There’s something that happens every time I do a book signing, or some other author event that causes me to brave the outside world and meet the reading public face-to-face; they stand there in front of my table and stare in amazement at the twelve stacks of original work I’ve had published over the last decade or so. That look of amazement grows even brighter when they inspect the books closely and realize that I’ve written a book in nearly every genre – science fiction, literary, poetry, short story, children’s picture book, a humorous memoir, horror, mystery and thriller. I secretly love when this happens, it validates the time, sweat, tears, frustration and work I spent writing them.

I love it even more when I begin a conversation with said reader and tell them that I always have at least half a dozen other manuscripts in the hopper waiting to be published – that look of amazement swiftly turns to utter disbelief. You should see it, it’s truly a joy to witness! But I don’t stop there, oh no, I go on to tell them what I’m working on at the present time then I tell them about how I start a new novel every year during the week of my birthday in late-November but in the summer I write primarily short stories (this is because life in the summertime, especially if you have a big family, can intrude on a writer’s time, concentration and energy). At this point the said reader’s head explodes and I end up spending the rest of the day cleaning up the mess with a mop and a bucket...just kidding!

Seriously, though, at a recent book signing I actually had another local author come, stare at my stacks of work and then, instead of displaying that familiar look of amazement, he shook his head and confessed to me that I had just thoroughly sent him into a severe bout of depression. I was taken aback by this revelation. He clarified his comment by telling me that he’s a middle-aged author who’d only had one book published and that seeing all those books on the table made him feel like a slacker.

Well, that certainly wasn’t my intention. I would rather be known as a writer who inspires other writers to write. I can’t help the fact that I’m prolific and I don’t feel the need to apologize for it. Then I thought about exactly what he’d said and realized he was, in his own way, just giving me a compliment. We have since grown to become friends who respect each other’s work and he’s even published a second book!

But I digress...After the said reader’s head metaphorically explodes, the inevitable question always follows: Where do you get your ideas? It’s the dreaded question every published writer is asked at some point in his/her career and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it but bite your tongue and answer it as best as you can. I know this sounds rude but there are two things a reader must understand; the first is that any writer worth his salt lives in a constant state of creativity - the writer is immersed in it, breathes it, eats it, drinks it, showers in it and yes, even sleeps in it. It’s in everything the writer sees, smells, hears, tastes and touches. It’s in the way someone phrases a memorable statement, it’s in the way someone looks at you, the way someone walks, acts or believes. It’s in the smallest and biggest of things, like the way a flower can be carnivorous or the specific scent a breeze carries with it on a summer night. It’s in the way a cloud catches a ray of light or the way a giant 747 lands on the tarmac or the way a tornado breathes itself full of life. To a writer, creative possibilities are everywhere and never ending.

The second thing a reader must understand about a writer is that a writer assumes everyone is living in this same, unending creative world he/she is living in. It being such a huge, normal part of the writer’s everyday life, it actually comes as a surprise when he/she meets someone with little or no creativity or imagination. When this poor person’s malady does finally sink in, we pity him/her for a mini-micro-second, readjust our thinking then realize that’s it’s all right, because our job is to fill those sadly empty, foreign imaginations with people and sounds and pictures and possibilities. Humanity can easily be split into two groups of people, those who read and those who write (There is a third group, people who don’t read, but writers don’t acknowledge them because they’re truly lazy, lost souls).

So here’s what I’m going to do...I’m going to try to answer that dreaded question: Where do you get your ideas? as specifically and truthfully as possible, just remember that I’m only speaking for myself. I leave other writers to their own devices...

