I am a few weeks from publishing a new book through Amazon CreateSpace.  Unless something goes astray, this one will be entitled Stumbling Toward Victory:  Living In Defiance of Parkinson’s Disease.

Unlike Walking The Crooked Path, this one is a collection of essays on the same theme.  Just as a preview, here’s the foreword to the book:

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I wrote “Walking The Crooked Path” in 2013, four years after I was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease at age 47. In that book, I not only publicly struggled to come to terms with my diagnosis, I struggled to put a traumatic childhood into context, and to make some sense of the arc of my life up to that point. It was an ambitious undertaking, and I ended up writing less about Parkinson’s disease than about my personal response to hardship and my emerging belief in God after four decades of agnosticism. I was perhaps more surprised than anyone how that book turned out. A few readers who were expecting a book full of practical tips on living with PD were disappointed, but I received positive feedback as well, and not all from friends and family.

I have lived with Parkinson’s disease for seven years now (only a short time; this is a slow-moving train, and for many it doesn’t arrive at the final station for twenty or more years), but seven years is long enough for me to have developed a viewpoint about how to live successfully with it. This book, “Stumbling Toward Victory,” is a collection of essays about my way of fighting Parkinson’s disease, and about my attempt to live honorably with or without Parkinson’s.

I write because I have to – these ideas occur to me, and I have to get them out of the way and make room for more urgent matters, like where I put my car keys or whether I paid the electric bill. I hope there is something in here that makes you chuckle, makes you think, or even makes you angry, but this is not a checklist for living well. It doesn’t even work for me all the time.

I didn’t invite Parkinson’s into my life, and I don’t intend to live peaceably with it. It’s not welcome here, and while I can I intend to resist it, rebel against it, sabotage its attempt to ruin my life. With God’s help and the support of family and friends, I intend to live in defiance of Parkinson’s disease. It can’t have me; I claim victory.

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Many thanks to all of you who have been supporters of my writing.  I’m grateful, and I hope that you like this new effort. With all honesty and uncharacteristic humility, though, I don’t write for the enjoyment of others, although makes me happy to get the occasional compliment.  I write because I have to, to clear my head and make room.  There’s just not as much space up there as I would like.