The National Launch of The Oasis Within

Tonight is the official national launch of my new book and first novel, The Oasis Within. If you live near Wilmington, NC come to Barnes and Noble in the Mayfair Town Center at 6 for the celebration! I'll be donating a portion of each copy sold to The Teacher's Fund, a great local philanthropic outreach to area teachers in the elementary grades, to provide for supplies that are much needed. 

It's been nine years since I did a bookstore event, and I'm excited about tonight's opportunity. If you live anywhere other than Wilmington, NC, first of all, visit when you can. But second, you can join us virtually tonight by going to your favorite online bookseller and grabbing copies of The Oasis Within for friends and family. You can even write me about sending you signed bookplates for the books, for any order of 5 copies or more! 

If you live nearby, I hope to see you tonight. It will be a meaningful time for me. The writer's life can be a solitary endeavor. But bringing a book into the world can be an act of social outreach. This book is so chock full of ideas I can't wait to share! And early readers are sending me such gratifying emails! Let me share two or three here, and then I'll be quiet. The first is from an old friend, a company founder and president who just lost his adult son, suddenly, not long ago. The second is from a neighbor I met the first time on a plane to Charlotte the other day, an accomplished artist who lost her husband not long ago, and then her only son. We live in a world of great gifts and great losses, of gains and challenges, and possibilities for deep growth. Then I'll end with a man in town who did a nice Facebook post for the event tonight. Here are the sample reader reactions:

Hi, Tom! The Oasis Within is breathtaking. At times while reading I actually gasped at the beauty of the writing and the clarity of such profound and life changing ideas. Virtually every page of your book is now covered in highlights. I was particularly taken with your perspective on uncertainty. Like so many folks, I've often resisted uncertainty, or even feared it. I now have a new tool in the toolkit. 

I also loved your description of goals. In my career I have focused on goals and talked about goals and obsessed about goals. But I never really saw them as a new path of concentrated, consistent and committed action. How I use goals in my life will never be the same.

Your discussion of the fire of positive energy, and for me, the idea that tough times can become fuel is inspiring and so very useful right now.

I could go on and on, but I do want to thank you specifically for one other insight - the roles of nobility and humility. After 30 years and hundreds of AA meetings that revolve around humility, I still didn't have a good way to think about the dichotomy of those ideas in life. Now I do.

I was captured by Ali and Walid. And I was taken by surprise by the plot twist and revelation. I can't wait to see what happens. Tom, this is a remarkably important work, one that I'm certain will benefit thousands and thousands of people. Thanks for sharing and thanks for your friendship.

Jack H.

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Hi Tom: I’m home from Naples and I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed THE OASIS WITHIN! I was hooked from the opening chapter……underlining, highlighting, making notes and ‘WOW”s in the columns………

Full of chills……one in particular…….When I got to the chapter entitled ‘WISDOM BUCKET’…..for some odd reason, I drew a heart around those words………I read those two pages…..turned the page and read the line…..”My wisdom bucket is in my heart”……..chills up and down my spine….. I was definitely meant to read this book………….so, AGAIN……THANK YOU. Hope to make it to the book signing……already have a list of friends who will receive them for Christmas!!! And definitely will share with my book club!

In the last 8 years, I’ve watched my husband succumb to cancer…….and then my only child succumb to ALS………. Since I’ve been searching……which I guess is pretty normal……trying to figure out what’s next for me and trying to be open to those answers, directions, signs, etc. This book arrived in my hands in a totally random way… (Thank you Universe). MY book is now full of “highlighting”, notes, “Wows”, answers……One I will read over and over and over….It’s THAT GOOD! And so now, I’m on this new ADVENTURE with Uncle Ali and Walid…….and can’t wait to continue the journey……. Thank you Tom Morris!

With gratitude, Anne. (Anne Cunningham, Metal Artist)

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From Facebook:

I’m compelled to stump for my Wilmington friend and philosopher, Tom Morris. If you haven't yet stumbled across his absolute gem of a book, "The Oasis Within", then please check it out. It is the most meaningful book I've read in years, possibly ever. Book signing this Friday evening at Mayfaire's Barnes & Noble.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1668042616770164/

Tom Hackler, Duke Energy

Friends! This is Tom Morris again. If you have a chance to read the new book soon, please write and let me know what you think!  TM

A Land More Kind Than Home

There's a novelist named Wiley Cash who lives in my town. I've never met him but we have at least one friend in common. I recently picked up his first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, and once I started reading it, it was hard to put down. The story is told from multiple points of view in a way that actually works, and helps, rather than confusing the reader. It's a winding tale about some people in the mountains of North Carolina, and crucially involves religion, big snakes in church, crime, murder, heavy drinking, a family broken apart, and a long road to redemption for one man you'd never have suspected as capable of it. My favorite sentiment in the book, one that the story has richly earned the right to announce, is uttered by an older lady near the end. As she sums things up, she says:

It's a good thing to see that people can heal after they've been broken, that they can change and become something different from what they were before. (305)

This is a hope that we all have, and a truth that many of us can attest. Something is going to break us, if we live long enough, and we can change and heal, given enough time yet to come. And the healing doesn't have to look likely, in order to happen. Redemption is the result of a multitude of forces at work over time. If we give people the chance to turn around, sometimes they will. It's a prime example of the true alchemy in our world.