The most important thing a writer must do is have his/her mind constantly open and receptive for the possibility of an idea. A bank vault can’t be filled with cash unless the door is open. Here’s an example: A few years ago my son became a firefighter for the City of Fox Lake, Illinois, it was an absolute surprise to me as my son had never expressed any interest in such a vocation before. Needless to say, I was proud as a prize-winning heifer at the Lake County Fair as my son sat me down and told me the story of how it all came about. I listened with an open, receptive mind, filing away every important detail for later use. For a month, my subconscious mind chewed on this information, fueled on by endorphins of pride, then it happened...I had a dream about what it would be like to be a firefighter in the year 2070. When I woke up the next morning I had the main plot and the subplots fully realized, I had the main and secondary characters worked out and named, I had the antagonist and his reasons for being so, completely developed, I had the various action scenes fully visualized. It was like a miracle. All I had to do was sit down and write the book. I quickly filled pages and pages of my journal (which I keep by my bedside for such an emergency) with the elements of everything I’d dreamt – the book later became “Firefighter 2070: Flashover Point” and it was published by Champagne Books in 2012.

This doesn’t just happen, a writer has to train his mind to be open and receptive and only then will such breakthroughs occur, if you’re truly skilled at it, on a semi-regular basis. I’ve had this experience many times.

Another thing a writer does to foster ideas is to talk less but look and listen more. Whenever I’m in a crowd of people, I sit back and watch...I observe people with the concentration of an eagle seeking its prey. Every person is different, unique, every person has their own style of doing everything and I love witnessing this whenever I can. On many occasions I’ve been accused of being anti-social when in reality, it’s completely the opposite. I can’t tell you the number of people I‘ve observed or known that have made it into one of my stories (my wife once bought me a T-shirt with the warning: “Be Careful, You Might End Up In My Novel” splashed in bold black letters on the front). Sometimes I even bring my journal to the mall, find a bench and watch people for hours. The material a writer gets from doing something like this is priceless but be careful not to look suspicious, apparently, in a little turn of irony, I was being observed by mall security video police and a security guard actually came up to me once and asked me what I was doing.

Something I’ve found very easy and effective for creating new ideas is the What If? technique. I asked myself, What if a man could fly tornadoes? The answer was my 2004 novel, “The Funnel Flyer.” I asked myself, What if the Second Coming is actually an attack by an alien strike force? The answer was my 2015 novel, “Second Coming.” The What If? technique can be used for any genre of writing. Try it yourself when you’ve run out of ideas, it’ll work beautifully.

I’ve culled ideas from reading books, watching a science documentary or from listening to a particularly good song (sometimes even the title of a song sets my imagination off). Just be careful you don’t steal the main idea, main characters or any lines of text from any of these motivators, this amounts to plagiarism and that isn’t a good thing. The idea is to absorb and develop your own original ideas. “Growing Young,” a story in my first collection of sci-fi short stories, “Till Heaven and Earth Pass,” is about a ship of human colonists and their families who stumble across a white hole in deep space. A white hole is the opposite of a black hole and the crew soon learns that time is going in reverse because of this. How they deal with this conundrum is the crux of the story. “Growing Young” was the result of watching a documentary about the strange wonders of the universe; one of the strange wonders of the universe was a white hole. I took it from there.

A person you can steal from is yourself. A common tool many writers use is to take situations and characters from their own lives. But I strongly encourage you to expand and exaggerate on these ideas, let your mind fly, have as much fun with them as you want or make them as sad as you want – writers should never put self-imposed limits on their imaginations. That crushes the burst of creativity, it’s one of the reasons I’ve never had writer’s block. Once, my wife’s son, who was very young at the time, was playing with his Tinker Toy set on his bedroom floor and he came up with this fantastic robot creature. My mind exploded with possibilities when I saw it, the story that resulted, “Ryna,” was about an Earth traveler who comes across an enslaved alien robot on some far off, terrible planet ruled by these weird spider-like creatures. Ryna, the robot, and Kerkstra, the earth explorer, become friends and at the end, Kerkstra finally sets Ryna free. It’s one of my most favorite short stories but has yet to be published...maybe someday!

Looking back on this article, I guess the theme here is that the most important tool a writer has to develop is to observe and record. If you’re not doing these things, you’re not going to come up with any creative, original ideas. Remember, inspiration is everywhere, the responsibility a writer has is to recognize it as such, pull them out of their brain and slap them down on the page.

