This post includes a few quotations picked up in recent years from different books. They include wise, and sometimes practical words.

‘The idea of a mental reducing valve that constrains our perceptions, for instance, comes from the French philosopher Henri Bergeson. Bergeson believed that consciousness was not generated by human brains but rather exists in a field outside us, something like electromagnetic waves; our brains, which he likened to radio receivers, can tune in to different frequencies of consciousness.’

From How To Change Your Mind—The New Science of Psychedelics, by Michael Pollan [Penguin; 2018]

‘No other animal can stand up to us, not because they lack a soul or a mind, but because they lack the necessary imagination. Lions can run, jump, claw and bite. Yet they cannot open a bank account or file a lawsuit. And in the twenty-first century, a banker who knows how to file a lawsuit is far more powerful than the most ferocious lion in the savannah.’

From Homo Deus—A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari. [Penguin; 2016]

‘Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.’

From Quiet–The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. [Penguin; 2012]

‘Social status is not quite the same as companionship, granted, but it can be a bewitching substitute.’

From the ‘Citizens of Nowhere’ column titled ‘The anti-social secret of success,’ by Janan Ganesh. Financial Times Life and Arts section. [May 25&26, 2019; page 20.]

And  three quotes from a Nobel Prize winning scientist:

‘As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes.’

‘If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.’

‘Substituting one question for another can be a good strategy  for solving difficult problems, and George Pólya included substitution in his classic ‘How to Solve It’: ‘If’ you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it.’ “

From Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman [Penguin; 2011]

‘…the universal touchstones of holiness—chastity, the renunciation of property, extreme bodily asceticism, devotion to prayer and spiritual exercises—appealed to people who were troubled by rapidly increasing disparities of wealth and power.’

From The War on Heresy, by R.I. Moore [Belknap Press of Harvard; 2012]

‘The best cooks are  ex-dishwashers. Hell, the best people are ex-dishwashers. Because who do you want in your kitchen when push comes to shove, and you’re in danger of falling in the weeds and the orders are pouring in and the number-one oven just went down and the host just sat a twelve-top and there’s a bad case of the flu that’s been tearing through the staff like the Vandals through Rome?…A guy who’s going to sulk if you speak harshly to him? A guy who’s certain there’s a job waiting for him somewhere else (‘Maybe…like Aspen, man…or the Keys…’)? Or some resume building aspiring chef? …Or do you want somebody who’s come up the hard way? He may not know what a soubise is, but he can sure make one! He may not know the term monter au beurre…but who cares?’

From The Nasty Bits, by Anthony Bourdain [Bloomsbury; 2006]

I wrote the words below over a decade ago, but never published them.

They were written as part of my book titled Rivers of Change—Trailing the Waterways of Lewis and Clark. I had to cut down the volume of the book, so omitted these—not because they were of any less merit than those from other sections, but in order to keep a balanced volume of narrative for each portion of the book.

Instead, I put them into a collection of stories titled Vignettes—which still sits inside a laptop.

This is the first half of an omitted chapter.

The purpose of this piece was to explain why I quit a job, ditched income and hit the trail.

I treasure these original words. They bring the spirit of exploration back to my mind. I lost tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars by quitting jobs in order to explore the world now and then. My bank account may be lean, but my spirit is keen, kicking and filled with faith that, as a friend here in the town of Blaye often says, the universe will provide.

Here is the first part of this chapter.

In Canada, where I drove to the source of the Columbia River

Decision

In the year 2001, before leaving on my trip to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers, I needed to find a vehicle in Albuquerque. I spent days combing through classified ads and cruising sales lots until pinpointing two prospective buys. One was a 20 foot long recreational vehicle that had 52,000 miles, a generator, toilet, shower and stove. Its maneuverability was poor, but the price was right. Still, it was huge. All of that vehicle for one person? I stepped inside. Its skunk brown interior was a depressing tone for a lone man on a long haul. Both its bulky size and dim color incited me to try something else.

On a honking corner of Candelaria Avenue, I found a 1988 van with a pop up roof, sink, burners and bed. Although its interior was bright and cheerful, the ignition failed three times. When it finally started I lumbered out to the first stoplight where the engine died. Traffic horns wailed from behind.

The ‘Big Muddy’ Missouri River

“We’ll tune it up,” the dealer promised. “And adjust the timing. By noon tomorrow it will be 100 percent better.”

At noon the next day the ignition purred and died again.

“Didn’t have time for a good tune up,” the dealer explained. “We rushed to have it ready by noon. There’s plenty of room for improvement.”

That was plenty of incentive to move on.

That same afternoon my sister (whose home I stayed at while planning the trip) bicycled along Albuquerque’s North Valley. With wind at her temples, a notion struck her of how I should find the right vehicle. That evening she offered advice.

“You’re using logic to decide what you want,” she said. “That’s fine – up to a point. Now wait until you sit inside something that makes you light up and say ‘I want to drive this!’ ”

Scribbling notes along the Missouri Riiver

The next morning I scoured classified advertisements and found two ads that had been unlisted the day before. One was for a used four wheel drive pickup truck; the other was for a compact camper shell. I visited both, loved them, and paid cash for the two. Before leaving Albuquerque and motoring east toward St. Louis – the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers – there was still plenty to do. The full tilt effort ransacked my senses. One evening, frazzled, I paid for a tank of gas at a Circle K and drove off. A station wagon sidled up beside me at the stop light and honked. Inside a pert man with frantic eyes and sudsy hair rolled down his window. He flagged his bulky palm at me.

“Gas hose!” he yelped.

“Gas cap?” I asked.

“The hose man! You got the whole thing!”

I punched my hazard lights and stepped outside. The handle to the gas station pump was still inserted in my tank, trailing its rubber fuel hose down the highway.

It was time to slow down.

Wayne Tyndall of the Omaha, one of the many characters met along the journey

When I finally drove away from Albuquerque the wind died and starlight sang above. I exhaled and reviewed the past week of preparation and departure. Altogether the trip had launched itself with ease, reminding me of when the more ambitious explorer Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris. When he banked over the Atlantic in his fuel laden single engine plane, Lindbergh was delighted to see lingering fog vanish before Canada’s Chedabucto Bay.

“It seems today,” he wrote, “that every door is flung wide open when I knock.”[i]

Along the Missouri River in South Dakota

I accelerated west, entering a leather landscape puckered in rude depressions. My union of truck and camper was neither swift nor vain but compact, economical. Because there was no cassette player I stabbed at blunt plastic knobs to tune the radio. Soon the music of Johann Sebastian Bach soaked into the cab’s upholstery and soothed my frazzled nerves. I passed ruminating cows and a stooped mailman and, hours later, pulled into a rest stop off Interstate 40 to spend the night.

The next morning, beyond Tucumcari, I pulled onto Route 66 and passed a battered farmhouse tucked beneath corrugated cedars. Close to this a discarded mandarin sofa angled out of a lone field and pointed somewhere toward Mexico. Miles ahead an old gas station wall collapsed inward, like folding stairs of an escalator. Taken together, this vista formed a curious geography of abandonment. The remnants of Route 66 were easy and empty, a serene and hidden luxury driven by few. Only hundreds of feet away from this route’s slovenly pace the Interstate highway honked and jittered, where speed increased and variety plummeted. I felt certain that this simple truth resonated with a powerful lesson, one that would serve well on the trail ahead.

British Columbia, Canada (off the Lewis and Clark route, but along the Columbia River)

When I fired down the sun kissed sheen of a rural Oklahoma highway a cloud of crackling doubts attacked me. They thickened so deeply that I had to pull over and park beside two strands of sagging barb wire. I rested one palm on the hard steering wheel. Questions loomed: was it worth flushing away my savings for this rickety tour of the Midwest, Northwest and Rocky Mountains? I had left an excellent job with ample international travel, profit sharing incentives, tax free earnings and benefits as cushy as a down comforter. I had abandoned this secure route not from impatience, but hunger. Life was flashing by and I wanted to view part of it from inside a shaking canoe or from the top of a lightning pierced ridge instead of from the trim desk of a bright office cubicle. I needed pine scent, sloppy rivers and aching calf muscles and wanted to poke along life’s own Route 66.