Wiley's story is rich with a resonance of North Carolina's mountain people. But you might see and hear something similar in any poor, remote area of the country. The words and cadences of the characters reflect even what I heard in the piedmont portion of the state, growing up on the edge of a town in an eight hundred square foot rental house. Its setting strips away a lot of the complexities of modern life, to allow some of the elemental things to shine through. The story of the book will fascinate you, disturb you in good ways, and then lift you up.

I'd recommend it as a great summer read. And now, Wiley Cash already has another book out. So I've got more reading to do.

The Art of the Question

The other day, a friend mentioned that he was reading a great new book, just out, called A More Beautiful Question, by Warren Berger, based on his website of the same name. Berger is a careful student of innovation. And he's discovered something interesting. Creative solutions to longstanding problems often come when someone thinks to ask the right questions.

Berger suggests that we benefit most from asking three types of questions:

Why? What if? How?

For example:

Why do we do things this way? What if we tried a different approach? How could we do it?

Why do we assume that this is the best process? What if we looked at the problem in a new way? How could we implement a new perspective here?

Sometimes, the only thing standing between you and the breakthrough in your life or career that you need is the right question, or set of questions.

So let me ask you something: Why do you take for granted the things that you do? What if you asked more questions? How would you go about this in a productive way?

Today.

Best Book of the Year

The best book I’ve read this year was a total surprise. I hadn’t seen the author’s two previous books, although the first one got a lot of attention. And it was only noticing the “Pulitzer Prize” sticker on the front cover of this one at my local Barnes and Noble that got my attention. I was intrigued. There was a picture of a bird. And it was a big book, nearly 800 pages. The thought ran through my head, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

But some strong instinct, some irresistible intuitive urge, made me buy it. It was almost like I had no choice. And it may actually be the best, most completely involving novel I’ve read in at least five or ten years.

The Goldfinch, by Mississippi-born Donna Tartt, is named for a famous painting, done in 1654, but the book takes place in something like present-day New York, mainly, but also in Las Vegas and Amsterdam. It follows the adventures of a precocious but academically uninterested thirteen-year-old boy through a suddenly traumatic period and then into the subsequent years of his life, up to his late twenties.

The book is, first of all, a real page-turner. And, at its core, it’s an extended reflection on the power of our actions and inactions in a sometimes-crazy world. The main character, Theo Decker, does something, early on, you could say, instinctively, that has implications he doesn’t at the time fully grasp, and as he begins to understand the potentially damaging consequences, he hesitates making the choices that alone could undo, or at least mitigate, those very big problems. In the initial instance, it was almost like he had no choice but to do what he did. And yet, when opportunities later develop to possibly reverse the course of things, his failure to take the obvious action and do what we wish he would do, seems on one level mysterious, and yet on another level understandable, in context, at each juncture.

Further circumstances beyond his control intervene, and we see him hide from the realities he faces by indulging in various forms of self-soothing and self-medicating behaviors, mostly involving more drugs than you would ever imagine, all throughout his teens, and then into his twenties, rather than grappling as he should with the things that confront him.

But this sketchy, high-level abstract of the tale can’t possibly convey the nature of the richly realized story, the fully imagined settings in which Theo’s problems grow, or the fascinating characters who come into his life along the way. I don’t think I’ve ever been so involved with the characters in a story, since my very different experience of Harry Potter and his friends.

Then, within the last hundred pages or so of the book, we get major philosophical payoffs from the story. And some of these reflections are almost worthy of Blaise Pascal in their vividness. Beauty, truth, meaning, chance, depth, choice, consequences, and surprise: It’s all there. And the ultimate results of Theo’s actions are so strikingly different from what we have come to expect that musing on them will keep you philosophizing for quite a time to come.

I just finished writing a series of novels – eight, as a matter of fact – totally well over two thousand pages. Entering that fictional world has involved the most intellectual excitement and fun I’ve ever had. And, if you might still be looking for some great summer reading, I’d love to be able to recommend these to you. But they exist only inside my computer. I haven’t even shown them to a publisher yet. So, shhhhh.

That, however, leaves me free to urge you to get your hands on The Goldfinch as soon as possible. I think you’ll be amazed.

But don't read any reviews. They give away far too much. Experience it all as you should!