writing – STORIES MADE US HUMAN

Rapture

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

Sermon delivered by John Winthrop (1588-1649), Puritan lawyer and later Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor, on a ship heading for the New World in 1630

“Because it’s there.”

George Mallory responding in 1923 to the question of why he wants to climb Mt. Everest

Orbit

Arrival

Wyatt, aboard Fence Family ship Magellan

There, 200 miles below, the great planet crept. They had arrived. Half again earth’s diameter, and twice the surface area, its oceans held four massive continents, including a vast island archipelago spread across the middle and upper latitudes. It was indescribably beautiful. The planet held two moons.

Wyatt Fence, watch team Four, observed cousin Allegra, assistant engineer, flipping switches at the console. Allegra’s screechy laugh had become tiresome these one-year watch periods, so tiresome Wyatt considered sending her into space, though of course he did not have such authority. Allegra was a capable engineer, ice-cold but lovely. Her younger sister Erika, systems specialist, down in the hold for the moment, clumsy and squat, knew Mind technology like nobody else.

Wyatt wished he could feel a glow of satisfaction. Arrival – slowing the ship, coming to orbit – was his responsibility, his and the ship’s Mind. They had arrived, on schedule, but not exactly as planned. During the 40-year journey that began 2125 they had lost only four of the 40 souls suspended, the souls carefully monitored by four three-person teams, one year awake and three in cryosleep. Coming out of cryo, the disorientation, the nausea, was difficult. Wyatt hated it. The monitor teams were mainly Fence Family members. Luther, the patriarch and Mission Commander, also watch team One, would be the first team member awakened now they were in orbit. Wyatt, Luther’s second cousin from the disdained Peninsula side of the Family, had never been comfortable with Luther, always feeling the imposter.

When they had left the Belt Wyatt had been 40 years old, his two cousins somewhat younger. They had all been in cryo for 30 years of the 40-year passage. Ten times, they had left cryo for one year’s duty. This was the last of Wyatt’s team’s duty, arrival. Was he now 50, or 80? The one gee thrust, first accelerating away from the Belt for 20 years, then turning the ship 180 degrees to decelerate all the way to the planet, had kept them strong. He was still lithe and trim, but he felt ancient. Now, in orbit, they were weightless, zero gee.

Allegra turned from the console, shaking her head. “It’s confirmed. The habitat modules landed off course.”

“What?” Wyatt had launched the three modules as soon as they came into orbit. The modules had released properly, aiming for the level plain by the river. First send down modules holding construction and transport robots, supplies, living units, and materials, then dispatch an assembly team to set everything up. Only then wake everyone else, the breeders and felons. This final awakening, once conditions on the ground were stabilized, was also Wyatt’ responsibility, to bring the felons and breeders out of cryo and deliver them to the planet in shuttles.

Allegra laughed. Wyatt winced.

“Wyatt, I tracked them after release but we lost the signals when our orbit took us beyond the horizon. The next pass I caught the signals, but they were – are – really faint. They’re not where we wanted them to land.”

Erika floated into the bridge from the living quarters below. She overheard Allegra.

“They landed off course?”

“They did,” Allegra said. “In the foothills, not the plains. They could be fifty, even one hundred miles from our desired settlement location.”

Wyatt pulled up a map on his battered console screen. Probe-developed maps were all they had. They gave only a rough idea of terrain, altitude, and vegetation type. They had chosen the largest island in the archipelago, an island nearly the size of Canada. Wyatt wondered if Ferdinand Magellan, their ship’s namesake, blindly crossing the endless Pacific nearly 650 years earlier, had felt as uncertain as Wyatt felt now.

“Fifty miles? A hundred miles? Are there beacons?” Of course the modules had beacons, they had to.

“They have beacons. If we must we can triangulate the search from up here on the ship.” Allegra was looking out a window at the planet passing below.

“Only when the ship is passing overhead, Allegra. Every two hours. We’ll have to drop our assembly team as close as we can and let them follow the beacons from there.” Luther, once awakened, would make the final call. He was going to explode when he learned the modules were misplaced.

Erika’s thick eyebrows were raised. “I’m not sure we are really equipped for an overland search.”

“Can we land or maneuver the shuttle close to where the modules are?” Wyatt asked, knowing the answer.

“Those units are designed to parachute people to the surface, one-way trips. They have no maneuverability.” Allegra was scowling. Wyatt kept his expression neutral. Allegra had complained about the need for aerial vehicles for 40 years.

