A new relationship

After a decade-plus relationship, we've decided to part ways.
It wasn't because things weren't working. I just decided the time was right for something different. So I told my 1999 Toyota Corolla, 'It's not you, it's me.'
This was after the dear soul hung on for dear life to get me to the Toyota dealership. It was a white-knuckle final ride up the Maine Turnpike to Augusta. With my muffler and entire exhaust system being held up by a coat hanger,  my gas tank running dangerously empty and tempting fate with any old part on that aging bucket of bolts just waiting to give way, I held my breath and patted the dashboard lovingly as I inched my way closer and closer to my Corolla's final destination.
Since then, I have a new love. A black beauty that is quite RAVishing. I traded in the Corolla for a more powerful Toyota cousin, the RAV4.
While I'm thrilled with the purchase and trying not to think about the debt I've just placed on my meager finances, I can't help but think fondly on those many years me and my Corolla spent together.
Right from the first day, that car taught me a lesson.
 I went to Prime in Saco on a Saturday morning in the fall of 1998. I didn't really have the intention of buying a car that day. They happened to call my bluff and gave me a price I couldn't resist. I had perused the choice of cars and picked out a nice blue color on that cloudy day. Two days later, it was a bright sunny Monday and I discovered that the car I had bought wasn't blue but teal green. I made a mental note to never buy a car on a cloudy day.
I proved I learned my lesson this week. I test drove my RAV4 on a nice sunny day and bought the black SUV in the rain the following day.
I had over a decade of great memories with that Corolla. I kind of wish I could keep it around like an old abandoned row boat and make a planter of out, but as much as I loved that car, I didn't mind sending it on its way. I want to remember it in its prime.
It was a spunky a little number. It could be fun to drive. It had some zip. It was a fun little fling while it lasted, based on simple reliability, economy and fitting into the parameters of my life at that time.
The RAV4 feels more like a grown up car. It has just about everything except bells and whistles. I waited years to have a car with a CD player in it, but now I don't need one because I have a car with an IPod jack in it. It has 10 air bags (11 if you include me). I sit it in and hear the Pursuit of Happiness song  "I'm an adult now" racing through my head. It has space for all the things my life needs to make space for - from people to all the stuff George Carlin often talked about. It has a seriousness about it - like serious power and acceleration with a V6 engine.
Still, it is difficult to move on from one you've loved and lost.
One of my favorite adventures with the Corolla was the day the town of Wiscasset  made pieces of Maine history available to the public. The old schooners, the Hesper and Luther Little, had rested and rotted in the river for decades. They were icons for those that drove Route 1 on a regular basis. Time had taken its toll on them though. What hadn't broken apart and washed away was dredged up and dumped at the transfer station. Word was sent out that anyone interested in souvenirs of these two beloved vessels, could rummage through the debris on a particular fall morning.
There I was bright and early ready to load up that Corolla with ship debris. You wouldn't believe how many schooner pieces you can stuff into a Corolla. I have one bean that was a good foot thick and about one Corolla in length. I barely fit across my backseat. I swear the Corolla sucked in its gut and held its breath as I slammed the backseat doors.  I piled smaller pieces on top of it and loaded up the trunk. I dreamed of what I could have done had I had a truck, but the Corolla gave me every inch of space it could.
My plan was to put these pieces on display at our cottage in Owls Head. But I couldn't deliver them directly that day. I had to cover a playoff soccer game in Auburn that afternoon. After that game went to penalty kicks, I raced down to Portland to cover a Pirates hockey game. It wasn't until about 11 p.m. that I headed for Owls Head.
By the time I arrived, I didn't feel like emptying my car of the Hesper and Luther Little. So those pieces of maritime antiques sat in my car overnight. The next day, they were proudly put on display while the Corolla wreaked of an old ship for a couple weeks.

