Date:	2008-03-12 09:57
Subject:	The Last Poilu passes
Security:	Public
Mood:	melancholy

Words are inadequate to express--even from the vantage point of one born forty two years four months and a day after the guns fell silent--the enormity of the so-called War to End All Wars. From the blood of millions came the end of an age and the birth of a new one. It was the catalyst for an even greater world war and the shaper of a century. One of the greatest and most tragic events in human history, the First World War ended empires, beget revolutions and altered European society forever.

What must the ensuing years look like to a soldier of the great war? Lazare Ponticelli was such a soldier, a French poilu, originally Italian, who lied about his age, as many young men have done, in order to join the French Foreign Legion. He fought in the War to End Wars. Who knows all that he or his fallen friends and foes alike saw? Certainly not I.

If I could have one wish for a just legacy of the First World War, it would be that we always remember those who served and those who fell. Never forget.

Date:	2008-03-12 06:58
Subject:	Fire and Rain on my birthday
Security:	Public
Mood:	thoughtful
Music:	Fire and Rain

James Taylor and I share the same birthday, today. I've always loved this song and have come to associate it with this day (namely because it was often played in honor of Taylor's birthday).

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I'd see you one more time again
There's just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you fire and rain, now

Date:	2008-01-27 08:43
Subject:	Crunch time
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited

Finishing up my synopsis for The Snow Witch by writing a much shorter vision. I should be ready to actually begin the first draft on Tuesday.

I'm feeling good about this. It's been a different sort of process, working with the bones of a story from a novella and then writing out the novel in synopsis form (or what I sometimes call, the "story skeleton.")

I am not mapping out each scene but rather the overall story.

It seems to be working quite well.

Date:	2008-01-27 08:13
Subject:	(South)Carolina on my mind
Security:	Public
Mood:	ecstatic
Music:	Carolina on my mind

I haven't intended to blog about politics here; I much prefer to focus on the writing process. That said, I can't help but mention how I feel about Barack Obama's victory in South Carolina's democratic primary yesterday.

In a word, I am ecstatic.

I've been a supporter of Senator Obama's 2008 campaign from the beginning. I've always been an outsider in politics. My mother was an Eisenhower Republican while Dad was a staunch independent. I followed in his footsteps. I've vote in every presidential election since I turned 18, beginning in 1980, casting my ballot for John Anderson. I registered as a democrat in 1988 because I felt that there was no longer any middle ground. The current administration has emphasized that to the Nth degree. I deplore the political hard right veering that happened a while ago.

I've never liked establishment politics with all their shibboleths that are must be followed. Politically, I began as a moderate and wound up being "left-center." I think government has an important role to play in rectifying the ills of our modern capitalistic system, and help those who run afoul of economic changes and so-called globalization. I find the libertarian view that some people are bound to fail and that's just the way it is to be abhorrent. We are all in this together; we are one big extended family. I think that religion should remain out of politics and decry the recent American tendency to equate one's political beliefs with God to be both wrong and a huge mistake. (For instance, Reverend Huckabee claims that he is not about establishing a Baptist theocracy, yet he wants to govern by his Baptist theology. Seems like an apparent contradiction to me.) Seperation of church and state should be absolute.

I was no fan of Bill Clinton. While I was happy he was president rather than then the alternative, there were too many squandered opportunities and lack of success during the 1990s for me to look back on the Clinton presidency as halycon days.

Barack Obama speaks to me--of the possibility of a new beginning for America, of change in politics (to a certain extent--I'm not naive enough to assume that politics still won't have some of, well, politics), of a generational shift away from the old ideological struggles of the 1960s, of transformation. Senator Obama and I are the same age, both born in 1961, living our lives in the twin shadows of the Greatest Generation and the Boomers (technically we are both boomers, but it has never felt that way to me). One of things I dread about a Clinton versus McCain match up is a refighting of the Sixties in 2008. To me, it's well past time to deal with the present, not the past. There's also a personal connection (isn't there always when one feels strongly about a candidate). My brothers and I went to school with a family of mixed race--the father was Kenyan and the mother a White american. We became friends with the children--the eldest, Lisa, was one of brightest students I knew from grade school through high school, and she and her siblings were friendly and compassionate (quite important when I felt like a loner through much of school). When I see Senator Obama speak, I am reminded of Lisa, and how she spoke, and how she and her family were a bridge.

