Read the entire post on the official website of the Greek National Tourism Organisation

Today marks the 59th anniversary of the Great Ionian Earthquake. The 1953 disaster killed hundreds of people on the island of Kefalonia, destroying most of its buildings. Thousands were made homeless and forced to evacuate. The neighboring islands of Zante (Zakynthos) and Ithaca suffered similar fates.

Even though I have no family connections, the time spent investigating the event brought the tragedy close to my heart. For those not familiar, over a hundred tremors were reported in mid-August of that year, culminating in a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that lifted the island sixty centimeters. In my fictional version, I concentrate on the days of August 9, 11, and 12.

During my research, I contacted Eleni Villianou, who runs a Kefalonia history and genealogy website. She kindly provided advice on Greek customs and social conditions on the island in the fifties. I got an unexpected bonus when her husband, Dionysis, narrated an account of his experiences in the town of Lixouri during the week of the disaster.

Fourteen-year-old Dionysis Synodinos-Vallianos had been sleeping in his tree house on the morning of Sunday, August 9 when a 6.4 quake struck. His memories of that event inspired my Tree House chapter with the Katros and Matsakis children. At the time of the “Big One”, Dion was in the fields with his parents, picking grapes, while the younger children played in a pear tree. This description, of a rural scene, formed my own picture of the fictional Katros smallholding.

Dionysis was struggling with health issues in the year I finished the first draft. It took me another eight or nine months of edits before I mailed out copies for my beta readers.

I sent the manuscript to Eleni and received a reply a few months later. While I was delighted to hear that I’d captured the essence of the island, I was sad to learn that Dionysis had passed away; Eleni told me he’d been looking forward to reading my book.

Born in the US, Eleni (Elaine) has lived in Kefalonia for more than thirty years. Quite by chance, the main female character in MAGIC is an American named Elena. The fictional Elena struggles with the decision to leave the US for Greece just as Eleni did when she married Dion.

I was further touched to read in Eleni’s email that she planned a day-out with her sister-in-law on the following Saturday – the date of her wedding anniversary. They had chosen to visit the little port of Fiskardo on the other side of the island; the location where my two protagonists meet.

Eleni told me she’d be thinking of Dion and my characters too.

Thanks for sharing your memories, Dionysis. I dedicate the book to your memory.

As I prepare to publish this article, news is breaking of two earthquakes in northwest Iran. Many fatalities are being reported. My thoughts go out to the victims and their families.

Scientists at the University of Sheffield, England, say the din of lawn mowers, leaf blowers and other machines could be the cause. Maybe leaf blowers will eventually make writers extinct too.

Remember the halcyon days when sitting in the garden listening to the birdsong was a joyful pastime. Well, today, maybe less so. It seems like there’s never a time when gardening crews aren’t within earshot. Perhaps, we can come up with a mobile app coordinating their visits, then we could have leaf blower Monday’s on Mayfield Avenue or Strimmer Tuesday’s on Montana; the rest of the week could be reserved for silence.

A funny thing happened on the way to finishing my novel. At some point, leaf blowers morphed from thought-killer to wellspring of inspiration. Succumbing to writer’s block wasn’t an option, neither was cutting off an ear like Van Gogh, but who would have thought noise could bring a revelation. No longer was silence necessary to complete that tricky paragraph, on the contrary, the leaf blower became indispensible and the muse for my best work.

When dread silence descended, I’d whip out a headset and my pre-recorded leaf blower MP3s and press on. This certainly helped, but it just wasn’t the same without the dust and exhaust fumes pouring in through my open windows. To make matters worse, my building doesn’t use any power garden tools. I offered to buy the yard guy a leaf blower, even thought of hiring my own man to stand outside my window blowing imaginary leaves into the street but the building manager wouldn’t hear of it.

Back to the birds. As soon as the leaf blowing stops, the crows in the tree outside squawk and squabble. I’m not sure if they’re cheering or pleading for the leaf blower’s return, maybe it’s the only chance they get to talk to each other.

The City of Los Angeles banned leaf blowers as long ago as the last century, but thanks to courageous gardeners, defying the law, risking their freedom to operate their HARLEY DAVIDSON-LOUD gizmos, writers and telecommuters needn’t fear peace and quiet.

Who needs the songbirds, we can’t hear them anyway.

Inspired by an article in the Guadalajara Reporter

If, for some reason, leaf blowers don’t inspire you and you’d like more songbirds, the number to report illegal leaf blower use in Los Angeles is (800) 996-2489, hit option 1

I’ve found that the Japanese show a keen interest in how they are perceived in the west. I had some vague hope that I might get my novel translated into Japanese and market it as a western author influenced by Japanese literature; sort of a Japanese-Western hybrid.

My novel’s not about Japan, I’ll save that for another book, but there are earthquakes, three of them to be exact; the earthquakes that destroyed the Greek island of Kefalonia in 1953. Within hours of finishing the book – I can’t be sure how close – probably within three, a 9.0 earthquake hit Japan.

I started writing the novel back in March 2010, finished the first draft in July and went through edit after edit until I declared it finished on the evening of March 10, 2011 PST. I know this because I save each day’s work as a new file with the date included in the filename. The next morning, I uploaded the files to lulu.com and ordered ten printed copies. At some time between finishing the story on Thursday night and sending it for print on Friday morning, the Sendai earthquake happened.

I emailed some friends in Tokyo to check on their safety – yes, they were all OK. Normally I might have said “Guess what! I just finished a novel” but I couldn’t. Who, from Japan, would want to visit my web site and see Chapter 2 of the story is an account of a devastating earthquake.

One friend in particular has often recommended books to me. I’ll have to wait a while longer before mentioning mine.

Here’s a story from a few years back. I was in a hotel at Kyoto station; it was around 11:00pm. My colleague and I had just got back from a hectic day of customer visits. He turned in but I went to the hotel bar for a snack and a nightcap. The bar was almost empty; I sat at a table, ordered a bottle of wine and some hors d’oeuvres. Two Japanese men arrived and sat at a nearby table. One guy was in his sixties, the other, maybe forty; both had drunk a wee too much whisky. Somehow, we got into conversation and the older man introduced himself as Professor of Japanese literature at a Kyoto University – can’t remember which one. He was most surprised when I reeled off a bunch of classic Japanese novels that I’d read and we talked for a while. When he left, he hugged me. Here’s the cool part, when I came to pay my check, the waiter told me that the gentleman who’d  just left had taken care of it. It was over a hundred bucks. I never did get his card to thank him.

I’ll close by wishing Japan a speedy recovery. If anyone can overcome adversity, the Japanese people can.

Ganbare Nippon

I really admire the old school, typewriter authors … that must have been tough. Pens or even quills; forget about it. The amount of revisions I go through to end up with a coherent sentence – I would have given up long since. Still, with technology, I can at least make the claim that no trees were harmed in the making of the novel. Most of the book was written on a laptop, the same one that was researching the story and checking Google Earth for distances between locations. Heck, you don’t even have to visit a place anymore to use it as a location.

I edited the whole novel on an iPhone with Stanza – several times actually. Then a final edit with a Kindle. Here’s what I’d say about the two devices: The iPhone is so convenient to hold, I can read and type with one hand. When waking in the middle of the night with a new idea, I don’t have to turn on the light. The Kindle is a better reading experience but the lack of a touchscreen and virtual keyboard makes editing tough. It’s a nice device for a final read through.

I’ll get an iPad for my next novel.