When I emptied my trunk before saying goodbye to the Corolla this week, there was a tiny sliver of wood way in the back. I assumed it was a piece left over from that day. I hoped it would increase the value of my Corolla but it didn't. Neither did the antique cassette tape that has been stuck in the cassette player for five or six years now.

That day is one of the great memories I have of my Corolla. There were many more miles and many more adventures I had with that car. It served me well for a good many years.
I'll feel bad that I've left that Corolla for another love. But time moves on. Life changes. Some things don't last forever, especially if its rusts in Maine weather.
There's a new excitement to this new relationship. It offers me so much more than the Corolla ever could.  I hope this new relationship endures as well as the previous one did and the adventures we share are equally memorable.
 While the Corolla is likely headed for a scrap heap somewhere, I still have its key, a lot of great memories and a great appreciation for the reliability and dedication it showed me for so many years.
And if that isn't enough to keep me smiling, my RAV4 goes really, really fast !!!

A Great Maine Writer You've Never Heard Of

At just about every one of my speaking engagements, I mention the name of one of Maine's greatest authors.
And everybody acts like they've never heard of him.
That's because most of the audiences I have spoken to have never heard of George S. Wasson.
I could say that I was related to Stephen King or E.B. White and get all kinds of oh's and ah's, but I have no connection to either of them. When I mention my link by ancestry to Wasson and his influence on my novel Sons and Daughters of the Ocean all I get are blank stares.
Wasson is part of Maine's great literary history, as was his father, yet most people have never heard of either of them. I had no idea who they were either before I began looking into my own family history.
I discovered my connection to the Wasson family in West Brooksville. My great grandmother, Sarah,  was a Douglass. Her mother, also named Sarah, was a Wasson.  The older Sarah was not only a sister to Nancy Wasson, who married into the Mills family as my great, great grandfather's second wife, but she was also the sister of David Atwood Wasson. He was a well-established Transcendentalist essayist, author and minister, whose peers were Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau.
His son George S. Wasson became an established writer as well. He wrote a handful of maritime stories. His use of dialect and his wonderful drawings that accompanied his work, made his books something unique.
One Maine magazine listed the most endearing Maine authors in its literary history. Wasson was included on the list as was poetess Celia Thaxter, another ancestor of mine.
When I began writing my first novel and chose to base it on family history and Maine's shipbuilding and merchant sailing heritage, Wasson was an obvious  part of the research. He co-authored the book Sailing Days on the Penobscot. It is probably the most complete account of the schooner industry in Penobscot Bay. I have my great grandfather's copy of that book. My first novel is loosely based on him and a character like him that ultimately goes off to sea at a teen.
Between the stories, the list of ships built along the coast, the dialect he wrote with and the historical information provided, that Wasson book was a significant foundation of my research for my novel. Reading some of his other books, like Home From The Sea and The Green Shay, gave me even more insight into that world. I subsequently used a lot of words and phrases he used in his books to bring my characters to life. Phrases like "Godfrey Mighty", "chowly and hubbily" and "a real apple-shaker" helped make my  characters feel that much more true and real.
Included in Sailing Days on the Penobscot is mention of his grandfather, David Wasson and the three-masted ship that he built. A significant part of the plot in my first novel is based on that three-master and it being the first of its kind on the Maine coast. I think he also mentions the story of George Tapley and his dying wife (my great grandfather's sister). The plot of my novel depicts a similar story based on that account.
I read a number of books that provided me great information on that age of sail, but Wasson's work was so authentic because he was there and was part of it. There was a great authenticity to his work and I feel it helped bring something similar to my writing.
There isn't a ton of information to be found about George S. Wasson or his father David Atwood Wasson. I did an online search for photos and found one of myself before I came across any for either Wasson.
A small sail boat once owned by George S. Wasson is on display at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport,Maine You can still find George S. Wasson's books for sale at various online sites. There's also a book or two about David Atwood Wasson. Because of their age, they won't come cheap. A copy of Sailing Days on the Penobscot will run hundreds of dollars.
It is too bad the work of the Wasson's have been passed over through time. It makes me all the more pleased that their work was able to influence my own. I mentioned in a previous blog the impact the work of Michael and Jeff Shaara had on my novels. Like their work, my novels wouldn't be quite the same had it not been for the work of the Wasson's. And being able to carry on their work and write about their ancestry, as well as my own, makes it feel as though I'm keeping their legacy alive.

