• Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    One of My Favorite Pictures…

    And Favorite Trips… Even though cows did explode and I almost got injured or killed… Grandmaster Jack Williamson fell in love with a story I turned into the very first quarter of Writers of the Future 37 or 38 years ago and fought to have it in the first book, even though I’m pretty sure Algis Budrys wasn’t so certain about the story. I didn’t learn what Jack had done until a party where I met Jack for the first time at Writers of the Future. To me, Jack Williamson was a god. He had published his first short story in 1928 and published continuously since. I was afraid to…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Doc Smith and My Family

    Some Strange Similarities… I got to know Verna Smith Trestrail, E.E. “Doc” Smith’s only daughter way back in 1974. Her father had been dead for about a decade at that point and I had never had the pleasure to meet him, but Verna was wonderful. Since Doc graduated from the University of Idaho and the writing group I was in there, and the science fiction club, was thinking of putting on a convention, I suggested that they invite Verna and have Doc be the honorary guest of honor. They went for it and MosCon was born, a great little convention that lasted for years and is trying to make a…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    23 Years Ago

    In a Land Far, Far Away… Dean and Kris had some great times with some friends… Or so the story goes… That’s right, back in the late 1980s and through most of the 1990s, Kris and I used to travel a lot to conferences. In 1992 it got excessive and we went to 26 different ones. By 1997, we had cut way, way back and basically only hit a few big conventions and a couple fun ones. One of the big conventions in August 1997 was the San Antonio World Science Fiction Convention. That’s right, San Antonio in August heat. Late August heat, actually. So it wasn’t the biggest world…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Blast From The Early Days

    Early Freelance Days… The picture below was taken by the great fantasy writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman on Christmas Eve, 1988. Professional writers used to gather in Eugene, OR on Christmas Eve every year and it was a wonderful tradition for a good decade. The tradition started in 1986 and we would start off at my place (and later Kris and my place just outside of town) where I would cook a turkey dinner for everyone. Then we would all drive over to Jerry and Cathy Oltion’s apartment (or later house) to open dollar gifts, then we would drive to Nina’s place to read aloud stories we had written for the…

  • Challenge,  News

    Mt. Saint Helens

    Forty Years Ago Today… I’m going to repost a blog here that I did one year ago about my time going through the ash of the Mt. Saint Helens’ explosion. Interesting that 40 years later, without all the ash clogging everything, I am going through another “Stay In” order because you might die if you don’t. But unlike 40 years ago when it was just some millions of people downwind that were hit, this one has the entire world locked down. And most people understand this is very real, and a few idiots do not. What was fun about the idiots back in the ash fall of 1980, they got…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    On This Day…

    It Was A Sunday… 1980. My girlfriend at the time was another second year law student and we were living together in this nifty apartment in Moscow, Idaho full of books, a couple of comfortable couches, a great waterbed, two study desks, and a old funky kitchen to die for. We had been in Boise to visit friends and to see my niece graduate. We were done with the semester and were both looking forward to a few classes in the summer. I was going to also work at the golf course part time and do some research for one of the professors. A beautiful May day, fairly warm, and…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Thirty-Two Great Years

    Thirty-Two Years Ago I Met Kris in Albuquerque Algis Budrys had asked me to stop there and give two writers a ride to Taos, New Mexico where we were all attending a conference. Kris was one of those writers. We have been together ever since. I consider that the luckiest day of my life. We celebrate this day (May 4th) ever since. Kris (on Facebook) put up this picture of us taken at Taos that first week. I was thirty-five, Kris was twenty-five. So I thought I would show you a few more pictures in celebration of the thirty-two years. This picture is about a year or so later. Kris…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Company of Black Books

    Yeah, a Very Strange Title… This story has to do with history and collecting and selling and other fun stuff. Four years ago now, I was talking with Bob who owns two of the bookstores in this town and he wanted to show me something he had just bought and hauled over from the valley. Turns out it wasn’t one thing, but 740-some things actually. Massive bound newspapers in black cloth covers. Each weighed over 40 pounds and went from 1904 to 1990, sometimes full years in one book, sometimes only one month. All from the Portland Oregonian Newspaper. They had been bound to put into libraries, stored, and then…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  publishing

    Time to Rest… Blast from the Past

    All Good Intentions… I spent all day in meetings, then working at my computer at work doing workshop stuff, then home at this computer and then reading. I rested my eye regularly, but still too tired in the eye to write much tonight or read much more. So the planned blog is replaced by this placeholder so I can keep my streak alive. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, how about a blast from the past on this Thursday? In this picture from the 1960 World Science Fiction Convention taken by Jay Kay Klein, Ron Ellik, Randall Garrett, Mark Irwin, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Dirce Archer, and James Blish watch BJo…

  • Misc

    A 1973 Picture for Fun

    In the lecture on Heinlein’s Rules, I talk about my writing years between 1975 and 1982. But frighteningly enough, I had a couple of professions before I took up writing while in architecture and then law school. I was an avid skier and golfer, but in 1971 I quit skiing and teaching skiing and went fully to golf, turning professional in 1972. Yeah, I know, hard to imagine me as a golf professional looking at the pictures at the top and side of this blog. But I was pretty good in those days. (I got worse every year for decades after those years. They were my peak.) I was what…