In 2001, Philip kept a diary while attending the Clarion East speculative fiction writing retreat. He had a transformative experience that I got to watch from the outside.

Years later, he wrote a round up post, where he collected some of his most meaningful reflections and provided a link to his Clarion at home page where he describes how to accomplish similar goals to attending the workshop, for people who can’t attend. Because attending Clarion is a huge commitment.

Clarion, as currently constituted, is difficult for most people to attend. It requires leaving home for 6 weeks, probably getting a leave from work, and being able to pay for room-and-board someplace while maintaining one’s current housing. Many people just can’t do that. Moreover, it requires living in close proximity to other people which I can’t do because of my chronic lung condition.

So I was excited to see that, next year (in 2025), Clarion is moving to an online format. Next year, at that time, I’ve already applied to participate in the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat. It’s a shorter online workshop that I think could be a good fit for my needs. But maybe next year, I’ll apply for Clarion.

The other workshop I’ve always wanted to attend is Viable Paradise. In the past, I couldn’t attend because it takes place during the fall, when I’m busy with work. But now that I’m in my phased retirement, I’m only working half time and might be able to attend. Applications open in January and I may well apply.

pine cone

Yesterday, I attended my first Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) Board Meeting as Secretary. It was a thoroughly positive experience. I took notes carefully and generated a set of minutes. I shared both my raw notes and my proposed set of minutes with the Board in order to get feedback in terms of how much detail people would like in the minutes. Some boards I’ve served on would like the full set of notes, but a set of minutes is generally a concise set of notes that captures only the essentials of what was decided. It will take me a while to get a sense of this Board to understand what is needed.

I had only met a few of the board members previously. We did around of introductions and it was interesting to see the range of perspectives and backgrounds present. I think it’s a nicely diverse board with members who bring very different life experiences, although many of us have teaching backgrounds. I immediately was made to feel at home and I think I will fit in well.

Initially, I had no plans to be Secretary. During the summer, when it became clear that SFWA was facing some challenges, I offered myself as a volunteer. Since I am beginning my phased retirement, I have more time available to dedicate to service. When the special election was called, I saw that someone had immediately offered themselves for Secretary and I was like, “Great!” If someone else wanted to do the work, I was happy to let them have at it. But then, due to some new opportunity at work, that candidate decided they had to withdraw. Seeing no other candidate step forward, I was happy to do so. I’m familiar with the work of being Secretary and happy to do what I can to support the organization.

SFWA is going through a major transition. I was aware of SFWA long before I began seriously writing speculative fiction. When I first started getting my fiction published, I was eager to join. At the time, however, the rules were such that it seemed an insurmountable challenge to become eligible. The rules required getting certain number of publications in markets that paid “pro” rates — except hardly any did. I spoke with my publisher — a small press — about the issue. They pay about a quarter of pro rates and admitted that without some other significant source of funding, they would not be able to sustain paying higher rates. But then SFWA changed the rules to be measured against absolute earnings through publishing. I was immediately able to join as an “associate” member and, when I renewed my membership the following year, I had reached the level necessary for “full” membership.

Not everyone is evidently happy about the change. It has produced a large influx of eager new members but, reportedly, some of the old-time members preferred the exclusivity of the previous, more restrictive, rules for entry. Personally, I think the new rules are better and produce a population that is more representative of the population of speculative fiction authors the organization is designed to serve. But I recognize the diversity of viewpoints on the matter.

A number of people have been worried about SFWA. The Romance Writers of America recently collapsed into bankruptcy. When SFWA experienced a number of resignations in a short time, people worried that there was some deep, dark secret that meant that the organization itself was in jeopardy. I have seen nothing that suggests this is the case. There are some challenges, but they are ordinary sorts of challenges. I have every confidence that the current board will meet those challenges and the organization will emerge all the stronger.

I would again like to thank everyone who had the confidence to vote for me for Secretary. I know that I was a bit of a dark horse. But I will work hard to repay your trust and help SFWA to meet its challenges.

icon for wss366

On November 1, 2024, the curators of Wandering Shop Stories met up via Zoom for the first time. We had, in fact, cast a wider invitation, but we were the only ones who came. We had a good discussion.

We spent a bit of time just meeting one another (some of us for the first time) and talking about writing in general. But we quickly turned to Wandering Shop Stories. I spent a little time just reviewing the history of how wss366 came to be and contrasting it with vss365, which had been the inspiration.

All of us are very satisfied with how the project is working. We talked a bit about choosing prompts. We agreed that our current practice of choosing ordinary words that have multiple meanings gave us the most satisfactory results. We debated the importance of avoiding repeats (probably worth doing, but not always worth the time or effort).

Our initial impetus had been to discuss how we approach writing our story fragments. Each of us approaches it somewhat differently and it was fascinating to hear the various strategies.

