a.k. baumgard

 I'd rather let my work speak for me!  I've taken 683,855,906 breaths since I've been born. Wow! For someone with no head for numbers (that's dyscalculia, not dyslexia) I figured that's about 18 breaths a minute for enough years on this planet to make me an elder.  Along the way I've accumulated a few degrees, including an MFA In Writing back when only ten places were awarding them.  Just like Kafka I thought that books were an “axe for the frozen sea within” and read and wrote like my life depended on doing so, which it did. 
     The Cheyenne say that our first teacher is our own heart and though my historical novel is set in the 19th century my main objective is to achieve emotional truths that transcend place and time.  Elie  Wiesel in the Hostage said “ God created man and gave storytellers the task of saying why.”  In February when I was chosen to participate in The Worldwide Book Give Away and handed out new books ,This Boy's Life at the local Salvation Army every one of the books was gratefully taken. Readers are out there!
Some good, interesting books: A Visit From The Goon Squad,  Jennifer Egan .The Heart Broke In, James Meek  Mary Doria Russell,Sparrow(sci fi) and Doc(Doc Holiday)
  “It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.  Today, for instance, as a man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on a autumn afternoon, under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horse, the leaves, the wind, the words that my people utter, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.”  Gustave Flaubert, circa 1850's,  a master of the short story.