The Wedding Crasher

Like a child on Christmas morning, he had vast expectations. But, alas, he didn't know those dreams were destined to be dashed to pieces on the curb of disappointment.

The wedding was a modest affair, held on a public beach with a small handful of people present. The young couple was excited to be officially beginning their life together, and the agenda was very relaxed. All that created the perfect opportunity for a wedding crasher to drop in. And that is what he did.

He showed up at first with some small talk and was probably more than a little under the influence already. We were preoccupied and did not notice the persistent hovering in the distance as the brief ceremony progressed. When the eleven of us gathered around the picnic table for sandwiches, the crasher made his move.

He invited himself to some cake, which was yet to be iced or cut. We offered him real food, but he declined. Once the cake was cut, someone took him a slice, and that was to be the end of it. Except it was not the end of it. A few minutes later, he returned and said, in so many words, that we had breached a hospitality protocol.

It turned out that the poor man was parched!

As we recognized our faux pas, my dear wife reached for the two pitchers and offered the fellow a drink of his choice. And that's where his expectations got shattered.

Evidently, earlier in the morning, his imbibing had been interrupted by the local beat officer who made him pour out his “drink.” It turns out that certain spirits are not permitted on the public beach, either by local ordinance, or park code, or something.

So the poor man, recognizing he was dangerously close to sobriety, spotted a wedding going down. He took prompt action and it might have actually worked, except for one problem. We had only water and lemonade.

When offered those choices, his amicable antics dissolved. Coldly refusing either choice, he stalked off. He looked as offended as a ten-year-old unwrapping a corncob at Christmas.

I don't know if there is a moral to this story, but the irony certainly had a high amusement value to me.

The Well Paved Road

We are not all intended to travel that proverbial well-paved road through life. In fact, some people do not travel well on those ultra-smooth, perfectly banked speedways. Those folks are certainly the minority, but they are bound to take the lesser roads, the roads that have long stretches of gravel, steep hills, and fewer amenities. The thing is, it suits them and they are happy.

Then there is that fringe element, such as myself, who only fit into that Awkward Few category. We are destined to take the rugged goat trails through the mountains of adversity in our life adventures. We tend to eschew conventional comforts and embrace the peculiar challenges of daily living on the edge of disaster.

Those are metaphorical descriptors, of course, of life choices in general, and the way we approach our work and home in particular. I assume you all caught that. But this is not intended to be a deeply philosophical or spiritual treatise.

This is actually an introduction. An introduction to the next generation of Hodges that have chosen the path of adventure over convention. The funny thing about a life of adventure is, there is no map. You get to make it up as you go. The down side is, there is no map, you have to make it up as you go.

So I welcome my son, Josiah, and his daring bride, McKinley, into the uncharted world of ad-libbed life. They are starting out today on the road as musicians/performers. They will be busking around the country this summer. To my "Dad sense," it's a little nerve-wracking. But to my sense of adventure, it is exhilarating.

So I invite you to share in their adventures. They can be found on Facebook at the following link:

Josiah and McKinley Hodge

3 - 2 - 1 - We Have Ignition

Wrath of the Falcon has launched!

How's that for a double metaphor? 

Okay, getting back to business. Wrath of the Falcon is in print and is now released on Amazon. It is also available to order through your local book retailer. If you are in my neck of the woods, you can get a copy through me.

And ... if you are in the "way up north" country, you can get a copy of Wrath of the Falcon or any of my other titles at the Cook Timber Days Festival! Yes, folks, you read that right. If you happen to be in the vicinity of Cook, Minnesota, on the weekend of June 10 - 12, you can purchase any of my titles at the Timber Days celebration.

Quantum Mechanics in Writing

Or, How to Never Get Enough Sleep

Let's begin with the known anomalies of physics. I'm not talking about wormholes or parallel universes. Those are inconsequential postulated theories. I'm talking about hard facts that don't line up with the known laws of physics. These abnormalities would include things like toast always falling jelly-side down and the magical attraction white clothing has for pizza sauce and grape jelly.

In writing, the primary physics-bending phenomena is, The amount of time it takes to wrap up a book is inversely proportionate to the amount of time available.

It's absurd. But, sadly, it is the truth. Logically, it seems like all the other steps taken should reduce the end-of-process workload. But it does not.

Then there is the boomerang effect. That is when you throw a ball into a time portal (of course they exist) and it returns through a different portal and smacks you in the back of the head.

The boomerang effect happens with the Boathouse Mouse books, because I write them, and edit them, and change them, and so forth (you get that part). Then I send them to Shawna for illustrating. We try not to have a rigid deadline, because we do not want to force-feed the process. So I don't know when they will actually return.

The odds of a Boathouse Mouse book returning for editorial review at the same time a Kingdom of the Falcon book is being wrapped up is approximately 9.73x10²³ to 1 against such an occurrence. It's like having all the stars in the universe aligning and synchronizing their frequencies. Obviously, that is not possible. But, it happened.

The good news to all of that is, Wrath of the Falcon will be available for purchase June 1st. And Boathouse Mouse, Book 2, The Cat and the River Thames, will be only a few weeks behind that.

Next up, I may write a fiction series on how to get enough sleep.

My Excuse to Write

It all started back in 2006. Our eldest was a little over a year out from her college graduation, and it occurred to me that I had no good ideas for her as a gift. With a seven-second audit of our finances, I was able to determine that we had exactly no money available to work with, so I plunged into "Plan B."

"Plan B" was to write her a family history. It seemed like an innocuous enough plan. Only, my pen did not cooperate. Not even a little. Every time I put the ballpoint close to the paper, that mischievous pen would signal my brain to write something else.

A story idea kept slipping into my mind about a profound, horrifying self-sacrifice by someone to save the life of another. So I set about writing that story. Only, I never got to the aforementioned part in that first book. As it turned out, Blood Trail of the Falcon (Book 1) set off a series of four books written as college graduation gifts for each of my kids.

This past week, we celebrated Josiah's college graduation from Visible Music College. As you can see by the gold tassels, he graduated with honors, and you can also see he received his book, Wrath of the Falcon.

At long last, my story-inspiring event has been put into print. It only took me four books to get it there.

For fun, scroll down and watch the video Josiah made as his graduation self-introduction. Turn up the sound and enjoy the action and the word play.