ll dust and shine the language until it reflects back even if it takes ridiculous long.  (This is obsessive and unlike the rest of my haphazard personality.  We are talking about a woman who can’t bear to follow a recipe and who makes a bed in 5 seconds.) 

Me: Is there a backstory for your Siesta lane?

Amy: The story of the story of Siesta Lane stems from an eight year old girl dwelling every spare minute in a gnarly willow in the Chicago suburbs who grew into a woman aching for the limbs of her first love.



Me: Talk about the process of writing Siesta Lane?

Amy: My writing process is to stretch out on my bed with pillows everywhere, a cat purring on my back, clutching a bowl of snacks (snacks are key) in one hand and a pen in the other. Being supine tricks my subconscious into thinking I’m asleep, which coaxes it to wander the dark hallways of my mind until part of it stumbles out onto the paper. I do this for hours, not even getting up to stretch or answer the phone (woe to anyone who knocks on my door during the voodoo-writing time) and usually rushing late to pick up my kids with a weird glaze to my face, muttering nonsense

    I wrote the book as a diary, a testimony, and as an investigation of this crazed urge to live near trees. Being awarded the apt-named Walden Residency in Ashland gave me the space to tinker with and shape Siesta Lane as a book.  I scrutinized and murmured every word in Siesta Lane as I would a poem. It took a long time to write, longer to edit.  It’s an expression of my soul finding home in an alien world. A book about pulling away from consumerism and chit-chat to live deep. Moving to Siesta Lane was a siesta – a contemplative rest in mid-life. I call it one woman’s search for Walden in the Pacific Northwest. A wealthy member of the literati shuddered after reading it, “It’s well-crafted, honey, but no one will read this. People just don’t want to wear secondhand clothes!” It’s different than other naturalist books in that I lived with nine other people! Quirky characters so fun to write about I’m trying fiction next.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are a perfect match.

Amy: Janet Reid was my Glinda the good witch (as in Frank Baum’s version of the Wizard of Oz not as in Wicked). She believed in my book more than I did. She boomeranged it to publishers and never gave up. It took awhile for readers to be interested in voluntary simplicity. Now we all have involuntary simplicity because of the economy. Increasing awareness of global warming has folks accepting more lifestyle change. While the world caught up to us Janet stayed cheerful and optimistic. We’ve never even met but I worship her business card.

Me: You get to have lunch with any author you which, from throughout history or toady, and why?

Amy: Let me sit at an Indian buffet with Loren Eiseley. Or maybe not. I may faint or fuddle. My feeling for him as a writer mirrors my daughter’s giddiness over her favorite rock stars.  Something about his incisive science, haunting lyricism and intelligent melancholy ripples my waters.  I’m burning up here. Pass the chutney.

Me: Like you, I come from a state that suffers from preconceived notions of what it’s like. Most people think of Oregon as rainy with lots of tree, yet the state boasts a considerable desert. How much has the total geography of Oregon comes into play in your writing?

Amy: Oregon is my other religion. This land, that roams from fertile wet to austere alpine, and I have a twenty-year marriage yet I still swoon over its landscape.  My new novel is again about the pull of a place. But instead of the fertile Willamette Valley the new one perches  on the oblique corner of Oregon where I live whenever I can. I exist in Portland where we have work and my kids have school, but I rush home to bask in the blue mountains every summer, drag back to Portland dreaming of my return to the hypnotic beauty of Wallowa lake. It’s a curse like impossible love.

timoconnorphoto.com

Me: Can you tell us about your next novel? If so, when can your fans expect to it?

Amy: My new book, Green Gentian, centers on this desire for land that keeps and crushes us even while such desire keeps and crushes the land. Pearl, the central character, has been scraped and polished by her place.  Zany based-on-true-but-toned-down-to-be-believable characters circulate the novel and bump each other like loose electrons.  I hope to finish it by next spring, if it doesn’t finish me first.

Me: Life experience in the writing process.

What advice can you give writers on its importance?

 

Amy: I would tell a new writer to go toward mystery, to be draw into your life and puzzle it out in your work. You don’t have to change your external life like I did to examine your internal one, but you may need to look at it through a different perspective, clothed in fiction, plumped with philosophy or crocheted into poetry.  If the idea of having the work you create published puts you into a cold sweat it might just have some truth in it.

