Imaginary Friends

Outside the City of Smith, in the valley of buried furs, there's a small fiefdom known as Thistle Park. This domain is so named because of an abundance of birds, mostly the little black kind that make a shrill, annoying, single-note call and do such endearing things as building nests, hatching eggs, and letting their little ones fall to their deaths, all inside the exhaust vents of furnaces, thereby rendering said furnaces inoperable and causing their owners to have to saw the pipes in half to flush the rotted corpses of baby birds out into a bucket. Oh, my mistake. It's named for the chest-high thistles festooning the grounds. In the eastern estate of Thistle Park, where the thistles grow thickest and tallest, is a quaint, old Butler grain silo twenty feet across and about eight feet high at the wall. No grain has laden this structure for many years, and a small flock of odious birds have taken up residence within. They aren't the little black kind that make a shrill, anno

Clever title, no? Music breathes life into words. You can take a mediocre-to-bad poem, set it to a catchy tune, and it becomes profound and meaningful. Just look at the lyrics of your favorite song written down on paper without the music. Chances are they're pretty lame on their own. (There are exceptions, many of which were good poetry before they were songs.) Ha! I'd like to see Message in a Bottle written down in its entirety. "Message in a bottle, message in a bottle, message in a bottle..." With good music, if the lyrics are at all meaningful, it's a winner in my book. I listen to the words. I learn them. I sing along. If the song is in Spanish, I Google the lyrics and run them through the translator just so I know what the heck is so important that it should have such nice music with it. I do listen to the words. Every week iTunes has three free downloads, plus a music video. There's usually at least one that I'll like enough to download, and s

Actually, my wife had the dream. In it, Brian and Esha were walking down the sidewalk, discussing Esha's newfound abilities. They came across Alley, who was sitting on the sidewalk, telling fortunes--highly accurate fortunes--for a dollar each. My better half actually woke me up at about three in the morning to tell me that dream. Thanks, sweetie. So, guess how my book begins. (I'll give you a hint: it doesn't start with Leah writing a suicide note and walking to the river, and doesn't have Alley nearly getting creamed by a car.) Yes, I used a dream to start The Sense, and it wasn't even mine. Have you ever had a dream worth writing?

Dear Sixteen-Year-Old Self, Have you noticed that the idea that teenagers are brain-damaged is passing into the common consciousness? I'm talking about the notion that young adults can't judge risks, don't reason the same way adults do, and aren't capable of making big decisions like whom to marry. It's like you're not fully human, but in a stage of development between larva and adult, sort of a walking pupa. Teens are creatures to be protected and tolerated. You can't help the way you are; it's biological. In this view, when teenagers drive recklessly or take risks, it's because you're incapable of proper judgment. If you fall in love, it's hormonal. If you get upset about the environment or politics, it's just because you're trying to find your place in the world. You'll grow out of it. Teens always do. We were all idealistic and naive at that age. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm guilty, I confess, o

Writers don't have to worry about other people stealing their ideas. There are several reasons for this. First, an idea is such a tiny grain of a thing that by the time it's a book, it's like the author's severed hand, with his or her fingerprints all over it. Ugh. Like that last sentence. What I mean is, books are so personal, no one else can write my books. Even if we start with the exact same idea, the books will turn out completely unique. The second reason might only apply to me. My ideas all sound so stupid, no one would even want to steal them. And I'm talking about the really good ones that I actually get excited about. I have hundreds of weird ideas for stories, but in the last couple of years, I've only had four that I got excited about. The first one is the book I'm working on, plus vague ideas about two possible sequels. Then there's the brilliant idea that came to me at work a couple weeks ago. Wanna hear it? Invisible people driving cars.