Our guest writer today is Bob Vander Lugt. Robert (most people call him Bob) Vander Lugt plods his way toward a writing degree at Calvin. He and his wife Vicki just survived a year of marrying off three of their four children. Sand, Smoke, Current, his first short story collection, was recently released by Wiseblood Books.

Here I go again, feeling somewhat old and out-of-place, feelings that my associations with Calvin seem to trigger. They began two years ago when I registered for classes, bought a parking pass, acquired textbooks, and actually walked through the south entrance of the Covenant Fine Arts Center and up the staircase to the second floor. Try walking the halls of an elementary school, Ninja Turtle backpack slung from your shoulder, and you might get an idea of what it feels like for a fifty-year old freshman to navigate the halls of Calvin’s English department. Students mistook me for faculty (I’m flattered); I mistook faculty for students (perhaps they’re flattered). Now, invited by a former classmate to guest post on a blog cleverly called The Post Calvin, I’m feeling the outsider again. Guess what? I’m not post-Calvin—at the rate I’m progressing, I may never be—and even if my mind stubbornly denies the truth, mirrors don’t lie. I’m not under thirty.

Still, I’m honored. I recognize names on the blog role call. Fine people and talented writers who welcomed me into their working groups and kindly but honestly critiqued my work. So though an alien in your gates, I feel comfortable here. Visiting The Post Calvin now and then, I read the posts and smile and think: Good stuff, good people. I’m proud to be connected to such good company.

It’s good company that I’ve been thinking of lately. On January 1^st, Wiseblood Books, a very new and very small press out of Milwaukee released a short story collection called Sand, Smoke, Current. My name is on the cover. It’s my first book. But it’s not just my book. Contrary to the myth writers carry around, we don’t do our work alone. Good or bad, there would be no book with my name on it if it weren’t for a crowd of supporters who’ve left marks on my writing. Behind this book stand my ever-supportive wife, my family, my sometimes-bewildered friends. Four faithful members of my writer’s group read my drafts and suggested edits. Professors have pushed me, fellow students have made room. My very patient editor navigated my stubbornness. Two authors graciously answered a stranger’s request to read a review copy and write blurbs. Then there is the influence of all the writers I know only by their work. And there would be no book at all if not for the folks peopling my stories—each one a fiction, but all bearing at least a strand of character DNA gathered from donor made of flesh and blood.

So, on the first day of this year, I sucked in a deep breath and made my next move to honor them all. It was, as Professor Debra Rienstra advised me a few months ago, time for some shameless self-promotion. I went to my Facebook page and shared my publisher’s link announcing the book’s release. Then, clumsily, I stepped on the networking dance floor, reached out, tapped a few shoulders, linked arms and danced. I’m a terrible dancer. My feet stick to the floor. My face reddens. My smile is forced. But I’m out there.

What I’ve learned among all my missteps and awkward movements is that the company I’ve been bumping around in is a really good bunch. Friends have told their friends, who are strangers to me, and they in turn passed the word along. People who never read fiction have bought my story collection. I hope they read it, but I appreciate the support nonetheless. In fact, I’m bewildered by the support. I whisper prayers of thanks for all this surprising provision. Then I worry about the next move. Maybe, just maybe, this gets easier as I go along.

I had a dream once. A woodsy cabin on a northern Michigan lake. A few weeks of solitude. Heaps of books and a good Wi-Fi connection and nothing to do but write and think. Still sounds good now and then. But after actually seeing something through to publication, after sending it into the world, after selling a couple dozen copies, I know that writing may be an individual act, but it isn’t a solitary one. It requires some very good company.

And good company breeds good behavior. Last fall I began to ask writers I admire if they would read my book and write a blurb for the back cover. After I worked up the nerve to ask Mark Richard, I received a reply that I hope to model someday. He said that when he solicited blurbs for his first book he was amazed at the gracious generosity of authors who didn’t know him personally. He vowed to do the same for others. And so he did. That’s the kind of company I’m resolving to keep—the kind of company I hope to be.

Bob Vander Lugt