Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Help pick the cover for “Lyin’ Fish”

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Next month, I’m releasing a new novella, featuring the gang from ScubaRadio, called “Lyin’ Fish.” But I want your feedback on the book cover. Select your favorite, or tell me which parts of which ones you like in the comments below.

“The crew from the nationally-syndicated talk radio show ScubaRadio comes to sleepy Withrow Key for a lionfish rodeo, but immediately Jackson Pauley feels something isn’t right. “Greg the Divemaster” Holt can barely dive. When Jackson spears a lionfish, Greg grabs it and gets stung. The radio show is a disaster. When Duffy, the local bar owner, goes missing Jackson, Littlebear and Zach jump into action to unravel the mystery and save their friend.”

Lyin’ Fish is the ninth story from Withrow Key. Set on a bypassed key in the Florida Keys, life moves a little slower and a little weirder. Each Withrow Key thriller features scuba diving, adventure, boats, the ocean and mystery along with beautiful locations and scenery.

If you’ve missed the earlier Withrow Key stories, you can read them all in Tales from Withrow Key.

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All for one and one for all

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I’ve been amazed, and humbled, by the reaction I’ve gotten to this column. I’ve had people recognize me on the street saying “You write that thing in the paper, right?” or “I see your face every week.” I’ve had people at church or other places stop me and tell me they really like what I write and to keep it up.

A couple days ago, I stopped by Jeff’s Auto in Quick to renew my car’s safety inspection sticker. Jeff greeted me, as he does everyone, and asked how things were going. And then he launched into something that was on his mind. He said “Not to tell you what you should write about, but you need to write about supporting local businesses or there won’t be any left.” He went on to explain that people come to him for the barest of basic services, like putting air in their daughter’s tires, but then go out to a big box store when it is time to replace those same tires. In other words, they want him there when they need him, but don’t even think about giving him business when it comes to bigger items.

Obviously, this issue has been going on a long time. When larger department stores opened, they drove the small mom and pop stores out of business. When the mall opened, it killed the downtown business. Southridge has hurt the mall as people chase convenience and economy. And, of course, online shopping is changing everything as people go to stores to look at items and then go home to purchase them online.

I think the basic issue is the same as the Made in America campaign on the evening news. No one expects everyone to avoid the big box stores the same way no one expects every clothing item or electronic gadget will be made in America. But next time you’re shopping, consider buying it from a local business. Consider dinner at a restaurant that isn’t part of a chain. If we look out for each other and support locally-owned businesses, the money we spend stays in our community. Of course, the thing that those locally-owned businesses can offer is service. I hadn’t been in Jeff’s place in a while, but he remembered what car I drove as I walked through the door.

We can all complain about big businesses and greedy corporate executives and the bonuses they receive whether the business does well or not, but the answer is pretty simple. We all have a voice and it starts when and where we open our wallets..

The secret is in how we see ourselves

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how we see ourselvesIn 1998, I left West Virginia headed for California. I remember thinking the place would be full of health food restaurants and gyms, along with high-end stores. I remember wondering if they would serve iced tea in the restaurants.

I know, I know, I sound really naïve. Believe it or not, I had been out of the state and had even traveled internationally. But those were my perceptions of what “California” was. That’s what we see on television and in the movies. We only hear about beautiful people doing beautiful things. For the record, there are plenty of fast food places, including an ironically named Fat Burger, and lots of not-so-beautiful people.

A few years later, I made my first trip to South Africa. Most of what I’d seen in the news were the shanty towns and the slums with dirt streets. Intellectually I knew there were cities, but it was still a surprise to see everyday people going about their everyday lives in suburbs and cities—both black and white. And both races were working side by side. Apartheid had ended 10 years before.

What I learned from these experiences (and dozens of others) is we what see shapes our perceptions. If all we see is one side of the story, we don’t even know what we don’t know. Recently, I learned about a really interesting website called Looking at Appalachia. It’s a crowd-sourced photo project (that has recently expanded to include audio, video and writing) by Roger May that takes on the perceptions of Appalachia and what is called “poverty porn.’ Poverty porn are those cheap, salacious images that are trotted out every so often to represent the “real’ West Virginia and Appalachia. May grew up in Chattaroy, WV and now lives in Raleigh, NC. This project is breaking down misperceptions and has been exhibited all over, even while it continues to expand.

