One Week Out – Berthoud Literary Festival Debut

There’s safety in numbers.

NYC has over 8 million people living there, so it’s easy to hide in plain sight.

Berthoud, about 6 thousand.

When I arrived in Berthoud in spring of 2017, I hadn’t a clue of how I was possibly going to acclimate. I mean, I was a stranger in a strange land. A lifelong Bronx Boy, suddenly without his Bronx.

Life on Mars where everyone seems nice.

I mean, strangers in cars waving as they pass you?!

That takes some getting used to.

I had constant anxiety, a rabbit grazing in an open field. A lifelong, inbred, situational awareness that keeps Bronx kids off the covers of milk cartons, kept me glancing skyward to make sure that the large hawks, whose shadows were constantly crossing the waving grass on my property, were not actually dragons.

Then I met Claire the Mule and everything changed.

Claire taught me that I had come to Berthoud for a reason.

Claire showed me that we are all sentient creatures, equal in the eyes of our Creator. No one above the other. And that all life matters.

Claire also awakened a dream that I believed had died in the last century. She reminded me that I was by Celtic blood, and childhood nurturing, a Seanchaí.

She wanted me to tell my story. Our story. The Claire Saga.

Thus, The Wise Ass was born, followed over the past four years by its four siblings – An Alien Appeal, Kissing My Ass Goodbye, Finding Jimmy Moran and, as of last April, Where The Ley Lines Meet.

Fitting, as I am one of five siblings. And these five books and their characters are a family. A universal family. That is the message of this series, the main one, the one that counts above all others.

Claire helped me understand that. And for that, I am forever in her debt.

So, when a member of my Berthoud family, Thora Seimsen, Outreach and Operations Specialist for the Berthoud Community Library District asked me if I wanted to participate in the town’s first ever Literary Festival, I was thrilled and honored.

The timing was perfect, as I was just dropping off an inscribed copy of WTLLM at the library, completing the set and the initial story line of the Claire series, when she first mentioned her plan.

It was a brilliant plan.

One of the first readings I had ever done was for the Library Book Club, after TWA was released, and they were a wonderfully receptive and inquisitive group. I had a great time.

So, Thora relegating my appearance in the BLF to that venue feels like a homecoming.

Now, I have learned over these past seven years just how wonderful and magical the Town of Berthoud really is. Indeed, I have done my best to share that knowledge with the world.

I’m hoping that people who have read The Claire Saga, and all about Berthoud, take this opportunity next weekend to find out just how much truth is woven in that fiction.

So, if any of my fine, five readers get the opportunity, come to Berthoud, Colorado, for the first ever Berthoud Literary Festival. You will not be disappointed.

Now I learned yesterday that our western neighbor, Boulder, was on the short list for the future home of the Sundance Film festival.

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/boulder-finalist-sundance-film-festival-host-city-colorado

Congrats, Boulder (love Pearl Street and The Hungry Toad), fingers crossed. Good luck.

Now I’m hoping that a huge splash with our premier and future Literary Festivals will help lure the literary glitterati, and that they then will lure their cousin creatives in the film industry – Robert Redford, are you listening – to finally decide on Boulder as their forever home. A rising tide floats all boats.

So, on behalf of my new home town in Colorado, I’m asking everyone to please turn out for this premier event. You don’t even have to come see me at the Berthoud Library next Saturday at 2 pm, there are lots of wonderful writers scattered in cool venues throughout the town. You don’t even have to come to see me and other writers inscribe books at City Star Brewing just a short walk away from the Berthoud Community Library. Indeed, if you come to my reading we can walk over to the brewery together.

Of course, if McCaffrey’s Law (Murphy was an amateur) comes into play, and I’m reading to a room full of crickets, then you’ll have no problem locating me at the Brewery afterwards. I’ll be the guy sitting quietly playing solitaire on my phone at the back of the room, answering the recurring question in all drinking establishments with “the rest rooms are right over there.” I may even start drinking again.

So, do me a favor. Let’s all of us make the Debut of the Berthoud Literary Festival something we can all brag about to our grandchildren. Pick up a momento or two (or five) with some inscription that proved that – like Woodstock – you were really there.

And Redford, don’t drop the ball with Boulder. You may someday want a favor to have the inevitable film version of The Claire Saga screened at your festival, and I know a guy.

Well, enough daydreaming, time to get moving.

Saturday’s are always busy at Casa Claire, and I have other promises to keep.

You five, fine readers sit back and enjoy that weekend morning coffee. Then do your errands and kick back for some well deserved rest.

Good luck in equal measure to the CU and CSU football programs as they meet up for a wonderful afternoon game.

I will happily endorse the first of you that offers me a lecturer’s position in your Creative Writing program.

Well, time to run, I have to drop Lisa at her per diem shift.

But first, some kitties to cuddle and rounds to make.

And no matter what else we all get up to, let us make today a great one.