Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “palo alto

Daily Distraction: DARK FIBER – a serial thriller, episode 29

Posted on August 18, 2014

Before he ventured on the net, Matt scanned and filed the fifty plus emails that had landed his inbox during his ride home. Most messages dealt with Dallas Bard and about Giddyap’s brightening future, ranging from covert inquiries to undisguised prying. He’d deal with them later. First he had to color in the life of his avatar. From now on Jonathan Groen was the illustrious Dallas Bard. Pasting in pictures and uploading documents, forging chats and email exchanges, he thought back to the day Victoria suggested to recruit a total stranger for the job. He’d been skeptic, had preferred an actor, someone he could pay and ditch as soon as the job was done. Victoria had laid out the threats of his plan: a contract, a honorarium, endless drivel over expenses, not to mention…

Daily Distraction: DARK FIBER – a serial thriller, episode 28

Posted on July 25, 2014

Matt was with his car in fifteen minutes and in less than thirty he covered the twenty-five miles to his home. Not the cramped apartment he had rented in Palo Alto to keep his boss, his co-workers and business partners away from his personal life, but the Woodside villa, the only place where he could seclude himself from the world. The Vet, top down, did what it was supposed to do: the speed and the wind blew his brain free of the tension that had built up in Amsterdam. If only for a short while. The solid steel fence slid open, triggered by the remote sensor in the car. Matt zoomed into the driveway. Inches before he’d crash into the veranda that circled the house, he hit the brakes.…

Silicon Valley View: A Horrible Death to Die

Posted on July 24, 2010

Palo Alto is where I took up residence for a couple of weeks, before I head down south to that famous city of angels and stars for a writer’s conference. From the outside it seems a quiet little town, but there is more to Palo Alto than meets the eye. Underneath, Palo Alto is a vibrant city that sucks you right into the country’s techno vortex. It is the home of Stanford University, the alma mater of more than a couple of successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Yes, graduating from Stanford definitely enhances your life’s expectancy. But as you know life is closely related to death and at Stanford, too, life and death go hand in hand. Stanford’s namesake Leland Stanford Junior died in 1884…

Silicon Valley View: A Ride Through the Baylands

Posted on July 16, 2010

Every now and again a writer needs to spread his wings and find new places for inspiration. I took my writer’s residence a couple of thousand miles away from its regular place and the orange madness, and settled down in Silicon Valley for the summer. Just swapped the old residence with another writer in desperate need of a change in scenery. On my first day out, I decided on a bike tour through the Bayland’s, a marvelous wetland area just east of Palo Alto and Mountain View. I cycled past the city’s outskirts, past a small lake and a golf course, past the last remnants of human presence and past what we tend to leave behind if we have no need for it anymore.…