So uber-excited….here’s the online store for purchasing Path of Grass! So for my loyal followers who didn’t sign up to read it for free online but preferred to wait and buy a copy, now is your time! To get to the store, you can also click the button at right.

Path of Grass will be on Amazon in 5-7 days, but the royalties are higher for me at Createspace (the link posted above) so I’d prefer that you buy through that. I need to live up to my reputation as a greedy capitalist exploiting the people ;)

This is really amazing, I just realized this. So my previous button said, “coming Spring 2011″ so I figured I should get it out by the first day of Summer so that the planned release date would be accurate. And it actually was released today, the first day of Summer! That’s pretty nice too.

So stop at Createspace to buy a copy of Path of Grass, and you can also enter the giveaway for a free copy, here. Hey, you can buy a copy for yourself and maybe win a copy to share with a friend!

Guns will put you in a position of power for a limited time, and rhetoric will get you fame for a while, but what is written will last forever.

I’m probably a bit biased because Lines of Phreedom is helping to promote Path of Grass, but even before the webmaster, K.J. Herr, kindly did so, I was impressed by the website. This is what we need. We need a place where young people can freely share their works. No, we’re aren’t all Ayn Rands right now, but if we keep writing and keep trying and keep practicing, someday there might be that one work which will become a common title in every household, as 1984 is, or the phrase “Who is John Galt?”

So go check out Lines of Phreedom, browse the works posted so far, and share some of your own lines for liberty.

I’m so ready to get this book out there…it is becoming very exciting! Much of the delay in publishing has been the time it takes to get the book from one person or one step to the next. My copy to the typesetter. The typesetter mails it to me. I give it to the proof-reader. My proof-reader returns it. I look it over again and send it back, and so it goes…Just a lot of steps that can’t be hurried.

Let me share with you one of my favorite parts from Path of Grass. This is also one of the oldest sections, I probably wrote it when I was 13 or so. It was the very first section I wrote that in the series of stories that became Path of Grass. There’s something about it that always surprises me, something that always delights me, and I’m left wondering how I could have written something that lovely.

My name is Adele.  But the other sisters call me Catherine, so I do not know who I am. My mother was French; my father was German. My father’s family was angry because he married a foolish French woman. After my parents died I was given to a convent and have lived there ever since. I remember the day when I was four years old. My Aunt Matilda pulled me impatiently through the streets and stopped at the nunnery door. She crossly straightened my little brown dress and tied the old shoes that were too big for me, and then a nun opened the door. My aunt at once became grown up and wouldn’t look at me anymore.

“This is an orphan; her name is Catherine. Will you take her and bring her up to be a good girl?”

“Please come in. I will go ask the mother superior.”

I was confused that my aunt lied about my name, but she gave me a sharp glance that made me afraid to protest.

We were led into a hollow-sounding, dark courtyard and made to wait a great while, it seemed to me. My aunt amused herself by rummaging through her small purse and looking at relics of the past stashed in it. She would not allow me the privilege of touching anything, so I wandered around the room and stared at the strange pictures of a woman holding a child, angels, and a man wrapped in sheets floating on clouds. At last another nun came in and spoke to my aunt for a few minutes. My aunt sounded angry and, after shouting a little, became satisfied. As I look back, perhaps she did not shout, but the vastness and emptiness of the room made her voice louder than it really was. My aunt smiled too sweetly at me and walked out. The nun took my hand gently and led me into another place. It was a long hallway, and I was afraid it would never end. We at last reached the last door, and the nun slowly opened it. It was a sort of chapel with candles lining the walls. At the very front of it was a statue of that same woman I saw in the courtyard pictures, smiling down at her baby.  The nun paused where we stood.

“This is where we worship God,” she said softly. I didn’t want to speak; the lady with the child seemed to be telling us to be quiet and just look at her. “This is where you will come also, to worship God with us. Do you know who that lady there is? It is the mother of Jesus Christ. He delivered His people from their sins by dying for them. He was perfect. He never sinned, but He bore our sins for us. We now pray to Him and His Father because His Father is now our Father. You used to have a father, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“But he died. Christ’s Father never died and never will. He is in Heaven, and he listens when we speak to him. Now, enough of that.” She turned around suddenly, as if remembering her real duty. “My name is Sister Clotilde. Let me show you where you are to sleep.”

She took me out of the chapel and down the hall about halfway. She opened another door that led into a very small room that had a little bed in the corner, a window, and a shelf next to the window. The walls were brick. I felt them, and they were cold.

I got my sisters hooked on Khan Academy, and they are having so much fun with Khan math that I decided to switch from chemistry to geometry so I could do exercises and earn badges and things like that. Can you believe I actually spent a whole hour last night doing geometry problems? I wish I had Khan math when I was little, I can just imagine how much fun it would be to go from 2 +2 to algebra with Sal Khan. As it is, I just have time for geometry.

I’m getting very close to having Path of Grass published, my typesetter is mailing a hard copy of the finished typeset version, I should be ready to send it to Amazon within a couple weeks. How exciting!! :)

More later…

One of the other nuns came to relieve me. I laid down for a few minutes and fell asleep. Sometime in the afternoon I woke up and went to check on the men. Most were sleeping. Franz wasn’t. He beckoned me to come near.

“Yes?” I said.

“I am lonely.  I haven’t talked to anyone in ages.”

So I sat down to listen to him.

