Rain has re-entered my life. First the unusual cloudy days, many including at least a few raindrops, before I left New Mexico for Minnesota a week ago. Since then more days than not with fairly steady rainfall. I imagined under these conditions I would be paying serious attention to writing both in my blogs and in massive note taking for everything I want to say about ‘time and place’ prior to and during the Big15Trip.

I’ve been begging, longing, crying, hoping, damn-close-to-praying for rain to inspire me. It’s here. I’m not inspired. Lazy. Accomplishing nothing. A week’s vacation. Okay, I can justify that but as of tomorrow morning it is time to move on. Think. Create. And so forth.

Actually I have accomplished something. The Village Bookstore in Grand Rapids is excellent—as good a small town bookstore as I’ve seen anywhere. It is especially on top of Scandinavian crime fiction so naturally I would be a fan. Marsha and I made our first shopping foray to downtown GR yesterday and I managed to stop by the bookstore for a quick look about and emerged with a few new ‘Nordic noirs’ in hand. I also picked up Book Four of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle.

Seriously, Knausgaard is as brilliant as the critics claim. “Not since James Joyce, has anyone written something this important…” a reviewer says. Since I’ve never been able to read Joyce beyond some required college excerpts I cannot attest to that—but I can tell you Knausgaard is most readable and original and addictive. Preparing me for my weeks coming up in Norway.

In fact in a little while we are practicing a time honored Scandinavian tradition. Company is coming over for cake and coffee. Trust me when I say it doesn’t get any more Norwegian than that.

Forest Goddesses.

One of those Nordic nights when the killer prowls the forest and the trusty detective scans the horizon for clues to who did it…