Bicycling Memories of Austin, Texas

A year or so ago, I pedaled around Sun City in Georgetown, Texas for my health. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have gone quite so far the day after donating two pints of blood. Also, if I had it to do over again, I would have eaten breakfast first or at least had some orange juice. I thought about all this while parked on the side of the road trying to decide if I should call 911 or just fall down and hope someone found me.

After some deep breaths, staying close to the flower garden at the woodworking shop in case I had to throw up, I managed to get past the nausea. I had already thought of a way to hold on to the branch of a tree for support if needed. But soon, I felt better and was back on the bike heading for home.

Perhaps I was delirious, but as I rode the rest of the way (mostly downhill, by the way), I had vivid memories of bike riding as a kid. I remember sneaking off when I lived near Clarksville in Austin, so I couldn't have been more than nine years old. My friend, Bobby Bayer, went with me. We told our parents we were just going to see someone a few blocks away and we ended up in deep South Austin. I felt terribly guilty for lying to my mother. But not guilty enough to keep me from repeating the trip several more times on other days.

Those memories and reminders of the guilt I felt, made me think about Brian, the male protagonist in Where Love Once Lived. Don't forget I said I may have been delirious at the time all this was going through my head.

In the novel, Brian had been brought up in a Christian family and attended church every Sunday. What's more, he loved to go to church and continued to go while he was away from his California home attending the University of Texas. Then, he committed a sin and, even though he knew better, the guilt is so strong he believes he is being punished by God. His punishment is to be in a loveless marriage.

He drops out of church for the next thirty years. This is all leading up to my wanting to tell you this is not a biographical story. It didn't happen to me. I was brought up in a Christian home and while there were some times in my life where I missed church because Sunday mornings were the only time I could rest, I never left the church completely the way Brian did in the story.

I am still friends with some of the people I met at church as a youth and we still get together frequently. I continued to be involved in church in college and while in the marines. After marriage and kids there were times when I wasn't involved as much as I should have been, but that didn't last long. I may tell you about that period of my life someday, if I'm ever delirious again.

How about you? When did God become a major part of your life? Have you ever dropped out? What brought you back?

Marriage on Mount Bonnell

Steps leading to the top of Mount Bonnell
(Photo by Sidney W. Frost)

Here's an excerpt from Where Love Once Lived near the beginning of the scene on Mount Bonnell in Austin, Texas.

Rain covered the mountain and the whole city, and it wasn’t going to blow over in a matter of minutes, or even hours. Dark clouds hovered over their cars and blocked the sun and sky, covering them with an ominous darkness.

“Why do they have to get married out here, anyway?” Ron asked. “This is what happens when you don’t get married in church.”

“That’s silly,” Susan said. “They want to marry here because it’s special to them. It’s where they first kissed. That’s what Josh told me.”

“Really?” Liz said as she turned to face Ron and Susan. “Now, everything is beginning to make sense. Being new to Austin, I studied up on this place because of the wedding. Know what I found out? There’s a legend that says a couple who climbs to the top together will fall in love.”

“I never heard that,” Brian said. He’d hiked to the top with Karen once or twice back when they were in college.

“There’s more,” Liz said. “A second trip to the top together, so says the legend, means they’ll get engaged.” Liz’s voice got louder as she talked, and Brian knew she was getting excited. “A third time up that mountain, the story says, and there’s a surefire chance for wedding bells. Does anybody know how many times Josh and Cindy were on that magic mountain together?”

“Well, it must have been at least three times,” Susan said.

“Hogwash,” Ron said.

The weather prevents the couple from getting married on Mount Bonnell, so Brian comes up with the idea of having the ceremony in the bookmobile parked at the base of the mountain. The bride loved the idea. Here is an excerpt that follows the wedding just after they get to the cabin for the reception:

Once inside, Cindy grabbed Brian’s arm. “It was perfect, Uncle Brian. Getting married in the bookmobile was better than what we’d planned. Thank you so much.”

Brian looked at Cindy and realized how much she’d matured in the past few months. It may have been the makeup and wedding dress, but it could have been because she was married and going out on her own and saying goodbye soon to her husband as he went into the marines.

