rock

On September 27, 2021, I submitted a new story, The Silver Tongue, for publication. And on September 28, I received a rejection. I submitted it several more times in 2021 and it got rejected as well.

My brother Philip was surprised. He said that if Gardner Dozois were still around, he would have accepted it instantly. Having never met Gardner, I couldn’t say. But it is kind of weird story and probably needed a weird editor to appreciate its merits.

I generally try to avoid editing manuscript after I’ve written them. I try to use whatever energy I have for writing new stuff. But at some point, I went back to look at it to see if there were obvious defects or changes I might make. I was kind of shocked to find that it really felt like a pretty tight story to me, without much additional cruft. It was good!

After a while, I gave up trying to keep it out to markets. A lot of the the top markets turn manuscripts around pretty fast and notify you when they reject stuff. Others take a long time and/or never get back to you. Every so often, I’d remember it and send it out. I submitted it twice in 2022, twice in 2023, twice in 2024, once in 2025. Then I saw The Freak!

“Huh,” I thought. “The Freak! They might like it.” And I sent it off.

It got accepted!

You can now read The Silver Tongue in Issue 4 of The Freak! Enjoy!

rosary

Most mornings, I write a brief story fragment for Wandering Shop Stories as a warm-up for my day’s creative activities. Sometimes, I use these directly as a rough draft or outlining tool for my current works-in-progress. Often, they’re just one-offs or fan fiction/literary canon of my existing work.

Since January, however, I’ve been struggling. I really haven’t hit my stride writing since my son was hospitalized. We’ve had a lot of stuff going on and my head just wasn’t in the right place. Some days, I couldn’t post anything at all. When I could, it often wasn’t until late at night. And I was frequently dissatisfied with the quality of what I was writing.

Things have been getting better. And just recently, I’ve finally felt like I’m starting to hit what I’m aiming at.

Last fall, before things went south, I wrote a few story fragments about the Hero and the Demon Lord. Here is the first series:

“What’s even the point of this?” the Demon Lord said.
“Ssh,” said the Hero as he cast his line out again.
They sat together at the shore of the lake. There was a quiet plunk as the bobber landed in the water. Ripples radiated out and then settled down.
“You know I can just cast death on the fish and…”
“You shall do no such thing.”
A ripple appeared around the bobber. Once. Twice. Then it dove under the water.
The Hero pulled back on the rod. The bobber and hook popped up, bait gone. The Hero pulled another worm out of the bait can.
“At this rate, we’ll never get lunch,” the Demon Lord said.
“Look in the basket under your seat,” the Hero said.
The Demon Lord pulled out the basket and opened it.
“Sandwiches?”
“And beer. Isn’t this better than fighting to the death?”

“What kind of sandwich is this?” the Demon Lord asked.
“It’s a tasty sandwich,” the Hero explained helpfully
The Demon Lord unwrapped it and inspected it skeptically.
“Try it!” the Hero encouraged.
The Demon Lord took a small bite. And then a larger one.
“An interesting flavor…” he said, as he chewed.
“Right?”
“So what is it?”
“It’s bang bang chicken.”
“You made this yourself?”
“Oh, no. My mother made it.”
“Your mother!?”
“Only the best for my friends.” The Hero smiled. “At least I hope we’ll soon be friends.”
The Demon Lord scowled.

“Well,” the Demon Lord said, getting to his feet. “It’s been fun, I guess…”
“You’re not going to eat and bolt, are you?” the Hero said, pained.
The Demon Lord settled back into his seat, grumbling.
“Look!” he growled. “Maybe you don’t have anything better to do all day, but I…”
“Pish posh,” the Hero said, casting the line again. “Your minions can run things just fine without you for an afternoon. When was the last time you took a day for yourself?”
“But…”
“Besides, you haven’t had dessert yet.”
“Dessert?”
The hero gestured and a group of people approached.
Carrying a cake with candles, they began to sing Happy Birthday.
“It’s not my birthday!” the Demon Lord barked.
“Do you even have a birthday?”
“Well, no…”
“So, today is as good as any.”
“What kind of cake is it?” he said, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Why, devil’s food. Of course!”

