Life
My First Birthday Party
Gracie and I had never had a birthday party with other kids at it. The most we got was Grandma and Grandpa coming over for cake. We wouldn’t have minded, except kids on TV had birthday parties full of other Read more…
Blathering
I do not want to be female
In the Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin inserts a passage, a fictional essay about gender among the Gethens. When I read The Left Hand of Darkness the first time, in a Junior High summer, I was deep Read more…
Writing
Adjusting Story Length
When I first started writing fiction, it felt like everything I wrote was either under 1,000 words or over 10,000… and the short fiction markets prefer the lengths between those two extremes. In fact, different fiction markets have different “sweet Read more…
Blathering
Fashion Hates Winter
You want to look cute. You also want to not freeze to death. Strangely, women’s clothing seems to be designed to either be cute or not freezing but never both. Maybe it’s an obsession with showing the skin, but whatever. Read more…
Announcement
Poetry and the SF Marathon and Returning to My Past
This week, I had a guest blog on Asimov’s, about writing science fiction poetry in a 14th Century French style. I used notes I wrote a decade ago to teach the Triolet style at SCA events. Reading those notes felt Read more…
Writing
Jimmy’s Planet
In Second Grade, our teacher said we would Make Books. She had a special book stapler, and a collection of wallpaper samples we could pick for our covers. First we would write out our stories and count the words so Read more…
Writing
Top Blog Posts of 2019
Checking my analytics, these are the blog posts that got the most page views for 2019: