Former philosophy professor George Kent Kedl gave up his 20-year teaching career for life on a sailboat with his wife and children. His award-winning release We Ran Away to Sea: A Memoir and Letters (2023) was written with a combination of his late wife Pamela Thompson Kedl’s letters and his own memories of their adventures. Look for Kent on his website JacanaPress.com, on Facebook and on Tiktok. We Ran Away to Sea is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.
At its heart, what is your memoir about? It is the story of my mid-life crisis, roughly spanning from 1984 to 2000, when I was obsessed with creating a life of cruising the world on a sailboat.
The goat has gone back to its original owner. As was evident to our neighbor and all the neighbors, the fencing around his property was inadequate. I admired his independent streak and was charmed by his fixation on our front door. Goodbye, goat! I hope you will find a more suitable new home. Anybody want a goat?
Our friend Jim decided his health wasn’t up to heading across the Pacific in a sailboat one more time. He was right, and shortly afterward ended up hospitalized in intensive care.
If you’d like to support Jim, look for three books: Windswept by his late wife Ginny Sollars, A Bachelor’s Paradise, and the Yamamoto Affair. The first is an account of the family’s years sailing the Pacific; the second is about Jim’s adventures in the Pacific as a bachelor; and the third is a gripping novel of suspense and intrigue inspired by his own diving experiences and the historical World War II Japanese admiral, Yamamoto.
As far as we know, the boat is still in San Carlos and for sale. Anybody want a boat?
The Book
I keep adjusting the ads on Amazon, and the book continues to sell an average of 20 books a month, not (yet) more than the cost of the ads. We’d like more readers to discover the book. It’s gotten more ratings on Good Reads and Amazon, but we haven’t had a new review in several months. Hint, hint! You don’t have to be a great writer; just share your honest reaction. Even star ratings help, but a few words are much more meaningful to us and readers trying to decide whether to read or buy the book.
The three copies at the Albuquerque Public Library continue to circulate.
Events
If you’re within hailing distance of Albuquerque, Kent will read at Books on the Bosque this coming Saturday, October 5. We hope to see some of you there. Books on the Bosque is a lovely, relatively new independent bookstore with many activities worth checking out.
Kent will also speak at the Tony Hillerman Branch of the Albuquerque Public Library on Saturday, October 26, at 1 pm., a shorter version of his illustrated January presentation at Oasis.
Book Awards
We Ran Away to Sea is a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award finalist. Winners will be announced sometime in October. We’ve also submitted the book for a few other awards
The most unusual is The Wishing Shelf. Based in England, the award is chosen by reading groups in London and Stockholm, Sweden. Unlike most awards, where you send in your application fee and wait for award announcements, this one asks for a book description before allowing you to submit a book for consideration. The invitation from the award administrator felt like a mini award.
He wrote: “Thanks very much for contacting us. I had a look at your book on Amazon, and I thought it looked very interesting. I very much liked the look of the cover and the blurb, and the Look Inside seems to flow well. I see you also have a number of reviews, which I read with interest. So, yes,please send me a PDF of the book plus a JPEG or PDF of the covers.”
Other Stuff
Since I didn’t get a newsletter out in August, I’m doing a lot of catching up here.
Kent and I are editing stories we left out of WeRan Away to Sea, but work is going slowly because …
I’m finally working on my book, working title “Once a Pilgrim,” about the first half and maybe the second half of my first Camino.
Picture of Vézelay Courtesy of luctheo on Pixabay
We’re planning travels after being home all summer: next week to San Francisco to see family, and on October 28 to France, where we intend to walk the less traveled Voie de Vézelay, which begins at the Basilica of Mary Magdalene in Vézelay and eventually meets the Camino Frances in St. Jean Pied-de-Port at the Spanish border. We won’t manage more than one-third of the 900 kilometers in just over three weeks of walking. Weather will be unpredictable but probably not hot, and many pilgrim lodgings will have closed for the season. I’ll try to post on my blog, Caminobleu.com, or at least on Facebook because writing blogs on a cell phone after a day of walking is not easy. And there may be days with no internet.
Reading, Book Signing, Exhibit of Pam’s Art and Maybe a Slide Show
Please share your thoughts about the book if you liked it (and even if you didn’t). Every review helps. It doesn’t have to more than a heading and a few words. Post on Amazon
The Story Behind the Book Cover
Pam’s Rough Draft of a Collage was the basis for the cover design
We spent months working with cover designer Sara deHaan, who patiently made cover after cover for us. Somehow, none of them seemed quite right. Even when we decided on the final cover, we had our doubts. In our Christmas letter we asked for votes on two cover choices, and only two people chose our final cover as their favorite.
Kent and I wavered in our choice, but Sara urged us to go with the blue cover we finally decided on. Pam’s collage expresses what is perhaps the main theme of the book: the relationship between Pam, Kent, the boat, and their boys, and Pam’s struggle to reconcile those loves, and her ever-present longing for home, as represented by the cats snuggled together on the lower right, and her love of art (in the upper left and right corners), for which there was no room on their small sailboat. Pam was practicing moving heads in Photoshop, so a photograph of her head is attached to the the figure slumped in the chair to the right of the boat, while Kent is given the be-wigged head of the dogmatic Puritan, Cotton Mather, both of whom, fairly or not, were characterized as stubborn and fanatically dedicated to what they believed to be right. Sons Jake and Andy sit on a log, their backs to us, and the curving lines connect all the elements of the picture with each other and with the boat, Coot that is the central and dominant image.
Pam and two artworks from the collage that represent her love of art, home, and her boys.
We finally launched a new video: A Storm at Sea , and we are excited to announce a new book talk and signing at the wonderful new Groove Artspace at 309 Gold SW in downtown Albuquerque on Wednesday, October 4 at 6 pm. More information to follow. Save the date!
Meanwhile we had a wonderful visit with the family and grandchildren in San Francisco over the weekend. Here is just one photo with Zia and Grampy reading We Ran Away to Sea on the shore in Sausalito: More to follow!
We had a lovely afternoon yesterday at Treasure House Books in Old Town, Albuquerque. If you are looking for books on the Southwest or books by New Mexico authors this is the place to go!
We enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Who would have guessed how many old sailors end up in New Mexico? Despite worries that we’d be disrupted by a gun rally on the Old Town Plaza, all was peaceful and our event was well-attended.
Our next scheduled reading and signing will take place at the new Groove Artspace at 300 Gold Southwest in downtown Albuquerque at 6 pm on Wednesday, October 4. We hope to see some of you there in this beautiful gallery surrounded by lovely art.
Jacana Press 
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