I began seriously writing a few months after Covid-19 shut everything down. I mean, I could only watch reruns of Star Trek so many times. I was beginning to recite the dialog along with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. I was cleaning out a closet at my wife's "request" and came across a hard copy of a short story I'd written decades before. Those were the days before personal computers and I had submitted a hard copy of this story to a number of science fiction magazines. Shortly after my submittals, I received a similar number of stock rejection slips, except for one. It was a typed letter indicating they liked the story and offered some suggestions on how to improve it, but unfortunately, they could not accept it at that time. It was signed by the magazines editor. Their closing comment was, "Don't give up. Keep writing. You never know what might happen." For reasons unknown, I stopped writing in spite of his encouragement. Fast forward to the 2020s. I sat down and reread the story. And it inspired me. As my late mother used to say, "It got my juices flowing." I had to retype the hard copy, making what I considered improvements in the story. It was an exhausting process. I had a PC and it took me a long time. Then my loving wife agreed to proof read what I had written and there were a ton of corrections to be made. I was burned out and stopped writing for a while. On one eventful Sunday, when I was in church, my pastor made a passing comment during his sermon, and something he said triggered a thought for a short story. After church, I went home and began typing again. About 5,000 words later, I'd finished the story. There were more occasions during the next few months when my pastor was the source for additional short stories and a novella. I had no idea what do do with them During the writing of my stories, my daughter, a librarian at the Vista Grande Library in Casa Grande, Arizona, had organized a writers group of local authors. Some of them were published authors and others were like me, Wannabes. It met twice a month and she encouraged me to let other writers read and critique my stories. The group was called "Inklings." It was a humbling and thought provoking experience, but also very encouraging. I met a gentleman, Gene Carr, who became my mentor. He introduced me to Amazon self-publishing and to the woman who was his editor, Trish Lewis. They were both very encouraging. My first book was published in 2020. It contained the three short stories and one novella and was titled "Future Histories." During 2020 I published a total of four books. The first novel, titled "Generations," used the decades old story as the first third of the novel. The next 2020 book was "Professor Radcliff's Time Machine." "New Generations" was a sequel to the first novel also published in 2020. In 2021 "The Last Generation" turned the series into a trilogy, which was followed by a prequel to the "Generations" series. It was titled "The Generations of Hope" and was the last book published in the 2021. A new series was started in 2022 with the book titled "Joshua." The sequel, "Joshua and Caleb" will be published in June of this year and the third book in the series, "The Book of Caleb" will hopefully be published later in 2022. Let me close with this message, I love to write. I hope all of you who have read my books find them entertaining and thought provoking. I hope to have a fourth book added to the Joshua series either by the end of 2022 or early 2023. As the old philosopher was fond of saying, "All things are possible if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise."Read more about this authorRead less about this author