The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.

If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs. Giggles can spread from person to person. So can blushing. But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.

Thus, true long-term change is brought about not by destructive passion of the moment but by well-reasoned constructive action. Violent shock of Armageddon that leaves nothing in its wake but a blank slate is not a solution, only a postponement of progress.

When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.

The act of sharing with readers was at first too much of an intimate thing. But it evolved into an intense necessity to share.

I technically live in the desert - Los Angeles being an artificial oasis - but my interest stems even farther to my own ethnic roots and to my love of antiquity, of the Old World and of the east.