So I’m taking ballet. I’m not especially coordinated, mind you, nor does it really seem as if there’s much point, considering you pretty much have to start as a child in order to get in the 10,000 hours necessary to achieve proficiency (so says Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point,”) but I’m ...
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So I was headed to work one morning and my car battery started to sound sickly as my engine turned over. Unfortunately I wasn’t headed straight to work, I went to the gym first… and by the time I got back to my car, the battery was completely dead. (I guess that happens in Arizona in the ...
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Last week I met a man who will almost certainly inspire a character in my upcoming dystopian trilogy. He'll probably be one of the underlings of the evil dictator. Picture this: 60-something, short (probably about 5’3”, slightly shorter than I am) with a pudgy middle, slicked back gray hair, shirt ...
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I watched a movie this weekend (“Liberal Arts” — I don’t exactly recommend it, but don’t not recommend it either), in which one of the supporting characters said to the main character, “I know you still feel like you’re in college… but the fact is, you’re not in college anymore, so you’ve got to ...
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I had this experience in Puerto Rico that I am sure is somehow going to make it into my next book series: kayaking through a narrow canal of mangrove trees to reach a bay, where single-celled organisms in the water give off light much like fireflies in response to agitation (it was called ...
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  I’m nearing the end of the “Piercing the Veil” trilogy… my goal is to have Book 3 ("Impossible") out by the end of July (which might be a little ambitious, but a lot of the first round of editing is done already). I knew that I’d be really sad when I finished the trilogy if I didn’t ...
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Ten years ago I lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for a summer. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a missionary doctor in Latin America, but I didn’t know Spanish yet. So I volunteered with a company called Manos de Vida, lived with a family that didn’t speak English, worked with a doctor and a nurse and a ...
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  In preparation for the release of Invincible: It took me almost a year to research the “Piercing the Veil” series before I actually started writing. For those who are curious, here’s a breakdown of some of the concepts I didn’t make up, appearing both in Intangible and Invincible (this ...
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This scene is from the first or second draft of "Intangible." It never made it into the final draft, although Peter references it in Chapter 5 when he's summarizing the story for Lily. ...But I really like it so I wanted to post it anyway!   Amid the hubbub of the castle, Arthur snuck ...
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This scene, where Peter explains superstring theory to Lily, never made it into the book. It was originally part of the first conversation Peter and Lily had in Mr. Richards' class. That scene is now from Peter's POV, although this one is from Lily's. Instead I ended up putting some of these words ...
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