Jack E. Stuckmayer

My novel "The curse of the Radiant Opal" is largely autobiographical based on the year and a half, 1965-1966, I spent digging for black opal in Wallangulla, (now called Lightning Ridge) New South Wales, Australia. The characters are based on real people now, for the most part, departed.

This is my first book, which started out to be a memoir but I got carried away and enlarged the story in an attempt to bring the reader into a life so unusual that it can take you to the brink of madness, as it did my protagonist, Anskar Thorston, or bestow on you your stone which can lead to obsession and death, which it nearly did to Anskar. This has happened to dozens of miners over the past hundred years. Fortunately, I, on the verge of madness, was able to escape and make my way back to Minnesota. I hoped to return someday to the most enticing, alluring, beguiling life I have ever known, but I have not, fearing I would, like so many others, succumb to "The Curse."

I hope you enjoy the story of "The curse of the Radiant Opal." The dozens of footnotes are necessary to fathom a different world, a different life, a different language. Let me take you into this adventure which, I believe, is worth ether effort.

The book series "Swaggy Tales" are stories from the 25 years, beginning in 1957, that I spent wandering, working, loving and learning. Book One, chapter three, relates to my pre-Swaggy days and explains why I left what would have been a happy, normal life surrounded by friends and family, to live a life of nomadic adventure, a that life encompassing 15 states and three continents. I have lived with fascinating people, worked in interesting places, slept wherever and ate whatever. The world was open, available and friendly.

By 1982 the world that I had lived in and loved was gone, never again to be. Life as a Swaggy was no longer possible. At 48 years of age I had squandered my youth and, as they had predicted, was left with nothing to show for it but memories. No money, no home, no family, friends scattered around the world. It was over. I was lost, alone and had no reason to be alive.

Were it not for my lovely pen pal of ten years, who took me in and nurtured me through a difficult adjustment back to normal life, I would not be here. But I am. We are married and life is good. However, that is another story, for another time.

Jack Stuckmayer