Plotting Without Pants…

Newsletter 023 – September 23, 2022 Hi, About the image: (Above the Desk) I’m wearing a t-shirt, my usual uniform for about ten months of the year (a minimal spring followed by an exceptionally long summer). All the other two months hold is an almost non-existent winter (during which I switch to a long-sleeved t-shirt). …

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You’d Cry Too, If It…

Newsletter 007, January 28, 2022 Hi — About the image above: I took this picture of the Lincoln Memorial on my third visit to Washington, DC. It’s one of the images I used in a short video I created called Lincoln’s Tears. A link to the video is included at the end of the newsletter. …

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Brr, Shiver, Brr…

Newsletter 005, December 24, 2021 Hi — (About the image above) I took this picture while Minay and I were walking through my mom’s neighborhood on Martha’s Vineyard in late-December 2000. She and her husband, Bill Sen, had moved there a few years before. We normally visited her there in the summer, so this let …

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Oh, No! Not Research…

Newsletter 004 – December 10, 2021 Hi — (About the image above) This was taken inside the Grove Arcade in Asheville, North Carolina. It was the first indoor shopping mall built in the city, in 1929. It has been thoroughly remodeled and modernized. Minay and I were in the city to visit my friend, Jerry …

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I Can See for Miles and Miles…

Grand Canyon, AZ, 2003

Newsletter 003, November 26, 2021 Hi — (About the image** above) By the beginning of November 2003 I had already written a scene involving a character named Billie Crowder. The scene was set in a courtroom, but not in any particular time or place.  In the middle of the month I traveled to Arizona to …

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Maybe He Ate Buttercups

Picture of Michael at a NaNoWriMo event

What if your story hinges on something being true, but you have no way to prove that it could happen? How do you convince your reader that it could? You could read every scientific treatise related to the subject at hand and devise a logical-sounding theory, but that obviously isn’t always practical (and is certainly …

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