“Blow out the candles! Blow out the candles!” everyone called.
The Demon Lord scowled, but then blew out the candles and everyone clapped.
“Are you really sure that’s sanitary?” he mumbled, as they produced a stack of paper plates and plastic forks.
“Well?” asked the Hero.
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to cut the cake?”
“With what?”
“Ah! I thought you’d never ask!” the Hero laughed. “Here!”
The Hero offered the Demon Lord an elaborate knife. It seemed to glow blue with an inner light.
The Demon Lord eyed it suspiciously.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It’s Cakecrist,” the Hero said. “The Frosting Cleaver — Made by the elves, you know.”
The Demon Lord extended a finger and tentatively touched the knife. There was a spark and a curl of smoke rose up. He jerked his hand back.
“I think I’ll let you cut the cake,” the Demon Lord said.

The Hero stood on the dock and watched while the firemen worked to contain the raging inferno where the lake cabin had once stood.
“I’m afraid it’s a complete loss,” the Captain said.
“It’s not a complete loss,” the Hero clarified. “We learned a lot.”
“What did we learn?”
“Well… We learned he doesn’t like fishing and he likes cake. Oh! And that he hates surprises.”
The Captain stared at the Hero for a moment, then sighed and looked away.
“It was bound to end this way,” he said.
“What do you mean?” the Hero said “End? We’ve got another date next week!”

The Hero and Demon Lord are tropes from Japanese manga. They appear constantly in all sorts of different forms. I’m by no means the first to “ship” the Hero and Demon Lord. In Gachi Koi Maou-Sama, for example, the Demon Lord is a cute girl that has a crush on the Hero. There are undoubtedly dozens — or hundreds — of manga that have the Hero and Demon Lord as characters. Sometimes they act according to their stereotypical nature but, just as often, they’re used to subvert the standard paradigm and do something unexpected.

Just recently, I decided to pick them up again and I’ve been pleased with some of the results — as pleased as with anything I’ve written for a long time.

After vanquishing the dread Spectre of Despair, the hero was feted with a parade through the town. As he passed by, a boy called out from the crowd.
“Hero! Hero! What’s the name of your sword?”
The hero paused a moment, then replied, “It doesn’t have a name. It’s just my sword.”
“Awww!” the boy said, disappointed.
“I’ll tell you what,” the hero said. “If you think of a cool name, I’ll name my sword that in your honor.”
The boy’s face lit up with excitement.
The hero waited while the boy wracked his brain for a cool name. The crowd grew silent with anticipation.
“I’ve got it!” the boy crowed. “Swordy McSwordface!”
“Swordy McSwordface! Swordy McSwordface!” the crowd chanted.
The hero drew Swordy McSwordface and broke the blade over his knee.
“I’ll get a new sword,” he said.

The Hero arrived to visit the Demon Lord for coffee. He was ushered into the Demon Lord’s breakfast nook. The Demon Lord looked up from his paper and warmly greeted the Hero.
“How would you like your coffee?” asked the maid. She was a charming lass of 16 or 17 with rosy cheeks.
“I’ll take it with a little cream,” said the Hero.
“And would you care for some coffee cake?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She made a bob, backed away from the table with her eyes downcast, then turned and left the room.
“So…” the Demon Lord asked. “What do you think of my new monster?”
“Monster?” The Hero regarded him quizzically. “What monster?”
The Demon Lord pointed after the maid.
“Her? But she’s just a girl!”
“Exactly,” the Demon Lord exulted.

