Milan Vodicka

Authorship of books is about writing. Writing books is about life.

I already had my share of life and I had my share of writing. My share of life includes growing up in the then communist Czechoslovakia, living briefly in the Netherlands, and spending the majority of my life in California. I earned a living being an engineer and manager in companies manufacturing television broadcast equipment for the whole world. The last twelve years of my professional career I taught technical and business subjects at the college. Some might say I am still qualified to do that, having master's degrees in electronic engineering and business administration, and a doctorate in integral studies. Integral studies, seriously.

My share of life includes family, friends, and colleagues and acquaintances, even bystanders - from all of its encounters. They are significant, because without them nothing noted above could have happened. You will find more about them in my upcoming autobiography.

Life is a sequence of events. My life is a tapestry of them. I had the good fortune to move across continents, countries, cultures, social systems, and professions. I am finding this blend brings to me, and hopefully through my writings to you, a perspective worth sharing among all of us.

I started to write as a child, diaries first, some of them still surviving in my drawer. Then, while studying dry technical and scientific subjects, came first loves. With them emerged in me a poetic streak. Moreover, within the controlled and closed communist society of Czechoslovakia, poetry was a means of free expression not readily achievable otherwise. Through metaphors and abstractions a meaning could be formulated that was beyond the touch of communist censors.

Poetry at that time and place created movements. One of them was Skupina 6 ("Group 6"). I am one of the founders. Ostensibly a poetry theater in one of the Prague student clubs, it delivered performances of not only our original works, but also of poets such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Vaclav Hrabe, Vladimir Majakovski, and other progressives.

Eventually, some of my poems were published. This happened in newspapers or monthly periodicals. Oh, what joy it was to find a check for thirty crowns in the mailbox! Movie tickets cost only two!

The 1968 invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia transpired while I was in the Netherlands. This was a traumatic event. My decision to stay out of my native country brought the end to my connection with any writing or publishing opportunities there. To the best of my knowledge, all publications where my poetry appeared were shut down by the occupying Russians anyway.

From then until now, my writing in English consisted of papers and studies on various subjects and occasional newspaper articles. I delivered speeches at conferences. I wrote my doctoral dissertation. I taught college level subjects online. These are mostly written endeavors, right? Yes, a poem here and there... I hold this affinity.

Communist grip on Europe fell with the Berlin wall. In the early nineteen nineties I participated in the exciting times of my native country's renewal. I became an honorary member of the Civic Futurological Society of the Czech Republic. Its publication is called Dialogues with the Future. I am privileged to have been able to contribute to its content. Some of my writing was published by the Interuniversities Studies Programme in Poland.

Oh yes, not to forget, I wrote the foreword to and published my daughter Lenka's book Legends of Home in 1992, now available as a Kindle Edition.

What now and in the near future? If you wish to know more, please visit my website

http://drmv.info

For your reading pleasure,

Milan V.