News What's New for Summer 2010 "When the going gets tough, the tough go sailing." Still writing regularly for Bangor Metro and Maine Ahead magazines and making occasional appearances on behalf of my novels and The Maine Limerick Project. I'm also an adjunct professor of English at the University of Maine. May marks my 41st month of non-car ownership, though I do live in one-car household. But my name appears on no car registration or insurance policy; I do not own snow tires or jumper cables, and I spend no time drinking bad coffee and watching daytime TV in repair shop waiting rooms. I live in Bangor, Maine, and I've never been more free.

J.D. Salinger Dies at 91 Reclusive author appeared in Room 13 The world mourns the passing of J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, which has sold over 60 million copies since its publication in 1951. It is arguably, along with other defining books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Grapes of Wrath, one of the Great American Novels. Salinger's last publication was a short story in The New Yorker in 1965. The following is an excerpt from my novel Room 13 . The setting is a high school classroom haunted by the spirits of characters from classic American literature. "I think you've tried to take those posters down," Moondog said, "and something's prevented you from doing it." Marilou's jaw dropped. "How did you know that?" she asked in a husky half-whisper. "Because they don't want to come down." He walked slowly back along the wall, toward the front of the room. "These posters," he said, "these authors, are part of the presence I feel. Something of them and their work is in this classroom, and not just in books. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I can see it as clearly as I can see you. Whatever supernatural force is in here is using these posters to manifest itself." Marilou stood up and walked to the center of the raised area. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," she said. "They're just posters. They're not even very good ones." "But you have tried to take them down." "Ye-es." She took another few steps toward him, stopping at the top step. She threw a sidelong glance at the authors, then quickly looked away. "What happened?" "Twice I got paper cuts and once I fell on my ass," she said, not looking at him. "Do you think the selection of the authors might be significant?" Moondog asked her. "I mean, there are a lot more writers who aren't up there. It might help to look for things these authors have in common." "They're all dead, for one thing," Marilou said. "Except for Salinger." "And he might as well be, for all he's written the past thirty years," Moondog said. "What else?" From pages 158-159 of the original hardcover, 1997 St. Martin's Press.

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