That is one of the reasons I support Obama for President.

Mostly I support him because I truly believe him to be the best candidate for the job, and because I truly believe he embodies the promise of change for the better.

Date:	2008-01-24 07:02
Subject:	The Snow Witch--a synopsis of the process of becoming a novel
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited
Music:	Celtic

Towards the end of my "story a week" push in 2005-06, I wrote a novella, "The Snow Witch," in three weeks (the story a week thing wound up becoming an average rather than a constant figure). It wound up being 21,000 words long, a short length for a novella.

I liked the story. I liked writing it. I had fun with it, it flowed well at about 1000 words a day and overall, I had a good vibe from it. I finished it the day before our cat Max suddenly sickened and died, so I suppose the timing was good-- I was in a bad way for a while after "Maximum Max the Manx" went to the great cat run in the sky.

Since finishing "The Snow Witch" on March 31, 2006 I kept thinking that perhaps there really was a novel there. Finally, three weeks ago after finishing A Secret Sorcery I gave "The Snow Witch" the same treatment. A read-through on my MacBook with a second window open to write scene summaries. When I finished the read-through and scene summary, I imported the later into SuperNotecard, a nifty index card program, with scenes grouped into a three act summary. I then wrote a short synopsis of the novella. Unlike A Secret Sorcery, the synopsis here clicked. I had a story, one that really did need to be longer because I had left a lot out. So, then a wrote a novel version of the synopsis, along with a notes file filled with my thoughts on the story and characters, along with general blue skying.

This is a rather oblique approach (for me at any rate)to 'outlining' a novel. It seems to be working very well at this point. I need to revise the synopsis and write down my word count goals and deadline for the draft. And then, voila!, my third novel.

Date:	2008-01-23 09:48
Subject:	Jane Austen's Unreal Half-life Crysis
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

A brief diversion. goloban has a great joke regarding unconventional videogames that don't involve blowing things up. His quip came to mind as I read a glowing review for the new Wii game, "Endless Ocean," which isn't so much a game as an open-ended diving simulation meets exploration, sort of a sandbox version of Pokemon Snap meets Animal Crossing. Pace goloban's joke, I could see a stereotypical hardcore gamer sitting down to watch someone 'play' "Endless Ocean". "What, no speargun? And, WHAT, no killer sharks? Whaddayamean there's no death match mode. This game sux!"

With that in mind, I imagined applying the same principal to fiction:

"John approached Marcia across the grassy glade. 'Oh, Marcia,' he whispered, and fired a burst from his pulse rifle.

"'John!' Marcia exclaimed. She dodged the burst, ducking behind a park bench. She aimed her rocket launcher at him. 'How I love you," she proclaimed, and pressed the firing stud. The rocket streaked at him, detonating on contact. Fortunately, he had the overshield power up and survived."

"'Marcia,' he said as he ran up to her, pulling his vibroknife.

"She reloaded her rocketlancher and hit him pointblank. Boom. They both died.

"Final score--zero."

Date:	2008-01-23 09:04
Subject:	One month on--short stories
Security:	Public
Mood:	calm

Update -- my plan to write a short story a week, begun back in October, lasted only a month. I ran into the same problem I had with A Secret Sorcery-- too much writing off the cuff.

A little history. In 1982, when I decided (having just turned 21) that I wanted to write fiction professionally, I turned to short fiction. My first submission was to "F&SF in 1983. In 1987 after earning my degree in history and going to work for the library, I decided that I really wanted to write novels, and began working on several ideas.

I spent the next few years working out ideas and writing lots of first chapters, but getting nowhere. When I joined my third writer's group in 1995, I decided to return to short fiction and did so until 2003, when I wrote my first novel at long last. My dad's death that June from a terminal illness, my responsibilities with the estate, then getting hit by drunk driver threw a big wrench into my writing plans.

