What do you feed a starving soul?  You feed it moonlight.  You feed it the Milky Way falling to Earth one slow star at a time, one slow snowflake at a time, a spangled snowscape stretching from December to March, deepening with the sacred hours and the silence of a perfect winter.  Did you catch it?  Maybe you caught it from behind glass, the furnace ticking as it breathed pseudo-spring all around you in your living room.  Maybe you stole a real breath of it from your doorstep to savor in your blood like a chilled fine wine.  I had it all, and I wish I could give it to you, but it’s too big to handle, too long to e-mail.  You had to be there.  Am approaching 2000 miles now and still skiing that trail toward true spring where the Earth takes off its holy white vestments and dons its rainbows.

In any event, I hope you saw the lunar eclipse – a half hour special on the early evening of February 20^th, admission free.  I lay on my couch staring up through a big picture window at the moon as the Earth’s shadow ate it up.  Actually, the passing of that shadow seemed to make the moon brighter somehow, chrome yellow crescents around a red core refusing to go away.  I like that, because it confirms a presence in the sky.  There has to be something up there in order for light to be reflected.  If light doesn’t win, heaven is empty.

It’s been the best winter ever for skiing, but you know you’ve been living in the woods too long when someone describes one of a million trees in a 5,600 acre nature preserve and you recognize it.  This was not Evergreen, the wounded pine I spoofed as my mentor a while back.  It is a proud, rugged tree alone on the marshlands, and Mike Nielsen, one of the high-schoolers I told you about last month, said he just had to climb it.  I get that.  Minnesota youths will shatter your stereotypes.  If they aren’t pulling some stunt like night-climbing a movie theater complex to the roof in mid-winter (yeah, Mike & friends did that), they might be doing something as benign as a milk-chugging contest.

I prefer chugging a quart of Coffee Blast ice cream, microwaved until it’s drinkable, from Trader Joe’s.  Love shopping at that place, where the old-time rock ‘n roll they play is incredible, as is the food, as is the service.  They actually insisted on making up a tub full of whipped cream for me one night when they were all out of the canned stuff – gratis, of course, along with the cherry cider they opened for me while I waited.  Bad diet, bad diet – yes, mea culpa, and as the winter comes to an end so too my culinary sins.  Gonna go straight soon as the snow melts.  (Straight to Baker’s Square.)

My agent, Jim Hornfischer, and I are still waiting for some response from Harper’s on THE SHADOW SHOW as well as CASE WHITE out on the other coast.  A short story adapted from the latter novel is due out in Cemetery Dance soon.  Some of you may remember that mid-March has a special significance for me, so my column this month over on StorytellersUnplugged.com deals with the curse of bad timing and the blessings of good.  In the process, I hope it gives you some inspiration.  You can check it out here: SWALLOWING CHOCOLATE-CHIP FRISBEES, CHARLIE BROWN, & THE ONLY BUS OUT OF TOWN.

David Niall Wilson asked me the best (and most probing) questions I’ve heard in a while in the new interview for Macabre Ink.  This time he covers everything from literary standards to personal relationships.  Here’s the link and photo:  Macabre Ink 03-11-08: Interview   [Note: if you don’t get to this link while I’m on the front page, click the word Shadeaux in the box and you’ll find me in the Interview archives for March 11, 2008.]

Very much appreciate all the email from so many extraordinary people around the globe.  How else could I sit in my hermit’s cave and collect wisdom about tigers in Bengal, the weather in London, drama at the World Series of Poker, the inside scoop on journalism in Detroit, poetry from Germany, Puerto Rican scuba adventures, and much more from California to Maryland to Dubai?  The photos in this newsletter seem to be evermore popular, so I’m including a half dozen this time: three nature shots of the aforementioned tree, one of “Snow Spider” Mike in his favorite “air chair” with Comrade Slick (Art Petrakov) about to ascend the heights, and a couple of travesties from the notorious Dr. Foto (musician Mark Manrique).

WebMaster Ed Picard is now archiving newsletters w/photos on our website.  If you’re not getting this free monthly newsletter mailed directly to you, ask to be added to the list at: mn333mn@earthlink.net.  As always, this is a Blind Carbon Copy that does not reveal your address.  If you ever wish to stop receiving emails from me, please just drop me a note to that effect, and I’ll remove your address from the list.  And if you’d like to see more of my latest writing, please check out a free sample chapter from THE WATER WOLF at the website below.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/