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ABOUT WORDS
Where to begin?
Forgotten technology now, these floppy disks held over 20 years worth of writing projects for corporate clients. Lots and lots of words.
I guess I should start with my discovery of Mark Twain in sixth grade, which then triggered a deep, transformative dive into Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Melville, Joyce, and so many others. That would be a great story, but it didn't happen. My early discovery, the one that set me on the literary path I would follow to this day, was Arthur C. Clarke. And this certainly led to a deep dive, but it was into the works of Heinlein, Tolkien, Leiber, Ellison, Sturgeon, Le Guin, Bradbury, and countless others. The science fiction bug sank its teeth into me early, and never let go.
That covers reading, but my journey with writing is harder to understand, even for me. Why do I try to write? I have almost no formal training in writing, and what talent I have is usually hamstrung by insecurity. Unlike most people who end up as writers, I wrote nothing of my own as teenager; no diary or journal. To this day, I don’t know why. I loved stories and I hoped to tell them someday. Yet picking up a pencil and setting down words seemed beyond me. Even so, there are a few early influences that are fun to mention.
As a kid, my favorite book was “The Mad Scientists Club” by Bertrand R. Brinley. Published in 1965, the collection presents the adventures of a half dozen smart, precocious adolescent boys in a small American town. They do all the things any kid would find delightful: finding treasure, fooling grownups, pulling pranks, even rescuing a downed pilot. Imagine the group of friends in “The Goonies” and you’ll get the idea.
Another early influence was “Men, Martians and Machines” by Eric Frank Russell. This 1958 collection of four novellas was the first book without pictures I ever read. It was also my introduction to science fiction beyond the TV screen, and I could not have asked for a better welcome. The stories are fun, full of imagination and adventure, with a veneer of real science just thick enough to let the reader feel a measure of sophistication.
The Day Job
But none of this great stuff got me writing. What did was a job working side by side with my brother Chris in 1986. We were both consultants for an AT&T data systems group, and we had to do a lot of writing, almost every day. Our work product was all business copy, but it was writing! Chris, a natural-born writer if ever there was one, became my mentor and guide. I just tried to write like he did, and that seemed to work. This job was a turning point. Were it not for these two years with Chris, my career never would have veered back into media in 1988, when a small video company hired me as a scriptwriter full-time.
The Beethoven Roundtable
Second only to the AT&T job, the next big factor was a screenwriting group I joined in 2002. Before this group, founded by filmmaker Chris Messineo, I had done almost no serious screenwriting (despite taking Robert McKee’s excellent “Story” workshop twice). I was woefully naïve and broadly uninformed about the challenges of the craft. This group changed that. We met monthly at a coffee shop called Café Beethoven. And through these wonderful discussions, I finally felt ready to jump into the deep end and approach writing like a professional. All the scripts on this site, and many more, were written because of the support and encouragement of these writers. Thanks, guys.
Fictionalized
By 2015, I had grown unhappy with the spec screenwriter’s lot. Picture it: working hard to create a blueprint that can never become a house without an army of collaborators and vast sums of money. So, I switched gears and mounted a sort of brute force assault on fiction. I had no education in prose, and the prospect was daunting. But I had written reams of business copy over the previous 20 years. That experience had to be worth something. And apparently it was, as the stories on this site attest. Yet I have a very long way to go. Fiction is still something I must wrestle to the ground every time I sit down at the keyboard, and the goal of being able to write a bit every day remains elusive.
Onward
That said, I’m proud of all the writing on this site, and I hope you enjoy the stories. But please read with a gentle heart. William Butler Yeats put it best. “…I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
THE BOOKS
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The Mad Scientists' Club, copyright © 1965 by Bertrand R. Brinley; Scholastic Inc.
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Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell; Berkley edition 1958, New Berkley Medallion edition 1965
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Childhood's End, copyright © 1953 by Arthur C. Clarke; Ballantine Books Inc.
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Great Stories of Space Travel, edited by Groff Conklin, copyright 1963 by Groff Conklin, Tempo Books
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First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time, edited by Damon Knight, copyright 1963 by Damon Knight, Lancer Books Inc.
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