Little Green Man from Mars

I finished writing Little Green Man from Mars yesterday. It's my sixth and final addition to the Science Fiction for Thinkers series. My plans are to publish this work in early 2007.

No, it's not about a Martian.

Talking with John Lee Hooker

It was either 1978 or 1979, I can't remember which year, that I met blues singer John Lee Hooker. He was standing on the concrete porch at the Scorpion in State College, Pennsylvania, which was a tavern with a nice stage and plenty of tables. He was wearing a big hat and he smiled broadly at everyone coming up the steps.

I shook hands with him and told him how much I liked his music and how unique and how stirring I thought his style of folk/blues was to experience and he thanked me for that. His eyes had a far off look to them as we talked, as if they were looking past me and scanning the horizon for someone or something, so I let him go. There were others waiting in line to greet him.

How a man of his stature came to play a small tavern in an alley in a Pennsylvania college town mystified me somewhat. I guess he needed the money. After I'd heard and experienced his incredible performance, I was mystified all over again by the fact that John Lee Hooker had been on a stage where mostly local and regional rock bands had played. His performance was so moving that I had goose flesh for a long time afterward.

And that's how I met John Lee Hooker.

Videos added on 6-15-12 to enhance the reading of this post

Back to the Present

Lately, I've been wondering what it would be like to go back in time, say 50 years, to an era when writers used a typewriter to create their works of fiction. Of course, there are certain drawbacks to being in that historical time frame.

It would mean that I wouldn't be able to type as fast as I do now or with such a carefree attitude. I wouldn't have a nifty "spell checker" or the ability to cut and paste certain lines or blocks of text or to quickly and cleanly delete errors and junk. I'd be using a lot of correction tape (that was before "White-Out") or black china marker to cross out boo-boos. And I'd have to retype a lot of stuff or else hire a typist. And I'd spend a lot of money mailing out manuscripts. That's the "down" side of going back 50 years in time and being a novelist who uses a typewriter.

The "up" side is that I wouldn't be competing with just about anyone with a computer and the desire to write what they call a book or a novel. As it is now, that includes a lot of teenagers who copy other people's stuff off the web and put their name on it and frustrated college students who just have to be a sci-fi novelist, despite the fact that they have no clue how to write and can't spell worth a damn. It also includes as competition every former housewife who has "a voice of her own now" and a mysterious dream or a spooky near-death experience or a nagging desire to share.

In other words, in the present day, I have at my disposal a lot of the latest tools for writing novels. But so do a million other so-called "writers".

Hmmm. Anybody have a time machine I can use?