It would make my life easier if I just wrote one kind of novel — some easily classifiable category.  Many of mine fit my Small Towns, Big Ideas label, but some do not.  This is one. Chicago isn’t a small…

My wife is a workaholic.  She always schedules more than a reasonable person can accomplish. So one idle science-fictiony thought caught in her brain and she mentioned it over and over for years — the idea of a room where…

In 2009, I had an opportunity for a big Canada trip, starting in Saskatchewan and traveling east, stopping in Montreal for the Worldcon where I picked up my Golden Duck award for Lighter Than Air. After that, we kept going…

Pixie Dust was actually written earlier than my young adult novels that I began to market under the Small Towns, Big Ideas umbrella, but it shares some of the same ideas. When I re-read the book after letting it sit…

I love to travel, and long lonely roads are sometimes the best times to think about stories and to plug ideas together.  One long drive on I-70 through the empty miles of Utah, the only distractions were the very infrequent…

The pieces of this novel came from a couple of influences.  In my back yard, there is a place in the yard where there is a clear mark of a former small building, long gone, but having left its outline…

On one of my California trips, I visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they had a sample of aerogel on display.  This substance is like Jello with all the moisture pulled out of it, leaving a stiff solid that is…

During the years when my daughter was attending Pepperdine University in Malibu, it was the perfect excuse to make numerous California trips.  We’d visit her for a while, then extend the trip to places all over the western states.  One…

Fresh from the euphoria of writing a novel, Emperor Dad, just for fun, I decided to do it again.  So I had to pull an idea out of my hat — any idea. Aliens!  That’s always a good science fiction…