It wasn't until 2005 that I really returned to writing, and it was with short stories, after a comment at that year's OryCon by Diana Rogers on a panel about writer's block. I had said that whenever I outlined, I didn't write. When I didn't outline, I wrote. She sagely replied, "then don't outline." I sat down the following week and wrote a short story. And then another. Then another. Three in three weeks. Weeks 4 and 5 saw me write a novelette, so I broke the rule a bit. Over the course of five months I write 26 stories, including several flash pieces, two novelettes and one novella. But I really wanted to write another novel. So, in April, I sat down and started doing just that but rapidly ran out of steam and turned to planning, outlining, and then reading about writing.

Needless to say, that book didn't get written.

I wrote a few more short pieces in the next year and a half, including two for an anthology contest in the U.K. (no sale, alas but it was fun). So, last October, I thought about trying to have my cake and eat it too, fiction writing wise. I managed four pieces, all short (the longest being 3K).

I do believe that writing and selling short stories first (at least in the Speculative fiction field) remains a very viable strategy-- Jay Lake, David Levine, Mary Rosenblum and several others locally have done just that, quite successfully. Of course, there are others such as Naomi Novik who went for novels right out the gate. I'm somewhere any between, though novels are my first love.

The novel market is a scary place. Images of writers lying broken on the iron wheel of their three book contract while newbies line up for the same treatment come to mind. That's one reason short fiction appeals to me. An open market. Lots of choice. Faster response times then novels (on average, there's been a short fic submission or two of mine that disappeared into the Ether, never to be seen again). Much more apparent variety in styles and content. Whether or not there is less competition is debatablle, IMHO. No doubt some of the short fiction markets receive fewer subs then an agent or a New York publishing house, but what about small press novel publishers? I don't have recent figures for the three digest sized SF magazines, but I seem to recall each received well over a thousand submissions a month.

But there are lots of other markets.

Either way, there's a lot of folks interested in being published.

You have to go with your passions. Mine is for both short and long fiction. I like short stories, I just happen to love novels, both as a reader and a writer.

I will write both.

Date:	2008-01-23 08:36
Subject:	One month later--reflections
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

I have not been idle since my last post, just not posting to this LJ. That changes today :-)

Since December 18th--

I read through and wrote up a scene summary of my second novel, A Secret Sorcery. It was an enlightening experience. A Secret Sorcery was my November 2006 NaNoWriMo novel, written at a breakneck pace in the space of thirty days. It wound up just under 55K words. Three POVs and two protagonists proved too much for the one dimensional narrative, more a "travelogue with random encounters" then anything else. This was pure seat-of-the pants writing and it shows.

I had had a nebulous idea for the novel for going on ten years, but had done nothing other than visualize a few dramatic scenes.

Fast forward to October 2006 as I wrote "Fishbowl Hotel" a novella and considered what I wanted to write for November's NaNoWriMo. A Secret Sorcery came to me. I thought about it more while listening to rock opera (I'm sworn to secrecy on which one ;-). The funny thing was, when I started writing the story, it took an entirely different form then the original darkly romantic fantasy set in an ancient city with gothic overtones. It wound up being a walkabout by the three principals in an ancient city. It was bereft of romance (save for a rushed one at the very end), no clear cut conflict, and the principals spent the bulk of the short novel trying to figure out what was going on, mirroring my own writing process. The positives were that I did write a novel in a month, I wrote daily and I wrote at length (averaging 1800 words a day). The same was true for the previous month's "Fishbowl Hotel", as well as my first novel, Psykers Rule written back in 2003. In each case I plunged right in and made it up as I went along.

I had tried "pre-writing novels"--writing up outlines, backgrounds, character bios etc etc--years earlier but with no resulting draft. Time and again I would try and figure out what I was going to write, and it got me nowhere. The only times I seemed to get anywhere on a novel (and most of the time anywhere on a short story) was if I just plunged in and started writing. The problem was that the result wasn't very good. Sure, IMHO at any rate the prose could often be pretty decent and the scene throughline would move briskly, but to no real effect.

I had a good heart-to-heart with golobanabout this during one of our recent write-ins at a local coffee shop. He observed that my earlier outlining/prewriting efforts had been me trying to come up with a foolproof method for writing novels. He is exactly right. And he was right on to say that there's no way to do that. Writing is risk.

