Tony Bowman's Page on Redbud Revue

Forty years ago when I was in elementary school, there was a wonderful time of year that stretched from early December through early March. Growing up in Swords Creek, Virginia, on a dirt road meant the first December snows gave us a nice, two-inch thick ice layer above the gravel and red clay. If we were fortunate, and in the mid to late seventies we often were, this ice layer would remain in place for the better part of four months. Ice meant no school. And, no school, even for a kid who loved school, was a wonderful thing. Russell County had numerous dirt roads such as the one I lived on, many of them narrow twisting things that were hard to navigate even on a good day. A school bus had no hope of delivering cargo in ice, so the students stayed home, sometimes for six weeks at a time. Snow days were filled with sledding, sometimes down mountainsides and into ravines that make the adult in me doubt the sanity of the nine-year-old. There was the time when I hit a mogul wi...

So often these days, I find myself troubled over the course of our nation. Then we do something like this: an American rocket liftoff delivering a space capsule, capable of carrying a crew, to an altitude of 3,600 miles above the earth. We haven't sent a crew capsule into that high an orbit since Apollo. I am reminded of Apollo 8, which launched 46 years ago this month. It was the first manned flight to leave earth orbit, enter lunar orbit, and return. The year was 1968, a ye ar that had seen the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam, the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis, the murder of Robert Kennedy in San Francisco, the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia, and rioting at the 1968 Democratic Convention. It was a year of hardship and strife, but, as it came to a close, Apollo 8 gave us something else: a view of the earth from lunar orbit along with a recitation from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968 televised to the entire world, and, along with that, hope.

Smashwords is the devil. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. Let me rephrase that statement: Smashwords can be darned difficult to work with. Let me explain. Like most indie authors, Amazon is my friend. It's a huge company, and they throw a massive amount of money and talent at the web software used to create Kindle books from word processor documents. My typical pattern is to write my book directly in Createspace format in Microsoft Word. When the final edits are done, I simply upload my Word document to Createspace and let it churn out the print version. I then take the same Word file, tear out the fancy formatting I sometimes do, drop caps for example, and upload the file to Amazon. Churn, churn, churn - Kindle edition ready for the masses. Life is good, life is serene, and I can go watch The Walking Dead in peace. Recently, I decided to venture beyond the safety of Amazon and offer my books on Smashwords. Why? Amazon is great for print versions and...

I stink at math. Always have. In elementary school, I did fine until division. Addition, subtraction, multiplication - that was all good, but division and I were like oil and water. My Mom worked with me for hours after school trying to help me with it. What got me over the hump with division was when I was finally able to visualize the actual operation of division in my head: seeing the top value divided into parts by the lower value. What I didn't understand at the time was that I am a 'Visual Thinker', one of the myriad fun possibilities of falling on the Autism Spectrum. I don't think in words, symbols, or sounds, I think in pictures. I learned at an early age to form words to describe the moving pictures in my mind, which has served me well over the years. When it came to math, division became a visualization of a machine. Put the bottom number in slot A, top number in slot B, and keep turning the crank for the proper number of decimal places. Si...

My latest novel, Nine Fingers, is now available on Amazon.com . The Kindle version can be ordered  here , or you can order the paperback  here . Something horrible is killing people on central Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway. Is it a rogue bear? Or, is there a serial killer on the loose in the small town of Bedford? Ward Rickman has come to town looking for an old friend. When he finds him, he hopes to kill him before more innocent people die. Because, Ward knows the parkway killer isn't a crazed animal or a serial killer. He knows his nemesis is a mixture of both. And, he knows something else: only a werewolf can stop another werewolf... Only $3.99 for Kindle, $12.99 for paperback. Also, for the next five days, the prequel short story, Nine Fingers: The Tucson Ripper, is available for *FREE* on the Amazon Kindle - get your copy here .

  Once while walking, I came face to face with a tiger. No, seriously, I did. And, no, I wasn't in Asia. I was on the north end of Charlottesville, Virginia. I attended Engineering School at the University of Virginia back in the 80s and, on weekends, I liked to walk. I would usually start out in the morning and walk five miles to the mall (it was the 80s, man). I'd hang out at the mall till evening, then walk halfway back to take in a movie at one of the theaters off Hydraulic Road. I'd usually get back to my dorm after midnight. If you saw me back then, you would have thought I was a hippy. I had long curly hair down to my shoulders and a beard almost to my chest. And, there was a very good possibility I was barefoot on the sidewalk. I remember walking up route 29 toward the mall one day in 1984. I guess I was pretty dishevelled looking. A guy was walking on my side in the opposite direction, and he looked like a thirty year older version of me. He said,...

A lot of people hate Facebook. I have to say, I have days when I don't want to look at it. People fight and argue - and, I'm just as guilty as anyone else. But, then, there are days like today. Baptism in Bull Creek circa 1919. Bull Creek Old Regular Baptist Church, Buchanan County, Virginia. Courtesy of Forest Stiltner. My cousin, Forest Stiltner, posted a picture of a baptism on Bull Creek in Buchanan County, Virginia, from around 1919. The church was the Bull Creek Old Regular Baptist Church, and, when I saw the name, I was transported back in time. Not to 1919 - I'm not that old. But sometime in the 1960s. You see, I used to go to that church with my mother and grandmother. I've been to many churches since those days: Southern Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran - but, the experience of that church when I was a child has stuck with me my entire life. The building was small and simple. And, I was never there when it wasn't full. You'd arrive ...