Prose

I was afraid this would happen. Today's bookstore is less of a field guide and more of a history.

Confounded Books

Inventory: Alternative and small press comics, self-published comics, books on the bizarre & novelties

Read more about Confound It!

An unprepossessing name for a prepossessing bookstore:

B. Brown & Associates
3534 Stone Way N.
Seattle, WA 98103

Inventory: Fine used and rare books, science fiction, horror, mystery

B. Brown and Associates sits in the middle of a shady row of three great bookstores on the south end of Stone Way, between SeaOcean Book Berth and The Seattle Book Center. Read more about B. Brown

As far as I can determine, Ballard Books is still where I said it was more than 10 years ago. This is how it looked to me then.

Ballard Books
2221 N.W. 56th
Seattle, WA 98107
206-782-0820
Inventory: Used and rare books
Hours: Mon-Sat: 10-8
Sun: 12-6 Read more about Ballard Books

A few years ago, when The Year of the Crow was only five chapters long and sitting in an old dusty file somewhere in the house, I was thinking about other, quicker ways to somehow get off the ground writing.

There's no link to A Field Guide to Bookstores. I didn't finish it. Life reared its ugly head once again. But before it did so, I had managed to visit at least three quarters of the bookstores that were in Seattle in the late '90's. I even wrote an introduction:

Introduction

I subscribe to three magazines: Parabola, Opera News, and The National Geographic Magazine. That's what it was called in 1911. I'm currently up to October of that year, scanning a piece on Brazilian coffee farms. Oh, I've got the latest issue on deck too - September 2012. But a few years ago, I saw an ad for the complete National Geographic. From 1888 to the present. Read more about The National Geographic Magazine

Ever since I self-published my first novel (click on book cover links to the right for further instructions), I have been encouraged by well-meaning writerly friends of mine to both write and read a writer blog.

Connect up with other writers, they said. Join the community. Get with the program.

So I did that, and here's what I found: writers write about themselves and, mostly, about their books. Writers want you to read their books. Here's a sample of the content on one other writer's site:

• Where to read about the book
• Where to buy the paperback

The year is 1967. Read more about Varieties of Musical Experience

I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

Thus begins Isak Dinesen's classic Out of Africa (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books) .

I know now that I will never get to Africa. That journey would require a younger, stronger me. Perhaps it's all right that some things remain a dream. Read more about Dreams of Africa

"We are going to study a problem that no one has managed to approach objectively, one in which the initial charm of the object is so strong that it still has the power to warp the minds of the clearest thinkers and to keep bringing them back to the poetic fold in which dreams replace thought and poems conceal theorems. This problem is the psychological problem posed by our convictions about fire. It seems to me so definitely psychological in nature that I do not hesitate to speak of a psychoanalysis of fire."

Some writers write about inspiration. I have ideas, but the writing itself? I couldn't pin down an inspiration for the life of me. The stuff drops off my fingertips. I'm not always sure where it comes from. Maybe it's in the wrist action.

I do have a couple of cautionary tales. Tales that tell me, don't worry about perfection. Just write the next word and keep going. Then go back and fix it. You don't want to be Joseph Grand or Larry Donner. Read more about Camus & Crystal