Whether it be a sports championship, a trip to the Moon, or a major holiday, the rarer the event, the more awe, excitement, and appreciation it creates. Weather involving frozen precipitation is an example of this. In metro Birmingham, Alabama where I am a native and lifelong resident, there is snow, sleet, and freezing rain,…
Magic is a label that has been slapped throughout the ages onto events that people couldn’t explain or didn’t try to explain. Such is the case for the magic that Harry Potter practices in the fantasy fiction book series that bears his name. While Harry, a young wizard, was waving his wand, the books about…
To say that college football season is underway would be inaccurate. As of this writing, we are already into the seventh full week of college football. Why is this important? To ask that question would be blasphemy in my home state of Alabama where football is almost a religion. Without any cities big enough to…
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are literary classic characters, who is actually one character, which is so woven into our consciousness that “Jekyll and Hyde” is now a popular metaphor for people exhibiting a split personality. They first appeared in the novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson…
The Information Age did not begin with the invention of the digital computer in 1938. It began with the invention of the printing press in 1440. Since then, the written word has had a huge impact on human history. It has survived the rise of electronic communications centuries later which began with the telegraph in…
Life is not a rehearsal. It is not even a dress rehearsal. It is acting live on stage. I don’t get to redo the scene in which I had an opportunity to go to Costa Rica while in college many years ago but instead went to Great Britain again (I had already been there with…
A writer’s conference I am a member of and whose meeting I sometimes go to, posts monthly interviews of members. Among the many questions they ask is what their day job is if they do something besides writing. The percentage of authors who can rely solely on writing for income is well below one percent. …
Courtroom trials are ready-made drama. Some are far less dramatic than others, but some trials achieve a status that people tend to call “iconic.” Several trials have been called the Trial of the Century including the O.J. Simpson trial in the 1990’s. That trial had a sensational crime, a creepy defendant, and most importantly it…
“Where did Halloween come from?” sounds like a question a child might ask, but it’s not a childish question. Parents may be more comfortable explaining why people dress as scary creatures on a particular day of the year than telling them where babies come from. Halloween is a tradition which means that people do it…
We think about them all the time. If books and movies are any indication, space aliens preoccupy us and will continue to do so even though we have never met them. Extraterrestrial life is not only a staple of science fiction but is a dominant theme in the genre. Life on other planets in fiction…