The title song for Pilar Allessandra’s wonderful screenwriting podcast, On the Page, has the catchy chorus, “Get it out of your head, and onto the page.” Lately I’ve had to follow that advice or risk going off the rails.
Call it cabin fever from being snowed in, and without water in the house for almost three weeks; call in my warped brain. Whatever it is, I’ve woken up several mornings recently with weird after images from dreams (normal), but more significantly with weirder phrases or word groupings. Two examples: “Baby Want Perambulator” “Zebras need Zippers” and “On the Care and Maintenance of Mermaids.”
The mermaid thing turned into a 4,000 word short story, which I am shopping around. And I’ve begun a story with permabulators and zebras in it – which I feel will end up being a piece of nonesense for the trash on my iBook.
If anyone else out there has had similar experiences – or even stranger ones – do please let me know. Failing that, send the guys with the straight jackets out to catch me.
As an inveterate reader my whole life, a key moment for me was discovering science fiction. Off to one side was comic books and, in particular, the Doc Savage books, by Kenneth Robeson. I devoured them like they were going out of style. So I had a complete geek-out moment when I learned that JJ. Campanella (science correspondent on the 
Bone Machines 