The Bridge Builder by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Excerpt from Thank You, I Understand: First chapter

1. The morning after the night before

It was quite late in the morning by the time Rocky Rhodes finally made it into town, little knowing that he had a first appointment with destiny that day, and as yet still blissfully ignorant of the fact that his every move was being watched, recorded and later scrutinized, as it had been for quite some time.

Mother had insisted that he get some food in his churning stomach before he left and, bless her cotton socks, she had put on her pinny and busied herself in the kitchen to make him a bulging bacon and egg sandwich. He probably looked as bad as he felt, and she was no fool.

Looking up from the sports page of his daily snoozepaper, his father had quickly taken in and summed up the situation with a stereotypically grumpy “You look like warmed up bowel movements,” by way of greeting when Rocky had finally clambered out of the pit and made his way downstairs. Well, his words were a little more choice than that, but you get the picture.

“They're playing your song on the radio, I see ...” Rather too appropriate and timely for comfort, it was a twelve bar blues number about some drunken low-life ending up flat out on the tiles again. That kind of thing happened a lot in Rocky's life. He'd read somewhere, in one of the underground student magazines that it was called synchronicity.

Or wishful thinking, a wise voice inside his head corrected him, both denying and confirming his beliefs at one and the same time. That also happened a lot in his life.

“And a very good morning to you, too, Dad,” he'd lilted in return.

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” his father had retorted. And he, of all people, should know that.

Quotes from Thank You, I Understand by Etienne de L'Amour

“You know, we worry about the Bomb, yet there are millions of people out there with their thumb on the self-destruct button.”

“He had been diagnosed as suffering from atypical schizophrenia. Lord, how he hated that awful-sounding label. It conjured up visions of some deranged maniac escaped from a secure mental hospital.”

“It suddenly hit Rocky what an utter shambles his life had become. Well, not become so much as been since he could first remember. He was a walking disaster area. Some people couldn't put a foot wrong and here he was with two left feet, pointing in opposite directions. One wave short of a bloody shipwreck.”

“God, how he loved that synchronicity, ever-patiently and non-judgementally restoring his wavering faith in destiny and the divine. And straight after that came another soulful favourite of his: Van Morrison singing Warm Love. That was Donna's favourite track of all time. He couldn't listen to that song now without making the connection and tears welling up in his eyes.”

If these quotes have whetted your appetite, you may enjoy Thank You, I Understand, a cautionary tale of sex, drugs, psychosis, love and redemption, by Etienne de L'Amour.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Tips for writers #5: Getting citations

Getting noticed as an author

Like many authors, you may collect snippets from reviews in the media which heap praise on your books, and then post these on your web site. A typical snippet might read "... absolutely brilliant!" ~ The Times.

Give full publication details

This is fine for your own purposes and to woo your own readership, but if you would like to later have these reviews and interviews cited and used in a Wikipedia article about you or your book, then it would be beneficial to provide more information, including the name of the author, the publication, the article or column title, the date, the page range and, if the material is on-line, the web address. Avoid simply giving a web address, as on-line resources may well be moved or taken down at a later date, leaving a broken link, a process known as "link rot". This will make it far easier for editors and readers at Wikipedia to locate and verify the source and for editors to decide for themselves how to represent the review or interview in the Wikipedia article.

Thank You, I Understand: Etienne de L'Amour

Etienne de L'Amour has just released a new, standalone novel, Thank You, I Understand.

This factional work takes the reader on an evolutionary journey of self-rediscovery from near Neanderthal to sentient human being in a thousand and one fraught lessons.

A psychological drama, it explores the murky depths of the unregenerate psyche, trials and redemption; passionate romance; the wise voice of inner-tuition, and the heightened awareness of eventual spiritual reawakening. An awakening into a strange world pregnant with deep meaning in which we see revealed an awe-inspiring hidden design at work amidst the everyday life which we mistakenly take to be the real world.

Rocky Rhodes is one wave short of a shipwreck as the story begins, going through a period of teenage rebellion, amidst a subculture of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and later he experiences psychosis and schizophrenia. But his life begins to take on new direction when he is introduced to the way of the Sufi mystics.

Thank You, I Understand is a standalone novel of around 80,000 words.

The book is available for the Kindle at Amazon US, Amazon UK and other Amazon web sites: ASIN: B009KCNLHS. It is free of DRM (digital rights management) to make it easier to read and share.

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

A free preview (in Kindle/.mobi or .epub format) is available 24/7 from our Dropbox site. The preview is also available in pdf format at our mirror web site (on-line 10:00 to 22:30 hours, UK time, most days).

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+