Essays

If you saw CBS Sunday Morning a couple years ago, when Anthony Mason and his crew (all great people; they made it fun), came to Koontzland to do an interview, you will have seen my 20-year-old computer system that so puzzled Anthony, he said, “What is that?!?” I told him I’d just traded in my steam-driven computer. In truth, for a long time, I dreaded changing to a new system and learning a new software, because I thought the learning phase would slow me and inhibit creativity. To a writer, inhibited creativity is more to be feared than great white sharks and mad gunmen, or even mad gunmen who are great white sharks.

Well, I recently finished writing my first project on a new computer, a novella titled Last Light, and it went well. I wasn’t electrocuted. My fingers didn’t get stuck between the keys. Apparently, my creativity wasn’t inhibited, because my editor really, really liked the story. It’s the first of two that I am writing to be released as e-shorts, e-singles, e-somethings in advance of the release of my novel Ashley Bell, later to be release in paperback as part of a linked series of novellas. So, I have entered the second decade of the 21^st century at last. And the first thing I noticed is that a promise the futurists made when I was just a kid has not been fulfilled ——there are no flying cars, and I really wanted one.