I write about UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens. The fictional story possibilities are endless – as infinite as space.

Every mystery can be answered by the alien invasion, any body abnormality, too. Ever have a ringing sound in your ear? Sure you have. Everyone has at one time or another. That ringing you hear is a message from a UFO. Plausible? Sure. Why not? No doubt there are wards full of people at this very moment trying to decode the alien message. They are prevented by a continuous diet of Clozaril, Loxapine or Mellaril. Are they being confined in state hospitals because of a government conspiracy?

See how it works? All kinds of story ideas. 

There’s a market for this stuff, too. Everybody likes a good alien story. A lot of people believe we could have visiting aliens in our skies. “UFOs. Why do we believe?” was LIFE Magazine’s March, 2000 edition cover story. The article included polling numbers from average Americans and reported that fifty-four percent believe that there is other intelligent life in the Universe. Forty-three percent of them believe that UFOs are real. Almost twenty per cent of these average, normal Americans knew someone who has seen a UFO. There are a lot of ringing ears out there.

Maybe the aliens come here for a vacation. I think they get high on our atmosphere. That’s why their spacecraft do those crazy aerial maneuvers that so many witnesses report seeing. Earth is like a big round bong to visiting life forms from unknown planets.

See how it works? Another idea.

Long before I had the desire to write, I told alien stories. I would take some natural event and attribute the cause to a UFO. Looking back to those days, I can see the profound effect it had on my family. I was a smoker then and didn’t want my kids to think it was a good thing to do. I didn’t want them to be subjected to second hand smoke either, so at night I would walk the dog in an empty field behind our home and have my cigarette. I told my curious daughter that I was experimenting with contacting aliens through mental telepathy during my walks. I never realized how the thought of her dad being beamed up to some alien spacecraft frightened her. I would comically reassure her that if they came for me, I would just take a spin around the universe with them and come right back home. My daughter went on to several universities, including MIT, and is now an astrophysicist. She works on a NASA grant and studies far-away galaxies with an x-ray telescope. My stories had a great effect on my wife and son, too. They both became clinical psychologists.

Thanks to UFOs, I have a lot of meat here for my autobiography.

If you become blocked in your writing maybe it’s because you’re writing the wrong stuff. Don’t sit there staring at a blank computer screen. Look to the sky. Listen to the ringing. All the ideas are out there.

(Originally published July 11, 2003)