Bill Walton - Daisy Wheel Press

Ghostwriters usually pen the words for some celebrity who thinks he or she has a good story but cannot get the right words onto paper. Ghostwriters know how to apply adjectives, adverbs and subjunctive clauses to make the often dull story attractive to the reader. In this instance, the A ghost@ is the writer and I merely tapped the computer keyboard for him. This is Fletcher= s story.

Fletcher Blair introduced himself to me on a dreary autumn day when I was struggling with my first novel, the infamous writer's block having grown in the past weeks to a point where I was losing ground. I was editing out more of my old words than I was producing new words. When I look back now it is amazing how, in the matter of a few weeks, I was able to write a complete book on a subject that I had never considered. I had often heard writers say that sometimes the A character@ just appropriates the writing of the book and now I understood what they meant. Maggie, my wife, thought I was insane for those hectic weeks, but she showed a singular degree of tolerance, hoping that my relationship with the ghostly Fletcher Blair would end as suddenly as it began. You see, I only met Fletcher about a year after he died.

In a very short time, he gave me most of the details of his life preceding his death - and what happened after he died. Fletcher explained how the experiences after his wife died had prepared him for what was to come. Ivy had returned to tell him about the afterlife. Thomas had added confirmation. Now Fletcher wanted me to tell his story so everyone could be ready for the after-life, the after-death experience.

The question of what happens to us after death has been around for as long as we have been able to put two thoughts together. Every philosopher, every prophet, every teacher has had one answer or another, none of them entirely satisfactory to me. I had concluded that nothing happened to us after death, that we only lived for the moment and were gone. I admit I had some difficulties with the physics of this premise because I thought there was some energy to my being that needed an accounting for, but I had explained that away by acknowledging that humankind's understanding of physics is not as complete as we might like to believe. My thoughts on this subject were not that different from Fletcher= s. Perhaps that is how he found me.

Fletcher Blair and Thomas Three Toes have resolved those questions for me with their thinking on quantum mechanics, formative causation and parallel universes. Their Extremely Small Particles Theory makes some sense to me.

Oh, by the way, Thomas is a cat.

I know, I know - cats can= t talk. I used to believe that.