This Writer’s Life

Books changed my life. In 1966, I was a bored eleven-year-old who never read anything unless I was under duress. That was the year my parents bought acreage just outside Shaffers Crossing, Colorado, at that time a remote mountain village of about thirty people.

No television and few radio stations reached Shaffers Crossing. Satellite TV belonged to the realm of science fiction, and cable television was still rare. No one had heard of the Internet. Our telephone line consisted of a single wire shared by eight neighbors.

There is something special about the beginning of a new novel. Before the first chapter is written, the world exists only in the imagination. Characters are little more than names and personalities waiting to reveal themselves. Entire civilizations, star systems, and histories are still hidden, waiting to be discovered.

That's where I find myself today.