Imaginary Friends

Okay, so I haven't seen the Jetsons in about twenty years. (Note to self: check Hulu and Netflix.) So I'm just going on ancient, dusty memories here, but it seems that modern life is lacking in a few amenities we were promised as kids by the glowing box. Yeah, we've got Roombas (and Scoobas and whatever they call those gutter-cleaning bots.) There's the  Robomow and  Automower  lines of aimlessly wandering mowers. Honda and other Japanese companies have some pretty cool androids, but who can afford one? Robots aside, where are the flying cars with big glass bubbles? (Edit: Here they are !) Where's the crazy architecture? I'm thinking about this because I spent the day working with an automated parking system. Boomerang  makes the hardware, and ASI has been doing the controls for their flat car-lifting AGV (or robot for short). My job is to drive it around and make sure everything works. I haven't crashed it, yet. (I heard they drove one into a pit whe

In my interview with myself, I made reference to Harris Burdick as one of my favorite authors. He's the mysterious author/illustrator in the book by Chris Van Allsburg, who as the story goes, gave a stack of illustrations with captions and titles to a publisher, along with a promise to provide the complete stories if the publisher was interested. The publisher was indeed interested, but could never again locate Harris Burdick. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is simply a reproduction of those illustrations, each for a different story, and each with a compelling caption and title. The idea is that you supply the story yourself. It's an awesome concept, and Van Allsburg's, excuse me, Burdick's drawings are wonderful, of course. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Allen, introduced my class to them by forcing us to write some of the missing stories. I don't know what everyone else thought of the idea; I was too enthralled to notice. Never had I had so much fun doing schoo

...to disappear. It's a song. Go get it while it's free at iTunes . Then go ride your bike at night. (With lights of course.) Then come back and tell me if you love it as much as I do. Yes, that's an order, ensign!

I've had a run of good luck with winning contests and drawings on blogs lately. (I need to find someone giving away a publishing contract on a blog before my streak runs out.) The latest one was the first to give out an actual physical prize, and it's still going on if you want to enter. It's a blog tour promoting The Stone Traveler by Kathi Oram Peterson. This is the weekly prize. The grand prize is even better. The book is LDS YA fiction, so the nominal audience is pretty narrow. I haven't read the book yet, so I'm going to review the prize—because I've never done a review of any kind before, and everyone else is doing them, so they must be cool. Right? First, there's a cute toy jaguar and a necklace with a huge faux gemstone. They're quite nice. I don't wear jewelry or collect stuffed animals, but they were best part. Why? My seven-year-old daughter gasped when I gave her the stone necklace. I gave the jaguar to my four-year-old girl and she

I've got a special treat for my 12—No! 13! followers: an exclusive interview with an up-and-coming new author. Ben Spendlove (let's call him BS for short) is hard at work on a life-changing new book, but was kind enough to set aside a few minutes to answer our questions. Imaginary Friends blog (IF):  When did you start writing? BS:  When I was born. I just saved it all up in my infantile brain until I could actually hold a pencil and learned how to form letters round about kindergarten. Most of what I wrote mentally in those early days is only just coming out,  and that's why my writing is so fresh and original. Much of it doesn't even include actual words, so it looks like white space. But it's very meaningful white space. IF:  What was your favorite book as a child? BS: IF:  Very deep. What's your writing process like? BS:  It's exactly like eating pancakes with maple syrup. If you understand that, then you understand how I write. My process

I put this together from dozens of old DV tapes at work. Autonomous Solutions, Inc. started in 2000, and I joined in 2004. It's about the best tech writing job I can imagine, which is why I'm still here. Robots=cool. I'd make a blooper reel of all the times vehicles didn't do what we expected, but there's never a camera around when that happens and frankly, it doesn't happen very often.

There's was a piece on NPR's All Things Considered in which a writer was telling about a book he was ashamed to love (Kurt Cobain's journals). It sounded like part of a series, but I haven't heard any others since. Anyway, it got me thinking, and I couldn't think of a single book that I'm ashamed to love. The reason is simple, I think:  if I love it, I really think it's good and am therefore not ashamed to love it. It doesn't matter who it was written for, written by, or how it was written. If I like it, it's good. If it's not good, I don't like it. In other words, I define what's worthy by what I like, not by the expectations or opinions of other people. At least, that's how I am with books. Same goes for not liking something. I recently tried to read The Catcher in the Rye.  I say 'tried' because I couldn't finish it. Aside from the incessant profanity and annoying way the narrator rambles on and repeats himself, I j

Sat down, or rather sat up to write this morning. Got over 1000 words written by seven. Have to redo it all. Why? Well, I got really into describing what happened to the character a week earlier. It was pretty compelling. The poor guy went through a lot, and then I put him through another shocking realization right there in the scene I was writing. THEN when I finally got done with all that, I was ready to start on what I had intended the chapter to be about aaaaand I couldn't write anymore. Hit the wall. Train of thought crashed. Got that feeling where I knew I was on the wrong track and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't finish the chapter except by summarizing what I intended to write. My wife read what I'd spewed out, and agreed with me. She said the premise was fine, but the content was all wrong. But y'know? I really know that character a lot better now. I've got a backstory for him in my head, one that doesn't really need to be told because a si