Featured This Month


 

!!COMING SOON--IN TOPEKA!!

             In the next three weeks I am scheduled for two library discussions of two novels published this past year: at the Mabee Library at Washburn, Tuesday, November 23rd, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m., and at the Topeka Public Library (as a Sunday After- noon with a Kansas Author) December 5th, from 2:00-3:00.


      Cry to Dream Again--front      Bob Woodley      Cry o Dreqm Again--back

   
             I plan to open with a preview of coming attractions: my seven-year-old niece, Anastasia, reading the first story, "Benny Bunny's Berry Pie," from a collection of eight of my children’s stories that was to be published by my brother Russell’s The Cider Press by Thanks- giving (it obviously won’t be, but is on line at www.theciderpress.com).

        Then I plan to discuss his own novel, The Bridge of Dreams, which is also on line (at www.thebridgeofdreams.com), particularly the first two chapters that I read to you on line, as I do the sonnets that open each of the 24 chapters,  also available on a disc prepared by my grandson, Alexander, a senior at Topeka West High School.

             Then I will discuss the novel published this last month (by The Cider Press), Bob Woodley’s Cry to Dream Again, his Master’s Thesis at KU in 1962.  Bob was my office mate for 13 years (until he died in the summer of 1976, while I was spending the summer in Japan).  I still say he was the closest friend of my life. I will be talking mostly about the problems of preparing a 48-year-old manually typed thesis for publication as a book comparable to my own The Bridge of Dreams, and why the maps of Africa were chosen for the cover.

         I will close by reading a single sonnet from the 90-some in The Collected Sonnets of Robert N. Lawson (published by The Woodley Press, in 2004, as companion text to my novel), chosen by the winner of a drawing to win a free copy of that book.

            Everyone is welcome to attend either presentation.