Yes. It was a spin off of the Muppets later made by the actual Muppet writers...lol fine minds think alike...

Usually there's some bigger problem at hand to solve and I see ironic situations. I used to try to push my first draft, but then I learned to let my ideas cook, like a crock pot. Justin Time took 10 years to get where it is today. The Faithful took 24. Witness Protection took 20.

Oh, yes. I think most kids from my generation were seduced by the sirens of Star Wars. The slides of ILM's first effects shot of the dog fights exchanging laser fire that became wall-poster art for most kids of that era never really left us.

Chuck Berry. Articulation first and style second. The attention span is really countered by whether or not an image is clear. When in doubt, give the reader a fighting chance to know who you are. They might read you later or tell another reader about you.

Wow...tough...

Before I became a Christian, I would say, easily, John Jake's The Bastard and The Stand. My mother had them in our family book shelves and they were intimidating to read, so I undertook the challenge.

Later, George Lucas' bio, and then Reagan's, Lute Olson's, MLK's and so on. Condaleeza Rice's autobio captured my heart, the highlight of a boring college class.

Sports blogs. I love following my teams and their stories. I also love reading history discoveries -- Biblical and modern times.

Desk top. I haven't been able to find a hand held unit I like...which is ironic...but Spielberg can't figure out Tivo, so, I'm in good company... lol

Videos of myself and emails of freebies. In retrospect, the author's primary responsibility is to zero in on a very specific niche market, and not presume the whole wide world will wanna read their stuff. That's how good writers fail. I had to learn to adapt what I knew to what I needed in order to connect to my audience. It's a science and it changes. Adapt or go do something else for a living.

A wreck. I had to assign myself 1 day per week to clean it and not do any other type of work.

Oh, yes. Tucson has many personalities. The one I started with was on the East Side. Over time, I experienced all of its personalities...some of them warm and welcoming, and some not. The city's racism is a left over of Spain's Armada, coined pretty well in CS Lewis' Narnia series. Arrogant, racist and domineering. In most parts of the USA, race is very much a black-and-white issue. In Tucson, it's Brown-vs. Latino is superior and everyone else must deal with it. To even mention it is considered unacceptable. In 1997, when Lute Olson's Wildcats united the city in celebration of their national championship in basketball, it showed us what was possible to live Dr. King's dream. That stayed with me and inspired The Faithful. My bachelor experiences dating all the wrong types of women, including one I was with when she had an abortion (another man's fetus), inspired Justin Time. My miserable early college experience there inspired Witness Protection. I graduated in 2011 and wrote about that in Study Hard.

My parents were amused and surprised by my fascination with an old typewriter they bought at a yard sale around 1977. I was five-six years old. My mother read magazines and grocery store stocked novels all the time, and as some of them were made into films, she'd give her take on the plot as we sat in movie theaters awaiting the films to start. I found myself writing in that voice until I learned I was truly touched with a git for -- not just words, but storytelling. My writing lacked soul, imitating the likes of works I like, namely Star Wars and Quantum Leap, until I became a born again Christian. Once the Spirit took over, the quality of my work skyrocketed.

Justin Time In Paradise Lost is a sequel I felt God told me to write. I wanted to write other stuff, but He said, 'Do This Next'...Justin Time and John Milton's epic poem really accomplish the same thing, bringing the Bible's supernatural history into modern day perspective. Milton wrote using the technology he had. I had a flash of the character in the last 1990's, during a Christmas Eve rendition of "Were You There?" Well, what if a guy with a video recording device was really there, as Jesus died and rose again? Years later, a pastor somewhat obsessed with abortion inspired the time travel approach to the Pro Choice arguments...what if we knew God's plan for our lives, thus had the faith to not abort a seed He has a purpose and plan for, even if mom/dad don't? It became the Christian genre answer for James Bond...the adventure continues... :)

I refused to take no from morons or people too clumsy at marketing to judge me. Too many success stories have come from those determined to succeed, and not take the rejection reply from folks whose own track records are questionable. Given the tools, I decided to use my gifts and tell other peoples stories.

Marketing is a never ending battle with the machine that predates us all. I can't force 20th Century Fox to put $100M behind my ideas, but I can use user-friendly tools to connect with people who are interested in my work right now.

I compared Smashwords.com to CBS TV vs HBO. Kindle and B&N Nook are like HBO. They run the same program, in a slightly different format. Both add to brand equity and help build and maintain our storytelling with our reader-viewer base.

Responses, (almost) any.

They become family. We quietly add them to our Wills. lol

Several. Christian dating deserves its own version of Singles. Mine's called Friends In Heat. Then there's Boys of Summer, a baseball epic about the WW2 internment camps for Japanese citizens in Arizona. They were saved by Bible studies, the Boy Scouts and baseball leagues. Would love to get Ron Howard involved, but, he's barricaded himself pretty well...also publishing other authors work...

Aaron Sorkin. Tom Hanks. No one else comes close.

My kids noise. You try sleeping through that. lol

Family time, and weather permitting, basketball. Watching AZ Wildcat sports on locale TV is a blessing -- CO sports coverage is awful...

I only read ebooks that are Have-Tos, mostly clients.

Paralegal, and I'm a licensed teacher in the system as a sub... :)