Anung and Brita Wolf

The ancient Ojibway legend about Anung was told to me by Steve Fobister. He asked me to popularize it, and this summer Light Messages will be publishing a novella about Anung’s Great Adventures that I wrote hoping to fulfill Steve’s request.

It is a magical story, one that would certainly benefit from illustrations, and Elizabeth Turnbull, the book’s editor, hired Brita Wolf, my daughter, for the task. Brita is a very talented artisan and designer and for the past few years has been amazing us with her paper cuttings. She has prepared ten of them for Anung, each one so wonderfully graceful and pure, and I thought you’d appreciate the sort of magic her images will bring to the story.  Creative work in progress can be fun, and first you see an early sketch , then the final image.  And yes, that final image is a paper cutting. 

Marie, my wife, is reading The 53rd Parallel

She started yesterday, after our early morning bike ride.  I walked into the living room and there she was, reading my book. Later I found her in her office, reading my book. I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen anyone read a book I wrote, and here I saw the most important person in my life, reading my book.  After our Mother’s Day brunch she picked it back up again, and all day long she read my book.  She knew something about the stories, of course, but had never read the book.  I was fascinated by how uplifted I felt each time I walked into the room and saw her reading it.

Thanks honey.  I hope you had as nice a Mother’s Day as I did watching you read The 53rd Parallel. 

We will be holding a launch party for The 53rd Parallel on June 5th, at 7 pm, at The Makery in Durham.  The plans are just coming together, but we intend to have a fun time developing both the Irish and the Indian themes of the book, in the music we play and the refreshments we serve.  We already have a couple of surprises in the works. Join us.

In two days I get to be a novelist.

It’s been my lifelong ambition, to be a novelist. When I was five I wanted to be a  cowboy. Soon after, and until the age of around 15 or 16, I wanted to be the shortstop for the Chicago Cubs.  It was about that same time I decided I wanted to be, that I needed to be, a novelist.

It’s finally going to happen.  On May 8th my publisher, Light Messages, will officially release my first novel, The 53rd Parallel, the first of The River of Lakes Trilogy, and I will toast myself and call myself a novelist.

And yes, I still want to be a cowboy.  And oh my, what a great novel it would make when the 62 year old man goes to Spring Training in Arizona with the Cubs and shows he can still scoop the hard hit grounder deep in the hole and make the throw to first.

“The most solid advice…for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry.  Try to be alive.  You’ll be dead soon enough.”

William Saroyan