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Even people who know me well often do not know that I was a teenage evangelist or that I was a licensed Methodist minister at the age of nineteen. In the Methodist denomination being a licensed minister meant that I could pastor a church, perform marriages, and...

As I entered my local pharmacy, I again noticed a sign on the glass doors that said, “Heroes Work Here.” The word hero is bandied about a lot today, much as it was in 2001 and for years afterward, at least in America, often in ways that cheapen the word as well as the...

My mother was thirty-nine when she had her last child. Her first had been born when she was seventeen, barely. My mother turned seventeen one day and had a baby the next day. My parents had been married for five months. Thirteen months later, I was born. Four years...

The question writers are most often asked is where their ideas come from. Some writers cultivate a witty response, the best of which would satisfy even Oscar Wilde. Other writers opt for sincerity and admit that there is no pattern to it, that the idea machine works...

I did not grow up hunting, even though hunting was commonplace in the Ozarks: rabbit, deer, turkey, quail, waterfowl. Some people hunted squirrel and possum as well. My brother and I would occasionally go along with our dad and our uncle, but our dad used us to carry...

For years I've ignored my web site. For years I've taken a long break from writing for publication - no screenplays, no novels, no short stories. Instead I've traveled the world: seeing new place like Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Morocco, South Africa, Botswana,...

I often marvel at the frequency with which people self-destruct. My memory easily recalls a slew of names – Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan, Al Campanis, Charles Barkley, Prince Phillip, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Sarah Palin – politics is rich with blunders. Almost daily our...