During the course of my professional life in the United States, I wrote hundreds of papers, presentations and proposals. None of them likely changed the course of history or exist any longer in any form. But it was something I enjoyed doing. The analysis, the setting of context, the presenting of philosophy and argument leading to conclusions and recommendations, challenged me to think and put words into reality.

I am a lifelong student of words. I learned to read sitting on my father’s lap parsing out the daily comics to find the joke or the thought contained in 4 panels with pictures. And the daily habit of reading newspapers was born in that effort. That led me to enjoy reading history as the news of the past, and then historical novels, taking me to places in my mind that no longer existed. The only writing I did for me, and for fun, was in keeping journals of my travels, observing the life around me and trying my best to capture in writing what I was experiencing in real.

In 2007, I was able to retire to France, my Mother’s country. I live in Southwest France, in the department of the Dordogne. It is an ancient countryside of hills and valleys and rivers that has been one of the earliest and most continually occupied section of the world by homo sapiens. It is the land of the Lascaux Caves and Cyrano De Bergerac and of Montaigne. It is now my home.

Soon after arriving here, I was privileged to have been invited to join a bi-weekly Creative Writing Group. We would gather every other Thursday and be given a challenge, a starter, a trigger, In one hour we would take that trigger and turn it into a story, an essay, a memory and then read it out to the rest of the group. Thus you start with no preconceived idea of what you would write, You take an idea, a phrase, a picture and turn it into words in an hour. Its an amazing process really, how the human mind can pull words from the air into something complete, creating a life and world of its own.

Over the course of the next dozen years it was a constant in the rhythm of my life here. With the lockdown due to Covid 19 in March of 2020, we turned what was an in person approach, into a weekly on line effort using the same creative hook: an unknown trigger is sent out each Thursday afternoon, with the object of producing a story in one sitting. It is a wonderful discipline that has led me into doing more writing on my own, of my own.

At this point, I have accumulated hundreds of stories, memories and journals as well as two science fiction novels that grew out of one of my stories. The name of my blog “geraldswriting” is intended to be both possessive and active. it is possessive in that these are my stories, what I have written for my own effort at being creative. It is also active in that I intend it to show that “Gerald is writing” and therefore I hope to keep creating. This Blog allows me to post those from the past that I think are some of my better efforts. For sure, there are a lot that deserve to stay forgotten in my files. And each week, as new stories are written, they will be posted on this site as well. My hope is that they will entertain you.