A few years back I was contacted through email by an old friend. He was approaching the ripe old age of fifty and expressed a deep desire to write a memoir about his life. He wanted some tips on how to accomplish this Herculean task but I suspect what he really wanted was for me to do the actual work for him (If I did this for everyone who asked me, I’d never get around to my own work until I was on my deathbed).

He sounded sincere enough in wanting to get certain aspects of his life down on paper, but it’s been my experience that most people, though sincere about wanting to write their memoir, truly aren’t serious about it when they realize the massive amount of work and time the project will demand.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” I told him. “I’ll put together a simple, easy to understand, abbreviated list of tips for you to follow to get you started, that way it will be completely up to you on whether your project gets off the ground or not. Contact me when you get a second or third draft finished and I’ll take a quick look at it.”

He liked the idea. The following is what I came up with, maybe you can use some of this advice for your own memoir (should you choose to accept the mission)...

First, read some memoirs about subjects you like (politicians, actors, poets, writers, rock band groupies, rock bands, rock stars, etc.), pay close attention to how they structured and organized their memoir. It’s okay to copy how they did this, just don’t copy what they wrote.

Keep a journal by your side all the time, especially at your bedside as ideas often pop into an author’s head during sleep. Keeping a journal will help you organize your ideas later on and you’ll find it easier not having to keep all that information in your head. Keep in mind that we’ve forgotten twice as what we remember. And sometimes writing in a journal will spark another memory and another. Break your journal up into sections like “Memories”, “Dreams”, “Interesting Dialogue You’ve Heard”, “Smells”, “Tastes”, “Similes”, “Story Ideas”, etc, it all depends on your needs. For the untrained author, a journal will help you avoid brain overload, which leads to chaos, which always kills the writing process.

I’ve never met a single person who appreciated reading one of my stories in longhand. I strongly suggest you get yourself a laptop with a word processing program like “Word”, or borrow one from somebody. Publishers will definitely not read a story in longhand. Laptops are cheap nowadays and you’ll find it much easier when you have to go back in and reorganize elements or punctuation in a story. If you’re scared of using one, don’t be, they’re made so that a first grader can use them.

As you’re writing the first draft of your manuscript, don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, characterization, metaphors, story turns, etc. The first draft is all about getting it down on the page, nothing more. Your second and third drafts are all about polishing the story so that it’s readable to people. Sometimes fourth, fifth and sixth drafts are needed. The truth about writing is that the real act of writing happens during the editing process.

Don’t worry about organizing your stories yet. When I wrote my humorous memoir, “Thirty Three Terrific Tales of Lake County, Illinois,” what I did was write whatever story interested me at the time and then when I was finished writing them all, I went back and arranged them in an order that was entertaining for me and the reader. This was a very fun process. You can organize your stories by date, place, event, etc., you’ll figure this out after you’ve finished writing all your stories.

Another thing a writer does to foster ideas is to talk less but look and listen more. Whenever I’m in a crowd of people, I sit back and watch...I observe people with the concentration of an eagle seeking its prey. Every person is different, unique, every person has their own style of doing everything and I love witnessing this whenever I can. On many occasions I’ve been accused of being anti-social when in reality, it’s completely the opposite. I can’t tell you the number of people I‘ve observed or known that have made it into one of my stories (my wife once bought me a T-shirt with the warning: “Be Careful, You Might End Up In My Novel” splashed in bold black letters on the front). Sometimes I even bring my journal to the mall, find a bench and watch people for hours. The material a writer gets from doing something like this is priceless but be careful not to look suspicious, apparently, in a little turn of irony, I was being observed by mall security video police and a security guard actually came up to me once and asked me what I was doing.

As I wrote my stories, I gave each one a manila folder, titled the folder whatever the story was titled and moved all the information I had in my journal concerning that story to the folder, that way I had easy access to it, no searching around in pages and pages of the journal. Writing a story is hard enough, make it easier on yourself and you’ll find it a smoother process. Remember to put a line through whatever you used from the journal so that you don’t use it again.

