Help Terry write his book.

Hello, it’s Terry Haines, from Kodiak Alaska. I am a retired commercial fisherman, who is ready to write a book about fishing, and everything else.

The book I want to write is “A Deck Handbook.” Each chapter will begin with a brief tutorial on a knot, technique, or lesson learned while fishing cold Alaskan waters. The tutorials will morph into humorous stories drawn from my own experiences. I anticipate twenty chapters of twenty pages each, plus one illustration per chapter.

Here is a draft introduction:

A Deck Handbook (the roughest of drafts)

Introduction

Have you always yearned for the life of a mariner? To step away from the dry, hungry land and float above the generous green sea? Can you feel your brain and body softening like butter in the sun as you hunch over your little blue screen furiously thumbing an angry retort to another of the endless fools throwing scat on social media? Does your precious time drain away from you like life’s own blood while you slump in the seat of your car, helplessly trapped in a spider web of traffic, your enraged fingers choking the creaking vinyl wrapped steering wheel, tighter and tighter? Do you lay in bed when the morning alarm sounds, simply wondering “why?”

Deep in your cholesterol clotted heart you know a better life waits for you on the wide and welcoming ocean. At sea, all the warped worries of the dirt world fade with the sight of the shoreline. After all, humans are natural mariners. We have skillfully plied the seas since we first saw them, and their bounty has sustained us from our very beginnings. Yet few modern people choose a life at sea. Why? Well, because the endless, monotonous, soul sucking minutia of our landlocked lives has left us weak and hollow, without the basic skills and practical knowledge necessary to survive outside the womb that is the modern world.

But despair not! The slim volume you now hold in your hands contains all you will need to leave your grubby life ashore for a slimier, simpler and more satisfying life at sea. After you have absorbed its wisdom and performed the exercises provided, you will be ready to call yourself a mariner. Good luck!