After finishing my readthrough/analysis/scene summary and synospsis of A Secret Sorcery I could see that the story wasn't even broken--there wasn't any story there at all.

All was not lost. It was a very valuable experience to write the novel and to take it apart.

Finished beta-reading and commenting on Shawna's Ravensblood on schedule, by Saturday. What struck me was two things--how much she's improved as a writer and how much I learned from closing reading and commenting on her novel, scene by scene, character by character. I've dissected published novels before and critiqued novels by others former WG members but never at this level of detail.

It was highly instructive.

I have high hopes for Shawna, and for my own progress as a writer.

Date:	2007-12-12 08:51
Subject:	Beta reading
Security:	Public
Mood:	pleased
Music:	"Christmas Canon" TSO

I'm currently beta-reading Shawna Reppert's latest work in progress, Ravensblood. Shawna is a talented writer with an strong story sense and a gift for capturing a character's inner turmoil. Ravensblood is the third novel I've read by her and shows considerable improvement in her craft and growth as a writer--the scene where male lead attempts suicide was gripping. Her descriptions really shine as well.

It is pleasing and inspiring to see one of my old WG compatriots continue to get better and better. I've been a fan of hers since we first met. If she keeps at it, she'll be published and I think will find a responsive readership.

With luck I'll have my beta-read finished shortly and give her my feedback (Saturday being my deadline).

Date:	2007-12-12 08:42
Subject:	Post-Yoga bliss
Security:	Public
Mood:	calm
Music:	"Christmas Canon" by TSO

Still feeling relaxed after last night's yoga class. (Getting over yesterday's killer sinus headache helps as well). I take yoga classes 2-3 times a week. Tuesday night is my favorite--it's my only evening yoga class. There's a different energy to an evening yoga class, more relaxed in someways yet, coming as it does towards the end of the day, there's a sense (to me at least) waiting a recharge.

Last night's class was tougher than usual. Heidi ran us a through a long sequence of vinyasas Vinyasas are essentially a linked series of poses. In this case, we went from downward dog pose to a low lunge, from that to plank followed by a yoga pushup into upward dog, back to downward. Switch sides, repeat. Then repeat again, only this time going into a high lunge. Then upright, breath with a slight backward bend, and then into chair position. We did this for what felt like an age--maybe ten minutes tops--and then went into a vinyasa sequence of warrior poses-- go from standing to plank to yoga pushup to updog to downdog, then warrior 1, warrior 2, reverse warrior, and then extended right-angle, all in a single sequence. Whew. I ache from thinking about it.

Even for Heidi--the toughest of my regular yoga instructors--this was tough.

Tough can be good.

Can't wait for Thursday morning's class, which is with Heidi as well.

Date:	2007-12-10 07:06
Subject:	Through the flood zone and back
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative
Music:	"I'll keep your secrets"

Drove up to Seattle yesterday to rendezvous with my long-time friend Carl.

I left in the pre-dawn darkness shortly after 6:30. Daylight broke around Longview-Kelso. The roads were fine. I wondered how the Chehalis corridor would be after the flooding. When I reached it a bit after 8am with the speed reduced to 50 mph I discovered all clear. Construction vehicles were parked in the islands between north and southbound lanes. No sign of workers. I glimpsed debris littering the ground west of I-5--no doubt the flotsam and jetsam of the recent flooding. The roadway was stained brown, as where the guardrails and lower portions of signs. Try though I might, I couldn't see any evidence of ten foot high flooding along the roadway, but those WSDOT photos from last week tell the story. I really appreciated the herculean efforts one and all put into reopening the interstate.

Past the flood zone, in Centralia, snow began falling and grew heavier until by Olympia it was a micro-blizzard of sorts. Fortunately, it didn't stick to the roadway and I arrived in Seattle no worse for the wear.

Fishbowl Hotel. A big novella written a year ago which I need to devote some real time to revising and editing. Yes, I know, there's no market for novellas, especially for unpublished fiction writers.

Cue Stephen King in the introduction to Diffferent Seasons: "Welcome to Novella airlines senor, you'll be here a very long time."

Of course, given the length (38,000 words and counting), Fishbowl Hotel is closing on short novel terroritory. And since it is a young adult story, some expansion might result in a novel manuscript for the YA market.

