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      • The Sacred Act of Reading
        06/26/08
        “Then there were times when you had to write. Not conscience. Just peristaltic action. Then you felt sometimes like you could never write but after a while you knew sooner or later you would write another good story. It was really more fun than anything. That was really why you did it. He had never

      • The Guest House
        06/22/08
        The Book Passage Blog, 7 of 7

        I will tell you a secret in this last entry of mine here at Book Passage. I will tell you how I persevered through hundreds of days of confusion and doubt. I discovered (through an incredibly serendipitous moment) that I had a spiritual guide who seemed to be

      • Phototropism - The Book Passage Blog Part VI
        06/21/08
        "The truth of my writing – the spiritual truth for which I write – is all that darkness, so clear in its depth that there is, like God in eternity, no seeing to the end of it." David Plante

        I had never dreamed of writing a novel. I wanted to write stories. I began by writing sho

      • The Joy of Reading Aloud - Book Passage Part IV
        06/20/08

        Now that I’m drawing nearer my reading at Book Passage I am nervous. I wonder if anyone other than my wife and children will be there to hear me read. Serpent Box is my first novel so I have not done many readings. Those I have done were attended by few. This is to be expected. No one knows wh

      • Staggering Sextillions of Infidels
        06/19/08
        The Book Passage Blogs: Part IV

        "If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the co

      • Groping Your Way in Faith - The Book Passage Blog Part 3
        06/18/08
        How does a story form? Somehow, disparate words and images coalesce into something that resembles narrative thought. Stories are mysterious things. Stories that do not come directly from our actual lives are even more mysterious, they’re mystical.

        Often I am asked how I, a New Yorker, w

      • Wordlessness - Part 2 of the Book Passage Blogs
        06/17/08
        This is the second entry in the Book Passage series that I re-post here leading up to my appearance at the famed Book Passage book store in Marin County, CA...

        "From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot kno

      • Writing as Religion - The Book Passage Blog
        06/16/08
        Dear Readers:

        I am re-posting here my daily blog entries on Bookpassage.com, which I am doing courtesy of Book Passage leading up to my appearance there this coming Sunday. Please forgive the duplication, but I would like all SerpentBlog readers to have a chance to read what I feel is an

      • Nebraska, After the Rain
        06/15/08
        People will often ask me, why did you write this book? Why did you put yourself through that? And those are difficult questions, and all the more difficult when I ask them of myself, for I often feel lost and lose track of my true intentions, my reasons for writing. Why do I write? Why do I tell sto

      • Welcome to Tornadoville
        06/12/08
        I spent my first night in Nebraska under a tornado watch, with the rain blowing sideways and hail the size of lima beans. Much of southeastern Nebraska was under tornado warnings until late last night and we were not far from that boy scout camp in Iowa. The storm was spectacular. I stood outside be

      • Nebraska
        06/09/08
        I am going back to Nebraska. I was there one time, on my second journey cross country. I had with me then my dog and two cats.

        I pulled over at a truck-stop off of I-80, probably just inside Kimball County. I remember it was a Sunday morning but the place was packed. I sat alone of cours

      • Being BEA
        06/03/08
        Imagine being surrounded by thousands and thousands of books. Envision yourself browsing through books that nobody has seen yet – novels, art books, books of gorgeous photographs and prints. There are dictionaries and encyclopedias, Bibles and Koran’s, books on comic art and movie art and cooking an

    • May