It started with an observation, as I was driving one day through an inner city neighborhood. A jaywalker casually made his way in front of my car and I said, “Wow. That guy isn’t afraid of anything.” “I think there’s a cultural thing,” my passenger said. “I mean, I notice, Read more
In 2007, this article made the rounds: Pearls Before Breakfast. It went viral. It was forwarded to me dozens of times. It was supposed to be inspiring. It pissed me off. There’s a certain privileged tone to it, see. It implied that people were so stupid not to recognize greatness Read more
Daily Science Fiction released my story “Metal and Flesh” today. It’s a dark little flash piece I wrote for my very first write-a-thon in 2012. I picked it out of my old drafts folder recently and tweaked it a tiny bit. My initial premise was “uh… like, what if Transformers Read more
This will be cross-posted to Analog’s new blog site. My story in the current issue of Analog has the longest history of any short story I’ve written, and is, like its protagonist, a strange creature of thrown together parts. I’ve wanted to be a science fiction writer as long as Read more
When I saw a tweet that Cat Rambo was opening submissions for an anthology of cautionary tales titled “If This Goes On,” well, I wanted in BAD. It first appears in my writing journal on November 28, 2017: “Send something (Flying Cars?) to “If This Goes On.” My first instinct Read more
For the Clarion write-a-thon in 2014, I offered to write a story to order for anyone who donated. My friend Brian Fergueson prompted me to write “Aztecs in Space.” I happily fell down a research hole and learned, among other things, that the planet Venus was associated with the feathered Read more
At the end of 2017, a new anthology was announced: “Sword and Sonnet” — stories about “female battle poets”. The second I heard of it, I wanted in! Of course, my story would be science fiction, and I would totally end it with a big epic poem. I knew a Read more