A notebook on the passenger seat beside me lay open, containing a quote copied from Charles Lindbergh’s Pulitzer prize winning book: The Spirit of St. Louis.

“Security is a static thing;” he wrote, “and without adventure, lifeless as a stone.”[ii]

Clouds brewing a storm, perhaps in Nebraska or South Dakota

Days earlier a friend named Robin had written to me from her ‘home,’ a sailboat docked off St. John in the Virgin Islands. She had spent years in the region advising high school students on which college they should choose. During free weeks she and her husband plied Caribbean waves on their sailboat Frodo. In her letter she told how she was exploring the option of returning to live in the States. Yet she had doubts about the move:

“I’m on St. Croix wondering whether small town America exists anymore or have we turned our communities into malls, golden miles, and connecting three lane roads with traffic lights?”

Her question was valid. Days earlier, inside the entrance to an Albuquerque shopping mall, I had inspected a cardboard cutout image of a lean girl. The words printed beside her read: “Mall Doll says: Shopping is Always the Answer!” Another notice outside the mall tickled consumers with the phrase: “Ready, Set, Shop!”

Had our communities transformed into malls? If shopping was the answer, was it time to reconsider the question? I took my fingers off the steering wheel and bit the key into the ignition again.

Perhaps answers lay on the trail ahead.

Endnotes

[i] Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis, Scribner (Simon & Schuster), September 1998 edition.

[ii]   Same.

I’ve written a wine blog for about seven years, as well as this blog (related to publishing) for about four years. I also write about five articles, online, each month for Forbes. Truthfully, the posts are little read. I have no online guru pumping some algorithm to rake in zillions (or even thousands) of hits. No worries. But…

What is popular? What do most people want to read about?

Here is The Secret.

Beautiful spirals from a winery near Barcelona (photograph taken at Albet i Noya winery a few weeks ago) 

Which posts do the best? Which topics receive the most hits? Which headlines score most viewers? Which subjects are most favored?

The answer to this is also a Key of Life.

Simply put:

You Don’t Know.

Gorgeous evidence of the beauty of transformation (photographed recently in Barcelona)

You cannot predict in advance.

Let me emphasize that, more deeply.

You have NO IDEA. All of those publicists, publishers, online gurus, marketing wizards and experienced messiahs who promise to blow your Little Post into a Viral Stratosphere?

Nonsense.

They don’t know!

Seriously.

You never know what to expect when you visit another home

Sure, you can pay to boost online hits, and comb through huge databases to jack up your hits by a minor fraction of that total. You can opt to pay and have a jillion subscribers (although only a few hundred will actually ‘like’ your posts).

The Ancient Truth of Marketing is this:

You DON’T KNOW.

Thank goodness.

I look over my past years of running three blogs, two personal, and one for Forbes.

Everything is unexpected.

The article I thought would rage that mentioned the Prince of Monaco probably got in the hundreds of hits, while the piece about biodynamic wines racked up in the ten thousand range. The article on a bizarre day trip to obscure sections of the lesser known city of Poitiers quickly scored thousands of hits, while the article about the colorful, ancient, renowned, semi-mystical Jurad wine festival of beautiful Saint-Èmilion city turned out to be a virtual flop.

Goregous festival in Saint-Émilion. But how do we interest the world, and do we even want to? (Photograph taken this fall at the Jurad Festival)

As I wrote in my book, Visual Magic:

“The successful outcomes we visualize often arrive on their own schedule. Actor Richard Gere told a Los Angeles Times reporter about the mysterious process of maintaining his high profile in the movie business. ‘The only level of career you have to maintain is to have a hit movie,’ he said. ‘Nothing more, nothing less. You can still play in the game if every once in a while you have a hit movie. But it’s not like you can pick them. That never works. It’s all by accident. There’s an alchemy out there that no one can figure out.’ “[i]

[i] Los Angeles Times, P. E6, January 6, 2003.

So, too, with life.

Life is often a feast when you least expect it (this photo was taken at the Albet i Noya winery outside of Barcelona)

I visualize and believe and pray and often this leads to munificence and benevolence and rich beauties in life. But, often and unpredictably, life shifts in directions our haughty egos can never predict. This is the beauty of life.

The era of my life most charmed, beautiful and rich with jewels of experience and fortune, that made me feel as though I lived in a dream while my thoughts transformed uncannily into sweet reality, were my volunteer years in the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa. And yet these were followed, at times, by heartache and pain and a wondering—why can’t I go back?

The appearance of bliss changes every day (this photograph was taken this summer near Saint-Émilion in Bordeaux, France)

This is a truth I learned:

Life is fluid. When we cling to situations, beliefs, memories, or ideas as being ‘ideal’ or ‘pivotal’ or ‘bedrock,’ we are likely to be shocked when that state of affairs, that mindset, that paradigm, that reality, that state of governance, that code of ethics, that canon of belief, that trope of manners, that code of morals, shifts.

We cling to the past because it is comforting. Secure. Known.

Yet life changes. Reality alters.

Unless we are prepared, occasionally, to drift with those changes, we will ourselves turn obsolete.

This is not a question of being conservative or liberal, because the shape of those very definitions also morphs.

Lake Columbia, Canada (photograph taken back in 2001)

I wrote about this in my book Rivers of Change – Trailing the Waterways of Lewis and Clark.

In Chapter 34, Birthplace of Montana, I wrote:

“The truck radiator boiled over south of Fort Benton, and I pulled into a rest stop near a cluster of hay bales. There I stood at the edge of a semicircular rimrock wall hundreds of feet above river and plains. Below, the Missouri River curved like a rope, carving a path parallel to this cliff. It seemed as much a presence as a river. I envied the farmer who lived below and woke each dawn to this vista of cliffs ringed by muscular water.

The Yellowstone River (photograph taken during my trip in 2001)

The vista below reminded me of Alan Watts’ words from his book The Wisdom of Insecurity. He told how life is a state of flux and that wanting fixed security—stasis—is to desire that which is not a part of life. When we try to stake ourselves and our egos to a secure shore, we often find that the river of life drifts away, inflicting us with a sense of unease that makes us yearn for even more security.

‘It must be obvious, from the start, that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in the universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity,’ he wrote. ‘If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness in which we feel insecure.’

His words were inspiring. I believed that by maintaining optimism and flexibility, the future would unfold in a way both benign and prosperous.

Street Art in Barcelona, Spain

The day felt suddenly easy. I moved away from the cliff and breathed deep beneath a mackerel sky. Uncertain of what lay ahead I was willing to roam and learn. For a rare moment in life both hands stayed loose of certainty while the hours swelled with the rich bliss of knowing that nothing stays secure. There is no predicting where the river of life will carry us.”

Amen.

***

Thanks again for tuning in. I write this blog and another (vinoexpressions.com) and also write for various publications (shown below). I appreciate your visit to this site and hope you will continue checking out Roundwood Press.

Also, unless otherwise noted, all images shown on this blog are my own photographs.

On Saturday mornings I wake and walk a few minutes down the road to this little newsagent.

I buy a copy of what used to be known as The International Herald Tribune but is now called The New York Times International Edition.

The fact that they renamed the paper New York Times is sad. It erases all that nostalgic sense of fidelity with a Paris based U.S. paper having the illustrious title of Herald Tribune. As an American you once had a link to other Americans who had lived in Europe and who also knew the Tribune.

I buy the paper far less often than before. Whatever your politics, the editorial pages and headlines scream nothing but invective. These pages have become a sort of cross between the National Enquirer and the Soviet newspaper Pravda (which I read a few English translation copies of during college, out of fascination). The constant, incessant, unadulterated, semi-fanatic editorial negativity is as repellant as, say, listening to Namibian white farmers blaming everything bad in their lives on their black neighbors. Truly, I know about that having lived there and listened to them. I mean, ultimately, hearing the same complaints again and again about the same topic becomes boring.

Politics aside, there were a few good articles in a recent Saturday’s edition. One was an interview with Walter Isaacson, who wrote the biography of Steve Jobs (excellent book) and who wrote a book I am now reading—which is a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci. The second article was a book review about a collection of essays about writing, written by John McPhee.

