Long long ago, in an era unknown to today's youth, this old man had a thought. Both the character and the title were born, in part, from dissatisfaction. I was an aging young man who preferred to leave youth behind in favor of solid maturity. (My Dad always said I was born an old man.) Anyway, the fact that books, movies, and TV series were catering mainly to the young irked me. I drew on my hitchhiking experience and imagined an older man who traveled, not the highways and byways, but the galactic net.
I was not quite a hobo, as that era had just passed. I considered myself neither a transient nor homeless, but more of an adventurous wanderer. I was a bum, so the title became The Space Bum. The thought germinated over the decades, until after I was on Tapas, I wrote The Space Bum.
To tell the truth, my character debuted in an early work that I began and never finished. Later in life, I found the hand-written pages of my first Besh incarnation. I write it now as a prequel to The Space Bum series. I took my character in many different directions, but he remains a bum, an adventurous traveler.
I had great joy writing The Space Bum, then, The Old Man, and finally Htohmar Har. Now, I am writing The Regret as an account of one of his many travels as a young man.
