Coming Out - Reversing the Lie

For National Coming Out Day and dedicated to PFLAG - Here's my little award winner.

No Irish Need Apply

a Novella by Edward C. Patterson 

“ This book is multi-faceted in that it describes in great detail the impact this love story has on all of the characters in the story. ” 

“ This is a great book if you want to get a perspective on what it would be like to be so different in high school; you're more than alone but estranged. ” 

“ In his novel No Irish Need Apply, Mr. Patterson breathes life into the characters and the dilemmas they face. ” 

No Irish Need Apply http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0012NOW44 on the Kindle

also on the Nook, Sony, Kobo, Dieselbooks and the Apple iPad

available in Paperback on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1434893952

and at Barnes & Noble

Fishing the Ocean Dry

"Some days the fish bite and the fisherman is happy. Some days they laugh at him, and he sits on the shore and pouts. But no matter how many fish he catches, there is always more laughing from beneath the waves. So he sighs and whistles and baits the hook again, casting with his best lure. Flounders dream — dreams flounder."
- Edward C. Patterson (me) from Extempore Thoughts of the Day included in - A Reader's Guide to Author's Jargon 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006K66C0

The Imagination Runs Wild

When I was in the Army, I was stationed in Grafenwöhr, Germany and there was this woods - as spooky as you can imagine just outside the town - Hansel and Gretl spooky. When I would walk through it, my imagination would run wild with every Grimm story that my active mind could conger. So it should come as no surprise I would encapsulate those spooky mind roves with authobiographical material into a novel - and with 9 5-star reviews, and the Halloween holiday approaching, let me get your mind juices flowing too.

The Road to Grafenwöhr http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004QGYBKE

 

from the author of Surviving an American Gulag, No Irish Need Apply, Look Away Silence and The Jade Owl Legacy series.

PFC Quincy Summerson begins his military adventure in 1968 in Bavaria realizing that his presence stirs the paradigm - the thin line between twilight and night. His hyperactive imagination gets the better of him, and soon the world enlists him for a predestined purpose - to travel on the road to Grafenwoehr, where the wood is alive with myth and folk lore.

Set in a tense Cold War atmosphere during both the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Vietnam call to arms, The Road to Grafenwoehr is one man's emotional journey to square nature's justice with humankind's disregard for it. It’s a summons for a least likely and reluctant champion. But those called to service rarely choose where they serve. They just answer it, ripening to their purpose. For Quincy Summerson, a hero’s life is not his choice, but can he ignore the call? Can he stay off the road once the twilight snares him?

The author writes: "The Road of Grafenwöhr owes its existence principally to my own good fortune to be stationed in Germany and that bustling Bavarian town between 1967-68. Although the work is far from autobiographical, most of the events of a historic and pictorial nature (and even some used for the fantasy) are recounted from my direct experiences. Such is the web we weave.

During the last days of authoring this work, my father passed away. Therefore, this work is dedicated to his memory and also to the memory of all the brave heroes who — from Bastogne to Peleliu — have made our world possible through their sacrifice."

“ The plot is very tight and the storyline moves. ” Todd A. Fonseca  “ "Road" is a fascinating mix of reality and fantasy woven together with writing that can turn lyrical or gritty with the twist of a phrase. ” Dana Taylor  “ The added specter of Vietnam during the era of this book gave it another layer. ” Doug DePew  

Watching the Sky through the Branches

If you don't manage change, change will manage you.

When I thought about this (and how many times in my life I had to face change's awful and graceful moments) I came to the conclusion, I've become an expert on the subject of change. Through trial and error and tribulation, I've managed to wash up and wash out with life's most harrowing and delightful moments. In this I'm not unlike you or you or you and even . . . you. Still, if there's any subject, with supporting details from life's experiences, that bears sharing among the human species, it is how to manage change.

Now I can hear the scoffers ask whether it's loose change or pocket change, but despite the frivolity lurking in mockery's halls, an understanding of the topic is the key for shooting this rapid we call existence. In fact, and this is my own personal observation (ye ol' IMHO), self-worth is defined in terms of how we manage change in our lives. If we bob around the sphere like a weather vane, blown by the wind, we're bound to be bullied by circumstance. However, if we make the same gyration like compasses with an eye on magnetic north, we can hold our ground and spit in the bully's eye.

The first thing to know about change is that it is . . . changeable — nothing truly steady or eternal. So to ride the bucking bronco of relocation, employment shifts, retirement, financial earthquakes, marriage, birth, death, spilled coffee and the passing panoramas of vacations come and gone (not to mention the heartbreak of psoriasis) we must find a place to ponder — to make sense of the senseless. You must find a place within yourself — within your imagination — a place that doesn't change. A fixed place. Retreating there, you can savor change like dishes at an Roman banquet, selecting and rejecting that which fits self cultivation. For me that place isn't a beer garden, but a quiet one — a place under a wisteria tree, where I can look up and see the sky through branches. Each branch is filled with blossoms — the sum of my life experience, and hung so I may consider their fragrance in the light of new challenges and opportunities. It's a place to take resolve.

So from under the wisteria tree, I emerge to share my views on change management and will try my hand at it over the breadth of this blog. I'll dispense good advice and bad advice and sometimes no advice. However, like all things known and shared, I have a legacy — a collection of nuggets stored beneath my sanctuary — a bastion monument warding off change's finality.  My blog is new, but the subject is old, reflecting a myriad of possibilities afforded by change — the bully, if we let it push us around.


Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net