And finally, "Star Song" was one of the handful of stories I've written where I
was able to draw on my love of music. It was also one of those maddening times where I quickly had all of the story except for one crucial piece. In this case, a comment from my son was the key to that piece, after which everything fell into place. I made the mistake of giving him 5% of the payment in thanks.
Never do that with a teenager. He now figures any residual money that comes in from the story is partially his, and as a paralegal student he knows how to argue from precedent. I'm just glad I didn't offer him 10%.
So there you have it: background, history, and, hopefully, a little appetite whetting. All that's left now is the stories themselves.
Enjoy!
Point Man
Everyone, my mother used to tell me, had a special talent. Every human being, in one way or another, stood head and shoulders above all those around him. It was, she'd firmly believed, part of what made us human; one of the few things that stood us apart from the lower animals and even from the sophisticated alien hive minds that plied the galaxy.
She never told me just what she thought my talent was while I was growing up, of course. At the time I figured that she simply didn't want to prejudice me.
Looking back from the perspective of five decades, it has gradually become apparent that she hadn't told me what my talent was because she was never able to find any. But she was too kind to tell me outright that I was so uniformly average... and so I left home and spent thirty solid years looking for something in which I could excel.
Eventually, I found it. I found that I had a genuine and unique knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.