If anyone has had any problems with the site this last week or so, it’s because it was being moved. It has now settled into its new home and most of the bugs should be gone. We should be happy right here for any future I can see.

I just got back from a family trip back to my old home town, Boise, Idaho. I had a cousin die suddenly, and since there were only five of us to start with, I wanted to go. This cousin was six or so years older than me and I never really knew him. As people said at his funeral, he was a very nice person, very gentle. That was my opinion of him as well the few times I was around him. In reality, he was a casualty of Vietnam. He came back from that war and never recovered or got the help he really needed to recover, even though he managed to have three seemingly wonderful children and now grandchildren. Vietnam killed him very early in life just as surely as putting a bullet through his heart. It just took him a number of decades to die.

And that concerns me a great deal for this new generation of fighters. I hope they get better help than the Vietnam vets got.

My family, on a number of sides, were pioneers into Idaho way, way back. And my sister got all the memory dished out in the family and is doing a wonderful job of researching all the family history and making sure it is remembered. So after the funeral, she took my mother and me and her daughter on a tour of the old pioneer cemetery in Boise, showing us pictures of who was under each very old gravestone. Fascinating stuff, such as a brother of a great grandfather of mine, was killed at the age of sixteen in the 1890s while on horseback playing chicken with Boise’s first streetcar.

Another family member started and owned the rock quarry near town that all the stone for the Idaho Capital Building was taken from, and he did a lot of the building of the major state buildings. History of Idaho stuff like that while walking through a cemetery talking about family history with three generations of the few members left of that family. That was enjoyable.

That experience, seeing family, and a couple of wonderful dinners with good friends made the quick trip actually fun, even though the reason for going was not. Now I’m back in my office overlooking the Pacific Ocean and getting ready to go back to work. I will have up a new Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing chapter in a few days. And as the years go by, I will be writing books and stories under some of those old family names, as I have already done a few times. For example, Kris and I wrote some books, and I wrote a young adult series of books under the name Sandy Schofield. Thanks to my sister, I now know exactly where the Schofields are buried and have my memory refreshed on what they looked like.

On the running and weight side, since I promised I would update that here as well, the running is starting off slow, as I planned, more walking and other exercise than any running at the moment. But I am staying on my weight loss of two pounds per week and am now down where running won’t kill my old knees. So all is on track for running the marathon next fall over in Boise. More updates as the winter goes onward and I drop even more weight and pick up distance.

A few of the workshops over under the workshop page are getting close to being full and starting a waiting list. If you any interest in attending any of the workshops, just write me off list with “writers workshops” on the subject line and I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have. I’ll update the status of each workshop and talk about each later this fall.

It’s good to have this site in a new home. Thanks Scott and Allan for all the help. And it feels great to be home tonight with the sound of the surf hitting the beach. Even though Idaho is my old family home. I like it here just fine.

Cheers, Dean