“Finding those beacons could take days. Weeks.” Wyatt paused. Radiation shielding had forced them to cut weight everywhere. But not even a single aerial search vehicle? Luther had been, before launch, supremely confident, claiming the drones in the modules sent to the surface would be sufficient, that actual manned aerial vehicles were redundant. The ultimate choice had been his. Not something to remind him upon awakening. “Luther is going to be unhappy.”

Allegra laughed again.

“There is more, Wyatt.” Allegra waved toward the panels on the bridge. “That National Church ship, Wyatt, Americas Bloc, that finally launched five years after we did? Our Mind just confirmed it will reach orbit in just one month. One month. It almost caught up to us. Next generation fusion engines. You won’t believe its name.”

“Its name.” At least the faster engines on the Church ship hadn’t leapfrogged them, arrived first. One month? Was a one-month cushion enough for the Family to get established? Wyatt stared at Allegra. They had hoped to reach the planet at least five years before the staggeringly complex, bureaucratic, and endlessly delayed Bloc and Church effort. One month?

“Rapture. Its name is Rapture. That’s what they’re calling the planet, too, Wyatt. From the Bible, surely.”

Wyatt placed both hands on his head, closed his eyes. “They are literally rapturing themselves.” Somewhere on their ship Magellan there might be a Bible, though the Fence Family had been entirely secular since reaching the Belt decades earlier. It had been deep in the Belt, 2105 to 2125, when Family robots had hollowed an iron and water asteroid to secretly build and launch this ship.

“And,” Allegra added, staring fixedly at Wyatt, “the Mind has confirmed more details about planet life. This planet is in an ice age, Wyatt. It has megafauna. Big animals. And something else, too.”

“And that would be?”

“Possible controlled burning.”

Wyatt tried to remain calm. They had arrived, yes, but the misplaced pods had surely delayed the settlement plan. He would be blamed. Wyatt stared through the bridge window. One of the planet’s moons was rising before them, the other, beyond. Tides must be ferocious down there if the moons ever lined up. Wyatt wanted to scream. Instead, mindful of appearance, he remained measured, logical, precise. He spoke carefully and quietly, as if by so speaking he could manage the situation.

“So, to summarize, we misplaced the habitat pods. The Church ship is one month behind us, headed for the same continent. This planet is in an ice age. There may be beings setting fires?” This was ridiculous. Allegra raised a finger.

“You assume the Church ship is headed for the same continent. There is no basis for assuming that.”

Wyatt decided perhaps he would send Allegra into space after all.

Erika drifted closer, gestured back toward the belly of the ship. She wore an expectant expression. Wyatt suddenly wanted to send her into space, too.

“One more thing, Wyatt.”

“What?” Mechanical problems? Engine problems? Mind problems?

“I think we have a stowaway.”

Been a while. Been busy.

The only purpose for this little site is that is serves as a record of sorts for certain ideas, stories, or comments. I have learned that a site like this needs attention, needs material, needs tending, all of which I fail to do. Mostly though this site is about the telling of tales. So I will record here a brief report on something in progress, just for the record.

In 2010 I started doing research about this story set in the Olympics. Did that for three years, then took a writing class at UW to prove I was serious and the very first time we met the teacher, even before we introduced ourselves, had us all do a ten minute writing session. The bit I wrote then became almost word for the word the start of this tale Strong Heart which I finished a rough draft of in between gigs on ships at sea working 2013-2014. Then in the spring of 2014 I was in Cleveland working there on a shipping thing with the Port of Cleveland and I wrote a second tale, an extension of the first, Adrift. Then in 2015 I was back on a ship in Baltimore and I ended up writing a third tale there, Found, but it wasn’t quite done and at that time I wasn’t sure, had this become a long series or was this a three-book series?

In 2016 when I got back from my last ship and retired I miraculously found a publisher, a start-up person who believed in the tales, and they were published in 2017, 2018 and then the third in 2021, by then titled Totem and added to nearly another full book length. I had some in bookstores, had a lot of readership with the Online Book Club, all over the world, and felt then, and still feel, those were as good as I could make them and readers seem to really like them. They are set in the Olympics, the British Columbia and Alaska coast, and tell stories of the present day and the very very ancient past. The books have a touch of magic realism, maybe more than a touch.