Find someone who will read your stories with a critical eye (your mother is out, unless she’s a writer herself she will not give you the critique a serious writer needs - I know this from experience). What a writer needs most is someone who is honest. And don’t take the criticisms personally, if you do then you shouldn’t be writing in the first place. A critique is all about making your story the best it can be.

To this day I don’t know if my friend even started the process, I haven’t heard from him. Perhaps he wasn’t serious after all.

I will never write another poem as long as I’m alive. I know that sounds harsh but I’ve got good reason to make such a statement – you see, I’ve learned my lesson.

In 2006, I performed a minor miracle (though, at the time, I was too naive to realize it)...I got a book of poetry published. I titled it GC Rosenquist’s Super Elastic Traveling Sound Circus because part of the purpose of the book was to have fun with the sounds of words. I even designed a fun cover (see my website for proof) with plenty of purple on it because it was a tribute to the publisher, Purple Sky Publishing.

I experimented with poetry beginning in high school, and as the years passed I got married, raised a son, I got divorced, which resulted in a waterfall of word catharsis which probably saved my life at the time. Later on, when my life settled down, I had a moment to take inventory of all those poems I’d backlogged; I found I had over one hundred of them written. Some were good, some were bad, some needed more work, some were perfect. At the same time I realized if I edited the collection down to the best fifty poems, I might have a book worth publishing. People all over the world would benefit from my experience and wisdom. I would win awards and receive grants, my future would be assured.

I went to work, edited, re-edited, arranged, re-arranged until I had something publishable. Then I sent a query letter to Purple Sky Publishing, the owner jumped on the bandwagon immediately, truly liking what I’d come up with. To make the poems even more accessible to non-poetry readers, I added a brief, one or two line preamble before each poem, giving the reader an insight to the true meaning of the particular work – they could make their own interpretation from there.

My publisher went all out, sending the book to China to be published; it came back as a nice four-color glossy softcover, the paper inside heavy and of high quality. When I received my author copies, I was proud of what I held in my hand. Here was a document of my most personal feelings, full of failure and victory, pain and survival. There was metaphorical blood on almost every page and the thing I’m most proud of is that every poem in the book is honest. I took no shortcuts, I left it all on the page, warts and all.

Immediately, my publisher sent a bunch of copies out to reviewers and I was met with primarily positive reviews except for a Christian reviewer who made it the point of her article to show that I had misquoted the chapter and verse of a certain book from the Bible in one of my poems. It was a simple typing error. My bad. Oh, well, you can’t please everyone, right?

So, I began my own marketing onslaught, hitting up my Facebook friends, advertising it on my website, making flyers, holding book signings.

That was when the weekly calls from my publisher started coming in. We weren’t selling enough of the book to pay for its initial investment. I needed to step up my marketing plan. I approached coffee houses to see if they’d be willing to stock some copies of the books for sale – NO. I contacted local newspapers and magazines, see if they’d be interested in doing an interview feature – NO. I contacted an English professor at the College of Lake County to see if he could read it and help me stock it in the college’s book store – I never heard from him.

I joined a handful of poetry groups, trying to get my name out there. I even entered a dozen or so poetry contests on my own dime because winning any kind of award is something a publisher can brag about on his end – I never even made runner-up. It seems that the same two or three poets win all the awards every year, no way I was going to crack through that barrier. But this part is what really disappointed me – there was practically no support from other poets in the genre. Sure, I could ask them about this type of poetry or using a particular word, but to promote another poet’s book, well, I could just forget about that. The air was silent. I even subscribed to a monthly poetry newsletter concerning the Chicago area and in bold black letters, on the front page of the newsletter was a warning that poets should stop sending notices about their new collections being published, there just wasn’t any room for such mish-mash. But there was plenty of room to talk about the creative eating habits of a certain poet’s dog or a new poetry wing going up in whatever library. Maybe I’m out of line here, but shouldn’t the primary purpose of a poetry newsletter be to expose the new work of new poets?