The look on her face turned serious. “When I say perfect,” she added, “you know I wish Dad had been here.”

While a student at the University of Texas, I climbed to the top of Mount Bonnell many times. Usually with my buddies, the Combine, but sometimes with a special girlfriend. We felt safe there back then. If you go today, you'll see a sign saying to beware of crime in the area. I'm sure Mount Bonnell has a special place in the hearts of many Austinites. In Kit Frazier's Dead Copy, there is a scene on Mount Bonnell that describes the area perfectly.

When Did You First Become Interested in Writing?

I've been interviewed several times since my first novel, Where Love Once Lived, was published and one of the questions often asked was "When did you first become interested in writing?"

My earliest memory of writing is when my sister, Barbara Cagle, decided we would publish  a neighborhood magazine. We were living on Pete's Path in Austin at the time, so I had to be about twelve years old. She had written and produced some neighborhood plays several years before this when we lived on Josephine Street in South Austin.

But, my involvement as a writer didn't occur until the magazine phase. By publish, keep in mind that the magazine was handwritten and each copy was handwritten as well. So there wasn't a wide distribution and the magazine only last for a summer. When school started we were too busy to continue it. But I remember getting to write and I remember the encouragement from Barbara.

She also told me I had to keep a journal of all the movies I went to see. We included movie reviews in the magazine as well as news about our neighbors. I remember getting a spiral notebook and on one side I pasted the ad for the movie clipped from the newspaper. On the other side was the movie review itself. I wish I still had that spiral notebook. It was lost in a heavy rain that flooded my basement bedroom years later while I was away in the Marine Corps. I lost all my precious books in that storm, but that's a story for another time.

I had the writing bug from then on. Aptitude tests showed an interest in creative writing, but my school counselors said I should think of it as a hobby since few people made a living from writing. So, I ended up majoring in computer science and wrote for the fun of it, including a novel written about my time in the marines that was never finished.

I also wrote short stories. Only one was published, but it was a thrill to see it in print. Much of the writing I did was as a part of my jobs as a computer programmer and systems analyst. I was called on to do the reports, or apply for grants, and I learned my writing gave me a way of persuading others that I couldn't do face to face.

I published one computer book, Automated Law Office Systems, but it was short lived due to the rapid changes in computers.

I realize this would be too long an answer to the question posed at the beginning, but there you have it. And, by the way, my sister is still writing. She had a funny article published in the Sunday magazine of a Houston paper and she has placed in writing contests as well.

Thank you, Barbara.

Making Dreams Come True – Part 1

On a recent Sunday morning, my pastor talked about the gap between where we are and where we want to be in our spiritual journey, and how we usually know what needs to be done to close the gap. However, more often than not, we fail to take the required action. Since this sermon followed a sermon on giving, I suspect the pastor was sneaking in another stewardship talk to get us to give more. That is, close the gap between what we think we should give and what we actually give. But, I'm just guessing. He didn't mention giving at all. In fact I'm not sure what he said next because I couldn't get my mind off the idea of taking action to close the gap. I realized this idea could apply to most life situations, such as jobs, marriage, parenting, and all aspects of life. This reminded me of a time in my life when I was nudged by another sermon to take action and do what I'd always dreamed of doing.

My dream was to write a novel.

I did more than dream.  I started two novels back in the 1960's. One about my experience in the Marines Corps and the other about a bookmobile librarian who traveled around town helping people. I wrote five or six chapters of the first one and a chapter or two of the second one. At the time, however, I was too busy raising kids and working to take do much more.

Many times over the years I'd get the writing bug and try again. I did get a short story published as well as a non-fiction computer book along with a bunch of non-fiction articles. But the novel idea eluded me to the point where I decided to wait until I retired to accomplish that dream.

Still too busy.

That didn't work. After retiring from my full time job with the Austin Fire Department in 2001, I continued to work there part time for a couple of years. I also taught part time at the Austin Community College, sang in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus, and volunteered too much at church and other non-profit organizations.

