Jay's still preening about the publication of his novel, The Naked Ghost, and his second novel is now imminent, mere days away from seeing the light of day. Before that happens, however, he's giving credit where credit is due.

Jay began The Naked Ghost on an actual typewriter. Those contraptions employ the impact of raised letters through inked ribbons for the torture of posterity. That was barely as many years ago as Jay generally likes to admit being old. After languishing for years, after revisions and re-revisions, and after being ported to a succession of computerized wordprocessors, Jay read the manuscript ten or so pages at a time at meetings of the Twisted Scribes writers group, whose members are hereby properly and thoroughly thanked, as well as being acknowledged in the book. So, what did Jay get from the Scribes?

Plenty. As you read The Naked Ghost, thank the Scribes for the activities near the beginning that the two main characters don't see - sure indications that something is "odd" while Whit and Casey explore the haunted mansion and its grounds for the first time. Good suggestion. Introduced the ghosts, and set up a mysterious conflict. Thank them also for suggesting other plot twists, but particularly for nodding off when Jay's readings from the book got a little tedious. Those somnolences helped greatly, because Jay wisely paid attention to the nods and snores and spiced up the novel accordingly.

Alas, the Twisted Scribes folded, but not before Jay was able to inflict his second novel, Company Time v1.0, on them and obtain their sage guidance. As a non-computer-geek audience, the Scribes' reactions were extremely valuable. Jay calls the book "a geeky novel," and it is. The non-geek Scribes had difficulty understanding some of it, so to help them out Jay interwove a cool discourse on the inner workings of computer software and the process of creating it. As the characters pursue their elusive goal of not being fired, sets of curly braces - it's a programmer thing - interrupt for explanations of things software. The geeks among us won't need those explanations, but Jay's made them cynical enough for even C++ experts to enjoy.

The Naked Ghost is available in paper and electronic versions at booksellers, Amazon.com, and Smashwords.com. Company Time v1.0 is coming soon - real soon now - in paper and electronic versions. Here's the cover and a synopsis. And Jay's working on yet another book, as we "speak."

For entertainment, here's a nice bunch of internet magic that features Jay's photos from

Nothing finer than cruising through the mountains expressing awe at the fabulous scenery, and that's just what Jay's been up to for the last couple of weeks. As he prepares to celebrate the 34th anniversary of his 29th birthday (you do the math), he rewarded himself with not one but two trips to the mountains. He even sprung for a new pocketable camera for the second trek, and except for eating batteries for lunch, it's a gem.

Verbiage, even the storied kiloword, does a poor job of expressing the visual, so here are some pictures, with links to larger versions on RedBubble.com.

More are in Jay's RedBubble presence now, with still more to come. There are more extensive captions there, too, but really, just look at the pictures and enjoy, and fill in with your imagination any details that might be lacking.

First up is The Light Center. It's on the scenic (to the max!) Highway 9 near Black Mountain, North Carolina. A geodesic dome (think 1964 New York World's Fair and the 1970 South Carolina Tricentennial celebration), the cool space has shaped windows that admit streams of light. The Center is located on a one of the many vortexes (vortices, whatever) in the area, and if you're not familiar with those tune in to some of the frequent Visitations from Distant Planet episodes on cable. Mystical or not the dome made for cool pictures, both inside and outside.

The nicest thing about Tennessee is getting there, 'cause from here you get to drive through the mountains of North Carolina and through some of the most beautiful parts of Tennessee, just over the North Carolina/Tennessee line. In the mountains, of course. Can you tell Jay likes mountains?

Anyway, the occasion was a wedding of friends and former neighbors of Jay's in Knoxville, and here's a cool shot of a small stream close to the outdoor ceremony. The weather was quite hot, with humidy far above the Richter scale, so Jay got overheated, but managed to survive. He snapped this picture and many others before retreating to the cool confines of the hotel for a rest.

And this one, a simple slatted wooden chair. Jay likes pictures of chairs, always has, and harbors many of them in his collection of Photos that Few People Appreciate.

More chairs.

Now back to Black Mountain for a pleasant stroll around Lake Tomahawk in the middle of town. It's more of a pond than a lake, and a small one at that, especially by Lake Murray standards, but don't let on, as the locals treasure it. It's home to a fine bunch of feathered friends, too, some of whom posed for portraits as Jay and his friends made the half-mile trek around the lake to take in all the sights.

Cut to: Fine feathered friend on the fly, or almost so.

The park's management has taken pains to installed a Watercraft Launching Point. Looks like the ducks are observing the rules and launching without bringing in any vehicles.

It'll be hard to tell from such a small print, but this is a butterfly, posing momentarily in the middle of the path. Normally, Jay would enlarge to the max and zoom in on the little creature, but in this case he likes the shadow of the setting sun, and the textures of the path and the lawn's edges. So this is what you get. Small butterfly in a large space. Live with it.

Back to downtown Black Mountain, where a store named Chocolate Gems makes these masks out of, well, chocolate. This one's inside a plastic wrapper inside a glass showcase.

Jay pronounced the place a suburb of Heaven.

