Hello, everyone and thanks for joining in this #RRBC ‘Spotlight Author Tour for November’.
Today I’m delighted to present author Michael Lynes.
Author Bio:
Mr. Lynes is a serial entrepreneur who enjoys dry red wine and single malt scotch. When not occupied with arcane engineering projects he spends his time playing with his two grandchildren, baking bread, feeding seasoned hardwood into his ancient Timberline wood stove, working on his various cars, bird watching and taking amateur photographs. His current menagerie includes one short-haired turtle shell cat and a pair of actual turtles.
His last book, There Is A Reaper: Losing a Child to Cancer, was an Indie B.R.A.G. Gold Medallion Honoree in January 2017, a silver-medal winner of the 2016 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards for Memoir, a medalist in the 2015 New Apple Book Awards for Memoir, a winner of the 2015 TISBA (The Indie Spiritual Bookk Awards), and a finalist in both the Independent Author Network 2015 Book of the Year award and the Beverly Hills Book Awards for 2015.
Mr. Lynes was awarded a BSEE degree in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and currently works as an embedded software engineer. He has a consuming interest in the science of emotion as promulgated by Dr. Paul Ekman and has made a comprehensive study of his Face and Emotion courses.
Mr. Lynes has four sons, has been married for over thirty years and currently lives with his wife and youngest son in the beautiful secluded hills of Sussex County, NJ.
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There is a Reaper…Creation
Almost four years ago now I first sat down in front of my computer in my office, driven to somehow find a way to honor the memory and life of my son Christopher Aaron.
I thought I would write a few words, something to try and capture some of the memories, some of his spirit, before they became too far removed from memory and distorted by time.
I sat there, really just lost, and unable to find a way to begin. Touching back into those memories was like opening a long shut door, reentering a place of fear and failure and pain that I was not sure I would be able to handle.
I typed a few words and discarded them. And then I typed a few more, with the same result.
I realized that, in order to tell this story I would have to face my fear, and my failure. My fear rooted in the pain that this re-exploration would dredge up; my failure in my inability to prevent or find some way to cure him of this deadly affliction.
These two overarching forces combined to hold me impotent.
In all likelihood, left to my own preferences, this project would have been abandoned, stillborn…but…there was a third force.
Chris.
As I sat there, blank page before me, paralyzed by my own doubt, my own fear, my selfish craven indulgence….it was Chris, clear and sharp and bright and powerful, who appeared in my mind’s eye. I realized that he wanted his story told, that it needed to be out there.
The feeling had grown, imperceptibly…first a wish, then a whisper…then a calling and now an unfulfilled duty.
When Chris had become sick, we were consumed in combating his disease. When he lost his battle we were shattered by his death.
He knew that we needed time, to heal, for the wounds to knit and scar, for his memory to become a story rather than a source of heart-bursting agony.
He had given us that time.
Now he was calling me, back to myself and to my task. I owed him this – and my debt was due.
I nodded my head, silently signing my unspoken contract.
There were many false starts, and many, many days when I laid aside my task, exhausted by the anguish and emptied of tears. Despite all, the promise I made to Chris and to myself that day drove me onward.
The story, Chris’s testimony and epitaph, the memorial of his life here and the start of his life-eternal is now complete, and I fervently pray that it satisfies my debt and honors his memory.
Thank you Chris, for pushing me to complete this work…
I hope you like it.
Follow Michael online:
Twitter – https://twitter.com/woodheat
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/MLynesAuthor/
Website – https://mikelynes.wixsite.com/mlynesauthor
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Michael’s Books:
THE FAT MAN GETS OUT OF BED: https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Man-Gets-Out-Bed/dp/1938812905
THERE IS A REAPER – https://www.amazon.com/There-Reaper-Losing-Child-Cancer-ebook/dp/B00XNZW6C4
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