I’ve just published a new book on Amazon CreateSpace, the Kindle eBook Store, and Amazon.com.  Walking With Parkinson: Finding Faith, Purpose and Peace is a compilation – I decided to put my first two books  under the same cover as the new book I’ve been working on, and publish them in one volume.  Parts I and II (Walking The Crooked Path and Stumbling Toward Victory), with the exception of a few corrections and minor alterations, remain as they were originally published.  Part III (Seeking The Way Home) is new.

This is one continuous story, but perhaps you’ll be able to see differences from beginning to end. I certainly can, having lived it from the inside. I have not asked for much feedback on this book – normally, I ask for a limited number of friends and trusted advisors to read and provide comments.  This time, only my wife Amy and my daughter Rebecca have read the unpublished text.  There are a couple of (perhaps obvious) reasons.

First, although I still have things to say, it’s getting harder to say them.  Both physically and cognitively, the process of writing, incorporating feedback, and revising until it’s right is almost overwhelming.  I don’t want to offend by ignoring feedback, so I just didn’t ask for it.

Second, Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease, and naturally there is going to be degeneration in my writing,  I know it’s true intellectually, but seeing it in feedback and trying to revise it away seems like a fool’s errand. The novel Flowers for Algernon comes to mind, for some reason.

It’s available in hard copy and Kindle eBook versions. If you bought a copy of one of the first two books, you’re in a pretty specialized group, since I give away more books than I sell. It upsets Amy, who is my biggest fan and thinks I devalue my writing by giving it away. This is the one to have, if you’re going to have one, though. It doesn’t get any better from here. Not trying to be maudlin; them’s just the facts (as my less-educated progenitors used to say).

As I said in the introduction, the writing is what it is.  I think, though, that there is something in this book for everyone.  Not just for people with Parkinson’s or people with chronic, degenerative, incurable disease, but people who have challenges to overcome and fight to live good lives anyway. All of us, in other words.

I hope you think so, too.