The procrastination gremlins have been having their way lately, so here's Jay again, typing away at this blog despite having many other things he ought to be doing. We left off last time in a hurry as a result of previous procrastination episodes, before taking up the Conch Republic.

In Jay's view, the Florida Keys have a big problem: Florida. Namely, you have to travel through all of Florida to get to the good part: Key Largo and parts south. Travel in the state is impeded by enormous amounts of traffic, mostly homicidal drivers of large, obnoxious vehicles. Well, Florida has more problems than that - and we won't discuss politics here - but when it comes to the Keys, getting there is a very long drive. Understatement of the week.

Jay's made the drive many times, mostly in the scorchiest days of summer when the only the heartiest of Southerners venture out. Jay discovered the Keys in summer in the mid-1970s. He'd just bought his first Hondacar, a yellow Civic CVCC 5-Speed with no airconditioning, which he chose for high fuel efficiency so he could roam around on the cheap. He met a friend in Miami and for fun they trekked to Key West to see if local yarns about it were true (they were!). In those days all the bridges were narrow wooden affairs, rather scary, especially the infamous seven-mile bridge. Jay was happy to be driving a narrow car. Jay and his friend dined like royalty in Key Largo - a quaint little German restaurant where the friendly owners grandmothered the diners. The food was exquisite.

They checked out John Pennekamp Coral Reef Undersea Park, but did so from the bank, and climbed its lookout tower, and made a note to come back again for a better look. Wandering around all the Keys in turn, large and small, they eventually landed in that other world known in this one as Key West. Amid many creatures of a time long past, aging hippies mostly, Jay felt at home, especially when he found out that the Big Event of the Day was the sunset. Jay's a fan of sunsets. Key West's locals and tourists gathered daily on the docks at Mallory Square to admire the sunset. Local sailboaters and colorful characters took turns riding off into the sunset so the tourists would get nice snapshots. The Cookie Lady peddled cookies from her bicycle's basket, and musicians congregated to jam and jive. In short, a good time was had by all. Jay and his friend went back to Miami with smiles on their faces and stories to tell.

Besides Ernest Hemingway's cats, its bars, and some other things, Key West is famous for Key Lime pie and Conch Fritters. First the fritters. The pretty sea shells that she sells you by the seashore and you hold up to your ear to hear the roar of the ocean? Those are conchs. You coax one of those defenseless little critters out of its shell, batter it, fry it up and smack it on a bun with condiments of your choice. Ding! Conch fritter. Jay admits to consuming exactly one conch fritter - when in Rome - but after seeing them being roasted in their shells at a Long Key campground he swore off permanently. Too barbaric.

Key Lime Pie, on the other hand, is a delicacy Jay can get into. In fact, it was first on the list of local foods to try when Jay and his friend first visited Key West. They stopped for afternoon snack at a disreputable dive - because that's where his friend insisted on stopping - and surrounded a memorably unmemorable meal followed by absolutely divine Key Lime Pie. The place's signs touted their pie as original, genuine, native, home-made, and everything else that gets the tastebuds into high gear. It was.

For the Key lime pie uninitiated, don't think green fruits and Corona cerveza. Limes and Key limes are different fruits altogether. Key limes are much yellower than green limes, and they're much sweeter, with a distinctive taste more like lemon chiffon than plain ol' lime. Jay and his friend returned to Miami a few days later, raving about the pie - naturally they ate it constantly at many different places. "Oh," said his friend's mother, "I've heard about that. Let me see." She walked out into her back yard in Coral Gables and picked some Key limes off her tree! In a couple hours she proudly served home made, phenomenally delectable Key lime pie. What a treat. Jay has never had better, and he's tried many, many times.

The many better-traveled people out there are by now cringing that they can't pack off hate email for Jay's meager travels being touted in the previous post. Fact is, Jay's been around mostly locally, and had a great time doing so. He'd rather explore the streets of Pageland, South Carolina, for the season's best watermelon or ride the Ridge west toward Leesville and Gilbert for July's best peaches than put up with leg-cramping, knee-aching, interminably boring flights to parts of the planet beyond the ponds.

Pageland, as it turns out, is on Jay's list of favorite places for the good times he had there. It's a cute, quaint, friendly, definitively small town. Jay's in no danger of moving there, the locals will be delighted to learn, but he's visited many times and enjoyed every trip. He's been to Boston many times, too, and big city that it is he enjoyed those visits. That was before Yoyo Ma, one of Jay's current heroes, played Bach on the cello for Beantown's benighted city council. Now, Jay'd have to think carefully before visiting Boston again. Well, okay, visit might be okay but calling on the city council is out of the question. Not that they care.

Jay had a great time in San Francisco, including a culinary adventure already detailed, and would like to visit again, stay longer, and maybe leave wiser but leave just the same. Chicago, too. Jay got snowed on there once in April. April! What a ridiculous time of year to have cold weather, much less snow. But Jay likes huge, hulking Chicago, having visited there many times and never once going shopping in the touristy designer shops area. Put Charlottesville, Virginia, on the like-em-a-lot list, too. Great small town that thinks it's a big city. Or maybe wishes it was.

