I’m going to ramble a bit… brace yourselves. I’ve been reading through my personal library a lot lately. I do that. I’m a huge collector of books, I have shelves and shelves of paperbacks. Several hundreds of them at least. Mostly science fiction and fantasy. I like to read new stuff but occasionally nothing catches my interest and at those times I turn to my old favorites and devour them all over again. I can read the same book over and over, it doesn’t bother me. I find something new to like about it every time.

When I get in this mode, I don’t normally jump around. I’ll pick an author and read everything by he or she I have on hand. Often that will remind me that I’m missing a book or two, especially in a series and I’ll renew the hunt for it. I prefer *not* to order books online, I enjoy prowling through used bookstores looking to plug gaps in my collection. On rare occasions I’ll cave in and turn to sources online when I have concluded that I simply won’t find a particular volume in person.

One such book was “Fall of the White Ship Avatar” by Brian Daley. It’s the third book in the Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh trilogy. I’d read the first two books many times but I’d never been able to find this third volume. I finally broke down a year or so ago and ordered the third one from a used bookstore online.

So, on to present circumstances. Quite on a whim I started reading the trilogy again this past weekend. I just finished the third book perhaps an hour ago. Yes, I am a speed reader and I do read daily, often for an hour or two when I go to bed. As I’m finishing the book I notice something I hadn’t caught before. On the cover, it says “The exciting conclusion to the *first* adventures of…” etc. Ah! First adventures… perhaps he’s written more by now! So I toddle over to the computer and track down Brian Daley’s website to see if there is more to this series that I can look for. My joy rapidly fades as I read a message from the author on the home page, written some months before his death from pancreatic cancer in 1996.

I read his entire website after that, learning more about who he was and the life he led. I think he lived a good life, embracing the adventure and sharing it with his fans through his writing. I really can’t explain how moving an experience it was. I was really caught off guard. I didn’t know him, didn’t really know much about him. I had just spent several days “in his head” reading his books and I guess that contributed to the odd sense of sorrow I felt in learning of his passing.

It is I think, a fitting commentary on the way he wielded his craft that I felt an emotional bond because of it. And that’s all I really wanted to say about it…