This seems to be roughly a bi-weekly occurrence that I find a TED talk that I cannot simply keep to myself.  As someone who has played piano for most of my life, I am in absolute awe of this young man.  He is far and away a better pianist than I will ever have the hope of being and he can't even see the keys.

You have probably see videos of famous blind musicians like Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder playing the piano and making millions doing it but I venture to say that this goes beyond even them.  The things that Derek Paravicini can do on the piano and the speed with which he can do them are almost inhuman.

I wish that I could speak with him regarding his abilities so that I could understand how he does what he does.  Perhaps I will need to edit my story about the loss of sight to incorporate a character like this amazing man.

Please take the time to watch this through to the end, it is completely and utterly worth every second.

So obviously no one is buying my book this Black Friday.

It's not available on Amazon.com.  There is no listing for it in the iBooks store.  Barnes & Noble doesn't have it on their shelves or available for the Nook.

Next year at this time, I hope all that has changed.  While the initial writing of these stories is taking longer than anticipated, my hope is that by this time next year, there are at least two books available in many of these outlets when you do an author search for Jonathan Ytreberg.  Lose Your Senses will be available as well as a yet to be named collection of poetry.

I wrote here a few months back that I had found a stash of old papers from my college days and would be posting a bunch of my old stories and poems.

I had been a bit hasty with that proclamation.  The papers I had found were important, but not from any of my creative writing classes.

That was then, this is now!

There is some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that I am making good progress with writing the "Touch" story.  The bad news is that it's taking longer than I expected.  The good news about that though is that there will be more story for you to enjoy once it is complete.  So while I am working on getting through this story for the first time, I thought I would share a little more of it with you.

After walking for a half hour, Alex turned into a small park that was two blocks away from her friend Stacy’s house.  Stacy was usually an early riser, even on the weekends, but seven thirty was too early to go ringing doorbells.  She walked up to the swings that hung silently in the still morning air like gallows ready for their next victim and plopped down in one of the cracked plastic seats.  It bent under her weight and when she lifted her feet off the ground, the swing began a lazy pendulum trip forward and back.

Alex and Stacy had spent many days and evenings on these very swings when they were younger.  They were perfect seats for trading gossip from school and for the two of them to bitch about their families.  Once they got bored of talking, they would spin around in place and watch the chains curl around each other only to let go and spin back to earth with arms and legs spread wide, staring at the spinning sky until they fell to the ground laughing at the dizzy feeling.

There were a few times when Alex had run here with Stacy after school to avoid her grandmother.  It wasn't that Grandma hit her all the time.  And it wasn't like she could even feel it anyway.  To that extent, what Grandma had said yesterday after smacking Alex across the face was the truth.  But while Alex couldn't feel the physical pain, her emotions were much more fragile and having to look in the mirror and see a bright red welt slowly turn into a purple bruise hurt her more than the physical pain that she couldn't feel.  The fact that Grandma had such little respect for her and treated her literally as a punching bag was more than Alex could handle.

“Hey.”

Alex’s heart skipped a beat as she looked up to find the source of the voice.

“This swing taken?”

Stacy grabbed the chain supporting the swing next to Alex’s and slowly sat down next to her.  Alex relaxed a bit knowing that her friend was nearby.  They sat in silence for a few minutes, Alex staring at the same six inches of the ground under her feet as she swayed gently back and forth, Stacy looking around the park and trying to figure out what to say to Alex.

“Where were you last night?” Stacy asked.

“Out.”

“With who?”

“No one.”

Another minute of silence.

“Where’d you go?”

Alex didn't answer this time.  She was already getting tired of being interrogated and didn’t look forward to all of these same questions if the cops ever caught up to her and brought her back to Grandma’s house.

“I don’t want to talk about it!”  She said it a little more forcefully than she had intended.  “I ran away.”

The silence returned for a few minutes as Stacy had understood the underlying message that the conversation about Alex’s whereabouts last night was over and it would be pointless to try and continue it.  After a few minutes, Alex slid out of her swing enough to set her feet on the ground.

“Can I borrow a few clothes?”

Stacy put her feet down too and let a big smile spread over her face.

“Yeah, come on.”

Despite the late hour (or is it early since my clock read AM at this point?) I have had a very productive evening of writing tonight.  I have set the "Hearing" story aside while some folks take a final read through it before my last round of revisions and am focusing 100% of my effort on "Touch" at the moment.  While "Hearing" currently comes in at about 6 pages, "Touch" is already over 17 pages and it will probably end up being even longer when put into the final book format.

I'm on a bit of a roll so I'm going to go back to the writing, but wanted to give a quick update.  Don't forget to visit the Indiegogo campaign page for Lose Your Senses.