Curiously, both times Jay's been to Virginia Beach, Virginia, it snowed. Well, it was January. Nice place, and Jay enjoyed going there but found it difficult to get comfy with snow and ice in the way.

Time's short this week, so this discussion has to hold for another installment.

We haven't yet explored Jay's passion for the Keys, his unenthusiasm for Jackson, Mississippi, or his fondness for Charlotte, North Carolina. Here's a picture from Newport, Rhode Island, another of Jay's favorites, to tide you over till next week.

Jay's been around. His family often ventured to Folly Beach, South Carolina, for vacations. That tradition took a small break in the 1950s when Hurricane Hazel eliminated the wooden ocean front hotel that the family frequented. The hurricane arrived while the family was IN the hotel. Jay's father, ever mindful of the weather, noticed the unbeachability that had beset the trip for several days. He gave up waiting impatiently for the weather to clear and packed up the Studebaker for the trip home. By that time ocean waves were lapping onto the narrow lane that led to the mainland. The rain was extremely heavy but he managed to get all of us home. Wet, but safe.

After that experience, annual beach outings moved to Myrtle Beach a couple of times, but settled on Savanna Beach and Tybee Island, Georgia, when Jay's favorite aunt moved there with her new husband Bill.

Jay liked Savannah for its donut shops, and he enjoyed the drive to his aunt's house for its down-home Southern scenery, mostly trees and cotton fields. A few times he went to Savannah with his grandmother on the passenger train - they still had those back then. Jay took the train to New Orleans, and to Dallas and back several times. He's also enjoyed the wondrous and famous Silver Meteor to parts south, namely Florida, as well as to Washington, DC, and Richmand, Virginia, from which a couple of times he took a train to Charlottesville, Virginia.

He does not like flying. Or airports, or crummy scrunched up seats with no legroom. But Jay has yielded and flown to places too far for car or train. After driving to California once and only once - and back - Jay's sworn off of deserts. He's seen one, and that's enough.

Some years ago, Jay roamed extensively around these United States. By Hondacar. Houston, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, and lots of places between. Discoursing on the wonders of Amiga computers and peddling his magazine and his books. Lately, he pretty much confines his travels to 'round town. Too many diets to watch, too many pills to take, and not enough driving time between requisite rest stops.

With Italian food covered for now, we move on to other fare. There's Mexican, and its corrollary Texican - slash - TexMex, to consider. Jay's palate doesn't like being singed, so the milder spiciness suits him fine. His favorite Mexican dish is Chile Relleno, a wondrous concoction prepared with roasted chile peppers and cheese. Tangy, but not painful. He also likes tamales, enchiladas, and of course tacos in their many guises.

Jay visited actual Mexico in person once, decades ago. He dined like royalty in a small place in Reynosa, Mexico, where no one spoke a word of English. Jay's learned some Spanish since then, but on the trip south, south, south from Fort Worth, Texas, his traveling partner, a professor of mathematical-type stuff and a long time friend, assured him there'd be no need for Jay to cram Spanish skills along the way, as university classes were still fresh in his mind. They drove on, and when they got to Mexico, the first test of the good professor's Spanish was a road sign that said (forgive any misspelling after all these years), "No estacionarse." Jay, who was driving, asked frantically, "What does that mean? Is this a one-way street?" The professor shrugged a "don't know." Fortunately it only meant no parking, though cars were parked all around the sign.

After several days and many other great episodes, Jay and his friend dined in the nicest restaurant they'd seen in Reynosa. Jay spotted it the night before, observing that a block-long line of well dressed Mexican families were lined up outside, waiting for tables. Jay and his friend went early, to avoid the rush. The waiter brought the menu, and Jay asked his professor friend to translate. Unfortunately, Professor Math didn't know Mexican food, and asked the waiter if he spoke English. Nope, sorry.

Undaunted, Jay looked through the menu and pointed to everything he recognized. He'd learned the word "dos," two, and repeated "dos" for each item he pointed out. The waiter jotted furiously on a pad, saying things and asking questions. Jay nodded, though he understood none of it. After much gesturing and smiling all around, the waiter went off, presumably to the kitchen. In a few minutes the feast began. Dozens of dishes, all of them delectable though Jay knows not to this day what they might have been, accompanied by an inexhaustible supply of tortillas, salsas and garnishes. And bottled water - Jay'd seen a truck unloading the huge jugs of water the day before.

Jay and the Prof are both what we call here in the South "big eaters." They consume mass quantities of food, the more if it's good, and even more if they've starved all day in anticipation of a fancy meal, as they did in Reynosa. Even so, it turned out that everything Jay pointed to on the menu was in fact a "family" meal intended for several people. After a while, Jay and the Prof asked, no, begged, the waiter to stop bringing food. With some difficulty they finally succeeded in getting him to desist. Then the Prof got worried. "Oh, no," he worried, "we've run up a huge bill and we won't have enough money and we'll be imprisoned in a foreign land, never to be heard from again."

A while later, the Prof agonizing the whole time, the waiter presented the bill. Translated from pesos to dollars, it was little more than a couple of Happy Meals on the other side of the Rio Grande. Sighs of relief. Jay and his friend left an enormous tip, and smiled all the way back to the hotel.