1 - Writers read. You must acquire a sense of the value of language by reading. Television is junk; it does not

help you.

2 - Everyone watches television and so the value of writing has been radically degraded in the past ten years.

Be realistic about what you can accomplish and how it must be accomplished.

3 - You should ask yourself why you want to write. Some people think it is fun and glamorous. Some people want

to witness what they perceive as the truth.

4 - Look at the lives of writers. Do writers typically, or ever, live the kind of life you think you want to live?

5 - Lone-wolf writers occasionally succeed. Writers in packs - such as academic writers - seem to get published

more often, even though I think academic writers are meaningless and often incomprehensible. Those who publish in

packs are often unread after their time. Why are you writing?

6 - Luck is important since life is not fair. But work is also important. A writer writes - every day.

7 - Your first book is not the measure of your art, but you must write your first book to progress to greater things.

Science-fiction, espionage and romance set in present-day and

World-War II Manhattan:

On September 26th, 1977, the CIA conducted the secret test of a time-travel device. The test took place on the roof of a New York apartment

building, involving a sealed movie camera that disappeared in a microwave force-field, only to reappear several minutes later. Dr. Ira Lowenstein, the

young physicist who conducted the test, disappeared that same night. Neither he nor his device has ever been seen again.

Herb Cohen, the author of The Cube Root of Time, is an electronic consultant for the Mass-spectrometry Lab at

Rockefeller University in New York City and author of six published short stories (one in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery

Magazine).

Kogl's Roadmap - How to Get a Life . . .and Keep It! - Richard Kogl

is a board-certified psychiatrist who practices in northern California, working with young adult and adolescents. This

book sympathetically details the life-tasks of today's college students. It offers insight into what issues need to be

faced at this point in life and how to face them. The author has interesting ideas on priorities, noting that not all of

life's problems can or should be solved at this time, suggesting what issues can be reasonably and safely postponed.

Dr. Kogl offers sympathy and good sense in the cause of making young-adulthood both responsible and rewarding.