Fred First of Fragments from Floyd has published a book.

Of course!  He’s a working writer and it was simply a matter of when, but there were times it didn’t feel simple to Fred or when was on the horizon. The term ‘place blog’ has been used for blogs that take us to the surroundings of the blogger, his blog is a place where you can go and slow down. So his book is aptly named.

 IF you live in or long for the southern mountains– IF you find yourself drawn toward the pace and pleasures of unhurried, out-of-the-way places– IF you hope for a home you are waiting to find, then you or someone you know will feel at home in the pages of this “memoir of place”, Slow Road Home ~ a Blue Ridge Book of Days.”

A taste from Dark Clouds Anniversary, Silver Linings Celebration:

And it is a black horizon passed, four years ago today. Had that unsufferable darkness not come; had it remained only dull gray sameness at an unrewarding job, I would be there still–trapped in routine, in unfulfilling sameness at the whim of those whose goods had nothing to do with me. I was a means toward their end, and too costly an experienced clinician at that. The harassment of the months leading up to this inevitable decision amounted to ageism, and I probably could have fought and “won”. But instead, when I knew it was a lose-lose situation, I retreated. I surrendered. Go ahead. Hire a cheap new-grad replacement. I’ll go and…I didn’t know what I would go and do, only that I would go. Home. And I packed my boxes and left, with nothing planned for the rest of my life.

And it was from that helpless silence that the blog started. It was a way of talking to myself when I knew no one at “the company” was interested in anything I had to say, and I had given up finding a way or the will to suffer gray sameness. This is the anniversary that marks one the greatest and certainly, the most sudden and unintended changes of direction my life has ever taken. It seemed necessary at the time, but what came next, I could not say–only that it would have something to do with learning to take my bearings from where I lived, not from what I did for a living.

Early on, I had the strong conviction that the weblog, or the way of writing out of the images in my life that would be left there, would make a difference if I only persevered. Maybe I wouldn’t find an income in it. The blog wouldn’t make me rich or famous, but it would become a discipline worth the time and effort every morning. I knew this and told Ann so confidently, when she scolded me for “wasting time” in my fantasy world of disembodied stangers I spoke of as if there were “real people”.

Yeah. Fred, blog on!