###
I hope you enjoyed the book. If you did please consider leaving a review, even a short one, at your favorite retailer or site.
Appreciated!
Frank M Sheldon
About the author
I grew up in New England, lived in the UK for about a year, then back to New England a while, then back to the UK for four years, then lived in West Virginia and Virginia for more years (with some of them as part of an intentional community) followed by a move to Berlin with my wife, where we also lived on and off in an old farmhouse in the former DDR, there to help run courses in Guitar Craft. Four years later, we moved to Seattle where we reside still. In between and all around, much happened, and this book comes out of that. As well as writing, I work with my wife, Ingrid Pape-Sheldon, on her photo business in Seattle and occasionally still with Guitar Circles, which evolved from Guitar Craft, a placeless space that became for many years as much a home as I might ever have. I have a cool daughter on the East Coast who comes to visit now and then. Boots, our cat, remains here to keep an eye on us. Her book, THE EMPTY BOWL & OTHER TRAGEDIES, is all but written in her own mind.
And, yes, still writing….
Like this novel on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FarFromTheSeaWeKnow
My site:
https://www.frankmsheldon.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the following people:
My daughter Katherine, who gave me my first useful criticism and some of my last as well. My wife Ingrid, for her patience and encouragement in seeing me through my first novel. My sister Cynthia, and my brother Mark, who both encouraged me in this project. My sister Janet and her husband Fred for inspiration and, lately, their son Richard for giving me another kick to get this in print. My father Alfred, who took me early in my life on trips to far off places. My mother Caroline, who read to me at bedtime, and made the stories come alive for me.
Teachers and story tellers: Miss Taylor. Bill Caulder. Mrs. Crane. Mr. Ives. Phil Perry. Dr. Wright. Bill Calder. John Hoy. Michael March. Alan Crane. Normy Graves. James Kaplan. Geoffrey Richon. Ron Sutton-Jones. Mick Sutton. Edwin & Ginny. Yogesh. J. & H. Bortoft. Hugh Elliot. JGB.
David and Nonny for giving me the opportunity to find out that I had something to write. Robert Sanders, Jan Jarvis, Elisabeth Perrin, and Jaxie Binder for early advice. Tim Stone for well appreciated encouragement during our Berlin period. Curt Golden for well appreciated encouragement since living in Seattle. Christina Florkowski for patience. Franis Engel for a needed kick. Sandra Prow for support and excellence in pie. SBC for shouldering a load lightly. Carolina Leguizamon. The Seattle Guitar Circle. Tony Geballe. All the Valentinas. MG. Fernando Kabusaki and his mother, who gave me a place to stay in Rosario. You can visit there too in chapter 61.
Early readers and supporters, Pat Myren, Brock Pytel, Peter Kardas, Steve Ball, Victor McSurely, John O’Connor, Bill & Donna Van Buren, Bob Williams, Carola Tocornal, Dean Jensen, Jane Pietkivitch, Peter Kardas, Rachel Altman, Ron Sutton-Jones, Sally Asthana, Stephen Golovin, Tobin Buttram, Tom Redmond, Janette Rosebrook, Vivien Engelberg, Martin Bradburn, Anne Knapton and Richard Pickwick. Robert.
Pilots who gave me invaluable assistance with the details of the floatplane trip: John Nealon, Jim Landman, John Deakin, and Frank Hauptmann. Neal Komedal for information on fishing and research vessels in the Pacific Northwest, which allowed me to correct several errors. A man whose name has been lost to me: years ago, he answered important questions regarding the physiology and vital signs of whales.
Elizabeth LaBellce, Diane Frankel and Patty Ohlenroth for early editing.
Joel Palmer (joeldavidpalmer.com) for heroic editing of the entire manuscript. Then I worked on it some more. Any errors you find are likely new ones that I inadvertently introduced, not Joel’s. Steve Turnidge (arsdivina.com) for catching a number of typos in one of the first print-on-demand editions and giving me hope that this book can find a wider audience. Mary Beth Abel and Julie Turnidge for then spotting still more typos and needed corrections. And, recently, Edwin Hedge and Alex Lahoski found some, and Dale Abrams found a continuity error, since corrected.
Pablo Mandel (circularstudio.com) for expert advice and the final font and title layout for the cover.
To any I have left out: remind and forgive me. I could have easily extended these acknowledgements forever.
NOTES
About sixty editions of the about the first 24 chapters were self-printed and bound as The Jonah, Book I a few years ago on its own. Since then, it has been extensively rewritten and the rest of the story completed. The basic story is the same, but many inconsistencies have been remedied. The characterization and tone are more consistent, the story flow has been improved, and the writing has been refined. The old ending was adjusted to become the new beginning of second part of the story. Over time, to the annoyance of some, I have changed a number of the names of the characters.
The two lines from the Stevenson’s poem directly after the end appeared later in a poem A. E. Housman, which was written as a tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson. It confuses people as to the originator to this day. Any similarity between real people, living or dead, and the fictitious characters in this novel are entirely coincidental. The marine science facility known as the Point Kinatai Marine Science Center is fictitious. The incident with the gray whales and the TV news helicopter is based loosely on an account of a helicopter’s encounter with gray whales while doing research in Baja. I have sometimes been vague or fanciful concerning geography and technology. I tried to make everything that is written about whales conform to what was known at the time the story takes place, the late 1990s. However, in researching this book, I found that knowledge in that field updates frequently and much of the life of these great mammals is still a story as yet untold. All errors of fact are my own
Frank Sheldon, updated on the 23rd of May, 2015
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends