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Have you ever considered the zero?  (0) The zero is a unique digit.  It indicates nothing, that is, that nothing exists.  It’s the starting point for counting, or to put it differently, before the counting has begun, and even though the first element in the counting process is one, zero is where we begin.  “One” is the first…

I finished reading a science-fiction novel a few days ago, a book I enjoyed reading and highly recommend.  It’s called The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon, originally published in 2002.  The book concerns an autistic man (his name is Lou) who is given the chance to become “normal.”  That is, he can take advantage…

I had the occasion a few days ago to attend a meeting where the topic of discussion was a preview of some of the movies that will be coming out in the summer of 2014.  Only science-fiction movies were presented, and I didn’t count how many there were, but I figure there must have been about fifteen of them.  And they were…

Well, I got back from the Pike’s Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs about a week and a half ago, and I thought I’d write down a few conclusions from the meeting.  There aren’t very many. A good writer’s meeting, like the Pike’s Peak conference, has a lot going on, and that makes it hard…

Which do you use?  “Shall?”  Or “will?”  Personally, I don’t use “shall” much at all. When I was in school, and this was many years ago, I was told that “shall” was used in the first person only, while “will” was used in second and third person.  “I shall…” or “We shall…,” in contrast to…

I had an interesting time at a writer’s conference yesterday.  I went primarily to pitch my novel (actually the trilogy of novels) to a representative of a well-known publishing house in New York.  This makes the third time I’ve pitched this novel to either a publisher or an agent.  I’ve gotten a different response each…

For those of us who are beginning writers, one of the rules of modern-day writing (as opposed to 19th century writing, for example) that is so frequently beaten into our brains is the concept that adverbs are to be avoided if at all possible.  They rarely work, the writing teachers say, and look down on us who use…

Do you remember the PBS show “Book Beat”?  It was on in the 1970’s, as I recall.  The host of the show was Bob Cromie, who worked for a long time at the Chicago Tribune.  It was one of my favorite book shows.  Come to think of it, what other TV shows about books were…

Fiction is basically an overstatement.  Or perhaps better terms would be exaggeration, or even caricature.  We writers do things in fiction that would be unlikely in real life.  Our characters act in ways that might be unbelievable if they happened in everyday life.  Perhaps I’m stepping a little out of line here, but consider the…

For several years a debate has raged in writer’s and publisher’s circles about whether there should be one or two spaces after a period between sentences.  How do you stand? I like two spaces.  I learned to use two spaces back when I took typing in high school.  That was a long time ago (never mind…

I’ve read a few science-fiction books in the past several years, many of which I’ve enjoyed, and a few of which I haven’t.  One of the most common things about a book, especially a new one, is the blurbs that appear on the back cover, as a way of selling the book.  These blurbs may also…