RESPONDING to an article in today’s BBC News entitled “Tech Tent: Are we really on the cusp of a VR revolution? — https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct3750, I’d have to say a definite, “Yes,” though not exactly as VR companies and Meta envision. More like envisioned in my Amazon-genre-bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor. And exactly how is that different, you might well ask?

Well, for starters, I believe that the missing “key” is projected, interacti...

I hear a lot these days about how “unfair” autocratic folks, foreign and domestic, feel they’re being treated these days. The popular saying, “truth hurts” as well as Khaled Hosseini’s famous quote: “better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie” say it all. In my opinion, the best defense against autocracy is truth, exactly what U. S. President Biden seems to be doing to defend against a Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

The problem, even in countries relatively i...

IF there’s one thing that’s totally unscientific, it’s human behavior. Especially “leadership” behavior. I’ve seen and experienced it first hand “on the set” (see https://www.netflix.com/title/80990849 and you’ll wonder how ANY movie of value could have been made) and watched in awe and horror during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yfIoHXOO9E). So, what’s new with President Putin and the manufactured Ukraine Crises. Nothing. ...

ACCORDING to UC Berkeley statistics (https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/Real-World/million.html), the following have a one in a million chance:

20 coin tosses (by me) all coming up Tails.

Winning the current California State Powerball lotto game if you buy 6 tickets a week for a year.

A major earthquake on the Hayward fault in the next 50 minutes.

One of the next 24 babies born in the U.S. will become President.

Casting the deciding vote in a California Statewide election that opinion pol...

IT’S true! There are rare “Ah-ha!” in-your-face-and-body, totally mind-blowing, moments of ecstasy in life that result from a concerted combination of prolonged devotion, discipline and action. I know it, because I’ve experience such a moment. The first happened one day during my 20 years of competitive-style dancing at a lesson. I was dancing with my coach, and suddenly, I wasn’t in the studio anymore. I was flying along effortlessly in a state of pure bliss. And yes, it was better...

TIMES have changed. It’s no longer a sheep or a Daniel thrown into the world of finance’s lion’s den of yesteryear. It’s a bear these days, though in two opposite meanings. First, a bear willing to slice, thrash and carve out it’s own piece of the financial lion’s den, but second, a transitory bear in the sense of a bear rather than a bull market. It’s commando-style business that makes the millionaires these days. And that seems to be increasingly true of authoring and publishi...

HEY! I’m talking “real” writing, which means recording whatever interests the writer in any written, enduring format. It’s the first step towards authoring, which means writing for a target audience rather than oneself. I’ve been a writer, author and poet for over four decades, and it’s only recently, when I was given the opportunity of being the lead actor in The STATIC Movie (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) that I began to realize just how privileged I am to be part of th...

AND I don’t mean those growing consumer lines at stores for food or goods, or the long waits on the phone for customer service. I mean those lines and lines and lines of character “Will” dialog in the movie script for The STATIC Movie – https://kspllc.media -the next filming being set of for this coming Sunday at the multi-million dollar house location. I love acting as much as I do authoring (maybe a bit more when I get to do the dance choreography and get to perform it like in The S...

CORRESPONDING today with my dear friend and colleague, the multi-talented, multi-award-winning author, William Maltese, the question arose: Which is better? To think or to do? It all stems from discussing with him my having been asked to audition for a role in an upcoming made-for-television movie, “Static,” written fellow author and screenwriter Richard Rose and purchased for cinematic treatment by K. Simmons Productions (kspllc.media).

You know, “To be, or not to be? That is the ques...

IN the publishing world, a writer writes for him or herself, while an author writes for a target audience, commonly designated by a “genre.” A writer doesn’t need a publisher; an author may or may not, depending on whether one wishes to “self-publish,” or contract with a vanity or “regular” press. Usually, contracting for the first time with an established press is considered one’s author debut.

I read that in today’s market, there is no need for a regular publisher. In fac...

WRITING writings; carefully wording one’s words; creating creative stories — it’s all about judiciously avoiding the irreverent epizeuxis, pleonasm and, God(dess) forbid, semantic satiation. And doing it without losing the occasional congenial, sometimes gratifying occurrence of alliterative consonance or onomatopoeia. Rat-tat-tat went the machine gun. Quack said the duck. Forsooth mouthed the itinerant forsoother.

In truth, as an author, I do enjoy employing semantic variety — a sor...