I believe in this story regardless of whether or not it gets published. It has special meaning for me. The idea first came to me in October 1987 (that's right kids, before the Intraweb thingie), and was inspired by my mother's inspiring struggle to regain her speech after her aneurysm in 1986. Fishbowl Hotel was to be my first novel. I didn't write it. I caved into my inner Caliban and went on to try and write something more genre. That didn't work either (but that's a different story). Come October 1st 2007 and I decided to write the story at long last.

Now its time to do the write thing and revise Fishbowl Hotel and see what I wind up with.

Date:	2007-12-08 10:16
Subject:	Co ho ho
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused
Music:	"Read my mind" by the Killers
Tags:	christmas

Spent a very enjoyable evening with a group of like-minded folks watching the Christmas flotilla sail by our friend (and fellow writer) Pat's house boat on the Columbia river. We had great fun adding our own twists (often secular or even--gasp--Atheistic) to the varied light displays. My personal favorite display (and one not requiring a twist) was the salmon wearing a Santa hat and the words "Co-ho-ho."

One of those things that struck me as corny kitschy funny. What can I say?

My only wish was that I had had more time to talk writerly with Pat and David Levine. There's never enough time when you're having fun :-)

Date:	2007-12-03 07:54
Subject:	The Anti-300
Security:	Public
Location:	Before Pentium Ebon and silver
Mood:	melancholy
Music:	"When you were young" by The Killers

LeAnn's up in Seattle at a training for a few days. The house is always so empty when she's gone, though the tabby boys always liven things up.

Yesterday evening after she had left, the wind grew stronger. I swear I could hear a faint echo of that runaway train howl typical of hurricane force winds. I suspect it was just my imagination. While the winds gusted at fifty miles per hour, that's a far cry from one hundred plus.

As part of my ongoing research for a Beowulf project I watched the 2005 film Beowulf and Grendel, starring Gerard Butler last night as the wind blew. Very fitting.

Yes that's Gerard Butler of "THIS IS SPARTA!" fame, having played Leonidas in "300."

B&G was almost the Anti-300. Whereas the 300 was this huge tripped out Mardi Gras spectacle filled with over the top silliness (for instance, Xerxes is extremely ridiculous and then some)Beowulf and Grendel was the opposite. 300 was filmed entirely on green screened sound stages, with all of the landscapes, most of the vast Persian horde, and one very goofy looking hellbeast of a wolf all CGI. Even the action scenes were augemented by computer effects.

Beowulf and Grendel was filmed on location in Iceland, in very rugged volcanic landscapes that dripped with water, and which were wreathed in loam and moss, at times sheathed in ice. There were no computer special affects. I noticed the classic film technique of taking a few frames out of one action sequence to make the action speed up slightly but that was it. Grendel, his father (yes, like the other recent Beowulf film, the screenwriter decided to add some back story) and Grendel's mother are all actors (tall to begin with and probably wearing height augmenting footgear) in costumes with Quest for Fire level facial prosthetics.

The dialog veered abruptly from okay to wooden to fitting to way too modern and back again. Very uneven speaking. The acting was generally good, though Sarah Polley as the witch Selma (another add-on) sounded too much like a 21st century cynical twenty-something, only occasionally capturing an otherworldliness which I suspect was the screenwriter's intent.

Butler was generally very good, hampered occasionally by weak dialog. His Beowulf lived at the polar opposite from his Leonidas. Whereas the Spartan King of 300 was a big, brash lion of a man who strutted around flexing his pecs and gritting his blazing white teeth, all the while proclaiming his alpha male status, Beowulf was shown a humble warrior who had seen many fights and who saw the fragility of life. Make no mistake, Beowulf was a warrior in this film, but Butler's portrayal, against the starkly beautiful Icelandic landscape, was subdued. His men were brash, bold lions. Brecca in particular was almost Spartan in his hair style.

The classic story was here, but really served as a backdrop for the film to delve into the theme of facing your fears, and of the legacy of actions, in this case, Hrothgar's killing of Grendel's father at the start of the film.

