Fact, Fiction, & Me

Writing the novel "Ten Thousand Secrets National Park" has been a good way to share what I have learned about politics and human nature in my many years as a fact-based community organizer for environmental protection. Scroll down to 2015-6 blog entries to view synopsis, excerpts and back story. There will be at least a second book in this series, once TThSNP is published (my present task).

Meanwhile, my day job as exec director of a Finger Lakes, NY watershed protection nonprofit made its own demands, so I set aside the novel for a while to - with the help of hundreds - compile, edit and write the 2017 Cayuga Lake Watershed Restoration & Protection Plan, which can be read/downloaded here: http://www.cayugalake.org/files/all/clwrpp_2017_final_4_30_17.pdf . Several people have commented on how strangely readable this report is, for which I give full credit to the different writing muscles developed and flexed during my novel writing process, leading to a felicitous interplay between fact and fiction.

During this fact-focused two-year period I also wrote and had published a scholarly article about water resources and protection in New York State and the Commonwealth of Kentucky, two of the places I know and love best. You can scroll down to view the Abstract (I love writing abstracts) of "Whose Water Is it?" and contact me if you'd like a pdf of the full article. Or maybe you have access to the May 2016 issue of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology 75 (3)! I tried to provide a link to the full article, below, but I am not supposed to do that per my terms of publication (I did not pay), so you cannot view the entire article here.

So now, in mid-April 2018 when trouble is hitting the fan in Washington DC and elsewhere, I encourage you to have another look at "Ten Thousand Secrets National Park," which fits these times like a tailored wet rubber glove. Please send me words of encouragement as I strive to get it published and out there for you and others to enjoy. Thank you.