About this time, I had read most of the Christian fiction by Jan Karon and could see how my bookmobile novel idea could work. Jan Karon's Mitford Series books were about a sixty year-old Episcopal priest in a small town, while my story was about a sixty-five year-old librarian in a small bookmobile. Also, I saw an increased interest in Christian fiction. Readers were looking for good, clean novels.

It was too late.

Even so, I did nothing about it. I even started telling myself it was too late. I had waited too long. I was too old.

Then, one Sunday morning my pastor, said something like this, "Trust God with your dreams and he will help you achieve them."

I felt strange, as if God was talking to me about the bookmobile novel. I had this life-time dream and I had given up on it and now it was so clear to me that I could do it, with God's help.

I believe what my pastor said came from Psalm 37: 4. "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I'd heard this before, but it had never been clear to me that it could mean achieving dreams.

I didn't have to do it alone.

The only thing that had changed was that I now knew I wasn't alone. I had God on my side to help me achieve my dream. To remind myself of that, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to my computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit.

Well, it wasn't as easy as that. In the next post, I'll tell you what happened next.

Trying to Ignore God's Nudges

The idea for writing a bookmobile story came to me while driving one back in the 1960's. I was a college student at the University of Texas assigned to drive for a feisty librarian who got us into trouble with the head librarian several times because of helping our patrons in ways unrelated to books. I wanted to write a humorous novel about her, but quickly learned I didn't know much about writing.

The writing urge hit me again a few years later, and I started a fictional account of my time in the marines in the 1950's and my true-life experience of driving with a black friend from California to Texas. I had read enough books to know it was an interesting idea and would have made a great novel. But once again, I was reminded I didn't know how to craft a novel. After that I settled for non-fiction writing.

The nudge to write the bookmobile story came again in 2004, and this time I said no because I knew it was too hard. The very next Sunday, my pastor, Dr. Jeanie Stanley, said this: "Trust the Lord God with your dreams and He will help you achieve them." This gave me the idea to turn the whole project over to God. To remind myself I wasn't alone, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to the computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit. Amen

By then I was smart enough to know I needed help so I started taking online basic fiction writing classes. At the time I was in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus and rehearsing three times a week for eight or nine months out of the year, and didn't want to take on a large writing project. But, God wouldn't let me use that as an excuse. I retired from the chorus, continued to study and started writing Where Love Once Lived. That's when I met my teacher, Bonnie Hearn Hill. More about her later.

I don't want this to come across as me believing my book is the word of God. Far from it. All I'm trying to say is that I had a strong urge to write and publish Where Love Once Lived. I hope it makes you laugh and cry, and if just one person should happen to move closer to God because of it, then all the effort was worthwhile.

How about you? Have you ever felt compelled to do something so strong you wondered if God was trying to tell you something?

Austin, the Friendly City

Where Love Once Lived is set in the current time in Austin, Texas. However, the male protagonist has lived in California for the past thirty years and his memory of Austin is different than the way the city is today. It doesn't bother him that Austin's slogan has changed from Austin the Friendly City to Keep Austin Weird. He doesn't even notice. He finds the place on Dry Creek near Mt. Bonnell Road where he and his college buddies rented a cabin and he builds his house there, including a replica of the cabin that had fallen to the ground from decay. Brian is determined to recapture his youth, and marry his college sweetheart. He buys a bookmobile, because that was the last place where he had been with Karen, and makes a deal with the city to try it for a year as long as he pays the expenses.

In addition to the cabin, scenes take place at an elementary school built in the 1950's, Mt. Bonnell, Clarksville, and the city library (the old one, not the new one), the University of Texas campus, and Manor.

It was fun revisiting the Austin of the past while writing the book, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it. I was born in Austin and went through school there. I joined the marines after learning I wasn't ready for college, and didn't get back to Austin for 20 plus years. It had changed so much by then I hardly knew where I was. But, it didn't matter. Everywhere I went I could see and feel the past, the place where the memories lived. Once, I told an old friend I'd meet him at the drug store. When we both got there, we noticed the corner we'd been thinking about was now a strip mall and there wasn't a drug store anywhere near there. Another fun thing is that we, my buddies and I, know routes through town that newcomers don't.

