Go on … admit it. You’re curious about my new e-book, Standing in the Surf, available at Amazon.com. Well, look no further. What you see below is none other than the Introduction, in all its introductory glory! And just because you’re here, and I like you, from now until November 30 I’ll send you a link so you can view the entire book for FREE in the hopes that you’ll write a review. To get your free link, just fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post. And please don’t forget to leave a review on the Amazon page, here. THANKS!
AND NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO … the INTRODUCTION:
Recently, I retired. Wanting to give my friends at work a parting gift, I wrote an amusing (to me) song called “Just Retired.” At my retirement luncheon, I handed out the lyrics and invited everyone to stand up and sing along with me. The melody was vaguely familiar — in fact, I might have stolen it — so my kind co-workers humored me by joining in. They even gave me a standing ovation, since they already were standing. (I recorded the song and put it on YouTube. You can listen to it right now.)
Did you like the part where I sang about how I’d soon be sleeping till nine or ten every day, and then I’d sit around like a lazy bum collecting Social Security? Well, I lied. I’m not one to sit around for very long. In fact, just one week after I retired, I became a traveling fool.
First, I visited my family in upstate New York, and then I flew to Seattle, where my husband Chuck was visiting his family. He’d rented a cabin on nearby Whidbey Island, in the area known as the Salish Sea. We thought it would be a great place to unwind. Ocean waves and hiking trails were just what I needed to get back in touch with life’s natural rhythms after years of Monday through Friday routines. We spent three weeks exploring the area. This book is my attempt to capture what I experienced at Whidbey Island, Camano Island, Stanley Park, and Vancouver Island during that time.
Speaking of rhythms, Chuck and I used to play music in a band called Pacific Buffalo. (You can read about us and hear our music at pacificbuffalo.com.) The reason I’m telling you about our band is so that I can explain how I came up with the title for this book.
“Standing in the Surf” is a combination of ”Standing Still” and “Old Man in the Surf,” two songs that Chuck wrote and that Pacific Buffalo recorded (as I’m sure you already know if you wisely decided to listen to our music). I was having a hard time creating a book title on my own. Since plagiarism had worked so well for me when I wrote my retirement song, I just borrowed a few words from Chuck’s song titles and told him about it later.
Although this book does contain actual photos of surf (most of which I took while standing), there are even more pictures of other things, like flowers, trees, people, and animals. To me, it’s all connected — just my way of expressing what it felt like, finally, to be free of the ringing alarm clock and to listen to nature’s heartbeat instead. It’s there in the pounding of the surf, but it’s also in the hiker’s footsteps, the squirrel’s chatter, and the petal’s unfolding.
This book can be read in either a standing, sitting, or lying down position. I don’t recommend reading it while surfing, though, unless you’re reading the e-book version and your device is waterproof.
Lori Bonati-Phillips, 2017
loristory 