The Time Capsule

You might wonder where I get inspiration for characters in my stories. It comes from all sorts of places which shall remain confidential. Because a magician never reveals his secrets. Now, I'm not a magician and that's not secret, but I like to keep that secret like a magician. But I will reveal the inspiration for one character. Wes Cooper from The Permanent Man  series. He's a cowboy who lives in southern California during 1864. He's tough. He's emotional. He's dirty and grimey. He rides a horse. He loves his family. And here's his inspiration. Someone not born until 2013. My youngest son!

Spotify decided to send me an email with a year in review of 2013. This showed stats for Spotify and also for my music listening habits on the service. I know what you're thinking. "The year isn't over." OK. I know that. But who cares. I highly doubt the numbers with change too much over the next couple weeks. Below is a graphic that shows my stats. But I really feel these stats are inaccurate to my  listening habits because my wife also uses Spotify under my account. So looking at the stats, everything  listed except the top album and top artist are a direct result of her listening habits.

If you've read any of my books, you might have noticed a few things missing that most books have today. In fact, what you see missing was absent from a lot of science fiction books from the 1950's and earlier. What am I referring to? Mainly gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity. There's a reason for these things are missing from my books. The main one has to deal with my beliefs and how I live my daily life. As a result, the books I write become quite a challenge in a world where vulgarities and gore abound. The challenge to write the story is small compared to the challenge of selling a story devoid of this content. Most readers today are looking for the "realism" of these added items within the plots. Why? I'm not sure. Let me explain. Most of the science fiction I read is what I would call "classic" science fiction from authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick. Now, these authors, as their careers moved forwar