Finally, I was able to announce that wandering.shop had approved allowing us to migrate from botsin.space that recently announced they were shutting down. I had originally chosen botsin.space because they welcomed bots and I sorta kinda personally knew the guy that was running. He had recently come to the conclusion that he needed to either substantially gear up to support the increased demand or shut down. He decided he really didn’t want to make the commitment to run the service, so he announced it would shutdown in mid-December. I approached the staff at wandering.shop and, after some discussion, they established a set of rules for allowing bots (from known members in good standing under defined conditions).

On November 3, I reviewed the documentation and made the necessary changes to migrate the bot. I was reminded of how straightforward it is to work with Mastodon as compared with when I did set up bots for birdchan and Discord. It only took me a a couple of hours to create a new account, configure it to receive the posts from my script, update the script, test, and then trigger the migration of followers from the old to the new account. It went about as smoothly as could be imagined.

We hope to have more meetings periodically. Perhaps we can have the next one between the holidays to talk about getting ready for the new year.

This semester, my writing students are studying lichens. Mostly not by choice, but because every semester I try to pick a different theme for my students to study and this semester seemed like a lichen kind of semester. To be fair, the students have been good sports, gamely looking at lichens and thinking deeply about how to study them.

On campus, there are lichens pretty much everywhere: on trees, rocks, buildings, light poles, benches, etc. But mostly not on the ground. Lichens get excluded anyplace where plants can grow well, so you generally only see them on very poor soil. But there are a few places in the region like that. One of them is the Montague Plains.

The Montague Plains are a delta where water from the glaciers flowed into glacial Lake Hitchcock during the last ice age. When a stream flows into a body of water, it creates a triangular (delta) shaped structure with sorted sediments: the gravel drops out first and then the sand. The silt stays suspended, but settles out on lake bed during the winter, producing varved clays. So most of the the delta is just sandy. Very sandy soil is tough for plants to grow on. It tends to be very well drained (i.e. dry) and there’s little organic matter, so few nutrients. And nothing for fungi to grow on, so few mycorrhizal relationships to help plants.

Few plants grow there. Some sparse grasses and trees, mostly pitch pine and scrub oak. Moreover, there tend be frequent fires, which end up burning off most of the organic material that might otherwise accumulate in the soil. So this is a recipe for lichens to grow. You have to look under the grass, leaves, and pine needles to find them, but they’re there.

It’s probably too far for any of the students groups to study there this semester. But I thought I’d stop by to take a few pictures to share with them anyway. Moreover, I always like visiting places with interesting geomorphology and botany to help me write fiction.

On October 23, 2024, I was elected Secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Thank you to everyone who supported my candidacy! I learned I had won from the Interim President (who will be Vice President going forward) who met with me via Zoom.

We had a good conversation. We discussed the expectations of the Secretary and a number of the upcoming activities: the business meeting and current thinking about how to organize the Nebulas.

He commented that I had received a very respectable number of votes — a surprisingly good showing for a write in candidate. I was gratified that my efforts of outreach — drafting a post to introduce myself, making postings in the SFWA Discord and Forum, and attending a SFWA Writing Date — were effective at introducing myself to the membership.

SFWA is currently facing a number of challenges. There have been a significant number of staff and officer resignations. And most recently, a newly elected board member had to be removed for cause. But it appears to me that the fundamentals of the organization are strong. I am hopeful that with new leadership, we can restore the organization to smooth operation.

My term is scheduled to begin on November 1, 2024 and will run through June 30, 2025 (since I am completing the term of the former officer). That should be plenty of time for me to determine whether I am a good fit and should continue in the role. I have typically enjoyed serving as Secretary: it’s work that I’m generally good at and allows me to play to my strengths. I look forward to meeting the rest of the board and getting to work!

Many years ago, when NaNoWriMo was new, I tried to participate. It didn’t go well. But this year, we’re calling it Writing Month.

November has always one of my busiest months. In my writing course, students are finishing their proposals and then launching their research projects. When I was BCRC Director, I found that there was also a bit uptick with people who were supposed to have started something at the beginning of the semester but now, since the end was in sight, were desperately trying to do something. And, there were always a few proactive people already thinking about next semester. It was always a busy time. Too busy to take on other commitments.

But, now, I’m semi-retired! I’m only teaching the one class (and doing my various other service obligations).

Furthermore, I have a new manuscript I’m working on: The Ground Never Lies. I’ve had this idea for a couple of years about a geomancer with an anger problem (who thinks of herself as unlovable) who gets involved with, and then has to rescue, a naive young woman who idolizes her. I wrote a pilot but couldn’t quite decide whether to leave it a short story or expand it into a novel. I have now completed the outline for a novel and am ready to start cranking on it.