Just last week, I heard about a similar project called West Virginia Point of View. It’s a collection of photos taken from Instagram. Chris Hodge, who developed it, explains on the site that photos are pulled regularly from the photo service, but then a human curates the photos and decides what to display. This is done to avoid privacy issues. The photos represent real people doing real things; going to baseball games, concerts and whatever else they get into. There aren’t “gritty black and white photos.” Unless, of course, someone uses an Instagram filter.

Poverty and despair are everywhere in the world (including California). But those things don’t represent a complete picture of any place. The trick is to not allow outsiders to dictate that public perception.

Perspective: Remembering the good, forgetting the rest

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It’s human nature to remember the good times and forget the bad ones. Even really difficult parts of our lives become good stories later. We survived them after all, so why not celebrate that fact.

I recently completed the first phase of the FestivALL Oral History Project, collecting personal stories from Charleston area residents. Over five days I recorded interviews with people, listening to stories of their childhoods and adult lives in West Virginia.

Many of the people I spoke to were born during the Great Depression and grew up in the 40s and 50s. They told stories of not having much and occasionally wondering where their next meal would come from. They talked of hard work to tend gardens and care for farm animals or seeing fathers come home from the coal mines, covered so completely all they could recognize were their fathers’ eyes. In spite of these things, most of the people telling the stories remembered those times positively, if not fondly.

Probably the most jaw-dropping story I heard was from Norma Sodaro. She came to Charleston in the early 1950s to attend nursing school. Charleston was the big city in her eyes after growing up in Shady Springs, West Virginia. Six weeks into her nursing program at St. Francis Hospital, she said, the hospital hired a black nurse and 23 white nurses walked out. (News reports I found said there were three nurses hired.)

Sodaro said the nursing students were put to work on the hospital floors caring for patients until St. Francis could bring in nurses from other hospitals to return the hospital to full staff. She explained that she knew nothing of charting or caring for patients at that time, but that didn’t matter, she got pressed into service. The story made national news at the time, even being covered by Time Magazine in May of 1951.

I bring this up mainly because it’s an amazing little piece of history and a story I’d never heard before, even though I grew up here. But, also, we West Virginians like to think we’re above those racial issues and attitudes. “We aren’t the deep south. We joined with the Union.” you will hear people say.

People often look back on the 1950s as the golden age of the United States while saying that things are falling apart today; sort of a “Happy Days” mentality. It’s also possible that we choose to forget the bad things and only remember the good..

July 4th and the pursuit of happiness

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IMG_4741If you think about it, we have seen an incredible amount of change in this country in the 239 years since the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence July of 1776.

Even that event, though pivotal, was just a single event in a greater conflict. The Revolutionary War began more than a year earlier and wouldn’t end for seven more years: April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783.

The Declaration of Independence itself was more of a process than an event.

  • Congress declared independence from the British on July 2.
  • Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on the morning of July 4.
  • John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress send the first two printed copies of the document to the legislatures of New Jersey and Delaware on June 5.
  • The Pennsylvania Evening Post printed the declaration in its evening edition on July 6.
  • The Continental Congress ordered an official copy of the document to be prepared on July 19 and the delegates signed that official version on August 2.

Even though it didn’t all happen in one day, the document, and the Constitution that came later, set up the United States as something unique in the world. I don’t know if Americans are actually “special” as some suggest, but I know we were given a mandate and head start that no other country in the world can claim.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

When you’re celebrating the Fourth of July and listening to patriotic music or watching the fireworks, I challenge you to remember and think on those 35 words from the Declaration of Independence. Events in the news make us realize that even though our Creator may have created us equal, we don’t do such a good job of living up to that. We have the right to Life and Liberty. And no one ever promised us happiness, but we were promised the right to pursue it.

That’s more than enough.

Happy Fourth of July..

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