How about you? Have you experienced a change in your life or your surroundings that made you wish for the good old days? Were the good old days as good as you remember? How do you handle change? Do you embrace it or fight it? Place is not as important as who you are. You can take your beliefs and faith in God wherever you go. Likewise, you can't move to another place to get away from problems. They go with you, too.

In Where Love Once Lived, Brian never recaptures his youth, of course, because that's impossible. But he does learn that what he was searching for was the love of God.

Growing Up White Next to a Black Neighborhood

The area of Austin called Clarksville is different than it was when I was born December 6, 1936. At that time, and up until the time we moved to South Austin in 1945, the former slave neighborhood was located between West 10th and Waterston Avenue with West Lynn Street on the east extending west to the railroad tracks that are now in the middle of MoPac.

It's hard for my children and grandchildren to understand that time in Austin's history when schools and neighborhoods were segregated by race. Only blacks lived in the area called Clarksville and the children didn't go to Mathews Elementary where my sister and I went.

My family lived in four different houses just outside the black neighborhood. At one house our backyard was up against a black family's backyard. That's where we lived when I was between five and nine, and I remember talking to some kids over that fence there often, or until my parents told me not to. Since most other blacks lived east of Austin, living where we did gave me an opportunity many white kids didn't have. I got to know some of my black neighbors, even though I had to keep it a secret from my parents.

I grew up in a segregated town, not really understanding why, and it wasn't until I was in college in 1954 that blacks in Austin began to be reluctantly accepted in some places. I left Austin in 1956 to join the marines. One of my friends was a black private from Houston. In California, we could go to restaurants together and the beach and just about anywhere we wanted. My friend rode back to Texas with me once and by the time we got to Austin, without discussing it, we started getting our food to go.

Perhaps due to my early experience growing up in Clarksville, I've always believed in equality of the races. I included a character in my novel, Where Love Once Lived, who is about my age and is black. I gave him my experiences, from the other side of the fence, however. Several scenes take place in the neighborhood, including memories of the neighborhood, Mathews School, the Confederate home, and what it was like to live in a segregated area. There is also an interracial marriage in the book.

Now, I have the opportunity to return to the neighborhood. Sunday, April 17, 2011, between 1:00 and 6:00 p.m. I'll be signing books at the Clarksville Family Fun Fest in the parking lot of the Clarksville Neighborhood Center. I know the neighborhood has changed, but it is my hope that someone who remembers that time in our history stops by the booth. I'd love to talk to someone who lived in Clarksville back in the 1940's, and most of all I'd like to hear what they think of my Clarksville fictional characters.

Trying to Ignore God's Nudges

The idea for writing a bookmobile story came to me while driving one back in the 1960's. I was a college student at the University of Texas assigned to drive for a feisty librarian who got us into trouble with the head librarian several times because of helping our patrons in ways unrelated to books. I wanted to write a humorous novel about her, but quickly learned I didn't know much about writing.

The writing urge hit me again a few years later, and I started a fictional account of my time in the Marines in the 1950's and my true-life experience of driving with a black friend from California to Texas. I had read enough books to know it was an interesting idea and would have made a great novel. But once again, I was reminded I didn't know how to craft a novel. After that I settled for non-fiction writing.

The nudge to write the bookmobile story came again in 2004, and this time I said no because I knew it was too hard. The very next Sunday, my pastor, Dr. Jeanie Stanley, said this: "Trust the Lord God with your dreams and He will help you achieve them." This gave me the idea to turn the whole project over to God. To remind myself I wasn't alone, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to the computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit. Amen

By then I was smart enough to know I needed help so I started taking online basic fiction writing classes. At the time I was in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus and rehearsing three times a week for eight or nine months out of the year, and didn't want to take on a large writing project. But, God wouldn't let me use that as an excuse. I retired from the chorus, continued to study and started writing Where Love Once Lived. That's when I met my teacher, Bonnie Hearn Hill. More about her later.