Diana P. Francis Interview

 
    It’s a gloomy rainy day, or maybe there is two feet of snow on the ground. A quick look out the window makes the decision to be somewhere else, to dream of somewhere else -  easy. A few steps to the bookshelf and your eyes begin to race across titles of books. In the back of your mind is the kind of day it is outside and how far you want to travel to make it go away for the day… There!

   If it’s fantasy adventure you’re looking for, you reach for a Diana Pharaoh Francis. The book is well worn, from read after re-read, because those times you want reality to fade away aren’t as uncommon as you’d like.

   My guest today, bestselling author Diana Pharaoh Francis, actually writes dreams. Based on her Amazon numbers, we are all going long on escape. Her newest book, “Crimson Wind” is flying off the shelves like a $2 iPhone.

   Diana has the talent to draw you in with every word and her loyal fans are never disappointed.

    Now a bit about my guest from her website while I pray for snow:

  “I was raised on a cattle ranch in Northern California (outside a town called Lincoln which is now part of an enormous sprawl). I taught myself to ride a horse at the age of six, as no one had the time to teach me—they were all busy learning how to irrigate, how to cajole an angry bull into another field, how to pull a calf… Afraid of heights, and absolutely sure I was going to die, I managed to scramble up on the back of a very patient and lazy strawberry roan destrier, and plod off into the sunset.

   After high school, I attended college after college, racking up a BA and MA in creative writing and a Ph.D. in literature and theory. My very patient and supportive husband traipsed across the Midwest and back to Montana for me (though my husband insists that he’s been running and hiding and I just keep finding him), where I now teach at the University of Montana-Western. We also have a son Q-ball, who in our humbly unbiased opinions, is the most wonderful son ever produced, and a daughter, Princess Caesar, who is the most wonderful daughter ever produced.

   I have a fascination for the Victorians, weather, geology, horses, plants and mythology, I like spicy food, chocolate and cheesecake, and I have an odd sense of humor. (Or so I’ve been told. Often.) Incidentally, the Pharaoh is in fact my real name, and oddly enough, is of British origin.”

I’m pleased to welcome Bestselling author Diana Pharaoh Francis to The Novel Road…

Diana Pharaoh Francis

Me: Your academic resume is beyond impressive: Masters in Creative writing, Ph.d in Literature and you now teach at The University of Montana –Western. You wrangle cattle, raise a family… Where did you find the time to write all your novels?

Diana: Well, to be honest, I don’t do cattle anymore. It’s been awhile since I lived on the ranch. Now I wrangle children. And dogs. And students. Finding time is basically a matter of carving it out of every day no matter what, and having an understanding family who let me vanish into the office for the weekend or evening and fix me food and make sure the house runs and nothing floods or blows up. I don’t do that all that often, but near deadline time . . . 

    In the end, I have to manage my time and write whenever I have a chance. I don’t have a lot of hobbies because of that, and I definitely don’t get to read as often as I’d like. Over the years, I’ve made an effort to prioritize family time so that I don’t become ghost mom. It also keeps me sane and healthy. Relatively sane, anyhow.

Me: You have a love of history in literature. History appears low on the priority list of today’s youth. What can we do to change this?

 Diana: History tends to be dry when it comes to classes. It becomes real when kids visit real sites and see where history happened. I know my son is excited about reading fiction set in important historical situations. I think fiction has the ability to get kids interested in all kinds of things, and it helps them get interested in reading non-fiction.

    For me, I know that reading Dickens and Austen and Thackeray and Browning really helped make the Regency/Victorian periods more real. It shows the texture and reality of people in their cultures.

    But in the end, any way you can, expose kids to history. I especially like living history museums and interactive displays of any kind.

 Me: Talk about life experience. How important it is to an author?

Diana: It’s been crucial for me. Everything I write comes out of my experiences, though some of those are imaginary—experiences I’ve had reading or watching a documentary. But so much of what I’ve done has given flavor to my work, or given me plots and other details. For example, in Path of Fate, Reisil gets saddle sores when she first learns to ride and spends a lot of time on the horse. When I was a kid, I went on a long ride in shorts. I was using a saddle, which I never did—I’d grown up riding bareback and hated saddles. It wasn’t long before I developed a nasty sore inside my knee where the skin rubbed off on the leather. I was far from home and had nothing to cover it with, so it got a lot worse. That became fodder for Reisil.

