Walking Is Very Good For Writers. There's

Childbirth Changed My Perception Of My Wife. She Was Now The Bloodied Special Forces Soldier Who Had Fought And Risked Everything For Our Family.

I Push Against The Tree And Run Away, Stumbling, The Unreal Night Playing With Me, Gravity Pulling From Below, Behind, Above, Making Me Fall. And I Run Through A World That Is Rotating, Conscious Of The Earth's Spin, Of Our Planet Twirling As It Careens Through Nothingness, Of The Stars Spiraling Above, Of The Uncertainty Of Everything, Even Ground, Even Sky. Mumtaz Never Calls Out, Although A Thousand And One Voices Scream In My Mind, Sing, Whisper, Taunt Me With Madness.

In A World Of Intrusive Technology, We Must Engage In A Kind Of Struggle If We Wish To Sustain Moments Of Solitude. E-reading Opens The Door To Distraction. It Invites Connectivity And Clicking And Purchasing. The Closed Network Of A Printed Book, On The Other Hand, Seems To Offer Greater Serenity. It Harks Back To A Pre-jacked-in Age. Cloth, Paper, Ink: For These Read Helmet, Cuirass, Shield. They Afford A Degree Of Protection And Make Possible A Less Intermediated, Less Fractured Experience. They Guard Our Aloneness. That Is Why I Love Them, And Why I Read Printed Books Still.

If The Dominant Political Expression That We're Seeing Right Now Is Of Nostalgia And We Know That Nostalgia Won't Really Work Out, What Happens Is, We Become Depressed As Individuals And Societies - When We're Depressed, We're Much More Vulnerable To Be Taken Advantage Of By Demagogues And Xenophobes.

If Your Book Is Set In The Plantation Days Of The Slave-owning South And You Write A Little Romance Between Two Slave Owners Without Acknowledging The System They Live, That's A Political Gesture.