Aspiring writers have always been told to write what they know, and to read the classics. If everyone would have stuck to writing what they knew first hand, the written word would never have gone very far. The advice about the classics, however, hasn’t been brushed off as easily. Although you expect writers to be [...]

There is much said and written by writers on how to overcome writer’s block, but I’m considering a more basic question. Why should you overcome writer’s block? The answer seems obvious, so that you can write. Why do you want to write? Because you’re a writer. Why are you a writer? Because you must write.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Sherlock Holmes. There has to have been a first time. Maybe someone mentioned it, or perhaps I picked it up in a movie or a comic book. The details of our first encounter remain shrouded in the mists of my early childhood memory. But, however [...]

Nostalgia and grief seem to fuel the pensive poet’s pen, Without them the bards would not know where to begin, On their journeys through life and soul and deed, All springing from the one eternal human need, A yearning for meaning, the hope that it will come, The fear that it has slipped past in [...]

I didn’t read any baby books when I was growing up, by that I mean books specifically written for infants and pre-schoolers. I got thrown straight into the deep end with fairly serious comics, books of folk tales, and some other strange things that most wouldn’t consider appropriate childhood reading. It was only natural after [...]

10,000 BRAVE NEW WORLDS One million years have passed since ancient man first launched his frail metal crafts into the great darkness named “outer space”. Now distant galactic clusters are home to the myriad descendants of the inhabitants of Earth. Now, each world, light years separate from the others, forms part of an island universe [...]

Once upon a time, at the height of the Soviet era, Russia and India were good friends. And not just the kind of casual acquaintances who exchange pleasantries across high-level conference tables; We were friendly enough that the two peoples were interested in how the other lived and thought and dreamed. During this era of [...]