    On the other hand, in The Black Ship, my characters sail on a square rigged clipper ship. It’s the setting for pretty much the entire book. I’d never been sailing at all. So I went to Seattle and went sailing on The Lady Washington to see how the sails were actually raised and lowered and what it was like to be on a ship. Then I did a lot of research. But I needed that first hand experience to get it right.

    There’s a scene in Crimson Wind where someone shoots a gun and the recoil sends it over their head. I had that experience shooting a .454 Cassul. It’s a cannon of a handgun. A friend let me shoot it and the recoil really does send it over your head.

    Graham Greene said that every writer has to have a splinter of ice in his or her heart. What he meant was that writers, even in the middle of a horrific accident or a dreadful loss or something, keeps one analytical eye open to watch and record. Writers keep track of experiences and put them away to use in their books.

    There are so many textures, smells, sounds, events and different scraps of life that make it into my books. Without them, I think the books would be plastic and boring.  

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution right now. Talk about how this has or will affect you.

Diana: Well, for one, my books get electronically pirated a lot. That’s really stomach-churning to watch as people post my books for free on download sites. These people like my books, but aren’t willing to pay me for them. And it is me. Because I only earn on what’s legitimately sold. So when I see pirating, it makes me want to weep because selling books is what makes publishers want to publish an author again and so I’m always worried that my sales numbers will sink and I won’t get to publish my books.

    Other than that, the economy and the changes in publishing are still causing issues and I’m still waiting to see what will happen. Unfortunately, Borders may go bankrupt or close, and it’s never good to see stores go away. Ebooks are becoming more and more popular and it isn’t yet clear how they will be priced or how authors will get paid. There are a lot of different models for that. The major issue for me as a writer is that people continue to buy books so that publishers will continue to sign me on to write them.

 Me: Lunch with you and any author you choose, from throughout history or today, and why.

Aphra Behn

Diana: Just one? That’s too hard! If I get right down to it, though, I’m torn. One would be Aphra Behn, who was an English playwright in the late 1600s. She was also a spy. She was one of the first women to make her living writing. She was witty and smart and her plays are fun. One of my favorite passages is from her preface to The Dutch Lover. She wrote it after the play received criticism and she is scathing. Oh it’s a lovely piece of writing.

   Here’s a little bit of it:

   "Indeed that day ’twas Acted first, there comes me into the Pit, a long, lither, phlegmatick, white, ill-favour’d, wretched Fop, an Officer in Masquerade newly transported with a Scarf & Feather out of France, a sorry Animal that has nought else to shield it from the uttermost contempt of all mankind, but that respect which we afford to Rats and Toads, which though we do not well allow to live, yet when considered as a part of God’s Creation, we make honourable mention of them. A thing, Reader—but no more of such a Smelt: This thing, I tell ye, opening that which serves it for a mouth, out issued such a noise as this to those that sate about it, that 224 they were to expect a woful Play, God damn him, for it was a woman’s. Now how this came about I am not sure, but I suppose he brought it piping hot from some who had with him the reputation of a villanous Wit: for Creatures of his size of sense talk without all imagination, such scraps as they pick up from other folks."

   Isn’t she wonderful? I would love to have written this.

   My other choice would be Charles Dickens, and you know? Largely for the same reasons. He was also scathing and witty and with such a good sense of human nature and the world. I adore him and would love to have a few beers with him and listen to him tell stories.

Me: Has the immense amount of information available now, caused a lack of learning from the past, in favor of taking current definition as a less thought out reality?

 Diana: I have no idea. I think that there is a deluge of information available now and it’s harder to be broadly read and educated, but I think that people can still think and reason and examine situations and make good decisions. I think they can still come to a good understanding of the world. I do think that politicians and corporations would prefer that people didn’t think—it’s much easier to herd sheep than thinking, reasoning people.

Me: You wake up one day and decide to write a Historical non-Fiction book. Give me the subject and overview of this dream book.

Diana: Oh that’s easy. I’d write about Emily Eden in India. She was the sister of the Governor General of India (pretty much the king of India for all intents and purposes) in the 1830s and 40s. During that time, a lot of things happened, including Queen Victoria taking the English throne. In India, Eden was a sharp and critical observer and at one point, she and her brother and sister and a huge number of people went “up the country.” A two year journey through India. I’d want to write about her and the politics of the period. It’s fascinating. She was also a novelist, and upon returning to England, she published The Semi-attached Couple and The Semi-detached House, both in a similar vein to Jane Austen.

