I was so tired yesterday, after not sleeping much the night before and being up early for my flight to L.A., that as soon as I finished writing, I crawled into my hotel bed at about 6:45 pm and collapsed. That meant that I was up early, despite getting 9 hours of sleep. So before…
Today has been a long day. I was up at 4:30 am and caught an early flight to Los Angeles. I then spent my afternoon working, checked into my hotel, and had an early dinner with an eye toward getting to bed early. After dinner, however, I took advantage of the large balcony my hotel…
To complete the picture of where I am as I start out writing this novel, it’s probably useful to discuss the tools I plan on using. Coming Full Circle Back when I started to write and submit stories, I used Microsoft Word 5.5. for DOS. I was in college and using an IBM PC, and…
The Little Man is learning about the scientific method in school: making observations, asking a question, forming a hypothesis, making predictions, testing prediction, wash, rinse, repeat. Writing this novel, while not a perfect fit for the scientific method, certainly borrows from it. Observations I have made in the past when attempting to write at length…
As I start on this novel, I think it is important to know where I am in my writing career. What follows is a brief summary. I started writing and submitting stories to magazines while a junior in college in early 1993. After 14 years of writing stories and submitting them to (mostly) science fiction…
I recently mentioned on Twitter that I have started writing again. I stopped writing for several reasons, but the most important one was that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write anymore. Moreover, with all of the good writing out there today, I wasn’t sure if what I wrote would make much of an…
October may be a rare month for boys* but it looks to be a great month for books. I don’t know why, but there are a ton of books that I am looking forward to reading coming out in October. Here are some of them: Letters from an Astrophysicist by Neil deGrasse Tyson (October 8)…
Now and then, I see one of those memes asking parents to name something from their youth that their kids wouldn’t recognize or understand. There are plenty of obvious answers to this, but one occurred to me recently as I listened to my kids ask Alexa to play various songs for them (many of them…
I’ve written quite a bit about diaries, journals, and notebooks over the years. I got a relatively late start with my own diary. I was already 24 and I wish I’d started sooner. A few years back, I tried to get the Little Miss to start a diary, but as with many diaries, it didn’t…
Now it can be told! After decades of research, I have discovered the secret toothpaste manufacturers don’t want you to know about. But let me back up. First, my credentials: I have been brushing my teeth roughly twice daily for nearly five decades. Call it about 33,000 observations. Each time, I am required to take…