Albatross

A humorous, intelligent novel concerning the pitfalls of honesty.

Greg Watson was just a regular enough school teacher fellow when, in order to quit taking debilitating pills to control his high blood pressure, he began to practice Hush Meditation. It worked. His numbers dropped to normal and his love life rose back to normal. All was well until, during meditation, a strange little man in a monk's cowl appeared and directed him to shoot a crossbow arrow into a tiny sector of his own brain. (Hence, the title, Albatross.) "What have I done?" Greg asked. "Oh, nothing much. You've only disabled your mind's ability to create bullshit." The consequence of this communicative impairment was catastrophic. Absolute honesty loses Greg his wife, his friends, and his job. Though this may seem a bit on the serious side, in fact, it is an uplifting and imaginative tale of farce, surrealism, and heartfelt truth written with a storyteller's craft and a poet's touch.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided to become a writer. Just goofing around with words in class one day, I wrote a somewhat imperfect haiku. It was Miss Henneke’s ancient history class and, aptly enough, as quiet as a tomb. I was drifting away during study time and out of the dim void this poem came to me: Still pond in the woods. Flawless surface spoiled by the rain that feeds it. I passed it over my shoulder to my friend Mike Nolan. He read it and then, in a booming deep voice, he shattered the stillness of that room. He said, “Wow!” So, for over five decades now, I have been writing poems, stories, novels, essays . . . you name it . . . all in quest of "Wow!" Eight published books and trunks of copy later, I am ever more passionate in my drive to take the leap of literature from my being to the world.