“What!?” The Captain of the Holy Order of Knights was incredulous. He stared disbelievingly at the knight who had just delivered the report. “Did I hear you correctly? You’d better repeat that.”
“I said,” the knight reiterated, “that the Hero is having breakfast with the Demon Lord.”
The Captain rubbed his hand all over his face as he tried to digest this.
“Who told you this?” he asked finally.
“The Hero told me.”
“The Hero told you? Himself?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say, exactly.”
“To the best of my recollection, he said, ‘I’m having breakfast with the Demon Lord.'”
“Hmm. No chance of a misunderstanding? He didn’t say, for example, ‘I’m having breakfast with the semen gourd’?”
“No. I also saw him go into the Demon Lord’s castle.”
The Captain sighed.
Just then the Hero entered.
“Did you really have breakfast with the Demon Lord?” the Captain asked.
“Yes,” the Hero replied. “He showed me his new monster.”
“Oh! You were collecting intelligence! How scary was the monster?”
The Hero caught sight of his reflection in a mirror and wiped a bit of lipstick off his cheek.
“Terrifying!” he answered, in a low voice.

The Demon Lord chuckled, rubbing his hands together. The Maid touched up her lipstick using the mirror in a compact.
“Did something good happen?” asked Jaygor.
“Everything is going according to plan!”
The Demon Lord clenched his fist. “Soon the Hero will be on his knees, nothing more than a quivering mass of gelatinous slime!”
“Pardon me, Demon Lord,” the Maid said. “I think your plan will have a better chance of success if I can make a few purchases.”
“Oh?” he said, interested.
“Yes. Just a few details, really — to enhance the effect.”
“How much will all this cost?” asked Jaygor.
The Maid batted her eyes. “Hardly anything!” she said.
The Demon Lord got out his billfold and began to extract some bills, but the Maid reached over and pulled out his credit card.
“I’ll be back later,” she said, and blew him a kiss. She slipped out the door toward town.
The Demon Lord replaced his wallet. “This is going to be great!” he said as she left.
Jaygor just rolled his eyes.

“Hello?” the Hero called. His voiced echoed through dark, empty corridors.
“This way,” said Jaygor, unexpectedly from the side.
The Hero jumped, but then followed Jaygor through the twisting passages of the dungeon.
“Say…” he said, after a short time. “So why are you all down here?”
“I’ll leave that to the Demon Lord to explain,” said Jaygor. The Hero detected a note of bitterness in his tone.
They arrived in a dimly-lit chamber carved out of the living rock. The Demon Lord was seated, uncharacteristically, at a small wooden table.
“Would you like some coffee?” asked the Maid.
“Yes, please,” the Hero said.
There was silence for several moments, as the Hero struggled to articulate the question.
“I had to rent out the Black Castle,” the Demon Lord said.
“Oh?” said the Hero.
“I became over-extended on my credit card,” the Demon Lord said.
Jaygor stared daggers at the Maid.
“How was I supposed to know that magic beans were so expensive?” the Maid said, pouring the coffee.

The Demon Lord came to his breakfast table in the dungeon. The Maid poured coffee while Jaygor brought him his morning paper. He unfolded the paper, then squinted, trying to read the indistinct print in the dim light.
“Why do you still read a paper, Lord?” asked Jaygor. “Why not use a magic scrying glass or something?”
The Demon Lord smiled.
“It’s something you young people can’t understand,” he mused. “The sound of the rustling paper… The feel of newsprint… The smell of the ink…”
He unfolded the paper the rest of the way, then scowled. Inside, there had been a print registration error and the text was unreadably blurry.
“Jaygor!” he barked.
“Yes, Lord!”
“Bring me my scrying glass!”
“At once, Lord!”

Just recently, I introduced a new character: the Saintess. The Saintess is also a tropey character from manga.

The Hero and Saintess were deep in the Forbidden Forest.
The Saintess pulled out the map and studied it for a minute, then finally threw her hands up.
“This is hopeless!” she said. “Admit it! We’re lost!”
“What do you mean?” asked the Hero.
“We have no idea where we are!”
“We’re right here!” the Hero said, pointing down.
“But where is ‘here’?” she pressed.
“The Forbidden Forest?”
“Argh!” She gnashed her teeth.
“Look!” the Hero said. Up ahead, they could see a sign.
The Saintess made a glad cry and ran forward to see what it said.
The Hero strolled up to the sign. It said “Forbidden Forest.”
“See?” he said. “I was right!”
“I hate you,” she said.

