Not long ago I was astonished to rediscover childhood Jack Commer marketing tools. As outlined elsewhere, my first Jack Commer, Supreme Commander plots unfolded in the fifth grade, and by the eighth I’d abandoned the draft of The Martian Marauders … Continue reading →
Some characters from the first draft of Jack Commer #6, Commer of the Rebellion, now in progress. The text is taken from the rough draft, about two hundred pages so far, and is obviously open to revision. We had the … Continue reading →
Or: Wandering in the Wilderness with New Discipline, the Consciousness Expansion of Adolescence, and Many To-Do Lists This is an odd period to write about, and only this year, after I made plans to write about first The Gore Book … Continue reading →
A previous post, The First Childhood Appearance of Jack Commer, covered the origin of my space hero Jack in the fall of 1962 and my elation at writing the story “Voyage to Venus” for a fifth grade spelling assignment. That … Continue reading →
I wrote my first stories in July 1960 in Fair Haven, New Jersey, around the time of my second operation for a head injury in a car accident earlier that year. I was seven years old. My friend Sabin Russell and … Continue reading →
Consider that the top of the hour is the same everywhere: 10:00 AM in Dallas, 4:00 PM in London, 11:00 PM in Beijing, 12:00 AM tomorrow in Tokyo … There may be some renegade time zone somewhere whose inhabitants insist … Continue reading →
I need to keep reminding myself about characters. Because I almost fell into this trap working on the notes for the sixth Jack Commer novel, Commer of the Rebellion. Boy, I really was straining for a dazzling plot, but it … Continue reading →
Writers are told to self-promote everywhere but it’s beginning to seem as if folks are pulling into your driveway at 3 AM and blowing their horn MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! then charging off to blare some other victim down the street. At least … Continue reading →
Cribbed and slightly expanded from a 2013 blog post, where it got lost in the middle. But as I start looking over my notes for a sixth Jack Commer novel, all this rumination applies anew! Notes for a novel have … Continue reading →
“Some guy at the bus stop disrespected me, so I blew his head off.” I could load this post up with a thousand examples, but let’s make it short and let that one serve. I’ve been struck by the appalling … Continue reading →