The problem, however, is that NaNoWriMo has become toxic in the writing community. Several years ago, it was revealed that the organization was not responding effectively to complaints and evidence that some predators were using the organization as a means to groom and make unwanted sexual advances to young people. And, this year, they received an infusion of money from a company that builds generative AI tools and they issued a tone-deaf statement that ambiguously supported using generative AI for writing. For these reasons, a number of people have decided to abandon involvement in NaNoWriMo.

That said, many people are interested in trying to write during November. It’s a dark time (literally, due to the axial tilt of the Earth) and a lot of people need something to help them keep going. So one guy created a new website called Writing Month. I’ve signed up and will use it to track my writing. Will I succeed in writing 50,000 words in a month? I don’t know — and don’t really care. But I do want to write this novel before January and this seems like a useful vehicle to help provide some discipline.

Steven D. Brewer

Upon the withdrawal of the only announced candidate, I volunteer to serve as Secretary for the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers Association in the Special Election. But as the deadline for new candidates has passed, my candidacy can only be as a write-in. If you write me in for Secretary I will serve. Read on to learn more about me as a candidate.

I believe I am eligible to be a candidate. I am a full member and I have been a member in good standing for more than two years. I have an internet connection. And I am not and have never been an employee of SFWA.

I am currently beginning a two-year phased retirement from my career in higher education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I currently teach scientific writing half-time and serve as Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate. (That means I’m the guy that chairs the meetings.) At the end of academic year 2025-2026, I will be fully retired.

I have a long history of service. At the university, I have served on many boards, councils, and committees and in many officer roles, including secretary. Outside of the university, I have been the secretary of two non-profits that are of similar size to SFWA, at least in terms of budget: The Esperanto League for North American (DBA Esperanto-USA, where I also served a term as vice-president and 8 years as webmaster) and Amherst Community Television (DBA Amherst Media, where I served a term as secretary and two terms as president). I have also served for a number of years on the organizing committee for a regional technology conference: the Western Mass Drupal Camp which evolved into the New England Regional Developers (NERD) Summit.

As an author, I’ve had several short stories published in anthologies, but have also published two books with Water Dragon Publishing. One is Revin’s Heart, a steampunky fantasy adventure with pirates and airships and a trans protagonist which was serialized in seven novelettes and came out as a fix-up published January 2024. I’ve also published Better Angels: Tour de Force, an anthology of fluffy, military, space-opera short stories for the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy (a shared-world anthology) about a group of non-human biological androids that look like pre-teen girls who serve as magical-girl, singing-and-dancing idols, but who can change up their programming and become a covert military force. My forthcoming book, A Familiar Problem (due in January 2025) is a dark, cozy fantasy about a young man who desperately wants a strong magical familiar but who, instead, is captured and made the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up for something. But what?

I also speak Esperanto and, before I began publishing in English, I had several speculative fiction stories, haibun, and essays published in Esperanto, some of which won awards in the international Belarta Konsurso. I also self-published four chapbooks of Esperanto haiku, which you can still find and purchase via Amazon.

I hope you’ll consider writing me in for Secretary in the SFWA Special Election.

One year ago this week, I ran the first session of Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. And we’ve met basically every week since. I’m satisfied that it’s been time well spent. (It was also the week when my son’s boxer puppy, Tanuki, pictured above, came home for the first time.)

Two years ago, I helped the Program Committee conduct a survey of the membership to assess whether there were unmet needs among the community. One of the needs we identified was that members were looking for more opportunities to socialize and write together. There were also a substantial number of members who lived too far away, had health issues, or didn’t want to drive in the dark during the winter, that were interested in more opportunities for remote interaction.

I proposed Straw Dog Writes modeled on the SFWA “Writing Date”, which meets weekly via Zoom to socialize for 15 minutes, write for 45, then repeat. With the support of the Program Committee, I worked with the organization to set up the resources and agreed to coordinate and run the program.

In the past year, more than 50 people have attended at least once. During the winter, usually there were usually four or five participants ― occasionally as many as ten. Attendance was understandably lower during the summer. About half were pre-existing members and another half were new members who joined to participate. Participants tended to be evenly divided among writing fiction, poetry, and memoirs. One current participant is working on a graphic novel.

I tried to persuade the administrative assistant to create a webpage to advertise the program, but she refused, saying that she thought the website had “too many pages” already. That was a significant disappointment to me, as it made doing publicity significantly more difficult, since there’s no landing page — just individual calendar entries. That’s why there’s no link to the program on this page: there’s no place to link to.

I had originally hoped to recruit guest hosts to actually run the sessions, in part because it might be a useful hook to draw more participants. I did get a few members of the Program Committee to guest host and it was fun. I reached out to a woman who coordinates one of the other regional writing groups that offers paid consulting to see if maybe their instructors/consultants would like the opportunity to promote their programming to my participants. But she didn’t seem interested. Maybe I can do a better job of finding more guest hosts this year.

