The publishing company name, Chas’ HotBooks, came from this description of my writing:

Helpful,
Out-of-the-ordinary,
Thought-provoking
Books and more.

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Excerpts from the Introductions to the two editions of Black Hole:

I haven't any particular secrets. I only know how to live. I don't know how to not live. I miss John. Part of me is wherever he is. I'm a different person as the mother of six, five of whom are living, than I was as the mother of six, period. I'm also different at forty-eight than I was at thirty-eight or twenty-eight or eighteen or eight. I'm not the same as I will be ten years from now. But secrets? I just live, enjoying every minute that I can and doing my best to let the others flow past without leaving too many bruises on me or those around me. It's all I know how to do.

I also wanted to add some assurance that the pain changes. My experience is that it doesn’t leave. It doesn’t fade away into nothing. It does, however, become bearable almost all the time. There are moments, days on the calendar, the occasional unknown trigger, that bring it all back. I now know – even during the worst times – that the pain won’t be debilitating forever. Even when raw, horrible, devastating pain takes over my whole being for a moment or an hour or part of a day, I know that I have lived through this before and I will live through it again.

Your quote here really spoke to me because for 10 years after Mom died I was living, but I was not alive.
 – Kevin Dawson, son, husband, father

A beautiful story, beautifully written. A useful tool in many situations.
 – Janet Ruckert, psychologist

Note: Until we put the PayPal links back in place after removing them due to confusion by customers of a different site, the only way to order any of our books, etc. is to e-mail Chas. Thanks!

More from Black Hole:

A black hole hovers just off my left elbow. It arrived shortly after my seventeen-year-old son died. I can't see it, but I know about black holes. They have a strong gravitational pull, enough to consume everything that touches their edge, even light. Nothing escapes. I am careful to stand up straight. I cannot lean toward the seductive darkness. My black hole is a physical reminder that my world has tilted, its rules have changed. I am a novice in this new world.

John loved tomatoes. When he was older, we bought forty acres of desert. After the goats helped spread tomato seeds all around the edges of the clearing we had tomato plants growing wild. Not realizing the seeds were already spread everywhere in sight and beyond, I'd planted more in the garden the next spring. John spent the summer he was five happily eating a ritual hundred tomatoes a day....

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Portions copyright 1999 Dan Ridley, used with permission.
This is revision 15 of http://hotbooks.com, the Web site for
Chas Ridley, PO Box 168, Bremerton, WA, USA