In college in Boulder I bought John McPhee’s book titled Coming Into the Country when I lived on Pennsylvania Avenue on the Hill. And the book—which is non-fiction about people living in Alaska, told many stories. One included some woman who had moved to Alaska from the lower 48 states and went to a meeting of, I think, dog sled racers. She had decided she needed a husband. So she eyed these men at this meeting, pared the possibilities down to three, then selected one. And, damn if she didn’t marry him!

Reading this, I thought: How brutal! The gal just checked a box and snagged a clueless dude.

But, who knows? I mean, maybe it was a match made in heaven. Truly. I envy her pluck and determination, to be honest.

Anyway, back to McPhee.

One of the books he wrote is titled Encounters with The Archdruid. The archdruid being a very well known and controversial environmentalist leader of the 1970’s and 1980’s named David Brower. McPhee arranged for Brower to spend a few weeks rafting through the Grand Canyon, together with a man he frequently debated with vociferously in public–Floyd Dominy, the head of the Bureau of Reclamation and builder of dams who basically wanted to dam up the Grand Canyon. Author McPhee documented their interactions, which turned spicy.

After leaving college in Boulder and spending weeks in Steamboat Springs, I came back to Boulder one weekend for an environmental conference. The keynote speaker was David Brower. I recall him explaining as he stood at the microphone in Regents Hall, with passion, how miraculous our lives are, and how even the process of chewing and swallowing and digesting food was of marvelous complexity. He was a tall man and a huge figure and appeared to be warm and generous and wildly attuned to the need to preserve wilderness and nature. I think he was some sort of Berkeley Birkenstock sort of chap who got the Sierra Club’s non-profit status revoked after he, the then leader of the organization, published some political piece in a mainstream media paper.

I remember in college a lot of students wore t-shirts with color drawings of, say, wolves. Or mountain goats. They were popular at the time. Written above these drawings, in some dainty and rococo script, was some quote about how nature was fragile and gentle. I always thought that was a crock of shite to portray the natural world as gentle and fragile. Because nature is not fragile, or timid, or weak (think tsunami in Japan, hurricanes in Houston, wildfires in California). Even if we humans nuke ourselves into oblivion (I pray not), within months some species of life—say beatles or lice or cockroaches or maybe even some robust lemur—will begin adapting to the radiation and multiplying and eating our thermonuclear toasted carcasses as they find them strewn across city streets and throughout the spiral configurations of tract homes. Nature—tectonic churning and billions of years old, will merrily plod on. Asteroid collision? Ice age? Bring it on! Mama Earth could not care less. Truly.

But I do remember my own mother saying, once, “Imagine there were no elephants left in the world?”

At the time, even with all the poaching taking place in Africa decades ago, I thought that was kind of far-fetched.

No more. We’re currently losing elephants due to poaching at a rate of 8 percent per year.

Yet you don’t see that on mainstream media headlines.

What I’d prefer to read in newspapers is the marvel of the world we live in, and how aspects are challenged. Rather than reading some Anti-Trump invective or reviews of a book by Hillary, why don’t we learn more about the fate of elephants across the African plains, or the latest space exploration voyages or the growth of high speed trains (or semi-empty cities) across China? I think Americans would be better off if we began to think more internationally, to be more Herald Tribune rather than New York Times minded with respect to world.

It’s excellent to see that Isaacson, who wrote the biography of an American icon (Steve Job), then focused his attention on the biography of a European Renaissance icon (Da Vinci). Fantastic.

Are we in too much of a rush to wonder at what is going on in the world around us? Are we in such a hurry that a woman would need to identify her partner for life during a single dog sled meeting?

You get the point.

Too busy to tune into the world? I don’t buy that. Buy an atlas instead of a new Lexus. It will cost you less, won’t break down and requires no change of oil. You won’t even need to plug it in.

Books, such as those written by Isaacson and of McPhee can, vicariously, expand our awareness of the great world we live in.

So – Read.

Widely.

Not just headline stories in mainstream media.

Terry near the Atlas Mountains. We did not have many cares back then.

Every few weeks I’ll walk up the main street in the town where I live in in France and purchase a pink copy of the Financial Times Weekend newspaper. It’s all art and travel and cooking and even includes a magazine now and then titled How To Spend It advertising Cartier watches and including photos of tawdry lasses who transformed to posh gals by wearing Saint Laurent leather bustiers, silk bandanas and Wilson Swarovski crystal and rhodium plated brooches.

And then there are—after, say, a suave article about having lunch with author Hilary Mantel in a Devon restaurant—articles about travel.

One recent article was about Morocco. The author recalled his previous visit, 15 years ago, to the town of Imlil at the base of Mount Toupkal in the Atlas Mountains. He recalled how television was coming into the region, and the reaction of the local Berber people. He talked about Richard Branson’s new hotel, and mountaineering stores and ample cafes.

Really?

I remember something different.

Because I visited Imlil 27 years ago.

I had taken the ferry from Spain to Tangier and met a college friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer. We took various buses with two Australian gals I had met on the ferry from Spain to Morocco.

Once in the mountains, the four of us rented a massive room on the second floor of a huge stone building at the base of the Atlas Mountains. There was no running water or electricity.

We piled all sorts of blankets over ourselves on a deep rug on the floor in the middle of the second story. The huge stone room was round and surrounded by windows and had no furniture.

There were candles, but no lights. That was not because the place was trying to be romantic.

Earlier, for dinner, we had found the equivalent of a restaurant up a hill, a lantern lit hovel inside a stone building where they served soup with hunks of fat encrusted beef and chunks of bread. I remember leaving hungry, questioning the food.

But it was the only place to eat at in Imlil.

In the morning the girls sat outside on metal framed summer furniture without cushioned pads and they drank Nescafe coffee on porch tables. Terry and I went for a long walk on a winding gentle footpath before the foothills of Mount Toupkal.

We chewed some local substance to enhance the journey.

Beautiful.

The day before, I had tried to take photos of brightly colored dresses of Berber children.

They threw rocks at me.

Wow!

I wanted to move there, to live there, to rent a stone house and to practice my writing.

Backpack, Moroccan mountains, and different frames of mind.

That never happened.

But, days later, after the Australian girls had gone their merry way, Terry and I traveled more, this time on the back of his motorcycle. At the time I was hell bent on becoming a writer, but knew I had to practice. Practice, practice, practice. Write, write, write. I was tormented. I considered renting some stone home for a few months in the Moroccan outback and practicing my writing, trying to evoke the beauty of the desert in the same way that Edward Abbey had breathed life into his descriptions of the southwestern desserts of the U.S. in his book Desert Solitaire. One night, I think it was on New Year’s eve, we went to a disco in the big city of Rabat. They served alcohol and Terry was dancing with cute western women and I was agonizing about the truth that I needed to write! I felt intensely guilty about being in some disco while I should have been dedicating each minute to the craft I wanted to pursue. It was bizarre to be in the throes of fun and to feel so tormented.

Less than a year later I was off on my own adventure as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, where I practiced writing and began a career of overseas work. About ten years later, having worked in Namibia, Angola, Dubai, Thailand, the Philippines, Panama and Guatemala (during which time I wrote books during my free time—self-published because the New York publishing scene never embraced my words) I FINALLY came to a conclusion, on another New Year’s Eve in my brother’s trailer in Paradise Cove in Malibu, California: finally I knew how to write. I had practiced my craft for more than a decade, and the angst felt during that trip to Morocco earlier had vanished.

I had learned to smoothen prose (much as I had learned to belt sand tables while working ten-hour night shifts in a furniture factory in Boulder, Colorado, during college).

We had visited many places during that trip to Morocco. We took trains to Marrakech (no, sorry, Crosby, Stills and Nash—there is no Marrakech Express); we had wandered through markets in Tangier, and hand carried our self made pizzas through dark alleys to a local communal oven for baking in the town of Tiznit, where Terry lived in rural Morocco with his American girlfriend.

No doubt those locations have changed.

I recall watching Terry climb up windmills with a monkey wrench to fix the water systems in different villages. And recall seeing, and appreciating, deep crimson desserts of the countryside while we rode on that motorcycle.

