To read chapter one of Ruane's Wooden Spoons visit www.woodart3d.com.

Dennis Ruane set his career path by realizing that his college studies were leading him in the wrong direction.

He was drawn to create something more artistic, both in taking up wood carving and with the literary word. He began keeping a journal and attempted to parlay his ideas into a novel. But as he would write chapters, he would hate them, and throw them all away.

As he grew older, having established a successful carving career, the theme of at first choosing the wrong field followed by self-discovery continued to resonate. He started to write in secret, crafting the story of professor Daniel Whaley who abandons his position at the university, leaves his wife and heads to the hills of Pennsylvania to restore the family homestead. Whaley, taking up where his ancestors left off, begins to carve wooden spoons for money. However, the homestead is threatened by greedy investors looking to develop the land, which Whaley must now defend.

The novel, Wooden Spoons, has spread across the Internet and wood carving circles since it’s publication in 2006. The experience has been so exciting that Ruane has decided to write a second.

“I almost have the same feeling as I do when I’m working on a big carving,” Ruane said of his writing.

The new book will be set in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A lady riding on horseback one day sees a mysterious man who she comes to learn lives in the Park. She is the daughter of the governor, who is making a push to increase logging in the Park, and he is an eco-terrorist in hiding. Call it an environmentalists’ Romeo and Juliet.