Are you acquainted with the term “batching it”? I associate it with the old west, where there were few single women. Lots of single men out this way (miners, cowboys and the like) had to take care of their own household affairs. In letters written in 1896, my...

You can’t go home again. It’s more than the title of the posthumously published Thomas Wolfe novel or an episode of Battlestar Galactica; it’s a basic truth. Yesterday I returned from a one-week visit to my home town. It’s typical of any small town that was...

One minute is a small measurement of time, but is it too small to make a difference? After the first One Minute event two days ago, I’m a believer. In what, you might ask? In the power of positive thought to change ourselves and, therefore, to change the world....

When writing about Greek immortals, I sometimes flesh out characters with what I call Myth Taken Identity. This week I’m studying Heracles (sometimes called Hercules), a character in Beyond Big-G City who is boringly two-dimensional in the first draft. My favorite...

When I started writing Small-g City in 2006, I had no idea the world I created would inspire a series. I hadn’t written a book-length piece in years. Small-g more or less insisted on breaking the boundaries of the short story I’d intended it to be and morphed into a...

The older I get, the more I fear being limited. Less flexibility, less skin elasticity, no more deep fried foods and no reasonable expectation of being cast as Annie in the musical by that name. This week, however, has given me a new appreciation for the options still...