The Hero and the Saintess followed a dark, winding path under a canopy of immense trees draped with moss and vines.
“Why do they call it the ‘Forbidden Forest?'” asked the Hero.
“The Forest is a queer place,” the Saintess said. “Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak.”*
“So it’s ‘woke,’ is what you’re saying?”
The Saintess started.
“Well… That’s not really…”
The Hero stretched his arms. “It sounds like my kind of place!”

*Note: The statement by the Saintess about the Forest is a direct quote from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, when Merry and Pippin are talking about the Old Forest.

“Do you even know what direction we’re going?” the Saintess asked.
“Sure,” the Hero replied. “We’re going this way!”
“No!” she said. “Which of the cardinal directions? Are we going north? Or east?”
“I know how we can tell,” the Hero said. “Moss grows on the north side of trees.” He pointed at a nearby tree.
“There is moss on every side!” she snapped.
“Ooh! So that means that every direction is north. Now we know exactly where we are: We’re at the South Pole!”
“I hate you,” she said.

I was particularly pleased with these last two. They’re short and punchy with a clear sense of story: a clear problem with a satisfying resolution — though perhaps not so satisfying for the Saintess.

I’m finally starting to feel like I can be productive writing fiction again. As I said at LOSCon, I’ve always found that my creative output is extremely uneven. But maybe it’s time — time to get serious about getting some new work done.

an older man in front of a vendor tent

Last year, I did both the Queer Artisan Market and Amherst Pride but, this year, I decided to just do Pride. Doing two days in a row is harder for me to handle now. In any event, the weather was perfect and, thanks to my experience last year, I knew where to site my vendor tent to be in the shade. I don’t think I sold quite as much as last year, but it wasn’t too bad.

Fewer people are buying books. Partly, I think that people feel poorer than they did, so they just aren’t buying as many books. I’ve always noticed that most people simply don’t see books at all as they walk around. There are a few people who spot the books from a mile away and make a beeline to the table. But the ratio is shifting. There seem to be fewer and fewer people interested in books at all.

It was my first chance to hone my pitch for A Familiar Problem. I got better at it. A lot of people like the premise. But I didn’t sell many copies. I did still some Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force. And a copy of Premitaj Floroj.

I tried really hard to sell M.D. Neu’s book Hawaiian Sun. This seemed like a perfect book for Pride! It was a bit hard to pitch because it has a such weird premise. “So, there’s this guy on the Hindenberg who’s come to New Jersey to see his boyfriend, but then it catches fire and he’s like isekaied into the future where he goes on an airship over the Pacific Ocean to do some Pride stuff.” I pitched it over and over, but I don’t think I sold a single copy. Oh, well. Fail.

Now, I’m exhausted and sunburned. But it was fun. Maybe I’ll do it again next year.

coins

I recently read The CIA Book Club: The secret mission to win the cold war with forbidden literature by Charlie English. It describes a covert program to fund underground publishers and cladestine efforts to provide access to information from the West to people behind the Iron Curtain. But is primarily focused on Poland.

I had become aware of the CIA covert support for sending books behind the Iron Curtain years ago. A number of Esperanto books were published and shipped to Eastern Europe with money from the CIA. I picked up this book to learn more about the program, but I was a little disappointed when it turned out that the book is almost entirely about the effort in Poland in the 1980s.

The events in Poland, from the coup in 1981 until the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, were at least minimally known to me. I graduated from high school in 1981 and I remember seeing reports on the television news about Poland. At that time, however — as a callow youth — I was not particularly paying attention to international or political events.

The book focuses on the events principally following Mirosław Chojecki, an independent publisher. He had been publishing an anti-government newsletter and was imprisoned shortly after the coup. After engaging in a hunger strike, he was released and subsequently went into exile in the West. In the United States, he became aware of the CIA efforts, met a number of important political figures, and was brought into contact with the agent who was running the largest part of the operation with respect to Poland.