 Me: How much author editing is too much? Where should an author stop editing before submission?

Diana: When the book is good. The trouble is, how do you know if it’s good? Part of me thinks that it’s volume that tells you. The more words you read and produce, the more skills you have and a better barometer for understanding what makes a good story. Applying that to yourself can be painful, but oh so necessary. Feedback from a quality source is also good. Someone to tell you when things are or aren’t working.

    But there’s a point where you have to stop and submit and start the next process. You move on because every project teaches you more and you become a better writer.

Me: Social Media. Talk about its importance to the modern author’s success.

Diana: I think that social media is only worthwhile if you like to do it because you like to do it. I think it’s obvious when someone hates twittering or facebooking or what have you. It’s not that fun to read when that happens and so doesn’t do anything for you as an author. I like to twitter and I like to keep a blog. I don’t know how interesting they are, but I do like them. It’s nice to have the chance in the various networking situations to talk to fans and fellow writers. Being a writer, especially in Montana, can be an isolating thing. So social networking can help keep me sane.

    Or it can suck up all my time. So I have to be careful. But I do enjoy the interaction so much. How much impact it’s had on my success, I don’t know. But I don’t do it for that, so any positive effect is gravy.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why you two are the perfect match.

Diana: My agent is Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency. She’s fabulous. She knows the business and she’s got the energy of a hundred Energizer Bunnies. Or a dozen cats on crack. She gets my humor (morbid and twisted) and shares it. She is a writer as well, so she understand what her clients are going through. She likes what I write and totally knows how to talk me off the ledge when I’m flipping out over something. She gives me feedback on my writing when I want it and she can be a bulldog when she needs to be.

                      ******************************************

I’d like to thank Diana for her time, for her talent, and for a reason to throw another log on the fire, close the blinds and fade into another of her fantastic stories.

Dan Krokos Interview

Cleveland

       Who do you root for? Anyone? Has life so inundated you that you’ve stopped wishing the best for someone you don’t actually know?

   New authors have an Everest-like climb ahead of them. They write with passion and heart. Then comes the time to see if their work will stand the many tests in the publishing process, and their days become times to hope and bleed with every e-mail in the inbox.

   Finding someone, anyone, to believe in them enough to devote time and money to further their writing careers is both humbling and daunting. So what can separate a new author from the many?

   Talent? Definitely the #1 way to get noticed. But what if an agent has five talented new authors and the resources to choose only one? What makes the one chosen different?

   My guest today on The Novel Road is debut author Dan Krokos. He’s different.

   He gained a bit of fame for a query he submitted to a powerful literary agent that blew her away. Query # 124 landed “The Shark”. Yet Dan will tell you that kind of fame is fleeting. There has to be a book. A REALLY, REALLY good book when the dust settles. There is. I’ll let you wait till the “two sentence Hook” question in the interview to find out about it

   Here is where a debut author can add something to the mix. To do that, you have to be someone that others cheer on. People in the industry that want the author to succeed.

   Dan Krokos earned respect with his talent, and friends by being funny, intelligent, reliable and a great guy. The interview that follows plays a bit on his friendships found, but don’t think for a minute that this is all there is to this truly unique and gifted debut author.

   First, just a short bit about him…   



One of Dan's many heros



   Dan grew up in a suburb of Cleveland. He went to school to become a police officer until he discovered his love of writing. He worked at the same gas station for nine years. Dan used his work shifts to come up with ideas, then went home to write them after fifteen hour workdays.

   He read voraciously as a kid, but stopped when he discovered things like Xbox and Warcraft. Then one day, a friend handed him Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It reignited his passion for reading. And the rest is history.

 

I’m pleased to welcome Dan Krokos to The Novel Road…



Dan Krokos



Me:  Breaking News! Dan Krokos has told me he is the actual author of the brilliant novel “Numb” and the incredible Avery Cates novel series. Sean Ferrell and Jeff Somers are actually pseudonyms he borrowed from his gardener and plumber. Care to tell us more Dan?

Dan: When I first signed with Janet, she recommended I develop different facets of my personality. That way I could release books in many different genres. We decided “Jeff” would be the lovable but gruff author, a throwback in some ways to the pulp novelists of yore. People would debate if he was homeless or not. He would refuse to learn how twitter works, and routinely bomb people’s timelines. It’s been working great so far.

