-
Good Or Best
Read more: Good Or BestIn today’s all-or-nothing society, where everything has to be the absolute best there is, where every day has to be totally awesome and worthy of inclusion in the history books, where everyone is expected to perform at maximum intensity all day long, and where multi-tasking is not simply an uncommon though admirable character trait but an absolute job requirement, I believe we have…
-
Lying and Laying
Read more: Lying and LayingOver the past several years, I’ve read a few manuscripts from friends and fellow authors (published as well as unpublished) in a situation where I’ve been asked to comment on the writing and give feedback. Some have been good, some not so good. Of the manuscripts I’ve read, two general mistakes seem to be more common…
-
The Martian
Read more: The MartianI went to see the movie “The Martian” about a week ago and was impressed. I thought it well done, well-acted within limits, and all around a good show. I’m not ready to add it to my list of favorite movies (which you can access on this blogsite), but I liked it. Some reviewers have said they…
-
Movies And Novels
Read more: Movies And NovelsThe post I put up last week—just below this one—had to do with not describing everything in a piece of writing. I generally write fiction (novels and short stories) but that admonition applies to non-fiction as well. Keep description short, I said, just enough to allow the story line to flow from the page into the…
-
Captain Bill
Read more: Captain BillI’ve become a proponent over the past few years of taking a minimalistic approach to the description of characters in a story. Whether it be a novel or a short story, or anything in between, the less description an author can give to a character, the better. Within reason, of course. The reason has to…
-
Bubonicon 47
Read more: Bubonicon 47Bubonicon 47 is over. Now for the post-mortem. Bubonicon 47, that is the 47th running of the Albuquerque Science Fiction Convention, was held August 28-30, 2015. This was my seventh con to attend, and as usual it was filled with the interesting and interested, the timely and the timeless, the bizarre and a bazaar (I’m…
-
The God And The Machine
Read more: The God And The MachineI watched an interesting movie several weeks ago. Interesting because of the ending. The movie was “Absence of Malice,” with Paul Newman and Sally Field. Newman plays the son of a mobster, but isn’t himself involved with the mob. Sally Field plays a newspaper reporter to whom is leaked by an unscrupulous Justice Department employee some information…
-
It’s Got To Be “Right”
Read more: It’s Got To Be “Right”Over the past several years, beginning in late 2011, I’ve been sending out queries to literary agents around the country, trying to persuade one of them to take on my first novel and sell it to a publisher. (This is what most people refer to as the “traditional” method of getting published.) So far I’ve…
-
Jonas Salk–A Book Review
Read more: Jonas Salk–A Book ReviewI just finished reading Jonas Salk, A Life, by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. Here’s my take on the book and the main character. Jonas Salk was born on October 28, 1914 in a tenement in East Harlem, New York. His mother was a Russian immigrant, his father a natural-born American of…
-
The Alien Paradox
Read more: The Alien ParadoxEnrico Fermi is credited with asking the question that forms the basis for “Fermi’s Paradox.” That is, where are all the aliens? Why haven’t we been visited here by aliens from another planet? There are so many stars in our galaxy, and many of those stars, even perhaps all of them, have planets orbiting around…
-
The Bell-Shaped Curve
Read more: The Bell-Shaped CurveAs an unpublished writer, I don’t have the experience of seeing reviews of my books on Amazon or some other web or paper-based site. Perhaps soon, though. However, I’ve heard from and spoken to a few writers who seemed to be surprised at the reviews they’ve gotten, especially negative ones. I’ve decided to steel myself against…