Day One

Working On: A new novel set during the Blizzard of 1888 called White March.
Last Movie I Watched: Crimes and Misdemeanors (again)

(BTW, the title of this entry refers to this being the first day of my LiveJournal blog. And my user name is from my first novel, Dialogues, and "The Gem" is from Deadwood.)

The other day, someone asked me if the story I told in my UFO Book of Lists about me seeing a UFO was true, or if I had made it up for the book. I was aghast that someone would think I had fictionalized something like that, but I was a good boy and didn't lash out and lambaste him for his unintentional (I hope) insult.

The story is true. I was driving along Route 1 in East Haven back when I was working in a family jewelry store in the late 80s, early 90s. I was stopped at a red light and it was about a quarter to ten on a Monday morning. I looked up at the northwest sky and saw a silver, oval-shaped object moving from left to right - south to north. It was quite a distance away, and so it looked rather small and, at first, I was sure it was a plane, or jet. I live near Tweed New Haven Airport in New Haven, CT (still do), and jets in the skies are very common.

But then this thing stopped mid-air, started moving backwards in the direction it came from, and then disappeared. I've always used the term "winked out" to describe what I saw because that's what it did. One second it was moving backwards, and the next second it was gone.

So, was what I saw an alien spaceship? I have no idea. But it was definitely an unidentified flying object, and so it qualifies to be called a UFO, a term which has all kinds of subtext attached to it, but which, in essence just means, I don't know what it was.

My writer's website is at Publisher's Marketplace and can be reached via THIS LINK
There you'll find my complete bibliography, plus the Word of the Day, and a "Cost of the Iraq War" counter. (We're up to about $220 billion, kiddies.)

Also, I recently finished a novel called The Lava Dome, which I will write about here one of these days.