Saturday, January 1, 2022

I first began writing about Arcane in the Summer of 1980 while living in Mt. Shasta with my family

 In 1980 I was 32 years old. I had survived the 50s, the 60s and the 70s up until then which was no small feat in itself with people dying around me in all sorts of ways from everything to Polio to the Viet Nam War to suicide to accidents like Rock Climbing and racing cars and overdoses and broken hearts and you name it. 

So, I felt very fortunate to still  be alive after all of that.

But, I had gotten married in 1974 a month before my son was born and we stayed together from 1973 until 1977 when we broke up in Mt. Shasta. She gave me custody of my son. Though I left shasta then I returned in 1979 to help a friend build a home who was an architect then. I brought my son with me who was 4 years old then. I met that summer the lady I was about to get together with but I thought she was taken at the time but by the time we got together all that got resolved and we married in March of 1980. We rented a big house at the corner of Lassen Lane and Old Stage Road there in Mt. Shasta and we bought two goats from the Zen Abbey where they had. goat herd and began selling goats milk and goat cheese to our friends in Mt. Shasta. 

One day I walked back from Pine Grove Health food store near where we lived then. It was an incredibly beautiful summer day and mild in temperature and the view from our front yard of Mt. Shasta was spectacular! So, I emptied our groceries into the refrigerator and starting writing longhand on the brown paper grocery bag the first few pages of Arcane that is now in Memories. Chapter two which is the chapter I start with through artistic license is now the first part of Memories which is in 11 parts now (the first 11 that I wrote between 1980 and 1989 mostly. The other things I wrote here are about characters in the Memories series in more detail: Here they are.

 

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