The calls from my publisher kept coming, I did what I could but I had hit a brick wall surrounded by razor wire and bordered by a mote of flaming, boiling oil. The fact of the matter is that Sound Circus was doomed from the beginning. I’d never attended any notable schools with an in-depth poetry program, so I hadn’t made the right university connections. Essentially, I was dirt under their feet. I was an unknown who’d produced a good book of poetry. I had no right writing poems.

The last call my publisher made to me was to tell me he was closing down Purple Sky Publishing. It appeared that the cost of my book sent him out of business. It’s a shame because the book is really, really good and was worth more attention than it received. To this day I feel guilty about what I did to Purple Sky Publishing. I know I did my best but that’s little comfort to me now, and to Purple Sky Publishing.

First of all, let me tell you that I am unashamedly, proudly in love with Ray Bradbury.

I live in a sleepy town just fifteen minutes to the west of Waukegan, Illinois, Mr. Bradbury’s legendary, mythical Green Town. For me, Mr. Bradbury is the absolute pinnacle of American fiction writing, edging out Hemingway and Mark Twain and the reasons are many, some of which I’ll explore below.

As a science fiction writer, he has been one of my greatest influences. There was a childlike joy in his writing, and passion for the craft – lots of passion, even at the end, while well into his nineties. This passion is what I cherish about him the most.

For seven decades, Mr. Bradbury had unselfishly given to the world so many priceless, memorable moments, so many amazing images. Who can forget the heart-hammering moment when Montag sets his captain on fire in Fahrenheit 451? Or the wonderfully ironic moment at the end of the Martian Chronicles when a father shows his children real Martians – their own reflections in the waters of a great Martian canal? Or how about the blind witch marking the tops of houses with paint as she hangs from the basket of an air balloon at midnight in Something Wicked This Way Comes? I could go on and on but if you’d read even one Bradbury story, you get the picture.

And his uniquely Bradburian way with words is and shall always remain unparalleled. Here are some shining examples from Something Wicked This Way Comes...

“Somewhere, not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.”

“...and looked at the salesman with a single eye open, bright and clear as a drop of summer rain.”

“Going away, away, the calliope pipes shimmered with star explosions...”

“...and Will further back, gasping, shotgun blasts of fatigue in his feet, his head, his heart.”

“Will’s father noted the muscles cord along the arms, roping and unroping themselves with a writhe like the puff adders and sidewinders doubtless inked and venomous there.”

It’s like this on every page of that amazing book. Where does writing of such quality and beauty come from? Thank God we’ll never know because if we did, everyone could write like that and that would be a terrible thing; Mr. Bradbury would seem a little less special.

The great Mr. Bradbury passed away in June of 2012 and I was crushed emotionally, not only from grief at his passing but by the fact that I’d never had the opportunity to meet the man himself. I wish I had. I can only hope he was the great, warm, kind man I’ve always envisioned him to be. I’ve visited the actual “Green Town” ravine (in Waukegan), I’ve driven past the house Mr. Bradbury lived in, I’ve even seen the library he wrote about so eloquently in Something Wicked This Way Comes, the very place where Mr. Bradbury spent countless hours and became the man, the writer, he was destined to become.

So, how does a writer (me) in love with a writer (Mr. Bradbury) who has passed on after giving the world so much of himself for so long, properly thank him?

The answer is that he returns the favor. He writes a book for him.

I first read Mr. Bradbury’s 1957 novel, Dandelion Wine, when I was in high school and it’s been influencing me ever since. I even wrote a book of my own titled 33 Terrific Tales of Lake County, Illinois (published in 2008) that’s very much in the vein of Dandelion Wine, though I didn’t realize it at the time I wrote it.

