I read my latest short story, “At Midnight’s Stroke” Monday night to the writers’ group at the Northern Lakes Center for the Arts in Amery. This is the first piece of fiction I’ve been able to write since I began pastoring again regularly on July 1st of this year. The creativity seems to have been channeled elsewhere, rather than into fiction. Per usual, there were comments, some of which I’ll heed and others that just don’t fit my sense of where the story needs to go. This may well be the first story of Kindle book #6.
My son John helped pull the dock from the lake yesterday. The sun shone but there was enough of a breeze to stir up whitecaps on the lake and the water was damned cold. I do this little chore in my bathing suit. John and I had to retreat twice to the truck to thaw out. Marina had a delicious chicken dinner awaiting when we finished. The job took us the usual half-an-hour or so and it’s great of John to drive all the way from Golden Valley in order to spend a brief time freezing himself. I pulled the pontoon myself last week, but it turns out really to be a two-man job. I got help from some guys from Brenizer Motor Sports up in Frederic who were pulling boats and docks at Wilkins. My thanks to them!
I do have one other story semi-formed in my head. We will see if it develops into something. Meanwhile, I’m awaiting a “patience seizure” to try to format paperback #2 so it looks decent–better at least than the results with the first book, which has some technical problems that embarrass me.