#ExpressYourself: My Favorite Book #author #IamReading #paranormal

Welcome back to my blog. I have decided to join the weekly Express Yourself Blog Hop. Each Tuesday I will be answering a question that is posted on the Express Yourself Banner for that given month. This week I was asked to chose one of my favorite books. Turn to page 89 and write the 8th and 9th sentences found on that page. 

I have two books published and two more ready for release. The book I chose to write about that I feel emotionally close to is Dying Dreams, the fictional account of Evan Shea and how, as a successful father, former athlete and businessman who must now deal with the fact he has only two months to live.

Death from a malignant brain tumor is not instant and is not pain free. Often, the treatment plan exceeds the pain levels of the disease itself. My granddaughter endured this inhuman experience from the age of thirteen until her death at age fifteen. She was able to survive all of the invasive medical procedures with dignity and strength, knowing she was terminal. She believed the experimental procedures might help some other young cancer victim beat the disease. She allowed the painful experiments and treatment options to erode her young body right up to the end when she asked her mother for her permission to pass away.

That is why I dedicated the book to my daughter, Lisa and her young daughter, Shawna. They provided the story line for Dying Dreams and the work of fiction it became. A year after Shawna died, Lisa and I went to lunch. She was depressed and had no appetite. Trying to cheer her up, I made a funny comment about being pregnant. She said that her husband, then almost 45 years old, wasn’t able to father children anymore.

A year after Shawna died, Little Hope was born.

DYING DREAMS

Page 89

Lines 8 and 9

Just then the fish jumped.

“It’s the edible kind. Not Flipper!”

Have Your Ever Seen Water Dance?

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN WATER DANCE?

Once upon a time, in Berlin, Germany there was a man named Otto who, in 1939, put a musical water fountain together on a stage, and with a series of pumps, levers, electrical switches and bright lights, created the first “Waltzing Waters.”

Today, in Cape Coral, Florida, Otto’s grandson is doing the same thing. Michael Przystawik grew up in the musical fountain entertainment business. His father, Gunther, and Otto before him created the first and most sophisticated musical, lighted fountains that danced, swirled and swayed to Broadway Show Tunes. Michael has made technical improvements that have brought the fountains into the modern world of jazz, rock and contemporary music. His fountains, some of them over 150 feet wide and sending colorful plumes of water nearly 100 feet in the air to perfectly timed music are now located in many cities and parks around the world.

I recently wrote a book called Dying Dreams. It is a fictional story of a man who dies and enters the “spirit world.” When his children honor his memory by building a park and having Michael install the latest edition of a Waltzing Waters musical fountain, the spirit of their deceased father crosses the mist of the waters as a “portal” to communicate with his mortal family.

For the past forty years I have been associated with Michael’s father, and now Michael, where I have had the opportunity to see his shows hundreds of times. I have heard the comments that have come from the audiences who witness the shows. Many people have been mesmerized and transfixed on the beauty and tranquility they experience while watching something as simple as water “dancing,” and reflect on how they wish their departed loved ones would have liked to see that, and even imagine their faces appearing in the fading mist.

And now, as the future of one of America’s minor entertainment treasures contemplates the future, a possible opportunity exists for the “Water that Dances.” Last week, on April 12, the Waltzing Waters showcased the Hall of Fame induction for the USA Water Ski Foundation held at The Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. Thanks to the generosity of Kermit Weeks, owner of Fantasy of Flight who hosted the occasion alluding to the possibility that the Waltzing Waters may figure into the plan for something huge, something on a grand scale that he is planning for the property he owns at exit 44 along the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando.

Good things take time and great things take even more time. But, let us hope that some of Kermit’s plans materialize in my lifetime so that I don’t have to be watching the progress through the mist of Waltzing Waters. I love it when a plan comes together.