I don't want this to come across as me believing my book is the word of God. Far from it. All I'm trying to say is that I had a strong urge to write and publish Where Love Once Lived. I hope it makes you laugh and cry, and if just one person should happen to move closer to God because of it, then all the effort was worthwhile.

How about you? Have you ever felt compelled to do something so strong you wondered if God was trying to tell you something?

Note: This is repeated from 4/5/10.

Austin, the Friendly City

Where Love Once Lived is set in the current time in Austin, Texas. However, the male protagonist has lived in California for the past thirty years and his memory of Austin is different than the way the city is today. It doesn't bother him that Austin's slogan has changed from Austin the Friendly City to Keep Austin Weird. He doesn't even notice. He finds the place on Dry Creek near Mt. Bonnell Road where he and his college buddies rented a cabin and he builds his house there, including a replica of the cabin that had fallen to the ground from decay. Brian is determined to recapture his youth, and marry his college sweetheart. He buys a bookmobile, because that was the last place where he had been with Karen, and makes a deal with the city to try it for year as long as he pays the expenses.

In addition to the cabin, scenes take place at an elementary school built in the 1950's, Mt. Bonnell, Clarksville, and the city library (the old one, not the new one), the University of Texas campus, and Manor.

It was fun revisiting the Austin of the past while writing the book, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it. I was born in Austin and went through school there. I joined the Marines after learning I wasn't ready for college, and didn't get back to Austin for 20 plus years. It had changed so much by then I hardly knew where I was. But, it didn't matter. Everywhere I went I could see and feel the past, the place where the memories lived. Once, I told an old friend I'd meet him at the drug store. When we both got there, we noticed the corner we'd been thinking about was now a strip mall and there wasn't a drug store anywhere near there. Another fun thing is that we, my buddies and I, know routes through town that newcomers don't.

How about you? Have you experienced a change in your life or your surroundings that made you wish for the good old days? Were the good old days as good as you remember? How do you handle change? Do you embrace it or fight it? Place is not as important as who you are. You can take your beliefs and faith in God wherever you go. Likewise, you can't move to another place to get away from problems. They go with you, too.

In Where Love Once Lived, Brian never recaptures his youth, of course, because that's impossible. But he does learn that what he was searching for was the love of God.

Note: This is repeated from 4/2/10.

On Becoming a Writer

I think about being interviewed after Where Love Once Lived comes out and one of the questions sometimes asked is "When did you first become interested in writing?"

My earliest memory of writing is when my sister, Barbara Cagle, decided we would publish a neighborhood magazine. We were living on Pete's Path in Austin at the time, so I had to be about twelve years old. She had written and produced some neighborhood plays several years before this when we lived on Josephine Street in South Austin.

But, my involvement as a writer didn't occur until the magazine phase. By publish, keep in mind that the magazine was handwritten and each copy was handwritten as well. So there wasn't a wide distribution and the magazine only last for a summer. When school started we were too busy to continue it. But I remember getting to write and I remember the encouragement from Barbara.

She also told me I had to keep a journal of all the movies I went to see. We included movie reviews in the magazine as well as news about our neighbors. I remember getting a spiral notebook and on one side I pasted the ad for the movie clipped from the newspaper. On the other side was the movie review itself. I wish I still had that spiral notebook. It was lost in a heavy rain that flooded my basement bedroom years later while I was away in the Marine Corps. I lost all my precious books in that storm, but that's a story for another time.

I had the writing bug from then on. Aptitude tests showed an interest in creative writing, but my school counselors said I should think of it as a hobby since few people made a living from writing. So, I ended up majoring in computer science and wrote for the fun of it, including a novel written about my time in the marines that was never finished.

I also wrote short stories. Only one was published, but it was a thrill to see it in print. Much of the writing I did was as a part of my jobs as a computer programmer and systems analyst. I was called on to do the reports, or apply for grants, and I learned my writing gave me a way of persuading others that I couldn't do face to face.

I published one computer book, Automated Law Office Systems, but it was short lived due to the rapid changes in computers.

I realize this would be too long an answer to the question posed at the beginning, but there you have it. And, by the way, my sister is still writing. She had a funny article published in the Sunday magazine of a Houston paper and she has placed in writing contests as well.