The contributions of many of the other members of the underground publishing movement are also recognized: Helena Łucywos and the other women who published Wazovia Weekly, Jerzy Giedroyc — who ran the CIA front in Paris — and many many others. The book ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the CIA book operation. But it never really talks about any of the other parts of the operation, since it’s really just about Poland.

It was an interesting read for me. Since I was only vaguely aware of these important events, it was nice to have a primer that provided a lot of the back story. But I would still like to know more about the CIA book program in general — and not just the parts related to Poland.

fossil sharks teeth

Palace of Deception by Darrin Lunde describes the lives of three men, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Roy Chapman Andrews, and William Akeley, who were instrumental in the creation of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The book seeks to marry and intertwine what are really four separate stories into a coherent narrative. Each of the stories was interesting: but I felt the whole didn’t quite do justice to any of the stories.

I’ve always been a fan of Roy Chapman Andrews. I first learned of him as a graduate student when I attending a workshop at Beloit College. Chapman grew up in Beloit, graduated from Beloit College, and became an adventurer who was, in many ways, the inspiration for Indiana Jones. When I saw this book that aimed to describe his amazing stories of adventure, I was hooked.

The AMNH was actually founded by Albert Bickmore, who had trained with Louis Agassiz, with money raised from wealthy New York robber barons. But it was under Osborn that the AMNH grew and took shape as an institution.

Osborn was a follower of Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton was a statistician who extended the thinking of Darwin to create eugenics and social Darwinism. Osborn — not unlike racists today — became convinced that immigrants were endangering the “superior” race, and he began to use the museum to propagandize this theory. He was also suspicious of laboratory science, and preferred the term “naturalist” for people who were studying the natural world. He hired both Roy Chapman Andrews and William Akeley as part of his plan to develop the museum.

Roy Chapman Andrews, unlike Indiana Jones, was primarily a field biologist. He wanted to document and collect specimens of animals in regions of the world that had not yet been studied by Western science. He was successful at raising money for long expeditions to Asia (Japan, Korea, China, and Mongolia) that collected animals, and later fossils, to bring back to the AMNH. His exploits were extraordinary and the book touches on a number of them.

William Akeley was a taxidermist. He developed a number of innovative techniques to create elaborate dioramas that showed animals in their natural setting and also went on long expeditions, principally to Africa, to collect big game (elephants, lions, and gorillas). Many people believed that Africa would be settled by white people, much as North America had been, and that all of the large animals would be driven to extinction.

Each of the four stories, about the museum and these three men, is interesting in itself. There is a lot of fascinating detail, and the book does a good job of showing the complexity of the history around the subject. The book is also timely, given the current fascist push toward expelling immigrants and promulgating a racist “great replacement” theory.

At the same time, the whole doesn’t quite hang together as a coherent story. The individual stories have the feeling of being incomplete as each has been subordinated to the overarching narrative. It’s still a good read, however.

The 2026 Nebula Awards Conference was fantastic. I attended with my brother Phil. I had driven in a few days ago and spent several days with him before we traveled together to the conference. At the conference, I had only minimal obligations so I could spend most of my time attending the programming and hanging out with Phil. It was equal parts relaxing, interesting, and inspiring. It makes me want to get home so I can start spending more time writing.

O'hare Crowne Plaza hotel

The conference was held in the O’hare Crowne Plaza in Rosemont, near Chicago. The hotel was comfortable. There were a lot of stairs, but ramps had been constructed to allow bypassing them in a number of places. There wasn’t really any comfortable place to hang out outdoors at the hotel, which was a little annoying to me since I need to take my meals outdoors to unmask to eat. Phil and I found a “garden patio” which, although it didn’t have any seating, did have a small section of halfwall where we could sit to eat.

