The Department of Lost Hours Where do they put them, the lost hours of saved daylight? Are they stored in a dusty government office, an accidentally-funded pocket of the federal budget? Stashed away by clever clock drones who save enough to craft an alternate century. As autumn hones our edges, brightens the leaves, and billows gray above, the hours dim, shrink, and turn in on themselves. All I want to do is turn and go…
Early in the pandemic, before a vaccine had been developed, when it seemed as though death stalked the streets, many of us poets wondered how to write at such a time. Whole cities had gone silent, absent of the normal traffic rushing from place to place. Work, shopping, worship, social life, dining out, going to movies — all suspended. We dared not go out exept to walk, masked, keeping carefully apart. I wondered how I…
I recently had a surprising writerly adventure. The scare of a possible stroke sent me to the Emergency Department with a smile that didn’t work and a droopy eyelid. My emergency visit became a two-day hospital stay for testing. Though our local hospital is one of the best, I was not a happy camper to be yanked out of home and interrupted in the midst of editing my novel. Plus, I was iscared of what…
Many people ask me how to self-publish a book on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). What are the steps? Is it easy? Do you have to pay someone to help? What do you need to have ready before starting? This article provides some answers and links. It’s relatively simple, if you consider making a nicely puffy cheese souffle simple. You don’t need to hire people, but I do. If you have hours of time to…
History and magic are a powerful combination. Time travel can be a form of magical realism fiction, depending on the writer’s approach. In a magical realism treatment, you’re in one world and then another opens around you like a blossom. In my magical realism style of time travel, there are laws to the ability to move through time, but the focus isn’t on the mechanisms (science fiction style), nor on characters living in a different…
Our Broken World People talk a lot these days about the divisions in our country and our world. With good reason, they lament the brokenness we see among a large swath of the population, and the despair many feel that the “normal” world will never be regained. I have a different view. I come at this chaos with the idea that we are making a hairpin turn in civilization, and won’t be returning to “normal”.…
Children Standing Together as One Family I’m always moved to see adults joining together from many countries to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders. And when I see children moved by the plight of other children, it’s especially touching. They’re not only sympathizing, they’re taking action! This group of children got together to do something tangible to help Ukrainian kids. They raised funds with handmade goods and baked treats, sending tthe proceeds to…
Sometimes speaking needs to be be done both plainly and in poetry. The essayist’s keyboard writes journalistically, but a poet’s pen tends to curve. It speaks truth aslant of literal meaning. It breaks into lines, cadges meaning from comparisons, and is known to divert utterance with entertaining rhythm or rhyme. I’m thinking about saying a thing with curves, speaking plainly in poetry. Uttering my truth in metaphor while making its essentials clear as glass. To…
Living a Creative Life Can Be Addictive It seems that I’m hooked on living a creative life. I always return to writing after a catastrophe or crisis. I return to it when I’m happy and fulfilled. When I’m bored or confused. It’s like home plate. After my younger brother died, I stayed in bed for two weeks and wrote. It was terrible and unexpected. He died of cancer after a year-long battled that gave him…
In this post, I’m going to rate several time travel novels, using my own I-Wish-I’d-Written-It test. Time travel novels go in two directions. Either the plot is a thriller-style story and takes a scientific approach to time’s paradoxes, or it immerses the reader as a tourist in a past era. Most often, time travel books have a romance. I’m not fascinated by time machines or historical paradoxes, so my stories go the romance and adventure…