And when I found out in 2006 that Mr. Bradbury was releasing a long awaited sequel, Farewell Summer, forty-nine years after the original, my blood ran with electricity. I loved that new chapter of Douglas Spaulding’s life so much I bought a copy for my son, a firefighter in Fox Lake, Illinois, hoping he would see the amazing things in it I had. He did.And I remember the deep sadness I felt as I read that last page of Farewell Summer, realizing I would never see Douglas continue to mature, become a man. I would never see new adventures in Green Town, meet new people that lived there. I always felt that there was more to be told about Douglas’ year of self-realization and self-discovery so, after Mr. Bradbury passed away, I immediately began jotting down ideas for a sequel to Farewell Summer. This novel would take place in autumn, Halloween and Thanksgiving specifically, and the metaphorical implications were countless. The result was a 57,000 word novel - October Wings, Autumn Breathings (from a line in Mr. Bradbury’s wonderful book, From the Dust Returned).

Just to be clear, I didn’t write this novel because I think I’m as good a writer as Mr. Bradbury or to make a buck. I could live and write a thousand years and never touch his greatness. And poverty? Well, I’m pretty much used to it by now. I understand I’m not Mr. Bradbury and will never be. No, I wrote this novel for two simple reasons, the first is that it’s a tribute to a true literary master who made my life better through his writing; a personal thank you to him to offset the deep grief I felt at his passing. The second is that I love Douglas Spaulding, his family and friends and I love his Green Town of 1928. I missed them and dearly wanted to visit them again.

It’s ironic, I think, that the book Dandelion Wine has, for me, become like a bottle of dandelion wine is for Douglas – an encapsulated way to relive the summers of my own youth. All I have to do is open the pages and read.

Style-wise and structure-wise, October Wings, Autumn Breathings resembles more Dandelion Wine than Farewell Summer. I even re-visit some of the same secondary characters, trying to finish their stories. For example, I’ve always wondered how Miss Lavinia Nebb dealt with what had happened in her living room that night when she returned home alone from a late movie at the Elite and found the Lonely One standing there ready to kill her. And how did Bill Forrester move on with his life after ninety-five year old Helen Loomis passed away? He clearly had deep feelings for her, and she for him, but both knew they’d each been born at the wrong time and it just couldn’t be. I thought that, perhaps, Bill Forrester and Miss Lavinia Nebb deserved some sort of lasting happiness in their lives, could it be found with each other? And what ever became of the Tarot Witch or Douglas’ Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot sneakers? All of this is answered in October Wings, Autumn Breathings.

I also introduce some new characters to the mythical Green Town rolls, such as the dreaded Neil Hagen, whom turns out not to be so dreaded after all. And Grandpa Spaulding’s younger brother, Harland, a man who looks like Moses but acts like Bugs Bunny. A man that brings with him all the way from California, a wild turkey little Tom Spaulding names Sophie Jr. Sophie Jr. turns out to have such a short temper that she eventually escapes and turns downtown Green Town into a federal disaster area on Thanksgiving morning. But more importantly, I reverently focus on Douglas Spaulding’s resistance to growing up and how he finally comes to terms with it.

After two long years nipping and tucking and performing metaphorical brain surgery on the manuscript, I finally sewed the final draft together. Then I sent a query letter about it to Michael Condon, Mr. Bradbury’s agent and now executor of the Bradbury Literary Estate, to see what his impression of the book might be. Though, he was sympathetic with the two years of my life I spent devoted to the project, he couldn’t see how any publisher would be interested in October Wings, Autumn Breathings. He went on to say that a sequel to Farewell Summer, would negatively affect the prospects of any movies being produced concerning the Dandelion Wine series (though, he didn’t say exactly how). A brief reminder about the copyright infringement of using the Green Town characters followed and that was that.

Believe me when I say that I understand copyright law (I’ve had a dozen books previously published), and I meant no disrespect to Mr. Bradbury in writing October Wings, Autumn Breathings. It was written with the deepest respect and love for him and his family in Green Town. It’s a celebration of his life and legacy. My only wish now is that I can get the manuscript into the hands of one or all of Mr. Bradbury’s children, as a gift to them, but finding any contact information for any of them has proved very difficult.

If I ever do manage to send them the manuscript, I hope they’ll find at least a little of that childlike joy and passion that their father never lost, in its pages. And who knows? Perhaps I’ll visit Douglas Spaulding in the winter – see what he learns there. And the spring?