Are You Ready

This weekend I participated, with a group of fellow amateur radio operators, in an event called Field Day. Field Day is where you take your emergency equipment out and contact other amateur operators using that equipment. To increase emergency preparedness points are...

Looking for ideas in all the right places

I recently read an article titled Looking For Ideas In All the Wrong Places. I was disappointed. This article did give you places to look, but only three or four tired examples. The article mentioned a writer using Jane Austin’s Emma for the foundation of Fast Times...

Ideas, Current Disasters, and Steampunk

You need a story idea and you can’t think of a thing. Pull a Terry Pratchett and write about today’s problems set in your story world. You don’t think the 1800s had problems with bizarre political actions, you need to read some history. Both US and...

Seeds, Sprouts and Story Structure

It seems like it takes forever for the seeds to start to come up. Doesn’t it seem like forever to get a book written? Seeds are like ideas for stories. There’s a little bit of DNA in a seed with lots of food to feed that DNA. Sprouts are like stories. They...

Weeding, Planting seeds and making your bed

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Things are getting in the way of my writing. I’ve been doing a lot of gardening; pulling weeds, tilling the ground, and planting seeds. I got a big garden with over a hundred planters/flower pots and a 80 foot long three foot wide...