Thank you, Barbara.

Bicycling Memories and Guilt

Today, I pedaled around Sun City in Georgetown, Texas for my health. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have gone quite so far the day after donating two pints of blood. Also, if I had it to do over again, I would have eaten breakfast first or at least had some orange juice. I thought about all this will parked on the side of the road trying to decide if I should call 911 or just throw up. After some deep breaths, staying close to the flower garden at the woodworking shop, I managed to get past the nausea. I had already thought of a way to hold on to the branch of a tree for support if needed. But soon, I felt better and was back on the bike heading for home.

Perhaps I was delirious, but as I rode the rest of the way (mostly downhill, by the way), I had vivid memories of bike riding as a kid. I remember sneaking off when I lived near Clarksville in Austin, so I couldn't have been more than nine years old. My friend, Bobby Bayer, went with me. We told our parents we were just going to see someone a few blocks away and we ended up in deep South Austin. I felt terribly guilty for lying to my mother. But not guilty enough to keep me from repeating the trip several more times.

Those memories and reminders of the guilt I felt, made me think about Brian, the male protagonist in Where Love Once Lived. Don't forget I said I may have been delirious at the time all this was going through my head.

In the novel, Brian had been brought up in a Christian family and attended church every Sunday. What's more, he loved to go to church and continued to go while he was away from his California home attending the University of Texas. Then, he commits a sin and, even though he knows better, guilt is such that he believes he is being punished by God. His punishment is to be in a loveless marriage.

He drops out of church for the next thirty years. This is all leading up to my wanting to tell you this is not a biographical story. It didn't happen to me. I was brought up in a Christian home and my life revolved around the church. I still have friends I met at church and we still get together frequently. I'll tell you more about the Combine as we go. I continued to be involved in church in college and while in the Marines. After marriage and kids there were times when I wasn't involved as much as I should have been, but that didn't last long. I may tell you about that period of my life someday, if I'm ever delirious again.

How about you? When did God become a major part of your life? Have you ever dropped out? What brought you back?

Marriage on Mount Bonnell

Here's an excerpt from Where Love Once Lived near the beginning of the scene on Mount Bonnell in Austin, Texas.

Rain covered the mountain and the whole city, and it wasn’t going to blow over in a matter of minutes, or even hours. Dark clouds hovered over their cars and blocked the sun and sky, covering them with an ominous darkness.

“Why do they have to get married out here, anyway?” Ron asked. “This is what happens when you don’t get married in church.”

“That’s silly,” Susan said. “They want to marry here because it’s special to them. It’s where they first kissed. That’s what Josh told me.”

“Really?” Liz said as she turned to face Ron and Susan. “Now, everything is beginning to make sense. Being new to Austin, I studied up on this place because of the wedding. Know what I found out? There’s a legend that says a couple who climbs to the top together will fall in love.”

“I never heard that,” Brian said. He’d hiked to the top with Karen once or twice back when they were in college.

“There’s more,” Liz said. “A second trip to the top together, so says the legend, means they’ll get engaged.” Liz’s voice got louder as she talked, and Brian knew she was getting excited. “A third time up that mountain, the story says, and there’s a surefire chance for wedding bells. Does anybody know how many times Josh and Cindy were on that magic mountain together?”

“Well, it must have been at least three times,” Susan said.

“Hogwash,” Ron said.

The weather prevents the couple from getting married on Mount Bonnell, so Brian comes up with the idea of having the ceremony in the bookmobile parked at the base of the mountain. The bride loved the idea. Here is an excerpt that follows the wedding just after they get to the cabin for the reception:

Once inside, Cindy grabbed Brian’s arm. “It was perfect, Uncle Brian. Getting married in the bookmobile was better than what we’d planned. Thank you so much.”

Brian looked at Cindy and realized how much she’d matured in the past few months. It may have been the makeup and wedding dress, but it could have been because she was married and going out on her own and saying goodbye soon to her husband as he went into the marines.

The look on her face turned serious. “When I say perfect,” she added, “you know I wish Dad had been here.”