There was also an “entertainment district” only 0.3 miles away with a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating. We visited several times. Crust Brewing, a brewpub had really good thin crust pizza and Fat Rosies served excellent margaritas. There were several other places that looked amazing too. But it was a little too far away to get there and back between program events, so we could only go there a few times.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day attending a SFWA Board Retreat and Meeting. I spent the entire day taking careful notes of the meeting. I never fail to be impressed by the insight and varied perspectives that our board members bring to the issues. I can confidently say that it’s the best board I’ve ever served on.

On Thursday, the conference proper began and I attended two panels and served on a third. Historical Perspective: the Evolving world in SFF brought Joe Haldeman and Jonathan Brazee, moderated by Dean Wells to discuss the phases of development of speculative fiction. Anthony Eichenlaub moderated a panel with Greg Kasavin, a Nebula finalist to discuss the role of worldbuilding and story in creating engaging games. Finally, I served on an Ask the SFWA Board panel where we introduced ourselves to the membership and let people ask us questions.

On Thursday evening, we attended a reception to recognize volunteers. The president called up each volunteer to receive a surferticket and gave people an opportunity to make a brief statement. She asked me to say something that people didn’t know about me, so I said, “Mi parolas Esperanton.” A guy heard me and found me after the reception to talk about Esperanto. He’d started learning and was excited to hear I had some books of Esperanto haiku in the book service.

On Friday, I attended three panels. The first was about diverse sexuality in worldbuilding for speculative romance with Cecilia Tan and Somto Ihezue, moderated by Jennifer R. Povey. Then Ben Francisco, Michael Solis, Charlie Jane Anders and Gabrielle Byrne talked about creating characters that are outsiders. An interesting distinction that they made was between characters that are new outsiders: still trying to understand how and why they don’t fit in, versus old outsiders, who are only too aware of the rules and made have developed strategies to conceal themselves or pass. A particular treat was a reading of speculative short plays with Alex Kingsley, Mary Robinette Kowal, Russell Davis, Jordan Kurella, Curtis Chen, and David Levine. These were amazing and a lot of fun.

The Grandmaster this year was NK Jemisin who had an hour and a half slot to offer a crash course in creating compelling characters. Instead of presenting, she simply used the entire period for Q&A. I’ll admit was a little disappointed at first to not have a presentation, but SFWA members ask great questions and her responses were insightful and interesting.

In the evening, I got to help with a reception for the Nebula finalists. Each finalist was invited to walk down a purple carpet to receive a certificate, get photographed, and then receive a pin from one of the Board members. In this way, everyone could recognize who the finalists were for the rest of the event.

Steven D. Brewer and Anthony Eichenlaub at the Nebulas Autographing event

After the Nebula finalist reception, there was an autographing event with a few VIPs and a bunch of the rest of us. I was seated between Anthony Eichenlaub and Somto Ihezue. I brought some giveaways and a few people took zines, ribbons, and stickers. One brave person ran the Makasete DNA Analysis Tool to fill out their percent human DNA for a ribbon.

A few people even brought me books to sign! Philip bought a copy of A Familiar Problem and the guy who’d expressed interest in Esperanto the day earlier brought copies of Premitaj Floroj and senokulvitre. A bunch of people also brought their programs around and had everyone sign them. Jonathan Brazee, who was a Nebula finalist, brought his surferticket around for people to sign. My fountain pen got a good workout and I didn’t even squirt ink all over anyone.

The next morning, Phil and I attended a presentation by Anthea Sharp about how to be successful on Kickstarter. A lot of authors (and even some of the pro markets) are using Kickstarter to raise funds for projects. She had a bunch of guidelines for how to run your first, small kickstarter. How much to ask for, how long to run it, setting reasonable targets. I took a lot of notes. I might consider using it for a small project just as a test run.

We also attended a panel on speculative screenwriting for plays, comics, and audiodramas. I asked a question in this one: perhaps very basic, about how to structure scenes. I’ve never had any education about writing fiction: I’ve just read a lot of stuff. When I working to intersperse two timelines for The Ground Never Lies, I realized that I really wasn’t writing in scenes at all. I realized then that it was an obvious way I could probably punch up my writing a lot. Daryll Gregory answered my question and recommended a memo by David Mamet about how to heighten drama in scenes, which he shares on his website.

