Get a Job!

Owen and Amelia are in camp together -- finally! -- and I'm getting a preview of what my life will be like in six weeks when Amelia joins Owen in elementary school.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Amelia gets out of camp at noon, but on Monday, Wednesday and Friday she's there until 4:00, like Owen is every day. So I've got more free time than I've ever had, and have started getting serious about how I'm gonna fill that time, and, with any luck, actually earn some money in the process.

My first priority is to finish my children's subway book. I am working with an illustrator and hope to present a draft with some pictures to the licensing agent for the MBTA in the not-too-distant future. If the book gets green-lighted, there could be other projects.

Also on the writing front, I continue to work on the memoir I mentioned a while back (see May 25, 2012, "Inspiration"). I've been working on it for four months, pretty regularly, and feel like it's coming together nicely. I've gotten down the facts of the trip after listening to audio tapes and going through my journal, newspaper articles and foggy memory. I've also included details about places we visited, and places we blew past that I wished we'd visited, and brought in memories from my childhood sparked by events and places.

I still have a lot of work to do to incorporate larger themes into the work, something I've begun but realize is going to take a bit of time. Unlike with my first book -- still available for sale here -- I plan to have a few sets of eyes look at my memoir.

I hope to get it out next year as an e-book.

That book probably won't make me any money, but reading other people's books (and my own) might earn me a living.

My mother-in-law, Rose, has told me over the years that I have a good radio voice. Recently, she suggested I should be an audiobook reader. So I looked into that and found that Audible.com seems to always be looking for voice talent.

Those interested in the job need to submit a 2-minute sample of themselves reading a book, so I've been practicing reading my book. While doing so, I looked into the possibility of turning my book into an audiobook, and Audible offers authors a chance to do that as well (apologies to my college buddy, Pete Duchesne, who last year raised the idea of doing my audiobook).

Anyway, I plan to send in an audition recording after I've done quite a bit of practice. After watching a six-minute video on Audible's web site, I realized that quite a bit goes into not only reading books -- a good voice, sure, but also good acting and diction skills -- but also producing quality audio recordings.

If that doesn't work, I could always go back to my first career: working in the Stop & Shop produce department.

Review: That Old Ace in the Hole

Newtonville Books is a great local store. When they were actually located in my adopted 'hood of Newtonville -- before their move to the tonier Newton Centre -- they for a time offered buyers of hardcover books a great deal: a coupon for a FREE used paperback.

I picked up a bunch of freebies through that offer, a few of which I've read. This week I finished Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole.

Proulx is well-known and highly regarded. She won the Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and garnered recognition for her 1997 short story, "Brokeback Mountain," which Ang Lee turned into an award-winning film in 2005.

So after pawing through lots of books by authors I'd never heard of, I was excited to find Proulx's 2002 novel about a young man sent by his new employer to the Texas Panhandle to scout locations for hog farms.

I have to say, though, that the book left me somewhat unfulfilled, as though I'd ordered the Lumberjack Special at my local diner, and instead of Canadian bacon on the side they gave me veggie bacon strips (side note: why hasn't anybody copyrighted Facon and turned it into a viable commercial product?).

Proulx fills the book with incredible descriptions of the Texas landscape:

And it was crazy country too, some of the flattest terrain on earth, tractor-chewed and rectangled, rugged breaks and plunging canyons, sinister clouds too big to see in one look, rusty rivers, bone white roads and red grass -- the oddly named bluestem."

And she populates the book with loads of colorful characters with even more colorful names, such as Freda Beautyrooms, Rope Butt and Ribeye Cluke. As a guy who discovered a love for writing in second or third grade by making up stories featuring the most ridiculous names I could think of, I chuckled at each of Proulx's way-out character names. But eventually I found them a distracting device.

The protagonist, Bob Dollar, has an appropriately generic name, as he really doesn't displace much water in the story, but seems only to serve as a sounding board for other people's opinions and ideas.

He never cares about his job at Global Pork Rind, understandably. But he feels a sense of loyalty, which he attributes to his not wanting to abandon his responsibility the way his parents left him behind as a child, with an uncle, when they took off for Alaska. The corollary just doesn't work.

I was sorely disappointed that this book just didn't seem to ever really come together. I felt as though Proulx kept stringing things along -- plots, character development, scene descriptions -- because she didn't really know how she wanted to end it.

And when the ending did come, it was with a whimper, not a bang, which I guess is appropriate given how dull a character Bob Dollar is.

Now, I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you that I didn't enjoy this book at all. I wouldn't have plowed through its 359 pages otherwise. But I wanted the book to be great, not just OK. I wanted there to be a big surprise or shock here and there, but there really wasn't.

I guess that's why I found this book in the used section, and got it for free.

Vacation Pix

Here are some shots from our recent Cape Cod vacation, as well as a few from the day after we got back, when I took Owen to a Micro/Mini Auto Show. Enjoy!

We played a lot of ping pong, which I hadn't done since I was a kid. I had a lot of fun, but not as much as Owen did.

When Owen and Max weren't playing ping pong, swimming at the beach or riding on the Cape Cod Railroad, they were side by side, using iPad train simulators.

The kids were very excited for s'mores on the grill.

Owen came up with the idea to run from the back deck of the house down the small hill to the little beach, while being timed.

Amelia had a few turns, too!

Amelia had fun playing paddle ball with Beth's mom.

Owen and cousin Max riding the rails.

View out the back of the Cape train.

Uncle Todd teaching the kids how to fish.

Amelia takes a turn.

Hanging out at a beach in Sandwich.

Owen loved throwing and skipping rocks at the beach in Sandwich.

Post-beach slushies.

View of marshes from Sandwich boardwalk.

The Sandwich boardwalk.

Owen in front of the coolest car at the Micro/Mini Car Show at Brookline's Museum of Transportation, the day after we returned from the Cape.

Owen and his buddy Walter in the coolest car.

Owen in front of a Messerschmitt.

Goin'

We're heading out to Cape Cod tomorrow, Saturday, July 7th. This will be our 10th year going to Pocasset, a small village in Bourne, just over the bridge.

Pocasset is a quiet place, but we rent a house with Beth's parents, sister and brother-in-law and their son, Max, so there are few dull moments. After renting the same place for the previous nine years, we're trying a new place this year. The house has plenty of promise, with a backyard that slopes down to a small beach on Buzzards Bay, WiFi, air conditioning, a ping pong table and plenty of room to spread out, from the pictures I've seen online.

I'll be taking pictures and posting as much as I can both here and on Facebook. Look for shots from our annual Boys' Day Out on the Cape Cod Central Railroad; the Heritage Museum & Gardens; the kids on the beach; and lots of other stuff. With any luck, I'll also get some good shots for my other blog, The Backside of America.

Keep cool....