Perhaps I may return.

But—this time?

No more itch to rent a remote dessert building in order to practice writing.

No more guilt at having drinks while at a club in Rabat.

Life moves on. We learn, we change, we learn to appreciate change.

And to appreciate life!

***

If you would like to read any of the three books I’ve written about Africa, click below:

Water and Witchcraft – Three Years in Malawi

The Deep Sand of Damaraland – A Journal of Namibia

Water After War – Seasons in Angola

Years ago I noticed that a lot of popular literature appeared to mention the beverage Coca-Cola, or the abbreviated name – Coke. Tuning in, I soon noticed two other related aspects. First, if the drink was mentioned once, it was often later mentioned another time in the same book. Second, not many other soft drinks were mentioned as frequently.

The question was whether this was paid advertising. This is not illicit or illegal, as product placements are common in movies and sports games. I had just never heard of this possibility before.

The answer to that question is: I still don’t know.

Some books can bubble with surprises

Many of the books read in the past were paperbacks, discarded or elsewhere now. However, today I opened my Kindle and chose dozens of titles collected during past years.

Ignoring those that were historical (before the time when the popularity of this soft drink spread), I searched each of these books for the words ‘Coca-Cola’ or ‘Coke’ – disregarding references to the use of the word coke (lowercase) in the context of the drug cocaine.

Of 52 books checked, surprisingly an exact 50 percent (26 books) mentioned either Coke or Coca-Cola. Of those that did, mention was made an average of 2.5 times per book (more often in fiction than in non-fiction). Of course the sample size is so small that these numbers may mean little, statistically.

Listed below are 26 books that included these words (both fictional books [F] and non-fiction [NF]).

The books are varied. They are about the environment, wine, technology, cooking, history and self-improvement – as well as fictional thrillers. Subtitles have been omitted or abbreviated because of space constraints.

[NF]  War of the Whales: A True Story – by Joshua Horwitz: (1 mention)

[NF]  Wine Wars… by Mike Veseth:  (5 mentions)

[NF]  You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS… by Hiawatha Bray (1 mention)

[NF]  Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence… by Brogan and Smith (2 mentions)

[NF]  Unbroken: A World War ll Story of Survival… by Lauren Hillenbrand (1 mention)

[NF]  Tom’s River: A Story of Science and Salvation, by Dan Fagin (1 mention)

[NF]  To Burgundy and Back Again: A Tale of Wine… by Ray Walker (2 mentions)

[F]  Sweet Liar, by Jude Devereauk (1 mention)

[NF/F]  Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace… by Greg Mortenson (2 mentions)

[F]  The Square of Revenge, by Pieter Aspe (4 mentions)

[F]  The Salome Effect, by James Sajo (6 mentions)

[NF]  The Road to Burgundy, by Ray Walker (1 mention)

[NF]  How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto, by Eric Asimov (3 mentions)

[NF]  Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, by Dunn and Norton (2 mentions)

[F]  The Expats, by Chris Pavone (2 mentions)

[F]  The Devil’s Banker, by Christopher Reich (5 mentions)

[NF]  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health… by Thaler and Sunstein (1 mention)

[F]  The November Man, by Bill Granger (3 mentions)

[NF]  Made to Stick…by Heath and Heath (3 mentions)

[F]  Innocent, by Scott Turow (1 mention)

[F]  The Martian, by Andy Weir (2 mentions)

[F]  I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (4 mentions)

[NF]  The 4-Hour Chef, by Timothy Ferris (1 mention)

[F]  The Colorado Kid, by Stephen King (7 mentions)

[NF]  Corkscrewed… by Robert V. Camuto (2 mentions)

[NF]  The Buy Side… by Turney Duff (2 mentions)

What to conclude?

One book was written by an acquaintance, a self-published author who lives in rural Italy. It mentions Coke six times. Because the book was self-published, I somehow doubt any corporate interests contacted him in advance in the Tuscan countryside to wave a check at him for any potential endorsement.

All this, as well as caffeine and carbonation…

Several bestsellers mention this drink, while other bestsellers (which were obviously going to be bestsellers even before they were printed) do not. Those that do not include Carte Blanche, by Jefferey Deaver, The Key by Simon Toyne, and Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson. Perhaps monetary offers were made for endorsement, but refused.

Or, perhaps this beverage is a universal currency in popular culture, an item so familiar to readers across the world it is known as well as other renowned physical symbols – The White House, Japanese sushi or the koala bear, for example. That might encourage writers, even sub-consciously, to mention this drink as a token of the familiar, a simple icon many readers can collectively recognize and relate to.

Even if no payment is associated with endorsing this product – mentioning it makes it more familiar, hence more likely to be included in the texts of other authors in the future (or on their web pages, such as this).

Free advertising at its best.

Perhaps next time you thumb through a paperback or ebook and see the words Coke or Coca-Cola inside, you too may wonder…

Evening view from the Citadelle

The weekend before last, the town in which I live held a book festival for two days. The Blaye Festival of Literature is a cozy gathering in a magnificent though still relatively little known venue—a beautiful citadel in a lesser known (though historically prominent) town. The books were spread out in three well-lit and heated ancient stone rooms (including one for children’s books). There were dozens of authors, ample illustrators and thousand of books.

One salon at the Blaye Festival of Literature

I arrived at 1.30 pm. Being France, only one author was in sight as the others had all left for their hour (or two) long lunch. Meals are a ritual here, and the country halts while they are being eaten.

Colorful reading

One poet named Sylvie Latrille, when asked, told me she began writing poetry when she was 15, and was now 65. I purchased one of her slim and illustrated volumes as a gift for a friend and she signed it with a quill pen and ink, then dabbed this with blotter paper to make sure the ink didn’t run. Her calligraphy was beautiful, and the moment was a reminder that new is not always most memorable, or best.

Sylvie Latrille and ink nib pen

There were books on geography and history; novels and cartoons. The event was filled with color and imagination, as well as low key and thoroughly polite authors and publishers.

This was a reminder that the era of books still thrives, that the hunger to read and learn and transport ourselves vicariously through our imaginations remains primal and strong.

One of the inner courtyards in the Citadelle

Not a bad location for a book festival.

View of the Gironde estuary

If I had a choice of which book festivals to attend?

Here is a list of international book festivals for 2017.

Oslo Book Festival (November 2017). [website not yet active]

Never been, but what a splendid city!

Bookstore in Oslo

Hay Festival (Wales – UK)—Again, never been. Perhaps it’s grown crowded due to popularity. But the word is that it’s lively and eclectic. May/June will be the 30th anniversary.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—I’ve visited a few times and listened to Ray Bradbury, Kirk Douglas, Michael Crichton, Dava Sobel, Jared Diamond, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Pico Iyer, Robert Crais, A.O. Scott and others speak. Well organized and free of charge to all. Book your tickets online so you don’t have to worry about gaining entrance to popular talks. Coming in April, 2017.

Reykjavik International Literary Festival—The bookstores in all of Iceland are open late and the chairs are all filled with adults and kids avidly reading. The literacy rate is 99%—the same as Cuba, except that Iceland actually has a variety of books to read, and an economy that allows people to buy them.

Never been to the festival, though, again—the location is superb. This is a photo taken in northern Iceland of the town Akureyri. Delightful locale.

Akureyri in winter

Auckland Writers Festival—Because it’s a fun country to visit and explore. Coming in May.

^ ^ ^

That’s all for now. Happy holidays to all…!

My latest Forbes pieces are here, and include one on the impressive new Lascaux Cave center in France, the island of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, and Berlin’s wine bars.

Chicago Beach, Dubai

Almost 20 years ago I sat on the side of a swimming pool in an apartment complex where I lived in Dubai. I worked for a large American engineering corporation based in Pasadena, California, and had been saddled with a sweet assignment in the Emirates, back when Dubai was small enough that you routinely recognized friends at Thatcher’s pub or the Irish Village. We worked 6 day weeks, so the abbreviated weekend was to be cherished. I would drive over to Jumeira for a croissant and coffee breakfast, then amble through Magrudy’s Book Store before returning to the apartment to lounge poolside, and maybe chat with a group of young English women also living there.

