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…
I am about to ask a philosophical question. What if creators of movies and books run out of ideas? I would have to think that movie theaters would have no new movies to showcase. They could only show movies that were released before they ran out of ideas. There is another option. Movies…
Once the winter holidays had passed and a new year had begun, I set about my goal of publishing my book It Was a Magical Place. There was one publisher that was guaranteed to not turn down the chance to publish my book: me. As you will read below, I did many of the things…
I could have labeled my previous two blog entries with Roman numerals I & II and this one as Roman numeral III. This is the third blog post about my publishing odyssey for It Was a Magical Place. To pick up where I left off, I waited patiently for a response from Karen Kingsbury’s…
I couldn’t tell how I got my book written and published in one article last month, so I am continuing to explain now and probably again next month. I will now talk about a writer’s conference that played a pivotal role in the development of my latest book. The conference was a “writing intensive”…