Once again, I was scheduled to play a small role in the Nebula Ceremony as a “floor escort” to lead people to the stage at the appropriate moment for their speaking roles. They called this role a “runner” last year, which I commented that I was willing to try as long as hobbling around with my stick was close enough to running. So they changed the name this year. They ran a rehearsal that gave every speaker and finalist the opportunity to practice making their entrance and exit from the stage. Cat Rambo, a former SFWA president, commented that the team was really nailing down the details to make sure the show would come off smoothly.

In the last evening, Philip and I dressed in our finery to attend nebula awards reception, banquet, and ceremony. At the reception, we mingled a little. Charlie Jane Anders noticed my airship pirate ribbon and, with unconcealed excitement, said she wanted one. I had left a few on the giveaways table, so I grabbed one and a sticker for her.

Phil and I separated when we entered the banquet and I was seated with members of the board. The servers were running a bit late with the food and I had only just been given my plate when I was summoned to start acting as a floor escort. I stuffed a couple of bites of food in my mouth and then was up hobbling around with my stick escorting people to the stage.

The ceremony was fantastic. Tananarive Due did a fabulous job as Toastmaster to warm up the crowd and serve as the master of ceremonies. NK Jemisin’s speech was really outstanding. I encourage everyone to watch it. It starts about 30 minutes in. Many of the other presentations are also excellent. SFWA people can write really well — as one might expect. People are generally overwhelmed when they win, which is charming to see. The ceremony ran for three hours. By the end, I was exhausted and went went straight to bed.

Phil and I departed early the next morning. We’d had a rough time with traffic driving in, so we slipped away right after breakfast to beat the rush. I’ll spend another day here with him and then start my long drive back to Massachusetts.

It was great to see everyone and I look forward to next year in Seattle. But I don’t think I’ll be driving to that one.

a group of dice

Since January, I’ve a lot of extra Tanuki Time, but I haven’t had the focus to work on my longer fiction. I have several projects that are essentially completed, but it’s beginning to look like I’ll need to find a different outlet for publishing them. While I’ve had less focus, I’ve been working more on shorter fiction.

What’s For Breakfast, Toasterella is about a wizard who patented a method for contracting with sprites to compel them to work for you, but he discovers a limitation when he needs to change the contract. It’s been rejected twice.

A Persistent Curse is about a dog caught between his owner and his witch grandmother regarding a particularly nasty curse. It’s also been rejected twice.

Exit Interview is my newest complete short story. It’s what happens when the entities that are running the simulation your universe is in decide to shut it down. It’s been rejected once.

Jimmy and Coral is a work in progress that’s not actually speculative fiction. It began as a series of vignettes posted to Wandering Shop Stories but, now that I’ve figured out the rest of the story, I’m just writing the rest in a document. It’s about a young woman whose mother is kidnapped and has to turn to her estranged father to try to get her back.

Now that the semester is over — and once I’m through the Nebulas — I’m hoping I’ll have time to get back to the business of writing. I plan to start querying to look for a new publisher — or maybe self-publish my current book projects. I also have made arrangements to use a recording studio to try to create an audio book for Revin’s Heart. I’ve had a lot of interest in have an audio book available, so I’ll see whether I can do a good enough job myself. It will be fun to try.

As May ends, I am enroute to the Nebula Awards Conference in Chicago. I am currently rusticating with my brother for a few days before we head up to Chicago on Tuesday. It should be a fun time.

I had originally planned to travel with my son too, by driving. Trapping him in a car to drive is a nice way to have long conversations, which we rarely seem to be able to do under normal circumstances. But this year, he had plans to attend another event and it didn’t work for us to travel together.

