Better Fiction

That's amazing. I dabble at some nonfiction projects, I have pages written on Biblical counsel and the Post-Babylonian Books of the Old Testament, but none of it is anything that will yet prove to be a book.

And how on earth did you manage 20,000 words?

Lose my Internet service tomorrow and move on Saturday. Be back soon.

I'm back!

Hope the move went well - does this mean you are no longer living by the bayou?

No longer on the bayou. Living just off the gulf now. Was just sitting on the front porch a watching the birds play in the ocean down the road. Lovely little neighborhood. Neighbor has lived here for three generations. Brought us a cake to welcome us.

Sounds great, Wade.

I'll probably be moving again next year. I want to share a place with my younger sister. She prefers either Orlando, or Dallas Tx, she has children living in both. I've personally been considering Miami, Daytona, and Tampa, in addition to Orlando, where I lived for three years during the late 70s.

There's also this idea in the back of my mind of moving to the panhandle, somewhere along the Florida Gulf Coast. I've lived by beaches most of my life and kind of miss the tides and salty air and have always loved what I've seen of the Gulf. This time next year we might be neighbors!

The water of the panhandle is gorgeous. We're a little different here, being both beach and river delta. The local marine scientists like to refer to the Pascagoula river system as America's toilet bowl. All the fertilizers and other run-off work their way down here and is probably the main reason for the large dead zone out in the gulf. The Pascagoula is the last unimpeded major river system in the lower 48 states. It's also dubbed the Singing River. The Pascagoula indian tribe was peaceful, and faced with war with a encroaching and brutal tribe, they committed mass suicide by walking into the river, singing. In the area, you can't turn around without running into something named after the river. It's very confusing. I work for Singing River Services, and you can imagine my bewilderment went I drove into town for the interview.

Singing River (Mental Health and IDD) Services
Singing River Health Systems
Singing River Mall
Singing River Electric
Singing River Federal Credit Union
Singing River Animal Clinic
Singing River Yacht Club
Singing River Opera Company
Singing River Soccer Association
... etc.

Newcomers tend to assume we're all somehow connected.

That's reminds me of being stationed outside San Antonio at Lackland AFB. We'd take the bus to town and everything withing miles of the famous site was either named Alamo, Sam Houston, Davey Crocket, etc & etc. Poor Santa Anna was left out entirely. Unfair as it was his horrible generalship that made the whole thing possible.

I have something of an idea about what you're talking about, the area of NJ I lived in during my marriage was filled with marshland and deltas and all the rest. It was definitely a swamp. And the beach was within walking distance.

Most of my life was spent in NYC and Long Island. There are very marshy areas just east of New York City, along the coastline. I hope your neck of the woods doesn't smell the way those places did. And yet there would be many very old wooden houses, some of them mansions and hotel, still standing when I was a child looking at them from the back window of our family car during the middle and late 1950s. I used to wonder what they did for drinking and bathing water, because the coastal and marsh waters didn't look very appealing.