IBMer to Author – How did that Happen?? I’ve always had the ability to “make stuff up”.  My colleagues at IBM would say I have the gift of B.S. – not a great term, but I always took it positively.  I could come up with new ideas and innovations to solve problems throughout my career. Looking back, my wife and I always joke about how I helped her get through her creative writing class in college.  She would struggle with coming up with a unique idea to demonstrate a writing style, so I would write a story that met the assignment need and then she would re-write it in her own style and ensure the format was what the professor...

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I wanted to share the origin of some of the names of people and my thoughts on a few of the characters in The Wonders of the Peculiar Parasol.   The names of all of the people in Mandy’s extended family come from actual names of my family (my wife, my kids and their spouses, my grandkids, and a few of my siblings); and, from my niece Gina’s family (her husband, her sons, her parents/my brother).  Some of the names used are nicknames or derivatives of the real-life names, while some are identical.  I mixed things up a bit though, the names of some of the parents in Mandy’s family are actually grandkids in mine.  Some adults in real-life, are...

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I grew up loving comic books and science fiction movies. As a child of the 60s, TV was a dominant part of my life and the only reading I ever did was comics.  Superman and Batman were my early favorites, but I gradually moved into “team” books and stories.  When I was in grade-school, the Legion of Super-Heroes was my favorite.  The heroes were all teen-age kids who came from many different worlds, each with a unique power.  Lightning Lad could shoot bolts from his hands, Ferro Kid could turn into solid iron and steel, Saturn Girl could change the gravity around items or people making it impossible to move. High school diverted my attention for a bit (sports, girlfriend,...

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