The short answer is: I hope Wanderer Come Home will be available for purchase sometime this month, July 2022.  It will be an eBook at this point.  Later, I hope to also publish a print edition but, at the moment, I can’t say when that might be.  Right now, I’m finishing the final copy edit to find any and all imperfections, though I’m certain I’ll miss something along the way.

The book is large: 194K words and 53 chapters, as well as a prologue and epilogue.  I will also be including, in the end matter, the first chapter of my next novel titled, Datesville, Camping In Canaan’s Land which I’m currently writing.  So you’ll get plenty of excellent reading material for the price of one book.  By the way, the ebook will probably be priced at around $9.99 USD or possibly less.

Smashwords will make the book for me when it’s ready and they have a retail store themselves, so I know it will be available through them.  But they also distribute ebooks through a number of other outlets, several of which are large retailers.  But I’ll make all of that clearer when Wanderer actually goes on sale and I have a better idea where the book can be purchased.

If you have further questions or comments, please leave them below or just say “hello”.  I’d love to hear from you.

Dale

So, here’s the bio which will appear in the “end matter” of my novel.  End matter is a new term for me; so I’m having fun using it; but I think you know what end matter is: it’s that extra junk they include at the end of the story which you might read if a) the book is interesting enough to finish and b) you really, really enjoyed the story.  But if you’re a writer like me, you probably read the end matter first, to see what the author is all about.  Bios, however, are notoriously bland and uninformative and they all, pretty much, sound the same.  I’ll admit, mine isn’t much different.

I suppose the reason bios are bland and uninformative is because authors are generally recluses—we’re not all that comfortable with strangers (like the people who make up our audiences).  Don’t get me wrong, we like people and we love our audiences.  We just don’t like spending too much time around them.  We like solitude better.  In that, we’re different from celebrities.  So the bio kind of reflects that, the fact that we prefer solitude, I mean.  Maybe I’ll say more about this another time; I just thought you deserved an explanation as to why the “About the Author” sections are so boring.  You do know, probably, that authors are often colorful characters, despite their bios?

Anyway, here’s mine:

about the author

A native of California, Dale Tucker spent much of his childhood in Palo Alto and Fresno before the family moved to north-central Idaho in the late 1960s.  Over the next four decades, he graduated high school, raised a family, earned a degree in English, and explored a number of career paths, including church minister, abstract painter, and museum curator.  2006 saw the redirection of his artistic energies as he transitioned from painting to writing with a focus on literary fiction.  Themes that appeal particularly to Dale are issues related to poverty, simplicity of living, and spirituality.  Wanderer Come Home is his first novel and addresses all three of these themes.

Dale is currently retired and spends his time writing, cooking, Nature-watching, and gardening at his home, sheltered in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina with his soulmate, Kathryn, and his Manx cat, Dill.

I’d like to give you some flavor of the novel which I’m in the final stages of preparing for publication through Smashwords in ebook form.  Whew!  That was a mouthful.  The title of the novel is Wanderer Come Home.

Our main character is 70-year-old Axel Browne.  The story takes place in 2018 and early 2019.  Axel is a veteran of the Vietnam War and served in 1967-1968 and was wounded the day before the famous Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese Army.  But this is not a war story.  So there you have the broad strokes which define our Axel Browne.  Oh, but I forgot one important thing:  Upon returning home from the war, Axel could not reenter society in the traditional sense which means he had no desire to live the way most Americans live—with careers, bills, mortgages, and the rest.  Instead, he decided to become a wanderer—a homeless person who travels wherever his boots take him.

This type of life suited Axel well, however, because he was in search of something—or, I should say, someone—but even his friends did not know this about him.  He did not tell them about his search because, first of all, it was a very personal thing and, second, if he discussed it with anyone, they would probably think him touched, or something.  Now, at the beginning of our story, Axel realizes he’s probably already lost whatever opportunity he might have had, over his lifetime, of finding the girl for whom he has searched so long.  Oh, did I say “girl”?  Well, okay then, that’s right.  He has looked for a girl who, of course, now, would be a mature woman in her late fifties.

But there’s a second character who enters our story early on.  His name is Hunter Carr.  He’s in his late forties, happily married, and has been speedily climbing the ladder-to-success.  As the story opens, Hunter has reached the pinnacle of his career, to date, when, in a freak accident, he drowns in his own swimming pool.  With the drowning, he experiences what people call: “a near death experience” or NDE.  He revives from the drowning but the NDE messes up his perceptions of reality, success, and life in general.  Everyone who matters to Hunter, of course, wants him to “recover” which means they want him to return to the same person he was before the pool accident.  The problem is he can’t.

Axel and Hunter do meet eventually under unusual circumstances.  But both men change the other’s life, unknowingly and profoundly, even before they meet in person for the first time.

It’s a story about how some of our mundane, everyday decisions accumulate to have life changing consequences.  But we never know which decisions change our fate or if they are somehow predestined.  And when our lives are changed profoundly, what do we do then?

See you around the block.