Authors Electric

  Can a casual tip from a driver for a new Lyft service called Pink add a bold new color to the palette of  your life? If that thought's not too absurd, could that color unify decades-long long skeins of thought into one powerful cord? And could  that cord help you harness a great force you'd hoped to believe in? Fear not. That's a lot to chew on for one blog, especially the short type I prefer to read and write, it's true. But I'll try to bring it home by starting near the middle...flashing back briefly with both art and speed...and then rocketing on to the finish. Step One: In media res One night a Lyft driver in Tucson recommended their new premium service called Pink. Regular passengers like myself, she said, could save up to $3 a ride at a cost of $10/month. The instant I got home, I began my research. The intel I'd been given had been both true and false. The savings did not come off the cheap Wait and Save fare, with its wait time of 5-15 minutes. No, the...

I’ve come to the conclusion I’m either prescient, or just suffer from incredibly bad timing. Or, perhaps, it’s neither, but a form of pareidolia. Back in early March 2020, I put the finishing touches to my first Young Adult novel. The plan was to work out a plan to do some pre-launch marketing, try and build up some pre-orders, basically all the usual stuff we do as writers when we have a new book coming out. (I use the term book loosely, to include chapbooks, poetry collections, short stories, and so on.) I’d sketched out a few drafts of what I thought would make a good cover, worked on the blurb, written a synopsis, and was all good to go. A week later, we went into lock-down as Covid cases began to skyrocket. Normally, this would be a gift to a writer – all that time at home to write. (You’d think, anyway, but that’s a post for another time.) My average commute was around an hour each way – I never considered it totally wasted as I often cycled and used the time to let my sub-cons...