David H Lyman

Storyteller

A Book for every Creative Soul

The Creative Process is a series of steps, challenges really, we face every time we embark on a creative projects. “Creativity,” David explains, “is the process  by which ideas are turned into physical objects, performances. Along the way, we discover what the idea wants to be. Each project, each idea we undertake teaches us something about the world of creativity, and of ourselves as creative people.

The Creative Process is used by artists, writers, inventors, entertainers, entrepreneurs as each moves their idea from their imagination to the market place. This is a process the author has used for more than 60 years and taught for 0ver 40 years.

David demystifies the entire process--from that first glimmer of an idea through a period of research, into and through the Dark Forest of Despair. It’s in this forest we confront Demons and Dragons, Vampire and Zombies, blocking the way. We also meet Heroes and Angles, Mentors and Peers who help us navigate through the Forest, to emerge wiser and with a better shaped idea and plan. As we follow this path, this adventure, we develop skills, acquire knowledge, gain experience we can use throughout out lives as creative professionals in what ever career we follow.

This book is still in serach of a publisher.

A Memoir of Vietnam

Hoping to stay out of Vietnam, David Lyman joined the U.S. Naval Reserve to avoid the draft. By the summer of 1967 he found himself with a SeaBee unit on a beach in Vietnam.

     A photographer and journalist in civilian life, he was assigned to Military Construction Battalion 71 as the editor of the unit's monthly newspaper, documenting the lives of the hard-working and harder-drinking U.S. Navy SeaBees. His unit spent 7 months in Chu Lai as they engineered the infrastructure of war—roads, runways, heliports and base camps for troops on the edges of the conflict. He got also shot at, almost blown up by a road mine, spent nights in a mortar pit as rockets bombarded a nearby Marine runway, and rode along on convoys through Viet Cong territory to photograph the villages outside “The Wire.”

     The stories and photographs Lyman are from the battalion’s newspaper, The Transit, from memory and recent conversations with shipmates, or I guess you say Bee-mates.

This memoir follow David's 14-months wi the Seabees.

     This book was published my McFarland Publisher in 2019 and is available at www.Seabee71.com

     The book is Books 225 pages, with

131 Photographs, maps and graphics. There are 17 Chapters covering the years 1963 to 1967, especially the 7 months the unit service in Chu Lai, 60 miles south of DaNang.



CUBA

Flying Under Castro's Radar


Cuba! A colorful and magical island with a stogy communist government standing in the way. Lots of characters, intrigue, suspense, and great photography. That would be a great story tell.

     Between 1999 and 2003, I struggled to get a media school off the ground in Cuba.

     Why Cuba?

     Why not, I thought. No body else was doing it, not even the Cubans. Besides, Cuba would not only provide a lot of story material for students to work with. It was warm, a great place to be in the winter. Besides, I needed a challenge, an adventure.

     So, off I go to Cuba in spring of 1999 to see what can be done. It’s not as easy as that, getting to Cuba, which is part of its charm. The Forbidden Island, at least for Americans. Permits from the US Treasury have to be obtained. I have to have a Cuban partner, or sponsor. There are hotels to find, film processing to arrange, classroom spaces to locate. And I need a “fixer” a Cuban who can translate and couch me in the ways of the Cubans.

     With my scouting trip a success, we book our first master class in Havana with National Geographic staff photographer, David Harvey. It was his idea in the beginning. All is goingv well until 2002. We are kicjed out of Cuba, by the Cubans! And therein lies the tale.

This book is still in serach of a publisher.

More Book Projects in The Works


• The Lake - Growing up on a lake, surrounded by a forest

• The Farm - A young boy' summers on a Vermont Farm

Ginger and Me - A young boy and his horse, Ginger,  are swept back a hundred years into in Post Colonial New England.

Kate: A Woman Observed - A Love story of a special lady who shared a dream with a writer.