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| 'Landmark by day, Beacon by night' |
While I have always seen myself as a sci-fi writer, it turns out I have a talent for writing History. My amazing Journalism instructor, Anne Belden, helped me realize this through her Magazine Writing class. Or, more specifically, she encouraged my work, and kept inspiring me work harder, until I got my first paid article published - as a Sci-Fi historian.
Researching that article about Frank Herbert's early photojournalism career required months of microfilm research, scanning each article and photo for his name in the byline. My research uncovered enough material for a book, Frank Herbert's Lost Archives, Vol. 1.
That first small success led to my second published article, then a third and fourth. It also led me to research Jack London's near-forgotten science fiction works. That, also, led me to more microfilm research.
I moved away from Sonoma County to work on my writing, specifically my sci-fi, my screenplays, and my sci-fi screenplays. I ended up getting freelance writing assignment for the local newspaper, which had a habit of becoming "Wild West" history articles.
My latest newspaper article "Centennial Tower Dedicated" covers the dedication of Elko's Centennial Tower. While this was a "news" article, it also dipped into the history of what happened here a hundred years ago - and earlier.
As it turns out, I have a talent for uncovering forgotten tidbits in public records, that anybody else could have discovered first, and people tell me I am good at writing my historical articles in an approachable way. That was never my goal, but something that evolved from years of hard work.
Looking back, it makes sense that I accidentally became a Historian. After all, writing about the past is a form of time-travelling, and science-fiction is just another type of history.
