The Summer of God

While I think May turned out one of my better blogging months, I have to say it was one of the worst months where my writing was concerned. For a variety of reasons that could probably fill an entire blog, life was just too bloody stressful this past month. Usually, writing has offered me a refuge for tough times, but this was one case where it just wasn’t happening. I’m happy to say that things seem to be on the upswing right now, and I suspect May’s drought will deliver a deluge for June.

Even though I plan to reinvigorate my writing this month, I won’t be neglecting my lair… or should I say lairs? For now, I’m still maintaining my parallel blog on Blogger… which I think has worked out well. Last month offered me plenty of good material with my tribute to John Williams’ scores for the “Star Wars” films and “Dust Jacket” entries focused on books I read a long time ago in cities far, far away from Richmond, Virginia.

The idea of monthly themes seems to work well for my blog, and as I finish reading the offbeat mystery Cat Seeing Double by Shirley Rousseau Murphy, I plan to get rather serious for the month of June. The focus, both of the next book I plan to read and this month’s “Dust Jackets” entries will be religion. As I mentioned last month, I received a copy of an autographed advanced reader’s copy of Javier Sierra’s The Secret Supper. While the book was not inspired by Dan Brown’s infamous The Da Vinci Code, one can safely assume the publisher hopes to cash in on the strong interest in religious conspiracies that’s gripped America’s readers.

So what books can you expect to find in my “Dust Jackets” entries? Well, I’ll finally do a review of The Da Vinci Code. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the book has found mentions aplenty within my blog. Perhaps my review will finally put that to an end (riiiiiiiiiight). The other books you can expect include End of Days (no connection to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film) by Dennis Danvers and This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti. I also plan to do a “Dust Jacket” on The Medici Dagger by Cameron West. The book doesn’t so much deal with religion as Leonardo Da Vinci, so this will be the “wild card” among my “Dust Jackets” for this month.



My “High Notes” entries will shy away from the religious theme, opting for a theme of their own. This month’s entries will focus on the music created for the Jack Ryan films based on Tom Clancy’s books. For those not up on their Clancy, those films include “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” Yes, there’s a fourth one, “The Sum of All Fears,” but I don’t own that particular score. Finances-willing, I might spare the ten dollars needed to download the entire score off of Buy.com, but I’ll have to wait and see.



Some have probably noticed Frank spends a lot of time hanging out with my son Liam. That has more to do with my son not being in school and my daughter still finishing up her school year. In the interest of “equal time,” I’ll see if I can’t let my daughter go an a little adventure with Frank this month.

As you can see, I plan to keep busy this month. I’ll also update you a bit on how things are going as the countdown to the 2006 James River Writers Conference continues. Talk about something to make me stress! As I look back on this entry, I suppose I’m selling my writing a little short, but I’ll explain why in a later entry.