Dubai 1997

On this particular sunny day – with a blue sky above – I flipped through a Time or Newsweek magazine (when these included news instead of celebrity gossip), and read an article about how author Peter Mayle’s book – A Year In Provence – had taken off. The story was so intriguing that I tore it out of the magazine and kept it.

Imagine. Living in the French countryside and writing. 

Decades passed. And, well, here I am. Lacking royalty checks and a renowned book publisher as yet, but content to be enjoying comte cheese, chocolatine croissants with almonds (flaky edible pleasure) and bottles of Fronsac and Blaye wine. The post office, bank, barber, market, two parks and several restaurants are all within a five minute walk of the front door.

Sometimes it takes decades for desires to be realized. So – patience.

Cap-Ferret, Bordeaux

Mayle wrote about long French lunches. With wine. Sometimes glasses; often bottles. I gave that up during past months after it increased body weight and the need to nap. Well, almost gave it up. But now when there is an occasional long lunch with wine and friends, it’s better appreciated as sacred.

Mayle once wrote an article for a magazine defending the existence of ‘airport literature,’ saying that sales of books with low literary merit gave publishers the funds they needed to take risks on new authors. He also defended the airport genre by saying that all reading is beneficial. Truth is, today you can routinely find airport books that are cracking good reads – well thought out, carefully constructed, and with respect for the use of language.

Though I can’t find that Mayle article writtten over a decade ago, here is one that includes advice about writing – from writers (including Mayle). And here is another list of author quotes regarding the process of writing.

If that advice is no use, perhaps you should put the pen down (or put the laptop away), stand and reach for a corkscrew, bottle, and slab of cheese. If you can find someplace with sunshine…even better.

Enjoy.

Here are a few quick stories about connections with writers, and lessons learned.

My great-grandmother Patty traveled with Mark Twain to the Caribbean, as well—apparently—to a few other locales. She was his ‘traveling companion’—though the depth of that relationship remains unknown. Perhaps as a form of thanks, Twain gave her a large black and white photograph of himself—white haired and stately. He signed it: “Be good Patty, and you will be lonely.” My parents bequeathed this framed, signed image to me when they passed away. It’s in good custody at the moment. Sometimes I have to remember Twain’s advice.

I was born in the Virgin Islands on the island of Saint Thomas. A neighbor of ours was the author Herman Wouk (“The Winds of War,” “The Caine Mutiny”). I am told a cameo figure of a Chicago businessman (which my father was) is portrayed in Wouk’s subsequent book set in the Caribbean—’Don’t Stop the Carnival.’ I have to read this book to learn more.

When I subsequently spent years growing up in Ireland as a boy, our neighbor was an 80+ year old Australian chap who golfed with my father. He had flown a canvas sopwith camel biplane during World War One, landed in a Belgian field where he found his hand spun propellor would not spin again. He ditched the plane by setting it alight, then spent the next 10 weeks escaping detection from German occupiers before crossing the border—illegally at night. During this episode he faced a pistol/bayonet confrontation (which he won). When he returned to England as a hero, King George held a private audience with him to learn the details. Fifteen years later he wrote a bestselling book about the experience. It’s a riveting read. I recently hired lawyers in London to track down the surviving relatives (which they did—to Asia and Latin America) so that I could buy the copyright and re-publish the work. They agreed. (Next step: to source crowdfunding to move this endeavor forward.)

I never met Mark Twain, of course, or Herman Wouk. I only learned later that our neighbor in Ireland had been a best selling author.

Recently I considered all three characters, their writings, and their effects on changing the world.

Why?

Mark Twain (which is a nautical term which he adopted as a pseudonym; his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens) wrote about his time as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Learning to pilot the river—navigating eddies, turns and shallows—was a challenge that kept his mind energized, hungry, focused. Yet after he learned to navigate those challenges with ease—he wrote about how the river no longer interested him.

This is a lesson of value: once we master tasks we set ourselves at, we will be ready to move on. Why is this important? Because we should consider not only upcoming challenges, but what comes after they are achieved.

Wouk’s lesson was more subtle. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi years ago I read and enjoyed a few of his books (which my parents had mailed to me): The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance. One evening while I visited the capital city of Lilongwe, the Peace Corps nurse invited a few of us to her house in the evening to watch a mini-series adaptation of The Winds of War. I went with my fellow volunteer, a Californian named Sam Abbey, and watched a few episodes. The book came alive on screen, and suddenly I heard the rather posh voice of a young British woman named Pamela Tudsbury—a huge character in the book. Yet associated with Pamela and a story of romance, there was a plot twist that was unexpected and refreshing.

So, too, with life: sometimes it will blow us away by twisting unexpectedly. The lesson? Set a course, but be prepared to change when forces of nature require adaptation.

From our World War One aviator pilot friend, I was reminded how strangely serendipity can plop into life. Twice during his escape he fortuitously met characters who helped hide and protect him—both times at the very moment when he was on the verge of being captured, or running out of food and shelter. The lesson? Keep an open mind and a positive attitude, and the very fabric of reality may bend to assist you in ways unforseen.

Thanks for tuning in.

^  ^  ^

My latest Forbes posts are here. They include pieces about a jazz musician in Dubai, the difference between Pinot and Pineau, and the reason Loire Valley wines may well become the rage.

(The first photograph above was taken at a sailing club in Cartagena, Colombia, several years ago. The 2nd and 4th were taken during these past months here in France. The third was taken in Belgium last year—and shows the ground over which our pilot friend had to move in winter—in a horse and buggy, or by foot.)

Last Thursday I spent the night in the city of Nantes along the Loire River in western France. This large city (population: just south of a million) was once a haven for persecuted Protestants before transforming to a slave trade capital. Located a few dozen miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean, this sixth largest city in France includes dismal outskirts with all the charm of a row of council apartments from post-war Britain.

However the city center is a gorgeous collection of fountains within circular plazas from where avenues radiate out like spokes. Green and white trams slice past impressive stone architecture and groomed lawns, while students peddle bicycles past bohemian buskers beating drums near L’Occitane, Swatch and Cartier stores. Walk up Rue d’Orléans toward Place Royale to marvel at its beauty, then locate a wine bar on Place Vauban serving mind altering glasses of biodynamic Muscadet wine at only four dollars a pop.

Your impression of a city depends, of course, on which segments you choose to explore. After moving from the questionable outskirts to the interior, you may agree that when commerce results in clean, safe and vibrant streets, then let commerce flow (taking care to control growth, and tastefully melding ancient and modern architecture).

Passage Pommeraye in the city center

This city was the also the birthplace of Jules Verne, whose writings have taken readers to the moon, to the center of the earth, around the world in 80 days, and 20,000 leagues under the seas.

Verne’s spirit of exploration remains; an hour south, the Vendée Globe sailing race took off days ago. This venture is an around the world, non-stop, unassisted, single-handed yacht race which takes place every four years. Verne would likely have approved with gusto.

“Jules Verne – novelist, forerunner of modern discoveries, was born is in this house”

Verne may also have appreciated that a strong interest in books still thrives in this bustling university city.

Travel Book Store

In March of this year, literacy rates for each country of the world were compiled by John Miller of the Central Connecticut State University in the U.S. The colder northern European countries of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark have the highest literacy rates. Further south, France is ranked in the top dozen.

During an evening in Nantes I visited three sizable bookstores, all brimming with titles (though none in English, which was refreshing; the dilution of the French language is certainly not imminent). One store catered to tales of exploration and travel, with books about Karen Blixen, by Joshua Slocum and about ‘la vie sauvage’ (wildlife) from throughout the world. Exploring these well lit covers was a treat in this city with vibrant collections of color for sale: ancient postage stamps, macaron pastries, wool sweaters and books.

Books on the Siberian taiga, Greenland, polar seas and Siberian exploration – just in time for winter reading

Progressive Nantes, of course, includes titles on health and diet (‘humans and grains’) and sustainable development (‘environment and energy’)

Titles include ‘The Wild Souls’ about Alaskans, as well as a recollection of the first traverse of the Canadian tundra

Nantes includes plenty of bicycles and coffee stores, wine bars and cafés. This is a place to take a day to wander and dream (perhaps of visiting the lighthouse at the end of the world) and enjoy getting lost in alleys, on stone stairways, even in decent bookstores. If you plan to explore the Loire River valley, this city center is worth several hours.