 “Sean” would be the crazy literary type. People would wonder if he saved his urine in jars, that kind of thing. Sean and Jeff would argue publicly, but no one would physically see them together. The arguing came easy, as my personalities attempted to mesh.

 They’re both equally popular, so I’m thinking about killing one off in the near future.

Sort looks like Dan...
with hair

 Me: Your office/hall closet features a movie poster, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, cleverly scotch taped to the ceiling. You’re a Danny Kay fan?

 Dan: I’m a fan of anyone with the same initials. Donkey Kong, Donna Karan, DMX, Denzel Washington.

 Actually the poster is there because my father’s name was Walter. He had a secret life. I’ve never seen the movie.

Me: Tell us about the Dan Krokos Foundation. Why have you made it your life’s work to ban Scotch Whiskey?

Dan:  You’ve got that wrong. The Dan Krokos Foundation works to ban Scotch-Brite. My dog ate a couple cleaning pads when I was a kid, and it died. Thanks for bringing it up.

Me:  Lunch with you and any author (except Sean and Jeff) you choose, from throughout history or today, and why.

Dan: My gut reaction on this is Josh Bazell, because he wrote my favorite book of all time, BEAT THE REAPER. It is a masterpiece, I don’t care what Bill Cameron says.

 But I have to say Charlie Huston. He’s inspired me so much I really can’t give him enough credit. I wouldn’t understand style, or voice, or dialogue if I hadn’t read his books. Every writer should. They’re real.

 That’s not why I want to have lunch with him though. It’s because he’s cooler than any writer has a right to be. He’s got these tattoos on his forearms. He writes these blog posts that make you realize you’re an idiot asshole and he’s the coolest dude on the planet. He’s smart. I bet he’d have good stories. He also swears a lot.

 I emailed him a few times, and he always replied right away with some words of encouragement and sage advice.

Me: Tell us about your agent and why the match is perfect?

Dan: This is very simple. Janet is everything a writer needs. She doesn’t coddle me. Writers are very flaky people by design. We live in a fantasy world for most of our waking hours. Janet realizes this, and she doesn’t put up with nonsense. She makes me better. She doesn’t sugarcoat it when I drop the ball. But she also knows when to encourage. With her in my corner, I know I’m safe. I feel like I can do anything.

 She can also line edit a manuscript so well it makes me realize I actually have no idea what I’m doing.

Suzie Townsend

 And then Suzie, who sold my YA on behalf of Janet. Suzie is like Neo in the Matrix. She can read anything and tell you how to fix it . . . and she’s always right. Ask anyone who has gotten an editorial letter from her. It’s scary. My books wouldn’t be the same without her.

Me: Give me a two sentence “Hook” for your novel.

Dan: A girl with no memory discovers she’s a genetically altered weapon of mass destruction and must uncover the truth of her identity in order to save her city. Bourne Identity with teens and sword fights and alarm pheromones and motorcycles and bioengineering.

Me: Publishing is going through an evolution right now. Talk about how this has or will affect you.

Dan: It hasn’t. Or if it has, I don’t know how. I just write books. Maybe that will change when my book comes out, but I don’t know. Oh, and since everyone is talking about ebooks, I’m all for it. Whatever gets people reading.

 I guess social networking has become more important. I don’t really understand the concept. I twitter because I love the people I talk to. There’s a downside to it though. It seems like some people do it to trade favors. The whole thing reminds me of high school a little bit.

 Then again, it’s really cool for the reader. I’m a fan, too, and it’s really cool I can talk to Duane Swierczynski on twitter, or leave a comment on Veronica Roth’s blog. Did I mention it’s really cool? Really cool.

Me: The City of Cleveland just gave you an award. I’ve seen people receive trophies, plaques and keys to the city, but never an award in the form of an ankle bracelet. By the way, why is the little red light on it flashing?

 Dan: My lawyers have advised me to ignore this question.

Me: Give me the subject and overview of a Dan Krokos non-fiction book.

Dan: I hate research, unless it’s something I’m interested in. So it would be a book about burritos or Anna Torv.

 Actually I get really obnoxious if I read non fiction. I have to share the facts I learn with everybody. I read a book about body language and for a week I was like “YOUR FOOT IS POINTING IN THAT DIRECTION BECAUSE YOU SECRETLY WANT ROB TO DIE.”

