Stuart Robbins

When I was twelve years old, on a particular Saturday afternoon at the public library (Danville, Illinois - circa 1965) I pulled a book from one of the shelves to pass the time and read the opening paragraph. I don't remember the author or the title but I remember the sensation - the feel of the book's cover on my knees, the yellowish light from overhead lamps, and the realization that such paragraphs are written by real people, words that last long after the writers are forgotten. I've wanted to write a book since that day. In that way, independent of sales or reviews, the Mirror book succeeded. And it was not too long ago that my son discovered a copy in the window of a local bookstore, so the wonder of this odd preoccupation has now been passed to the next generation.

The book itself? It is certainly not the technical treatise portrayed on the cover, though I will confess to more than 20 years in Silicon Valley as an IT manager and almost 3 years of research and writing. First and foremost, they are stories, stories about people with anxieties and sadnesses and in-laws who've lost their memory, people much like those we all know. Like Goldratt's "The Goal" in which a very real business principle is conveyed in a narrative, there's much in the book that deserve's a businessperson's time - and yet, in the end, the important aspects of the book are the stories that emerge: an illiterate executive who cannot read to his daughter at bedtime, a woman who understands cybernetics better than she understands her husband, a successful entrepreneur who is ashamed of his meager childhood.

Other publications? Dozens of industry white papers, some recent essays now categorized as Creative Non-fiction, a few short stories (one forthcoming in reprint as an illustrated chapbook) and a handful of poems - as for the next book...the tentative title is "Time is Not an Arrow" but there is still so much work to be done before our friends at Amazon can assist with distribution.

In the meanwhile, should any reader recognize the book I read when I was twelve, let me know as it remains one of life's mysteries: a pre-teen book about a lovely old man who happens to come from another planet, and the two boys in the neighborhood who discover his secret...

All I can remember is the feel of that book in my hands, the delight of recognizing that I, too, could craft such paragraphs...