With the exception of checking online newspapers, I’ve been woefully delinquent when it comes to reading lately. My ‘Wish List’ on Amazon soars in number, and yet I’m either writing, cooking, checking out some Netflix or Amazon Prime series, or enjoying a bottle of that sinfully good Château Cantinot or one of its well-priced vinuous relatives.

Here is a picture of Provence. Why? Because summer is skipping southwest France this year. Rain, wind, cold. It’s bizarre. Provence should be sunny.

Although now that I’ve included that photo I see it’s also raining in Provence this week. Aha, so the Gateway to the Riviera is not always sun dappled?

And those two ladies on the photo? I met and spent time with them five years ago exploring that lovely part of the world. They convinced me to join them for a minibus tour. I thought – No Way! But it turned out to be splendid and they were wonderful traveling companions. And they showed up during the final days of my month long trip away from work in Pakistan, JUST as I was thinking the insane thought – perhaps I should cut vacation short and go back to work early. 

Wow. Glad they showed up. Angels.

And Provence overall? Slightly crowded, a bit hot, but nice enough to visit and spend time.

If the usually gorgeous Bordeaux weather were not schizophrenically cloudy and spitting rain, the local winemakers would likely be tan by now. Instead they’re wearing raincoats and wool hats and shouting “putain!” as they wade through mud.

Still, no complaints. Life goes on and we have this wonderful Earth as Home.

I’ve been somewhat productive of late, having written my first piece for Forbes today. I hope you’ll check it out and maybe even post a comment. It’s an online magazine, so publication does not guarantee readership. It’s not about derivatives or finance or economic theories that beguile even economists. It’s about the city down the road. And I’ll be writing several more soon.

Okay. That’s all for this week. Yes, it’s a scant post. But I shall keep you posted.

It’s time to go for a walk, then find a decent book to tuck into. Any recommendations?

Best for now – .

The book Trailing Tara is an eco-thriller. It’s about a greedy few trying to steal technology that can deliver clean, affordable drinking water to those who are without – the majority of the world’s population. A young couple try to halt this theft so that the technology can be spun out for free. This breezy read oscillates between continents, beginning in the forests of British Columbia, skipping to Pepperdine University in California, then moving to Africa and back.

The above video highlights two locations from the book: California’s coastal city of Malibu (including Zuma Beach and Pepperdine University), as well as Catron County in the American state of New Mexico. Why these locations? As writers, it’s easy to write about what we know (or what interests us). A brother now lives in Malibu, while I also spent time living there in easygoing Paradise Cove while working on a previous book.

Peaceful Malibu – from where our heroine flees

The helicopter/plane/car chase in New Mexico takes our two heroes to the sky. The scene is set close to property I own in New Mexico, and close to where my sister and her previous partner once owned a cabin and small airplane.

I’ve also lived at some other locations from this book – including Africa’s Namibia, as well as Switzerland. One joy of visiting Switzerland comes from riding a train through the Alps. That’s why a (brief) Swiss train scene is included in the story. The story also includes places I’ve never seen, including coastal British Columbia, and the city of Lagos. Part of the fun of writing fiction comes from knowing it can help others learn about a country, or teach us about a location we’ve never visited.

Night time in Switzerland….an unlikely scene for a thriller

The scenes from Malawi are set near the Sekwa River, at a remote location visited frequently during three years I spent living and working there as a Peace Corps volunteer. In reality (as in the book’s story) the arrival of drinking water pipelines to that location truly thrilled the local residents.

The above explains why someone might write about specific geographical places.

But what is an eco-thriller? Below are definitions.

From Bookcountry:

Environmental thriller, also called “eco-thriller,” is a fiction genre with plots reliant upon stopping or surviving a pending environmental or biological disaster. The disaster is often man-made and globally significant. Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain is often cited as the first popular environmental thriller.

Ryan Elias even lists Moby Dick as an early eco-thriller, while Robin McKie from The Guardian’s Observer Magazine says an eco-thriller can be a simple “straightforward end-of-the-world novel.” One blogger reminds us how Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt is often involved in eco-thriller action.

There’s more to the genre than pretty countryside scenes

Is every eco-thriller about wresting power away from those determined to harm the planet? Hardly. Truth is, there’s plenty of latitude for inclusion within this genre. Decades ago I read a book that still towers in sales – about an angry man determined to seek revenge for the loss of life caused by an oil tanker. The Ship Killer is a classic. Considering that oil is the antithesis of green fuels, and the protagonist is trying to prevent wrongs caused by tankers, this is an eco-thriller – even though the fate of the world is not at stake.

This genre also merges with others. Is Watership Down a children’s story or an eco-thriller? Perhaps both. If you’re still unclear about this genre, plant yourself down and read the bad-ass classic of environmental/eco thrillerdom – The Monkey Wrench Gang. Do this – and never again will you look at a dam or a billboard in the same way. Promise.

Desert of Southwest US…fertile territory for an eco-thriller

Eco-thrillers should push us to view the world in a different way: to change our accepted Standard Operating Procedures. To make us hunger to strive towards a world that is improved.

The crux of Trailing Tara revolves around levitation technology. If abundant, this could propel water through pipelines to supply it cheaply throughout the world. The underlying message is that investigating cutting-edge technologies could reduce the number of people on this planet who lack access to clean drinking water. Beside the chase scenes and simple story, the book is intended to push us to think in fresh, innovative ways to solve an ancient problem. That’s a challenge. That’s the underlying message of this fiction, and the message of the entire eco-thriller genre: how seeing the world from a more integrated, and less narrow-minded, perspective might incite us to improve it.

Then again, the book is also just a summer page-turner. I hope you enjoy.

Ah, the inherent and ageless need to scribble

The facts regarding how much money writers earn when they self-publish, as opposed to getting their books brought to print (or placed online) through a traditional publisher, are in.  The report titled What Advantage Do Traditional Publishers Offer Authors: A Comparison of Traditional and Indie Publishing from the Authors’ Perspective includes potentially dismal news that twenty percent of both traditional and self-published authors make no money. None. About 55 percent of self-published, and 35 percent of traditionally published, authors earn up to $1,000 of writing income per year. A lot of work and a lot of writing earns very little. Only five percent of self-published authors earned more than $20,000 per year from their books, whereas 20 percent of traditionally published authors earned alike. Which leads to a basic question:

What’s the point of writing?

If we’re not earning a decent enough slice of the financial pie to keep us financially afloat – why write?

Here are a few reasons – based on my own decades of spending dozens of hours per month (sometimes per week) writing:

1. Writers can’t stop writing. Honestly. They love it. We love it. The desire to transmit information and stories is in our genetic code. We do it because we love words, chapters, and stories. We love paper and pens, or tapping keyboards. It’s expression, art, exposition, catharsis, communication.

2. Writing helps organize our thoughts. It helps provide our own minds with clear, distinct images we can later recall to tell an animated story or describe a clear process – whether we’re in a bar, restaurant, home, or hiking on a mountain trail. Our verbal stories, shaped first by writing, gain focus.

Late night bookstores satisfy Icelanders’ appetite for the printed word (literacy rate is 99 % )

3. Being published provides credibility. I published a book about rivers and was paid as a guest speaker in several different parts of the U.S., interviewed by dozens of radio stations, and hired as an eco-cruise ship onboard ‘historian.’ Self-publishing is now well respected, and a well-finished product demonstrates both an individual’s initiative as well as their ability to achieve the multitude of tasks needed to publish a book.

4. Writing expands our world. I spent vacations exploring Ireland, Italy, France, and over a dozen countries to research new books to write. There’s also plenty to explore in your own town or state or country. The process of gathering and organizing information alters your life. It also puts you in contact with people you would not have met otherwise.

There is  a story down every pathway

5. Assembling a book instructs us about our world and people. Assembling a book about wine introduced me to dozens of characters in locations I’d never heard of before. Their stories shared a common theme: overcoming unusual forms of adversity to realize a dream. From these episodes I learned about humility and dedication, as well as how every individual is valuable.