**These two questions were left on my porch with an empty bottle of Scotch and a pair of pants…

 Me: How did the query process with your agent shape your writing?

Dan: Funny story there. I’ve seen you say you’re against this, but I actually worked on my query while writing the first draft of my novel. I wanted to make it flawless. It also helped me focus on the core of the story. I would come back to it, tweak a line, then return to my ms. It was a weeks long process.

 I sent it to QueryShark when I was sixty pages into the second draft. Janet requested the manuscript, and I wrote as fast as I could. She read it and gave me some notes on the first two chapters. Those notes changed me forever. It was the first professional feedback I’d ever gotten. It showed me mistakes I was making, mistakes I still make if I’m being careless.

 If she hadn’t done that, given me a chance to fix my bad habits, who knows where I’d be.

Me: Can all literature be improved with the inclusion of swords, or only some literature?

Dan:  I’m actually writing a book right now with no swords. It’s terrible. I’m going to release it under the “Sean” persona.

I'd like to thank Dan Krokos for doing this interview and to tell him he's got another friend in his corner.

Christmas, Geocaching and the Great White Dog

              

          Christmas, Geocaching and the Great White Dog

                                       

It makes no sense to pose. Being cannot be unless you’re moving. Blurred images are the norm, if not the rule.

 I’m talking about my family this Christmas holiday. The rally cry of “Run, Shop, Run!” was common enough. My family is in constant motion when they gather. Everyone, except Calvin.

 Watching the turmoil is a favored pass time. I have a running play-by-play going on in my mind. Nieces pulling on one of my frazzled sister’s sleeves wanting this or to explain why this is that…

 The morning that gave rise to this story started out with warning signs. I paid no attention, not unlike the townspeople at the base Mount St. Helen’s when geologists came running out their hotel rooms yelling “It’s going to blow!” as they headed for their cars.

 There were tremors, rumbles if you will: A trip to Catalina was put off by bad weather, the annual (sort of) golf tournament canceled for the same reason. I could feel tension building among my siblings and their spouses to conjure an event that would rival Minnesota Survivor parties or Photo Recon scavenger hunts. These ended as a favored family game when some of the camouflaged contestants climbed onto the roof of a J.C. Penny’s and the crowd below mistook them as snipers…Oops! Bail should be a part of Christmas, right? How the police look past the drunken, camouflaged contestants or how they got there… I think they were dumbfounded by the semi-coherent explanation of what they were doing, or feared the paperwork for booking twenty adults and children and ordering psych-evaluations.

But we must try to top past events, right?

 Like the first shot of any war, no one knew who to blame.

 The first shot heard round my family world that day was “GeoCaching”.

 It came from within the crowd of twenty plus gathered in my mom’s kitchen in Laguna Beach, CA. All heads turned, looking for the source, but no one laid claim. All I know is the heads of the assembled started to slowly nod, first one, then another. I marked the silence as the idea was considered. Then murmurs followed as members of  the group each started reaching for Iphones, IPads, and any laptop handy to search for the reasons why “GeoCaching” was a great idea.

 I have to hand it to my family. The whole glass is half full thing comes to mind when an idea is sparked. Negatives are for the timid when the chance for a family adventure lurks just out of reach. We reach. Really, really reach. If that doesn’t work, we modify, modify. Then we expand and expand till the event becomes something Webster’s will offer as a definition of overkill and show a picture of my family, with everyone grinning, bleeding or grimacing in a way that looks like they’re grinning.  

 Five minutes after “GeoCaching” became the accepted course for the day, a small working group formed, which crowded around a computer for a few moments. The whir of a printer could be heard and pages of “The Christmas 2010 Amazing Race” came spewing forth. After a make-shift editorial team made fine adjustments(Now one half-hour into the creative process), this is what became the plan for the day:

Christmas 2010 Amazing Race

Rules:

Four Teams.

By draw of cards, the order of cache hunt will be determined.

Teams begin at Monarch Bay and proceed to Dana point Harbor to begin their quests.

Teams will be required to accomplish tasks along the way:

A Team picture is required with each cache as well as the following:

1\ With a firetruck

2\ R.H. Dana Statue

3\ Salvation Army Ringer guy (this description was by committee)

4\ Bowling alley

5\ Driving range (golf)

After the four Caches have been found in Dana Point Harbor, The Teams will proceed to a driving range. There they will purchase a bucket of balls and sequentially hit the balls.