A Christian Monk--Brendan--arrives on the scene shortly before Beowulf and his Geats do, and is more than half-insane, a reckless wild priest who eventually convinces all of the Danes (but not the Geats needless to say) to be baptized and thus protected by Christ. It doesn't save him from Grendel's fury. A fury which Beowulf eventually realizes is only directed at those who have wronged Grendel.

The fight and action sequences were brutal and short, very quick. Grendel is depicted as a troll (essentially a neandertalish giant of a man who bounds around the landscape and is extremely stealthy, using the mists to sneak up upon Danish warriors and dispatch them silently.

I give it a "B". Uneven, but very well done in spots. The location was stunning. And to think, not one second of CGI. This is all real folks. Definitely the Anti-300.

Date:	2007-11-16 14:32
Subject:	Orycon
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited
Music:	Mozart

At the con and loving it.

Date:	2007-11-14 18:03
Subject:	Going short (again)
Security:	Public
Location:	At the Windows (machine)
Mood:	calm
Music:	"Walk On" U2

Wrote a 500 word story today, while listening to a "Writing Challenge" podcast from Warwick University in the U.K. (I'm game for just about anything, writing-wise). More like a 500 word long story stew--it will be real interesting to see how this puppy turns out when I revise it (more like relive in the Ray Bradbury sense.

Still working on "Orbit Spells Variation."

Did a bit of planning on my latest WIP, "Orbit Spells Variation," before beginning, coming up with a structure to match my notes. It's an unusual piece for me, as the structure of the notes inspired the structure of the story as well as the POV characters.

I've struggled mightily over the years with the dilemma of plunging right in versus planning first. Outlining has consistently stopped me cold. Plunging right in has usually resulted in a finished draft but a draft that often doesn't work as a story (there have been several exceptions which I've been quite pleased with).

What I realized recently was that I wasn't letting my creative side (the "right brain") brainstorm and sketch out the resulting story--I was letting my editor (the left brain) run the show. And thus I wound up blocked. And avoiding writing.

It's like learning how to walk all over again. I don't want to overthink the process.

And I don't want to take forever to plan a particular story, so I'm working on brainstorming in a flash.

Stay tuned.

Date:	2007-11-12 21:16
Subject:	Reflections from the open road
Security:	Public
Location:	At home, on couch
Mood:	contemplative

Popped up to Seattle yesterday with my wife LeAnn and my best bud goloban who wrote a detailed account of our little jaunt on his lj. It was a splendid trip, visiting our old friend Carl. On the way back, we had a wide ranging conversation, again as goloban. Eventually we came around--somewhere past Centralia, to taking about our respective fiction writing.

We've both been at this a very long time. I wrote my first actual short story for a language arts class when I was 13, following up with a second a few weeks later for "extra credit". Then nothing until high school when I wrote a couple of vignettes. In 1980 goloban was writing a prodigious amount of fiction for a local 'zine. I was inspired to try my own hand at fiction again. So often Anthony has inspired me -- I've always had a huge amount of admiration for his talent, writing ability, and general skill at telling a darn good tale. At the time I naively thought that he wrote perhaps too closely from his own life--now I see that he was writing from his passions. I strive to do just that.

I sat down on New Years Day 1981 and started writing the first page of a what was intended to be a satirical space opera in the vein of Bill the Galactic Hero. I didn't get past the first chapter. But I had begun writing fiction in earnest. Two and half years later I sent my first short story submission to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The form rejection letter started me on path of studying the craft of writing science fiction. goloban encouraged me throughout. When, shortly before Thanksgiving 1986 I received a personal rejection letter from Ellen Datlow at OMNI, Anthony heartily congratulated me.

I had the privilege of reading each of his three novels and look forward to reading his fourth.

So there we were illuminated only by the blue glow of his instrument panel taking about writing and what to do next. It was a long conversation, but what it came down to was this-- write what you are passionate about. If that is a mainstream novel, then fine. If that is the best d*mn SF novel you can write, then fine. Time has passed, but it hasn't dimmed our enthusiasms for writing.

And that's a very good thing indeed.

Date:	2007-11-12 10:17
Subject:	The future has finally arrived
Security:	Public
Location:	work
Mood:	tired
Music:	"I want to be sedated" by the Ramones

In theory at least, assuming one assumes that flying cars equal the future.

Flying cars