Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest from Warren Adler on Vimeo.

Enter your short story by clicking here. Good luck!…

Read more: The Fall 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest

Of all the questions asked of fiction writers, the one most common is: Where do you get your ideas? It is a crucial question that goes to the heart of the storyteller’s art. One might generalize and assert that it comes from an amalgam of one’s life’s experiences, stories told by others, books read, movies seen, dreams and fantasies, and the molten mix in the cauldron of one’s imagination. This is one writer’s attempt to pinpoint the spark that ignited the idea that became the story and its aftermath.

Living in Washington in the seventies, we were treated to an endless drumbeat of stories in The Washington Post by the young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about a brewing scandal involving the Republicans and the White House. Eventually the stories created an explosion that rocked the country and caused President Richard Nixon to resign after winning a resounding victory for a second term.…

Read more: How I got the idea for The Henderson Equation

While the smoke continues to pollute the environment in the worst economic conflagration most of us have seen in our lifetime, it is time to confront the issue of who to blame. Here is my blame list.

I blame all the sad dreamers who believed you could buy a house for little or no money down and the rest on borrowed money, absurdly convinced that the market for this house would continue to rise. Like any commodity real estate goes up and down. Nothing goes up forever. Worse, the purchase of a house is the first step in an avalanche of expenses, furniture, appliances, carpets, TV sets, things, lots of things. If people who bought a house they couldn’t really afford and all the things that went into it, how did they think they were going to pay for it? How did they buy into the notion that they were entitled to such largesse?…

Read more: The Blame Game

It used to be that the main sources of credible and allegedly reliable political information came from the major big city newspapers, the three major TV networks, the two major news magazines and, more recently, the two competing cable channels CNN and Fox. I do not wish to denigrate newspapers and television in other markets throughout the country, but most people will acknowledge that the lion’s share of influence came from the sources I have cited.

By far the movers and shakers of the political world pored over the New York Times and the Washington Post as the bibles of the wise world view, the quintessential oxygen of the zeitgeist.

The mighty Washington Post had the power to bring down Presidents, and the newspaper of record, the old grey lady, the New York Times was the major news source with the clout to seed every important major media in America and, arguably, the planet.

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Read more: The End of Influence