The Teams will then proceed to Saddleback Bowling lanes, where each person will bowl one game, for a combined team score. The highest score will determine the headstart o the lead team for the final push  for the Championship.

Lunch Break (Bowling alley food… anything to increase the chances of not crossing the finish line?)

Teams will proceed to the Mission Viejo Mall and collect the following treasures:

1\ cologne sample

2\ paper toilet seat cover (unused)

3\ Corndog stick

4\ Picture of team with Santa

5\ free cosmetic sample

Get pictures printed and return to Monarch Bay for final Cache clue. Go find the Cache.

Take picture of last cache log book and head to Mom’s house. First one to complete all task and arrive at Mom’s wins!!

All this in thirty minutes, with no real thought other than: Why Not?

I guess I should back up a bit and explain "Geocaching". The first documented placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon.

Boxes, mostly old ammo boxes or buckets, are hidden in different locations around the world. That right, I said world! In this country, there are over a MILLION caches hidden under everything from bushes to buoys (Yes, some you get to swim to find). You use the Global Positioning System (GPS) and clues provided online to track down a box full of knick-knacks. You take something from the box and leave something, plus sign the small log sheets in each cache.

No, I'm not joking. Go online and look. This "Geocache" thing is huge!

With the exception of Calvin, we all piled into rented Mini-Vans (Morrisons always pay for extra insurance when we rent a cars) and sped off to Dana Point Harbor. It had been raining for days, and I'm sure Budget Rent-a-Car and Dodge will be happy to know that a foot of mud on the road doesn't stop one of their vehicles. Curbs and parking space blocks don't stop them either.

The vans fanned out to different parts of the harbor. Parking in strategically planned places to enable not only return to the vehicle after finding a cache, but hiding the vans from the harbor police. A lady crossing the road, at the far end of the harbor by the yacht club, might have called them when she had to dive into a giant Aloe plant to avoid possessed Mini-vans speeding toward her... On the sidewalk.

The group I was in had a tough time finding caches. We searched in the bushes outside a restaurant, until the smell of food drew a few of us away from the hunt. We asked for a table by the window so we could point my sister Trish's kids to areas that looked promising. Being a loving uncle, I threw chunks of bread to my nieces when they emerged from a clump of seaweed. It bought me time too. The seagulls grabbed the bread in mid-air and the nieces took off after them like the birds owed them money.

The harbor hunt was cut short when one of the other group's members came in to say someone had dropped a rock on my mom's foot. The rock was being coached out of it's resting place by the dulcet tones of my mom. People like my mom are why we have things like the Pyramids. In fact a couple that could have been from Egypt heard her, mumbled something about Rah, and fled in the opposite direction. Anyway, at one point, one of her slaves grandkids let the rock fall on her foot as they levered it up.

So we all piled into the Mini-vans, and headed for South Coast hospital. On the way there, someone decided it was a good idea to check and see if there were any "Geocaches" near the hospital. Instant messages flew between speeding mini-vans. More caches had been found literally withing a 1/4 mile of the hospital emergency room door. As the van I was riding drove slowly by the emergency room door, another van screeched to a stop long enough for my mom to stumble out the side door. She stood there for a few seconds, yelled at the van containing her teamates, then limped toward the hospital door, swatting away the offered help of an orderly. I later learned she told the doctor to patch her up and call her a cab. It seems the entire time she was having her foot bandaged, she was using her I-Phone to find a Geocache...

Some teams headed for the driving range, some to the bowling alley. The more daring headed for the Mall and a Santa photo. There was an incident at a firehouse, but facts are sketchy. It had something to do with a nephew releasing a parking brake and putting a fire truck in neutral while the rest of his team posed for a photo with the friendly firemen. My team headed for the bowling alley late in the day in time to see my mom limping toward the pins and heaving a bowling ball two feet in front of her, then kicking it with her good foot (Should I have said "spare" foot?)

Tired, and wishing I'd never heard the term "Geocaching" we all headed toward home. The Mini-vans all arrived at about the same time. The huge crowd of family surged through the double front doors, then into the front room.

Calvin sat quietly by the fire and looked up at the returning mob. My family went quiet at the look on Calvin's face.

We all knew what he was thinking. "People are such idiots"



Calvin