Civil Inspiration

I had always wanted to write a novel.

I was telling stories long before I could even write. I'd stand up in front of class in first grade and tell stories, stuff I made up or scenes I had played out with whatever action figures I used the night before.

But the writing the novel goal just never seemed to materialize. There were various attempts. There are numerous notebooks tucked away in the KCM archives with partial stories I had created and gave up on.

It wasn't until I read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and the other two books in the Civil War trilogy – Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, both by Jeff Shaara – that I saw potential for a novel. And it wasn't just one, it was three.

That's how my career as an author began.

I thought I might take a look back at some of the authors that have inspired my work. Not to give away too much of the speech I deliver to various historical societies and libraries, but my novel Sons and Daughters of the Ocean and its followup, Breakwater, would never have happened had it not been for the works of the Shaara's.

It really was the movie Gettysburg that inspired it all. I first saw that film at the State Theater in Portland, with the full sound system that made every cannon boom shake the walls and ring your ears. I loved that movie, and it quickly became one of my favorites. Afterall, its historical, its has a great music soundtrack, it's about Maine and it has some family connections (my great grandfather's brother was in the 20^th Maine) – all things I like.

The movie made me want to read The Killer Angels, the book that the film was based on. After reading that, and loving it, I followed with Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure. Ted Turner later made a movie version of Gods and Generals as well.

What I liked about those books was how the author took certain major characters during that period and brought them to life. It was a non fictional tale written like a novel, not a text book. I came to learn a wealth of things about such vital historical figures like Joshua Chamberlain, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I can almost guarantee if you see me eat a lemon, I'll make some sort of Stonewall Jackson reference – because I learned that Jackson loved lemons by reading this series.

For anyone interested in the Civil War, this trilogy is a must. It inspired me to create a historical series on my ancestors that made for a must read, whether it be about the privateering age or life of a small shipbuilding community.

I subsequently read Jeff Shaara's work on the Revolution – A Glorious Cause and Rise To Rebellion. Both were written in the same style of the Civil War trilogy. They're historical novels in the truest sense. I may read them again, just to bolster my knowledge as I write my next historical novel.

During that period of time, I had spent many years researching family history. I had produced two books as a result. One was on the Mills family and another was on the life of my grandfather. I printed a batch of copies for various family members and then went looking for another project. I had unleashed the creative beast within and not had to feed it again.

I concluded that my next move was to write a novel. With all that family history swirling around in my head and the work of the Shaara's fresh on my mind, the idea of my own trilogy was born.

Sons and Daughter's of the Ocean would be first. It would be a historical novel based on my ancestors that were shipbuilders and merchant mariners in Brooksville, Maine. I'd follow that with another historical novel set during the Revolution and one of my ancestors that was a privateer. The third book would be based on the life of my grandfather or father.

I knew I had the makings of my own trilogy and went to work. As it turned out, Sons and Daughters of the Ocean was published and subsequently Breakwater followed in December. I switched up the order, which has a long story in and of itself. Sea of Liberty, a tale about the privateering age is currently in the works.

For both Sons and Daughters of the Ocean and Breakwater, there were numerous authors that inspired, informed and help shape the books that were eventually published. Just like more authors are helping as I write Sea of Liberty.

But the Shaara's came first. As a journalist, I've learned to "write what you know". I knew my family history, and the Shaara's showed me how to tell its story. Following their lead and being inspired by their work, I achieved the goal I had had for decades.

 Now if Ted Turner would just call to offer to make the movie versions, I'll be good to go.