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The Lost Manuscript
I suspect most authors have one. The book you wrote, fell in love with, and then put it up on the shelf when it didn’t go anywhere, the ultimate distinction between literary and financial success in writing. You pull it down and dust it off from time to time, reading over the well-remembered chapters, smiling…
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Would Thomas Jefferson have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?
No, I’m not trying to reignite the old argument about the morality of using the bomb to end World War II. Rather, I’m trying to get deeper into an age-old debate in American foreign policy, Jeffersonian idealism vs the imperialism and realpolitik of Bismarck, Churchill, and Teddy Roosevelt. Jefferson believed that America was a new…
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Reflections on Retirement
It’s now some 20 months since retirement after 45 years with the same company, and I think this is just the right amount of distance – far enough into retirement but not too far from the memory of work – to offer some observations, albeit, rambling ones. From the start, I realized that I now…
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The Importance…and Problem…of Setting
Location. Location. Location. The three things that determine a property’s value. Location in fiction may not be quite so important, but it is consistently and vastly underrated. Yes, characters, actions, dialogue, plot development, and even prose are more immediately obvious to the reader, but not to the characters who are the avatars of the reader. …
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So, After the Launch…
We have ignition! A successful launch! The payload is on its way! No, this isn’t announcing the most recent NASA satellite or Space-X endeavor. It’s the upload of my newest novel to Amazon/Kindle, Black Jack: Behind the Waves, the first book of the Behind the World trilogy (series). After years or writing/rewriting, months of editing,…
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Finishing a Novel – or Three
So, you think it’s fun to finish a novel, to put the final touches to a work on which you have lavished your energy, your talent, and your love for months or even years, and written The End as the definitive last words? Well, sort of. First off, like house repair and maintenance, it is…