I completed my first science fiction novel this summer and went the self-publishing route. It was great fun writing it, with a lot of help and encouragement from my friends Tim and Tari, not to mention a fair amount of patience from my family as I spent long hours on the back patio typing away on the laptop. I also went to a writer’s workshop in Tucson during the course of the project, which was quite interesting. The highlight of the event for me was sitting with a bunch of strangers, one of whom was an elderly lady with an old Polaroid of herself standing with John Wayne. She had quite a story to tell of sneaking into the Old Tucson studios wearing a badge she had borrowed from a friend who worked there. Her goal, of course, was to meet the Duke, filming “Rio Bravo”, which she eventually managed,…