Dear friends...

Dear friends, I just wanted to post this short note explaining why I've canceled most of my visitors lately. There are two basic reasons—my lack of energy, and my selfish focus on my writing.

Over the last year, I found that my ability to carry on conversation has become limited. The desire to converse, to laugh, to visit with you, it is still very much there inside my heart, but the energy is not. After visitors, I always feel boosted spiritually, but totally drained physically. This leads to various symptoms that are quite unpleasant, and perhaps dangerous. So, reluctantly, I have tried to limit my visitors. I sincerely apologize. I hope that you understand. I love all of you dearly... I appreciate your sincere prayers, positive thoughts and caring deeds. I promise that after my stomach tube surgery, given that I presume with better nutrition my energy level will come back – I will begin to contact each of you personally, and I will ask you to make some time in your busy schedules to come visit.

The energy that I do have, I selfishly plow into my writing three or four hours a day. I seem to be most productive from around 11 AM to 2 PM. I've got so many stories crashing around in my brain—they fight each other to come out on to the computer screen. As I've said before, when I write I escape to a completely different world – ALS is left far behind. The time goes quickly, my thoughts go on to the page in short phrases, but combine together to create stories that I love to share.

I have two projects that I'm focused on at the moment: Scarlett's Fire, a sci-fi fantasy about a terribly huge, ferocious Kraken from a far-off galaxy that is rescued by a tiny red and white banded cleaner shrimp named Scarlett. She works for the Great Creator as a curator for the Intergalactic Zoological Preservation Society. Eventually, after sharing many adventures together, the two very different species fall in love. Will they be able to live happily ever after?

The other book that I'm working on is tentatively called Broken Spirit. I'm working with a friend that I met, through cyberspace while taking an online writing course last fall. Karen Lilly is an aspiring writer like me. I gave her some assistance with her first book, Family Secrets. Over the thousands of miles, we make a great team. Broken Spirit tackles the very tragic history of Indian boarding schools—a part of the government plan to break up the Western Native American tribes. It's a part of the history of the American West that we were not taught in school. We are trying to share some of the tragic history, while showing the terrible consequences the schools had on the language, culture, and lives of Native Americans. It's a sad story, but we are mixing in suspense, crime, lots of interesting characters and the central theme that you can massacre a people, but if they keep their language and culture alive, they will ultimately survive. It should be a real page-turner.

Thank you as always for your support. I'm slowly starting to think of contacting a literary agent. So far I haven't done this, don't want to waste precious time writing inquiry letters, but the financial situation is slowly deteriorating. I'm beginning to think that I need to see if my books are marketable to a broader audience. What do you think? Do any of you know of a trustworthy literary agent that might like my work?

PS – I hope you like my most recent photograph taken without my ventilator mask so that the photo could be used for my new Hawaii's State ID (that's a whole another story...).