{"id":48,"date":"2014-12-01T22:15:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T22:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/?page_id=48"},"modified":"2020-06-08T17:38:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T00:38:46","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why I Write<\/h1>\n

[hr]<\/p>\n

[dropcap]M[\/dropcap]y writing falls into three distinct categories. The first, grouped here under the title of Senior Fiction, is \u201cold people can have adventures too.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about solving a puzzle, as in \u201cThe Curse of the Palo Alto\u201d and \u201cThe Lost Frenchman Mine.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about helping others, as in \u201cHarry\u2019s Tree.\u201d Sometimes it\u2019s about trying to make something of a featureless life, as in \u201cA Prelude to Dying.\u201d Sometimes it’s getting out of the rut at the office, as in “The Gold Game.”\u00a0 In all of these stories the main characters simply get out and do things rather than sitting at home, waiting for the world to come to them.<\/p>\n

The second, grouped here under the title of Teen Fiction, is \u201cTeens can make a difference.\u201d The difference can be small, just to one person, a girl friend in \u201cRoboDoc\u201d or a boyfriend in \u201cSacajawea\u2019s Ghost.\u201d In these stories the seemingly simple act escalates into a much bigger difference to a much bigger group of people. The teen hero is the impact person and better off for it, even if he or she remains unknown to the world.<\/p>\n

The third, grouped here under the title Young Readers, is \u201clearning physics is exciting.\u201d All these stories are basic mystery adventure stories in which the characters and the reader too, must learn and apply a basic principle of Newtonian Physics to survive and solve the mystery. In \u201cMystery Spot,\u201d the principle is magnetism. In \u201cEvil Eye\u201d it is optics. In \u201cManiac Motion\u201d it is harmonic motion. This collection is a series, all the characters and the setting remain the same in each book. Only the circumstances and required science changes.<\/p>\n

There is fourth group, non-fiction. This is really a subset of the first, except the retiree having the adventure is me. The adventure is creating, collecting and discussing the photographs included in the book, \u201cSomething Different.\u201d I took my own advice and had a blast because of it.<\/p>\n

Photography grew into biography, may granddaughter’s story to give to her host family on her year of study abroad.\u00a0 Biography grew into memoir with “Alex’s Scrapbook,” my Dad’s story of a Polish kid growing up on Chicago’s south side in the late 1930’s.\u00a0 Along the way came travel writing in “On the All American Road,” “One Lap Around California,” and “One Lap Around San Diego Bay.\u00a0 Then came an effort at serious history with “Significant American Military Aircraft: 1861-2020.”\u00a0 Somewhere in there a cookbook popped out, though my wife says I didn’t do that one very well.<\/p>\n

None of these is meant to be the next great American novel or the definitive travelogue. I wrote them because I enjoy the creative process. They are just meant to be fun stories to read, and maybe to give the reader just a little something more.<\/p>\n

This is me<\/h1>\n
\"Don<\/a>
Don Lake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have read and written all my life, although I wasn’t first published until my mid-twenties, and then it was a technical article for a computer journal. \u00a0I have truly eclectic reading tastes, from mystery, adventure, and techno-fiction to history, sports and science. \u00a0 For many years my writing focused on technical articles, I have published over 90, primarily in my field of electro-optics. \u00a0Through it all I kept an avid interest in kids, coaching boys and girls in baseball, soccer and basketball, camping, and not forgetting to photograph everything I could along the way. \u00a0Then came retirement, and the \u201cdoing it\u201d changed to watching my grandchildren and combinng all those interests in my writing. \u00a0I didn’t consider writing a novel until my son, Jeffrey Lake, wrote his first, \u201cThrough Broken Glass.\u201d \u00a0I decided I wouldn’t be outdone, so I wrote my first, found that I loved it, and just kept going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why I Write [hr] [dropcap]M[\/dropcap]y writing falls into three distinct categories. The first, grouped here under the title of Senior Fiction, is \u201cold people can have adventures too.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about solving a puzzle, as in \u201cThe Curse of the Palo Alto\u201d and \u201cThe Lost Frenchman Mine.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s about helping others, as in \u201cHarry\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-48","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dlakewriter.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}