East Southeast France, Summer 2024

East Southeast France, Summer 2024

Morning Coffee, our view This summer 2024 in SSE France has been exquisite. Cloudless skies, soft breezes, flowers blooming in succession.  Morning fogs descend the hills burning off by 9AM.   Heavy rains in April and May burst a dam far upstream, flooding some houses...
A Park for all Seasons

A Park for all Seasons

Terrace of Parc Joly An American in France Les Français au Nouveau Monde The Parc Joly, Semur-en-Auxios, Cote d’Or, France, renders me nostalgic. I am a volunteer, my specialty mortarless stone wall construction. In 1965, the summer before I left for the university, I...
When is it as good as it can be?

When is it as good as it can be?

 I have finished composing novel # 5, the working title Resurrection, the last book in The Long War series. These five novels follow two men and two women, American and Russian, from their mid-teens to a denouement during the breakup of Yugoslavia.     They...
The Netherlands, 2-12 February 2024

The Netherlands, 2-12 February 2024

 Dutch friends, Dick S. and Sandra D., offered Patrice and me their country house in Middelharnis. It was a ‘two birds with one stone’ opportunity. We had finished our move from the apartment in Semur-en-Auxios to the farmhouse in Chevigny thus we could count as a...
Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

Grabovac, Plitvice Lakes, and a novel During the week 18-24 October 2023 Patrice and I visited Croatia’s Plitvice Lakes region to 1). take a one-week vacation and 2) to ‘ground truth’ a chase scene which concludes my fifth novel, Resurrection.  Sixteen Lakes, the...