Most people who attend indicate they get a fair amount of writing done. I know I do. When I’m writing, I usually get more than a thousand words written. Once I got nearly 2000 words and one of these days I hope to reach it. But I sometimes use the time for outlining or revising, rather than just writing. (And occasionally even grading.) In any case, I’m happy to keep doing it just for myself, if no-one else. But everyone’s welcome. Join me!

sunrise over Orchard Hill

I submitted five pictures to the Head in the Clouds Amherst 2025 wall calendar and one was selected for April! This picture was taken just across the street from where I live, at the edge of the UMass Amherst campus looking toward Orchard Hill at sunrise. The picture was actually taken on December 15. My original caption was, “This photo shows the southern-most point of the ecliptic, when the sun appears to rise behind Orchard Hill. The hill causes our winter sunrise to be an hour later than local sunrise.” Since they wanted to use the photo for April, I instead proposed using a haiku from my 2013 chapbook senokulvitre about sakura buds. You can purchase copies of the calendar for $22.

Many years ago, I got interested in photography. For a brief time, I dreamed of being a wildlife photographer. Using a 35mm single-lens reflex camera, I tried taking lots of pictures using Kodachrome and got some really nice pictures. But relatively quickly, I discovered the difference between an amateur photographer and one who can take professional, magazine-cover-quality photos. I might walk by a field, spot a deer in the field, and get a great picture. But a professional would say, “This picture is OK, but the weather is all wrong.” So they’d come back day after day until the weather was just right and then say, “The lighting is wrong at this time of year.” Then they’d come back year after year until the weather and lighting were perfect, get an even better picture, and then say, “Now the deer needs to be facing the other direction.” I had no-where near the level of patience and persistence to get cover-quality picture photos. That said, I learned a lot about photography and composition.

I still like to take pictures — especially now that, with a digital workflow, you can take as many pictures as you want. Working with Kodachrome was very limiting: you needed to use a tripod (because the films were very slow), the film was expensive, the processing was even more expensive, and then getting a photo printed was even more expensive.

I really liked the other pictures I had submitted as well, so here they are.

This was where the playground of my children’s elementary school was, before the town short-sightedly closed it down.

This is the millpond in Easthampton. I liked the reflections in the water.

This sunken road is on the way to Hawley Bog.

This abandoned trolley line is in the Arcadia Wildlife Refuge in Easthampton.

I’ll never be a professional photographer, but its still fun to take pictures.

I used to love to write in cafes or libraries or other public places. But after I was hospitalized during the pandemic, I could no longer go into public places where people are unmasked. So, for a long time, that meant staying in my office.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my office! I have a big laptop with a portrait monitor and a fridge that’s usually well stocked with cold water bottles and beer. It’s located in the basement of my house and is quiet when I want it to be quiet — but I also have big speakers I can turn on when I want to listen to kpop or jpop. And I have poster boards with the covers of my books which make a nice background when I’m in Zoom for class or Faculty Senate or Straw Dog Writes or whatever else I do.

In the past, when I was working full time, I was in my office for many of my waking hours. But this semester, I have started my new phased retirement. This means, that I don’t need to spent nearly as much time running class or having consultations with students.

During the winter, my office used to get pretty cold. I used to have to wear a sweater or fleece and use fingerless gloves to type. But, about a year ago, we got insulation installed in the basement that keeps the temperature nearly always in the 60s — very comfortable during summer or winter.

For a long time, we’ve had a little tent gazebo set up in the front yard. We used to have an old, weird picnic table under it, which was OK. But not really very comfortable. So I proposed getting more comfortable furniture. My wife, always practical, pointed out that, to do that, we’d need to have a patio for the furniture to sit on. So, this spring, we arranged to have a patio installed. And then I ordered the furniture and set it up.

It is glorious. Now, whenever the weather is nice, this is where you’ll find me writing. It’s not exactly quiet, as there is a busy road behind the arbor vitae. And sometimes the sun shines on my laptop screen. But I love it. It provides a nice environment for being able to write that is comfortable. I appreciate the fresh air and quiet stimulation of having people walk by on the sidewalk. And seeing the neighborhood children waiting for the school bus.

It’s also a nice place for me to meet with people. Due to my health issues, I can’t meet people in cafes or bars or restaurants anymore (although beergardens are OK) so it’s wonderful to have a comfortable place where people can come to hang out with me. It’s also a great place to have a beer or cocktail with friends.

It’s a bit of work to watch the weather and cover everything up whenever rain threatens. And, eventually, I’ll have to figure out what to do for the winter. I plan to move the cushions indoors and then cover up the furniture. Winters are long in New England and so I’m sure I’ll be looking out longingly all winter waiting for spring.

But, at least now — for the fall, while the weather is nice — this is where you can find me. Writing.