6. Writing teaches us the rewards of dedication, and how concentration can result in quality. In college I once spent a summer working the night shift in a furniture factory, belt sanding tables. I learned how focused effort transformed rough slabs of wood into smooth and elegant table tops. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was right when he said that all writing is basically carpentry. When I later began writing books, I recalled those nights with a belt sander, and once spent hours revising one paragraph. It was worth it. To this day, the sound of that paragraph is music. It takes effort and dedication to provide a product that satisfies an audience – whether they are buying furniture, clothing, or stories.

7. Writing changes how we organize thoughts, hence our lives. Even sporadically writing a journal helps clarify thinking. Studies show that when jobless individuals write about their job- hunting frustrations, they end up getting jobs more quickly. Perhaps the process of mentally clarifying obstacles helps these individuals to better decide how to tackle them.

That’s powerful.

And – now and then – when a reader compliments a piece we write, it somehow all becomes worth it.

During years past, I’ve collected cookbooks from several countries visited. I try cooking at least a recipe from each.

Cambodia

Iceland

Thailand

Most books are well laid out, attractive, thoughtfully organized, and include excellent recipes. Yet years ago I learned about one cookbook powerful enough to help shape Italy’s language.

A chapter from my book River of Tuscany tells a fictional episode based on the true character who wrote this book.

Pelligrino Artusi was a silk merchant who lived from 1820 to 1911. He traveled throughout Italy for business, mostly to Tuscan cities such as Siena.

While traveling and staying as a guest in many homes, he realized that rural women needed a cookbook which consolidated their range of recipes. He began collecting recipes from all over Italy, and women mailed him their personal lists of ingredients and methods for concocting dishes.

Unable to find a publisher, Artusi published the book himself under the title La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangier bene, or – Science in the Kitchen, and the Art of Eating Well.

After several years and near financial failure with the book, Artusi eventually hit success when a publisher took his title on. Within years, Artusi’s book became a hit throughout the land, the veritable Joy of Cooking for Italy. His blend of anecdotes, shards of history, and personal comments made the book approachable to women throughout Italy’s kitchens. It also spread a certain version of Italy’s written language around the country. This did for the Italian language much the same as what the book the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) did centuries earlier. Written by the poet Dante Alighieri in the local vernacular – the language of the people – Alighieri helped replace the use of Latin (the language of ancient Rome) with the more common tongue spoken throughout the land.

Artusi appealed to people’s respect that food is as important to life as sex, and his book ingratiated his name into Italy’s culinary consciousness. Pelligrino’s book is practical, humorous, and raw. He writes:

“Life has two principal functions: nourishment and the propagation of the species. Those who turn their minds to these two needs of existence, who study them and suggest practices whereby they might best be satisfied, make life less gloomy and benefit humanity. They may therefore be allowed to hope that, while humanity may not appreciate their efforts, it will at least show them generous and benevolent indulgence.”

For self-publishers, Artusi’s book is a reminder of the rewards of perseverance and patience.

In May of this year my nephew will marry his Italian fiance close to Venice. I also look forward to enjoying good food and wine and company, and will also practice speaking the basics of the vernacular, the language Artusi’s cookbook helped disseminate throughout Italy.

Buon appetito.

Other Snippets –

While reading Publishers Weekly today during a plane flight to Karachi, I was happily surprised to see that it listed a cover image and description of my latest fictional book – River of Dreams.

Kathleen Gamble, an author who attended the same high school as I did in Europe, recently published her cookbook Fifty-two Food Fridays, which includes recipes from throughout the world. Congrats, Kathleen!

Two years ago my friend Robin and I spent five days at a house in the village of Magny-les-Villers in Burgundy – surrounded by vineyards and rolling countryside. On arrival at such a quiet location, Robin wondered aloud whether we would find things to do for five days. On leaving, we both wished we could stay for weeks longer.

Peaceful Magny-les-Villers

I found this new book about Magny-les-Villers online. Turns out it was written by Laura Bradbury who (together with her husband Franck) rented us the house where we stayed. Titled My Grape Escape, this book is all about finding and renovating that property. It is about camaraderie with friends, family, and workers who help inject sanity and levity into the daunting task of completing renovations before the first paying guests arrive.

Colorful entry way from an inner courtyard

View of the local church steeple

The genre is that of foreigner buys property in France, undertakes renovations, and in doing so learns to slow down and appreciate the quality of day to day life. It also documents the transformation of a person as well as a property. Laura was in her twenties when she and Franck purchased this property. Her years of studying law at Oxford convinced her that time spent in non-productive tasks was almost abhorrent, something to feel guilty about. But her husband Franck helped demonstrate otherwise.

One of many cellars within walking distance

When they set off to spend a day buying a second hand car, they instead enjoyed long hours with friends eating breakfast and lunch, and drinking wine and coffee, and buying – unexpectedly – all required kitchenware for their home at a bargain price. Their failure to find a car was alleviated within days when they found one to purchase elsewhere. The book is filled with these scenes – which expand Laura’s comfort in letting go of control. As Franck asks her about events in life: “…why don’t you try to believe that they will turn out just fine – no matter what we do or don’t do?”

One day when Laura and Franck part from their friend René, he leans in the open car window to tell her, “…never confuse what is urgent with what is truly important.”

We found a tiny wine outlet…

…selling some cracking good burgundy

Laura lets go of her plans and realizes that working long hours in a law firm might damage her precious marriage. She also begins to enjoy herself more. Opportunities to learn abound around Magny-les-Villers. “I had never met anyone who was more gifted for capitalizing on a moment of celebration than Burgundians,” she writes.

Whether you want the renowned Montrachet….

….or a famed Clos du Veugeot…

….or just a simple wine for lunch – Burgundy has it all

On visiting a physician to get a prescription for pills to reduce anxiety, Laura hears her husband Franck ask whether his wife can still drink wine while on medication.

“Only good wine,” Doctor Dupont answered. “I would highly recommend around two glasses at lunch and dinner. Something fortifying. A Pommard or a Vosne-Romanée would be perfect, though I would also consider a solid Savigny. I would, however, advise you to stay away from the whites at the moment, Madame Germain. They tend to have an agitating effect.”

Voila! What the doctor ordered – Vosne-Romanee

The book is riddled with colors, scents, and images of good food and wine. There are blue-footed chickens from Louhands, yellow wine from the Jura region, cherry red ramekins, lime green pie plates, as well as stewed rabbits and prunes in white wine sauce, smoked morteau sausages and potatoes with crème fraiche and freshly chopped parsley, and bottles of bubbly crémant, Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, and Savigny-les-Beaune Les Guettes.

The home they are renovating comes with historical intrigue. Built in the year of the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille – 1789 – it was also used to house a billeted German soldier during the Second World War.

It was a pleasure to read this story of how the property we stayed in was first renovated. Though I never met Laura and Franck personally because they were in Canada at the time, the attention to detail they put into each communication, and their rapid responsiveness to our queries were both informative and helpful. The brightly painted home was a joy to stay in. On more than one morning while there, we woke, drank coffee, sliced a baguette for breakfast, then simply opened the door to wander by foot around some of the most sublime and precious wine properties of the Cote D’Or.

Burgundy terrain – producing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir

This book brings alive the quirky joys of living in the French countryside, and will make you reconsider what you truly consider important in life.

Check out more about Laura and Franck’s properties in France, here, or Laura’s book My Grape Escape, here for the Kindle version, and here for the paperback.

Where to go?

Laura and Franck can recommend some of the best places to visit. Two local wineries recommended by Franck are the following:

Domaine Naudin-Ferrand

In Magny-les-Villers; 03 80 62 91 50; info@naudin-ferrand.com

Domaine Maillard-Lobreau

In nearby Savigny lès Beaune; 03 80 21 53 42; maillard-lobreau.gerard@wanadoo.fr

This week it’s time for something different.

I write two blogs – one about wine, the other about books and publishing.

What to do after you’ve launched a new book

Every Tuesday I try to fire off one blog post, alternating posts on different weeks between the wine and publishing sites.

