Sea Goddess Released

I’m pleased to announce that after fourteen months of intensive authoring, my first novel of about 56,600 words is released as a Kindle eBook. The paperback version is being formatted. It will be added when the formatting is completed.

Sea Goddess is an uncommon novel with a fresh theme that fits more than one genre. This series of vivid experiences is a tale of ocean adventure, saltwater fishing, desire, pursuit, and love fulfilled. It's outdoorsy, contemporary, nautically authentic, and even partly a seafood cookbook. It's memoir-like, a buddy novel, and shot through with a golden vein of tenderness.

Set in Southern California and the coastal Pacific, the period is mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The main characters are a couple in their mid-thirties; married, and childless by choice. Jess and Evan both love to fish in the ocean. They also love seafood. They enjoy cooking together and cruising the watery expanse with all of the sea's moods and surprises.

Jess and Evan would sit beside a marina near their home to enjoy shared dream-time while longing to own a boat and go fishing together. When Jess found a beautiful, restored, wooden trawler yacht for sale, they bought her, re-named her Tin Hau and took her fishing on their days off. At first, they made mistakes that led to adventures like being caught in fog; dealing with all the work the engine needed; and even the threats of running aground and being lost at sea. But the fishing exceeded the happy couple’s dreams. They weaved-in romance afloat as they cruised to surrounding islands to anchor overnight and fish on distant reefs.

The angling couple's relationship included preparing and enjoying seafood they caught. They teamed up in the kitchen to prepare a few favorite recipes; easy, yet healthful and delicious, seafood feasts.

Jess and Evan caught so much fish that they gave away more than they ate. Eventually, they ventured far offshore to find the most plentiful catches. Some of their sport fishing was notable enough to make the news.

Sea Goddess is the story of a couple who bonded as fishing buddies through their shared interest, skill-building, seamanship, perilous escapes, teamwork, and star-crossed, mutual attraction. Read the story to find out how it all went and if, in the end, their adventures paid off their investment of time, cash, effort, and all of the risks they faced.

Please access the book preview HERE and if you like this first bit, I predict you’ll enjoy the whole book. There’s a link to the Amazon sales page in the upper left corner of this preview’s first page.

The Amazon Details page is found HERE:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KVMYKJ5/

Another option: why not sign up for the free “Nonlinear Notions” newsletter in the footer of this website (scroll down) and gain access to some of my stories, also free, for a limited time only? Go to the bottom of this page and sign up. You’ll get access to some stories immediately, during the signup process.

Enjoy Your Reading,

Joseph Riden

I've Been Pregnant

Tin Hau before her name change, just before we acquired her.

I've “been pregnant" for the last nine months. Of course that's out of the ordinary for a man. No, I don't have some special physiology. But the metaphor isn't far off the mark to compare "birthing" a first novel-length work to what a woman might go through to reach a blessed event. There are long gestation and then a final agony of release that fulfill one's power to create life. Leading up to that event comes the long, slow march of ideas that starts with a climax of insight, and builds ever so slowly to another, and then another. Moments of new vision are some of our sweetest pleasures.

A baby starts as a few cells and gradually repeats all the stages of human evolution as it develops into that eventual sheaf of beauty and promise of a bright future, a new baby. Gestation lasts nine months, give or take, and that's how long it took to grow this book. Those weeks of toil were powered by sheer joy and pain recalled from my happiest years, the middle of my life.

Like many writers who may be new to fiction, I began with short stories, those sprints that prepare and strengthen a writer for the marathon. One day, three of my stories aligned like distant, luminous bodies on the horizon. They clustered to suggest one entity. On close inspection, they had gaps between them and like so many events in writers' lives, they pointed the way through to new work that a lizard-brain was trying to suggest, a new entity.

"What this needs," I realized, "is more narrative to close the gaps and flesh out this story into something whole and viable that can survive, and stand alone, strong and beautiful.”

Then came more months of revision, finding issues, fixing them, adding, subtracting; until that moment when the whole being emerged, complete. It drew its first breath and screamed out to my world "I live!" And it was not merely a tiny, squirming product of my intents. It was separate, powerful, a goddess. A Sea Goddess born of three parents; my wife, myself, and that trackless, watery wilderness full of life, that blood of our planet that we call the sea. Suddenly, breaking water astonished me. I had actually written a novel, forty-four thousand words in twelve chapters.

Sea Goddess is with her nurses now. She’s being readied by two sensitive, wise midwives who are helping dress her in her baptismal raiment. But soon, she'll emerge into the world, full of portent and for me, consequence, and maybe even some wisdom.

The release is soon to be announced and all are invited to attend, to meet her and enjoy her lines. Like a proud father, I'll sit on the side and absorb everyone's responses, both positive and negative, and learn. Then, after a little rest, I'll turn around and do it all again, hopefully even better.

Sea Goddess, a first novel-length work, lives and soon I'll be able to say where to find her.

JR