While a student at the University of Texas, I climbed to the top of Mount Bonnell many times. Usually with my buddies, the Combine, but sometimes with a special girlfriend. We felt safe there back then. If you go today, you'll see a sign saying to beware of crime in the area. I'm sure Mount Bonnell has a special place in the hearts of many Austinites. In Kit Frazier's Dead Copy, there is a scene on Mount Bonnell that describes the area perfectly.

Have you been to Mount Bonnell lately? Here is a photo I took of the steps leading to the top: http://sidneywfrost.com/StepsToMtBonnell.htm.

Trying to Ignore God's Nudges

The idea for writing a bookmobile story came to me while driving one back in the 1960's. I was a college student at the University of Texas assigned to drive for a feisty librarian who got us into trouble with the head librarian several times because of helping our patrons in ways unrelated to books. I wanted to write a humorous novel about her, but quickly learned I didn't know much about writing.

The writing urge hit me again a few years later, and I started a fictional account of my time in the Marines in the 1950's and my true-life experience of driving with a black friend from California to Texas. I had read enough books to know it was an interesting idea and would have made a great novel. But once again, I was reminded I didn't know how to craft a novel. After that I settled for non-fiction writing.

The nudge to write the bookmobile story came again in 2004, and this time I said no because I knew it was too hard. The very next Sunday, my pastor, Dr. Jeanie Stanley, said this: "Trust the Lord God with your dreams and He will help you achieve them." This gave me the idea to turn the whole project over to God. To remind myself I wasn't alone, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to the computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit. Amen

By then I was smart enough to know I needed help so I started taking online basic fiction writing classes. At the time I was in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus and rehearsing three times a week for eight or nine months out of the year, and didn't want to take on a large writing project. But, God wouldn't let me use that as an excuse. I retired from the chorus, continued to study and started writing Where Love Once Lived. That's when I met my teacher, Bonnie Hearn Hill. More about her later.

I don't want this to come across as me believing my book is the word of God. Far from it. All I'm trying to say is that I had a strong urge to write and publish Where Love Once Lived. I hope it makes you laugh and cry, and if just one person should happen to move closer to God because of it, then all the effort was worthwhile.

How about you? Have you ever felt compelled to do something so strong you wondered if God was trying to tell you something?

Austin, the Friendly City

Where Love Once Lived is set in the current time in Austin, Texas. However, the male protagonist has lived in California for the past thirty years and his memory of Austin is different than the way the city is today. It doesn't bother him that Austin's slogan has changed from Austin the Friendly City to Keep Austin Weird. He doesn't even notice. He finds the place on Dry Creek near Mt. Bonnell Road where he and his college buddies rented a cabin and he builds his house there, including a replica of the cabin that had fallen to the ground from decay. Brian is determined to recapture his youth, and marry his college sweetheart. He buys a bookmobile, because that was the last place where he had been with Karen, and makes a deal with the city to try it for year as long as he pays the expenses.

In addition to the cabin, scenes take place at an elementary school built in the 1950's, Mt. Bonnell, Clarksville, and the city library (the old one, not the new one), the University of Texas campus, and Manor.

It was fun revisiting the Austin of the past while writing the book, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it. I was born in Austin and went through school there. I joined the Marines after learning I wasn't ready for college, and didn't get back to Austin for 20 plus years. It had changed so much by then I hardly knew where I was. But, it didn't matter. Everywhere I went I could see and feel the past, the place where the memories lived. Once, I told an old friend I'd meet him at the drug store. When we both got there, we noticed the corner we'd been thinking about was now a strip mall and there wasn't a drug store anywhere near there. Another fun thing is that we, my buddies and I, know routes through town that newcomers don't.

How about you? Have you experienced a change in your life or your surroundings that made you wish for the good old days? Were the good old days as good as you remember? How do you handle change? Do you embrace it or fight it? Place is not as important as who you are. You can take your beliefs and faith in God wherever you go. Likewise, you can't move to another place to get away from problems. They go with you, too.

In Where Love Once Lived, Brian never recaptures his youth, of course, because that's impossible. But he does learn that what he was searching for was the love of God.