I read a lot in elementary school, following the usual transition from school-required reading to voluntary reading involving comic books. Eventually I discovered science fiction novels and short stories, and my fate was determined. The only thing I've ever joined, besides the U.S. Air Force, was The Science Fiction Book Club where I could order two hardcover books each month for one dollar each (I still have a few of them). Those were the days when Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov, as well as other great science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers were ready to entice me into new worlds of wonder and imagination (a "tip of the hat" here to the Dedham Public Library for being the free resource I needed to discover and enjoy reading).I remember trying to do some creative writing in high school, the results were less than spectacular.
Despite the efforts of several teachers at Dedham High School, I spent as little time as possible learning English (I do remember one teacher saying there are a thousand rules in the English language and two thousand exceptions to those rules). Years later, after I decided I could be a reporter, I would sit at the manual typewriter (remember those?) and compose a sentence while trying to imagine how Asimov or Clarke would write it. That meant long nights at the radio station trying to get stories written, but eventually I figured out what I was suppose to do.
Many years later I decided to use the story ideas I'd found on my rounds as a journalist, combined with my own experiences, to write fiction (of course, I could also say that after twenty years of interviewing politicians I had a lot of experience writing fiction--but that would fault a few very good people I've known who happened to become politicians and shouldn't be slighted for that lapse in judgment).
So, that's a brief explanation of how I got to this web page. To guide you in your exploration of the pages, here are links to the variety of writing styles I've posted (not to say I won't add or subtract pieces later--after all, I've been editing my own writing, and that of others, for a while).