Why Tuesday? I checked the stats. People don’t check the internet much on weekends. They’re at football games or soccer matches or fixing up their homes or cooking with friends. They tend to look at the internet quite a lot on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. So I write during weekends and post on Tuesdays, hoping to snag attention when most eyes surf the net.

This week – I am posting the same blog for both sites: vinoexpressions (also known as wineandwork), as well as roundwoodpress.

The reason is simple.

This week we go from Barolo…

A few years ago, a friend sent a link to check out Wine Library TV. Someone named Gary Vaynerchuk ranted about wines on videos. I thought he was a bit over the top and loud, but he did come across as down to earth.

…to books

I’m now reading Vaynerchuk’s book – Crush It. Basically, he used the internet to promote his family wine business and succeeded wildly, then decided to step away from wine in order to work on promoting how the internet can be used for personal branding. The book is filled with short videos that keep the narrative lively.

This self-appointed wine wizard transformed himself into a branding guru.

Branding –

Here are a few quotes from Vaynerchuk’s book regarding following your passion, and branding yourself.

“…live and breathe your passion. Do that, and you’ll no longer differentiate between your work life and your personal life. You’ll just live, and love doing it.”

“Everyone – EVERYONE – needs to start thinking of themselves as a brand. It is no longer an option; it is a necessity.”

“…skills are cheap, passion is priceless.”

“Tell me your story, and if you’re good, I’ll come back for more. Then I’ll tell my friends, and they’ll come…”

[Italicized quotes above – copyright: Vaynerchuk, Gary (2010). CRUSH IT! Kindle Edition.]

His steps toward success in building your brand are simple, but require that you work your tail off. The major factors he attributes toward succeeding in building your brand are: do what you are passionate about, create excellent content, keep it down to earth and real, create a community, and make the world listen. This is a fun book to read, because Vaynerchuk is down to earth and energized.

Whether you like wine, are an aspiring author, are looking for work, or trying to carve out your own professional niche, it’s worth reading this book. Why? Because personal branding is critical to selling your product or yourself. I never met Gary. But what he says resonates with the same message provided by the authors of the book titled: APE, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book, described in an earlier blog post: if you want to succeed in this internet wired world, don’t pump out BS or try to be what the Irish call a ‘chancer.’ Because whether you are describing wines you love or trying to get others to tune into your latest series of sci-fi or pet grooming book series, you truly have to believe in what you are doing.

No BS

That confidence resonates with others.

Your brand will grow as your outreach expands, your confidence notches up, and your communities grow.

Community – 

The internet has created a brave new democratic space. Writing web log posts has allowed me to gain access to a community of people who are passionate and informed about what they do. The virtual community is far larger and more diverse and international than if I was only able just to walk around the ‘hood getting to know neighbors.

Let me illustrate, first about wines, then about publishing.

If I have a question about wine from the French Riviera or the Ligurian coast, I’ll contact blogger Chrissie who writes The Riviera Grapevine; if I want to know about Italian Piedmont wines such as Barolo (or if I want to talk about a new fiction book idea), I can drop an email to author / wine guide / blogger James Sajo who lives in Italy and runs a guide business and is dialed into local wines. To get the scoop on the best deals in Bordeaux wines, I’ll get in touch with my friend Les Kellen, who runs wine tours and operates a guest house in Blaye, Bordeaux.

If I want advice on publishing and marketing (or want to see some zippy artwork), I’ll check out Robin Kalinich’s site, or check out the blog or drop a message to Fiona Pearse – an IT guru and author living in London.

Bordeaux is a region, a wine blend, and also a very successful brand

Using the internet, I don’t have to hop on a plane or drive (though that’s fun) to get up to date information from people who are passionate about what they do. Instead, I just check in with the virtual world, and zip off an email query.

Another Word about Wine and Books –

What else do wine and books have in common? I subscribe to the Wine Spectator magazine. Because I’m working in Asia, I get the digital rather than the print edition. So I recently looked at the site and realized they have an entire wine course – with quizzes, instructional materials, quotes, and multiple videos that are free for subscribers. As the site says, homework was never so much fun. One lesson is about Buying Wine. To encourage people to be experimental at wine stores, they write:

“Think of a trip to the wine store as if it were a trip to the book store…None of the titles are familiar, so you read the plot descriptions on a few back covers as well as the employees’ comment cards…Buying wine is pretty much the same, only a bottle of wine is often less expensive than a hardcover book…” [Copyright Wine Spectator magazine.]

Thanks, as always, for tuning in.

On a recent trip to Italy I brought a hefty hardcover copy of the new book Inferno by Dan Brown.

The plot moves from Tuscany…

The first half is entertaining, engaging, and filled with promise. Brown also educates us about historical happenings in a way that is seamlessly entertaining. Then, in trying to manufacture surprise, the plot tries to back out of its entire premise. This doesn’t work. Readers want plots to move forward, not to circle around like a dog chasing its tail. The plot plummets as credibility disappears, consistency vanishes, and Brown offers us a personal, editorial polemic as an ending. Readers want entertainment. For morals or for preaching we can read Aesop’s Fables or editorials from a newspaper.

…to Turkey

It’s also disquieting that the publisher of a guaranteed best-seller refused to shell out enough money to hire an editor who knows the difference between the words ‘enormous’ and ‘enormity.’ Not once, but twice. Coming from a supposedly ‘reputable’ New York publishing house, this insult to the English language is egregious. The inside of a cathedral may be enormous, while a cruel punishment would constitute an enormity. Enormous refers to size. Enormity refers to something morally wrong.

The word ‘deplane’ is also used twice. It’s not a word. A noun is not a verb. It’s an airline company’s display that they are linguistically incompetent. Would we ‘decar’ after driving, or ‘desleep’ in the morning or ‘deoffice’ after work? Mmmm…it may be time to ‘deread’ Dan Brown’s books.

Perhaps the movie will be better. It would be difficult not to be.

Click here to read about my own book titled River of Tuscany.

Click here to read about other books from Roundwood Press.

Here are a few writing tips.  They include lessons learned over time, as well as insights harvested from writers who shaped the tastes of generations.

“There is no friend as loyal as a book” – Hemingway

1.  Make your writing active, not passive. “The Visigoths defended Carcassonne” instead of “Carcassonne was defended by Visigoths.”  Your subject should perform the action, rather than be the receiver of action.

Read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.  Read it every year.

2. Use short words and short sentences.

Why?  Read The Art of Readable Writing by Rudolf Flesch.

3. Minimize adverbs.  He ran.  Not: He ran quickly.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author of One Hundred Years of Solitude) tries to eliminate every adverb from his writings.  This makes the text tighter and easier to read.

4. Spice up your writing with smells, sights, and specifics – she stuffed six pairs of dirty Levis in a green cotton laundry sack before breakfast. Or this from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd: “Moments later shadows moved like spatter paint along the walls, catching the light when they passed the window so I could see the outline of wings.” Got it? Spatter paint. Wings.

5. Ground your scenes in some physical space. Don’t float. Whether a castle, a cast iron bed, or a mosquito ridden swamp – people have to be somewhere.

6. Dialog. Use plenty.

7. Outline, outline, outline. James Patterson (the highest earning author of 2012) described this as the key to writing when he spoke at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books years ago.

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil” – Truman Capote

8. My mother’s advice – when it gets too serious, crack it open with levity.

9. Surprise. Now and then. Ken Follet writes that, “There is a rule which says that the story should turn about every four to six pages. A story turn is anything that changes the basic dramatic situation.”

10. Write first, then get it right. Write it down. Edit afterwards.

11. Show, don’t tell.  In Moby Dick, Melville writes,  “What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks?” instead of, “I had concerns about the trip.”

12. Break the rules – judiciously. But first earn that priveledge by learning when the literary police take off for a lunch break.

13. Write about what turns you on. Need inspiration? Read Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

14. Here’s potent advice from Ernest Hemingway: Finish What You Begin.

15. This is odd, but essential advice I once read about writing:  be a likable person. Otherwise, become one.

16. Read. Novels, cookbooks, comics, newspapers, blogs, laundry machine instructions, magazines, dentist office Monster Truck magazines….whatever.

Most importantly – enjoy!

Read more about Roundwood, and this website.