In 2019 I had just finished Totem, it was with an editor, and I had always had these notions of trying something different, not more of the series, and series can be traps, by the way. The first book I ever published with Pocketbooks in 1990 Fat Chance was bought I think in hopes it would become a series and I refused, being an idiot, wanting to write more than a simple caper, and I did, but my agent eventually fired me and then there were years in the horror of self publishing and chasing editors and agents and publishers, and I thought I was done by 2005, plus I was too busy with this demanding job with a port, but later the whispers began and then the research and so the Strong Heart series emerged. It didn’t start out that way, but that’s what happened. Anyway in 2019 I was noodling, even then, something more along the science fiction line, but not seriously, and then this friend of mine, an Olympic rower with a 1956 gold medal, someone I had rowed with with the Ancient Mariners Rowing Club out of Seattle 1990-2010, he asked me to write him a book about his experiences winning that medal with a Canadian four-man crew. It is a fantastic story, one of the greatest rowing stories there ever has been, and I jumped at it but said, because you and your guys are Canadian and I am not I want to be sure nobody up there is telling the same story, and he thought not, but a week later we learned that indeed, a Canadian, good writer, was interviewing the Canadians. By then though I was a bit into it with Walter, had interviewed him, and then I had this idea I could write about other old Olympians from that era, other gold medal winners, like the Yale 1956 crew and an American 1956 pair and the 1964 Vesper boat club. All the spring of 2019 and later, as covid crept into the world, I spoke with over 25 grand old men of rowing, the real lions, who were generous with their time, but there was this other book supposedly coming out from Canada on the Canadian four so the entire thing kind of fell apart.

I ended up with a 220 page document all these great and not well known voices from the 1950s and 1960s, just a great series of tales, but in the end nothing happened, I did not pursue it. That Canadian book by that Canadian author has not yet appeared and I doubt it will. Most of those wonderful old lions are now dead.

Then after covid ended, rowing book a bust, my series out there and getting great reviews but not great on sales, and finding myself a horrible self-promoter and becoming aware that the real business of writing is, for 98 percent of writers, shoveling money at this scheme and that in hopes of sales, all scams, all a total waste of time, you can spend every penny you have and nothing will happen. In the end, my view anyway, there has to be the rare circumstance of people in the industry with pull who notice you, luck and timing, and even then unless you write something good, forget it.

So then I spent a year, and am still working on this, a bit, chasing a colonial legend about the Deerfield massacre of 1704, because my ten times great grandfather was in that raid and my nine times great grandfather was one of those captured and taken to Canada. There have been many books about this subject, all about this raid and the capture of over 100 people and how several, including the daughter of the minister, chose to remain with the Mohawks up there to the shock of the Deerfield people. There is a persistent tale and rumor, first documented about 1820, and prevalent in the 1850s, that the reason one group of the raiding Indians came to Deerfield was not to take people but to retrieve a bell ordered for their church but taken by privateers and ending up in Deerfield. This is a deeply held view and oral tale among the tribe. I know this because in 1970, 56 years ago, I talked at length with one Ernie Benedict, an elder there and former leader, who swore the legend was true, and to this day there lies a bell in St Regis and Caughnawaga Quebec called the Deerfield Bell.

This legend is hotly disputed by all serious study people and all records of it are limited to the bell itself and the oral legend. The possible source of the legend is however the great grandson of that captured girl, Eleazer Williams, he may be a flim flam man and inventive, telling the story in the 1820s, but maybe he was passing down oral family history.

There is one last place to look to trace this story to the end, and I am doing so. Hopes are not high, but hope there is. So this effort, this research project, this took another year, and, again, nothing, not even a manuscript.

All this time noodling a science fiction tale. And perhaps something not tied to the series from before but from it, linked, somehow, in a mysterious way, not an extension of the series but clearly with people from the same family, the same area.

Then the Port Townsend Writers Conference and Centrum offer this year long novel workshop, not cheap, but hosted by Jon Evison who is a highly regarded PNW author and one of the few people I can name who is raising a whole family while writing fiction, a near miracle, and so I thought, if I sign up for this and am accepted I am forcing myself to get serious about this new tale, just as that writing course I took in 2012 started me on Strong Heart.

This series and workshop started last July at Port Townsend, a dozen of us, all more serious writers than I, most already published, a few, no more than a few brilliant writers in all ways, and every month twice a month we do these very long zooms working through parts of our books and Jon brings in other writers and it is just fantastic.

I am certainly among the least efficient writers in the world, but I am persistent, and so I started trying to write something in June and the workshop started and I wrote and by September I had 70,000 words written, that is a decent sized novel, and then I bagged the entire thing because I was trapped, mired, in backstory, unable to break free and TELL THE DAMN story. Of course, I, like many, write my way into a tale so until the characters get real nothing much can happen, then they take the story themselves, and all that writing I did was of course not wasted, this built me the world view and the families.

In late September I started again, a new start, still in the near future, still linked to backstory, and got 20,000 words into that and then by Halloween bagged that, too. Now I am 90,000 words written and all of it trashed.

