Blog #3, January, 2019

Happy New Year!  We once again begin the cycle of resolutions, made, broken, and fulfilled.  We enter yet another year, hoping for better times ahead.  Here, in Orem, UT, it is snowing, with large half foot deep patches on our lawn, a white wonder land of snow.   We stay inside, Erin and I, most of the time, and keep warm.  I continue to read about World War I, and to work on the historical novel.   I am also now working on short fiction a lot more, submitting again to magazines, and hoping for more publication success in the new year.   Most of my short fiction pieces are your typical contemporary pieces, domestic in nature, that explore the human heart and all its variants.   The trick here is to avoid telling stories too closely resembling my own life and the lives of those around me.  That is nonfiction and not a good way to protect your loved ones from unintentional harm.  Better to make it up, whole cloth.  As the editor and author Tom Jenks once said, “Only God creates from a vacuum.”

I am currently making a study of NEVER IN FINER COMPANY, by Edward Lengel, a four part history of the Lost Battalion of the 77th Division during WW I, where we follow Major Whittlesley, Captain George McMurtry, Sergeant York, and the reporter Damon Runyon as they experience the Battle of the Argonne Forest.  So far it is absorbing, fascinating, and I haven’t even gotten to the parts where they go overseas and fight.   It helps bring many things to light that will help me flesh out the novel, especially the character of Hyrum.