This Author’s Desk

My Desk.

The vintage items you see here aren’t part of a deliberate theme on my part. Everything simply came together over time.

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1. 20-inch Dell 2009w LCD monitor. I bought this in 2008. It’s great for text, but the color isn’t up to snuff for production work. (Oh, and hiding behind that lovely illustration by Carolyn Arcabascio, is the working draft of The Murk, which I am currently editing.)

 

2. Western Electric model 500 telephone (sold from 1950 to 1984). This is my high-tech communications system. I picked it up at a yard sale ($5) several years ago because I was getting tired of buying new batteries for my cordless phone. It still dials out, but when confronted with an automated message system and asked to press “4” or whatever, I just have to hang up.

 

3. Panasonic Electric Pencil Sharpener, model KP-77 S (probably early 70s, with Auto-Stop!). My trusty friend, bought by my wife for $3 at a church bazaar. Amazingly, you can still buy replacement parts for this model.

 

4. Sony MDR-V700DJ headphones. My portable orchestra. I bought these in 2001, shortly after purchasing an iPod, because said iPod couldn’t pump out enough juice to drive my old AKG 260s.

 

5. 15-inch Apple Macbook Pro (Winter 2006). Tucked behind the monitor, Graphic Mayhem rests in a little wooden bracket and runs in closed-lid mode when it’s not doing color work.

 

6. Apple Pro Keyboard (2000). The computer this came with is gone now, but I kept the keyboard because Apple built it to outlast the sun.

 

7. Apple Mighty Mouse (2005). I have no clear memory of how I acquired this mouse, but it’s still on the job.

 

8. Picture of an Egyptian chariot (gift from a friend), because chariots are cool.

 

9. Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition (1938). Yes, it’s old, but it still beats the hell out of any other dictionary I’ve ever used.

 

10. Two Rinn. These were a Christmas gift, hand-made by my wife and children. They are more precious to me than my weight in 1st edition hardbacks of The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (Fine in Fine dust jackets). And THAT, my friends, is saying something.

 

11. Placebo coffee (or sometimes placebo tea). It’s hard to see in this photo, but it’s right here on the corner of this middle shelf.

 

Featured on lifehacker.com.

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Book Signing

Eastern High School library, Wash. DC, Friday 31, 2014

This was taken right after an Imagine, Write, Repeat presentation. Here I’m talking to one of the students while signing Moon Realm books. It was a smart crowd, filled with lots of good questions. The signing ran over a bit, but luckily the parents were very gracious. The librarian asked if I’d be interesting in coming back to run a writing workshop!

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New Author Bio and Author Note

My editor has been asking me to rewrite my bio. She thinks a bio should satisfy a reader’s curiosity about an author’s journey and skillz.  She also sees it as an opportunity to let a prospective employer—in this case, one of the goliath publishing corporations—know that I’m not a complete dolt.

This is what I emailed her today. Any feedback would be welcome—just post your comments at the bottom. Thanks!

Author Bio:

Richard Due (pronounced “Dewey”) first imagined the Moon Realm while telling bedtime tales to his children. He makes his home in Southern Maryland, where he and his wife have owned and operated Second Looks Books since 1991. The Moon Coin is the first novel in his award-winning Moon Realm series.

Author Note:

I started writing stories in the 3rd grade and moved on to novels in my teens and twenties, only to give that all up in my mid-thirties.

In my working life, however, I’ve been into making squiggly marks (or dots, lots of dots) on paper since the 1980s. First, I worked as a laser scanner operator, making halftones. (Halftones are a reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of dots). Or, put more simply, I turned black and white photographs into a whole mess-o-dots, extra pretty-like, making them perfect for running on printing presses.

Later, I worked as a DS camera operator, making halftones and text negatives on orthographic film. Or, put more simply, I turned photographs into a whole mess-o-dots, on film, and did the same with text, only without all the dots, making them perfect for running on printing presses. I made several hundred BFOPs this way. (BFOPs, pronounced BEEfops, stands for Books For Other People. And they aren’t always fun to make, but they’re great for paying for things like books, car insurance, rent, more books, food, and drink.)
Eventually, though, computers took all those jobs away from me and gave them to something called a digital typesetter. So I taught myself how to be one of those, and made more books (some cool, most not so much) and computer software manuals (can you say: kill me now).

In 1991, I put the typesetting business on freelance, and entered into the exciting and glamorous world of book selling. My wife and I are still at it, selling books at our independent (mostly-) used bookstore in Prince Frederick, Maryland.

In 2010, however, something very strange happened. . . . On a complete lark, during the night of a full moon, I put all my skills together in a paper bag, and waved them over my head while clucking like a chicken, then opened the bag, and out spilled the Moon Realm Series in all its ebook and print goodness. I have been very happy ever since.

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