Finally, early November, I take the leap and say to myself, f**k the backstory, just start the damn story, and so I do, on a ship approaching a planet 11 light years from earth, a planet unknown, with another ship close behind, a planet in an ice age, with some evidence of sentient beings on the surface, with misplaced habitat pods parachuted into the foothills, and, lastly, a stowaway aboard. This first chapter really had a good reaction from the fellow workshoppers, and me, too, so I persisted, and persisted, and this weekend to my amazement and astonishment came to that special place in any novel one hopes for and fears will never arrive – the completion of the first full story draft, the whole tale, start to end, of course needing revision and editing and changes and rearranging, always, but still, I have a stack of 380 one and a half spaced pages, 133,500 words, there it is in the picture, clean, fresh, awating the pen, the overwriting, the work.

I have this draft, which is pretty clean and has been thought through and adjusted as I have gone, now before five early beta readers, that is people who I know who have agreed to take a look at the whole thing in this state for general reading, is it readable, enjoyable, do you keep on with it?

Funny thing, too, once the draft is done and printed, sitting there as a three inch high stack of paper, fresh, clean, demanding ink, all of a sudden all these other things flow into my mind – this is a complex, detailed, many point of view story, we have basically four different story lines weaving together, and I see the value of a list of all the characters, and their relationship, I see maps – maps!!! – of this new world and the earth; I see a family tree line showing all the people in this one family that became very rich and sent a ship away and their alienated and poor Peninsula and tribal cousins who now get all mingled together on this new planet Rapture. And of course to make all this work there needs to be not only a world view but a consistent and valid series of assumptions or real truths about life, DNA, evolution, planetary composition, habitat, and space travel as well.

So, long way of saying, after writing that series I never thought to write, remember I pretty much gave up on this writing horror in 2005, and that is now 21 years ago, now a three book series and two failed books – oh and not to mention I spent the first half of 2025 with an economist grad school friend designing a Federal Budget that would solve our deficit problem, save social security forever, put people to work, and set up up financially for decades, an offering I then tried to get to congress members in Washington and elsewhere with little impact, because I am a retired old boomer, but it was a try, anyway – that picture of that first rough manuscript is affirmation of persistence and hanging in there no matter what.

We shall see….lots of work still to do. Lots.

Summers end….

The thing about having a little blog is it must be fed. When the summer comes out here, and the skies brighten and the rain stops, the trails and forest beckon. There are trails to revisit, or visit the first time, or areas off trail asking for attention, distant lakes to discover and reach, remote forest roads leading nowhere beyond which lies….? Of course, when you reach a certain age, and I fear – no, I am certain – I have reached it, you need to prepare for such excursions. Train. Walk miles, find nearby trails and hills to conquer, load a pack and climb stairs, or just walk, and walk, and walk. In the perfect world someone who wanders the woods would walk two or three hours every single day, all year, and then they would be ready for anything at nearly any age, even a greatly advanced age. I met such a man this year and he is a mountain goat, nearly as old as I am, going everywhere, on and off trail, as he has all his life. I envy him but could not keep up with him. Maybe after a year of training, and absence of injuries…

But you can write your blog in the evenings, some would say. This is true. But, to me, a blog is a strange sort of beast. On the one hand it offers a place to store tales, and ideas, and pictures, maybe even a few words about books written or envisioned, and as such, seems, to me anyway, a perfect place to store such things, whether anyone else cares to see them or not. On the other hand, in today’s monetize everything, build a mailing list, increase traffic to promote sales fever, the blog becomes a beast, a thing to be fed, its appetite endless and huge. When fun stories rise, or events beckon, the blog is fun, a place to record things, but when the money and traffic and out-there self promotion animal springs to life the blog becomes a monster, something loathed and avoided.

Maybe, too, this is all a function of two years of covid reaction and then the start of a European land war with the attendant media hype, lies, and hysteria filling all the airwaves and screens.

Then the forest beckons, the high and lonely places, difficult to reach, painful to achieve, but then, on the way and when arrived, silent but for the sounds of the wind, streams, insects, and animals. These are places that are still, InReach Mini2 aside, out of wifi range, phone range, web range.

Thank God.

There is a story I have been playing with now for two years, ever since I finished Totem as a matter of fact, maybe even another series, set in the future, so you can call it science fiction if you like. Whatever time I have spent with a pen and paper, or a keyboard and a screen, has been jotting notes and doing research on matters related to things future, plus the difficult task of trying to imagine a near future that might be realistic, which in these days of plagues and crisis and rage is hard to do.

All of which to say, this feeble little blog has gone dormant for half a year, now. But it is not dead, mainly because I find this a nice way to store stuff that I enjoy.