There seems to be a magic age to life. Somewhere between 15 and 30 the human brain reaches its peak performance. For about 5 years, the brain performs at a phenomenal level of creativity and intelligence. Then it is all downhill from there. Hopefully, it is a pretty gradual slope. I’m fascinated by young people in general, but those in this magic time amaze me. I have to admit: I squandered my magic time. Finances were bad. I spent most of that time starving. My…

Writing the Spaceport series crashed me into the inadequacy of the English Language. I’ve always been a bit of a grammar geek. I may not always get it right, but I care. Then I began writing alien characters. In Spaceport, these aliens are not “other” but are instead people, individuals, that the humans come to understand and work with. The pronoun “it” is completely inappropriate in this context. Perhaps I am a bit Victorian, but I do not think that it is appropriate to discuss…

I love it when real life mimics a story I’m working on. It seems that one of the Spaceport’s Bubble Ships has been caught on video by the US Navy. Oh…Tanner. You’ve got to remember to engage the cloaking device!  

I did it! “Shipping Out” is now a full rough draft, written in one month. In this novel, Tanner goes to school to learn how his world can become a productive member of the Galactic Alliance. When he gets partnered for intercultural interactions with a 3 foot tall, pink, sentient tree species who can kill him with one hand, he begins to wonder what he has signed up for. Especially when she calls him a plant-eating troll and decides the universe would be better off…

[nanostats] I have not completed my writing goals for this year. I’d hoped to have 3 novels edited by now. I’ve done 3 chapters of the first novel. And yet, I couldn’t resist doing NaNo again this year. If all goes well, I’ll have a 4th novel that needs drastic editing in a month. You can watch my stats as the month progresses.

I learned something important about myself today while baking cookies for a pot luck. I love baking, but I haven’t done a lot of it lately since I’ve been a bit under the weather. As I was happily dropping ingredients into the mixer, I took the no longer needed measuring cup to the sink, gave it a quick rinse and dropped it into the dishwasher. Back at the mixer, I put each ingredient away as soon as it was used. By the time I was…