“Do you know how long this war has lasted? It isn’t over yet, either, I can tell you that. Have you ever hated anyone? In this army, we live on it. My father was murdered by the Allies. My mother and the rest of my family died of starvation. I was so young then, and I remember watching them die away, like flowers wilt and are gone. They’ve done that to us…it is their fault we are in this now.” He clenched my hand so tightly I nearly cried out in pain. “My mother, she was so kind and so beautiful. I loved her with all my heart. She was so full of life and vigor, always ready for a game with us children. But little by little all her strength drained away. She worked, she toiled to let us survive.  When I was very young, I remember her laughing gaily. But as the English, the Russians, and the Americans sucked our very life away, my mother became weak and tired. She didn’t laugh and romp with us. If she had the energy, she slaved for a bit of bread, but the energy died. She sat listlessly, with hollow eyes, watching us scavenge for food. Then one morning she didn’t wake up. And it was all because of them.” He nearly started crying. After a moment he regained his composure. “After this war, my dear,” he said hesitantly, “we’ll do something together. We can start a life together, can’t we? After we pound the Allies to pulp, then we’ll live in riches and victory, just you and I.” He squeezed my hand again. I was thoroughly embarrassed and had no idea what to say. I just sat silently, and he took that for an agreement. I heard someone moaning from the other room and left Franz for a moment.

It was the man with the strange melancholy gaze who was making sounds.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

“Do you ever feel a dull aching right about here?” He put his hand over his heart. “That is my ailment. What is your name, child?” He spoke so sadly and so gently.

“Adele. I mean, Catherine.” I cursed myself for saying Adele; I didn’t know why that came out. I hadn’t called myself Adele for years, at least not out loud.

“Do you forget who you are?” He said with a queer smile. “You aren’t the only one.”

- From Part One, Chapter 14

“This is for those who lie. Those who are self-centered. Those who pretend they are righteous but are not. Those who take food from the mouths of the innocent. I shall either use this,” he ran his finger across the blade, “or burn you alive in this room.” I shook at the thought of dying in a fire. He took advantage of my fear. “I think that is the best way to remove hypocrites from the world.” He took a match from his pocket, pulled the blanket off my bed, and made a pile in the middle of the floor with it. He snatched my father’s books from the shelf. “Perfect tinder,” he muttered.  He crumpled the sheets up on the blanket. “I’ll light the match, and as soon as the paper has caught fire, I’ll leave and lock the door after me. I’d better tie you up so you don’t escape.” He used his belt to wrap me to the bed frame. Then, holding the match firmly, he lit it and carefully dropped it in among a treatise on the development of civil law. The greedy flame consumed the first sheet within seconds, and then the man left. I heard him bar the door. With agonizing awareness, I watched the fire spread and grow. It charred the blanket and crept closer to the bed. Then in a moment it caught the mattress and the straw inside. Another moment, and it was inches from my body. I could feel the intense heat, and I screamed.

I woke up, sweating and throwing the covers off me. I looked around desperately for the fire, but there was none. The fear choked my throat; I could not swallow. Oh, no—I can’t live like this. Please, I must escape; I must do something to get away. It will be like this every night. Every night I shall be haunted by what I have done. So I worried and fretted until morning came.

- From Part One, Chapter 10

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“No.”

“In the convent, did you hear any news of the world?”

“Some of the nuns had acquaintances outside who would give them news, but I didn’t really hear anything. The nunnery really was its own little world.”

“Do you know anything about our history? Do you know who Hitler is?”

I shook my head.

“Here’s a cup of water. It might calm you down. Pretend it is hot cocoa or something nice.” She handed me a mug and continued, “You weren’t around to remember the Great War. It was horror beyond imagination. It was just a big fight between everyone. But we lost. The winners made us pay for everything. They made us give them our factories, our food, our money; they forced us to kneel down before them like nasty sniveling little creatures begging for their lives. I watched everyone around us die. We all withered away, just barely clinging to life. All because of them…they ground us into the dust. It was humiliation and shame you can’t imagine. Then Hitler rose up. He came to save his people. He promised freedom, life, and happiness. And look at us now…” she laughed a little wildly, “we can’t speak our thoughts to any other living being. We can’t whisper rebellion to our pillow at night without being thrown in prison. People are dying like flies, all over, everywhere. And this is happiness. If this is happiness, I don’t want to see unhappiness. So that’s why we are here.”

Uncle Gottlieb came into the room, and my aunt cut off her lecture. I had a feeling he preferred not to speak any more than necessary and wanted everyone to follow his habit, too.

We didn’t go outside that day. It started snowing a little, and the streets were littered with soldiers and people—dead and alive. I walked all over the house, trying to stay a little warm and trying to keep my mind off the terror of the night. It didn’t help very much.

- From Part One, Chapter 9

“Hello; is anyone here? I am Catherine from the convent. Auntie, are you here? Hello?”

I walked into the kitchen, where there were pots strewn all over, but not one had anything in it. A dog barked, and I almost screamed. The little thing jumped out from behind the stove and ran at me. It made ferocious sounds and nipped my ankles. I grabbed its neck, I am afraid to say, and muffled it in a bucket until it stopped barking.

“What are you doing?” A voice from behind me sounded. I turned around, still keeping a tight hold on the dog. It was a gruff man staring at me. “That’s my dog. Let go of it. What are you trying to do, kill it?”

- From Part One, Chapter 8