3- MY VERY FIRST NOVEL!

The Serpentine Bond!: after writing over 110 essays for a local newspaper in Williamsburg, Va., dozens of State and national magazine articles and now research articles on "The Stone House Mystery" and the W&M student, Joseph Shelton Watson, who sent aloft Virginia's first hot-air balloon in 1801 (Toano-Norge Times), this educator has spent the last handful of months creating and composing, from boxes of notes over the past few years, my very first novel and I'm 'cited.
My last chapter, chapter thirty-four, has been ALMOST completed, with 600+ pages...WOW! Am in the process of putting all of it into WORD, rewriting ever so slowly as I go. That 34th chapter is a biggie, with lots of technology used to create a final "big BOOM" at the end. But the even bigger biggie is which one of the 7 bonded chums "done it!"
Seven students meet their first day of studies at a large, well-known Southern university. They form a bond of trust, with time and weekends, for four years of adventures that will influence millions of college readers, or those who did go to college and any reader looking for a book that they will not want to put down once begun.
They discover a "secret garden sanctuary" on the old campus, surrounded by a serpentine wall that is one-brick wide, and was uniquely and intelligently designed by the famous founder of the university. In this garden sanctuary, they often meet in the evenings to chat, debate and share their thoughts and lives...and bond even further over a span of four years.
This writer has discovered, like others, that the secrets to a great novel include telling a neat story!...real, relating characters!...adventures galore!...respecting of both coeds and collegians!...humor!...romantic thinking!...and a bit of mystery to close in on the seven after they graduate and go onward and upward in their careers. Oh, and plenty of ADVENTURES!
The late evening the night before they graduate has them coming together in their santuary garden for their very last time, with plenty of bubbly. As the friends talk and drink of the bubbly, no names are mentioned. And one keeps adding comments about their challenge and intent to show American society the error of its ways, with a hell of a "bang" to finalize the intent to prove a point all across America.
Ten years later, after each of the seven has earned distinctions in their related fields, one of them is actually putting that diabolical plan of action into use to make American society come to a halt! But which one? No one knows...one bonded friend is lying, and the race is on to stop the one doing it...but which one?
My first draft of SB has almost been completed. The final draft is being placed into WORD, polishing as I go. You WILL like the seven collegians, three guys and four coeds, their many ADVENTURES at the university and the intelligent, stimulating dialogue, confabs in their sanctuary garden and #37 room along the colonnade!! Fizz from New Hampshire...Rockwell from Virginia...Tabbi from Montana...Trent from sunny California...Butt from Texas...Rain from New Orleans...and Kaipo from Hawai'i.
A second novel, Meet Me at the Wild Cherry Tree! is being planned and plotted out in my sparetime, also, and is a bit shorter at 300 pages+)---it's a romantic "fairy tale"!, a L-O-V-E tale, with possibly a bit of intrigue.....squire