I like driving. I just wrote a post about taking the bus to avoid driving, but — in fact — being out on the open road is a pleasure for me. I really enjoy the feeling of flow: of having just enough engagement to keep me occupied, but not so much that I can’t let my mind wander and think about stuff.

It takes two pretty long days to drive here, but it’s a drive I’ve made many times before and it’s interesting to see the changes that have taken place over thirty years. Each time is a little different. This year, I took the northern route along the New York Thruway.

Gas prices were not as high as I might have feared. The highest prices I saw (in New York) were $4.78. The most I paid was $4.57. Prices were generally around $4.50, except in Indiana, where they have suspended the gasoline tax and the sales tax. I saw it for $3.82 at one place, and it was generally around $4.00. But it went right back up once I crossed the state line into Illinois.

Speaking of Indiana, I drove through the largest construction area I’ve ever seen in my life near Lebanon. It was an area that almost defies comprehension: 10,000 acres, or 16 square miles. It was immense. Evidently, Indiana has created a special regulatory/tax district called LEAP (Limitless Exploration/Advanced Pace) that is basically a scheme to enrich the extremely wealthy. The wealthy are incredibly happy to be enriched, so they’ve taken advantage of this opportunity and they seem to be building at least two gigantic projects, a $4.5 billion project for an Eli Lily “Medicine Foundry” and $10 Billion for a Meta data center.

I saw a lot of other interesting stuff on the way. There’s a place near Erie, Pennsylvania that has billboards for Big Woodie’s Fireworks. They sell not only fireworks but pepper spray, tasers, and swords. Nothing like enjoying fireworks with a nice squirt of pepper spray! Hoof Hearted Brewing sounded like place worth visiting: weird brews and weird artwork. I saw a car that had a bumper sticker that said “Serene Transportation” that was zipping frenetically in-and-out of traffic. And no trip would be complete without a stop at the Uranus Fudge Factory, which has to be the best name for a confectioner ever. “The best fudge comes from Uranus!”

Anyway, for two days, I can rest and visit with my brother in Champaign. We don’t have any particular plans, other than to write, take walks, and maybe drink some beer. It’s nice to visit with family.

PVTA bus in Amherst

Today, I started riding public transportation again. Amherst has a great bus system provided by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA). When we first moved to the Pioneer Valley, I lived for two years in Pelham — one of the “hill towns” that surround the valley. During those two years, I had to purchase an expensive parking sticker and drive to work. As a newcomer, the only parking stickers I could get were a long way from my office. I initially selected the closest lot I could find but when I asked my colleague he said, “Do you want to die? That’s on top of Orchard Hill. In the winter, you will slip, fall, and die trying to get down the hill.” So, I picked a lot that was essentially as far as you could get from my office and still be on campus.

When we purchased our house, it was about the same distance as that parking lot had been. But, even better, there was a bus stop at the corner of our property. It took about 15 minutes to walk to my office but, if I timed it just right, I could take the bus and get from my front door to my office door in under three minutes. It was so efficient, it made it kind of hard to walk. If I did walk, two or three buses would go past. Eventually, when I did want to walk for some reason, I started walking a slightly longer route that took me along a different street where I didn’t have to have it rubbed in my face that I could have ridden the bus.

During the pandemic, I pretty much quit riding the bus. Even before the pandemic, I had started my Professional Improvement Fellowship and was going to the Makerspace, instead of my office. The Makerspace was even closer than my office and not on a bus route, so I just walked to that. And once the pandemic started, I wasn’t going to my office anyway. And then I was hospitalized and needed to avoid respiratory infections, so I started working remotely.

Looking back, I also realize now that, even before I was hospitalized, I was already showing symptom of chronic lung disease. It became harder and harder to walk any distance. It was a very gradual process that I explained to myself by saying I was “out of shape” or that I’d gained some weight. In fact, my lungs just weren’t working very well and I was constantly suffering from hypoxia. Doctors would ask me if I suffered from “shortness of breath” but I literally didn’t understand what that meant. Since I had been suffering from shortness of breath for so long, it just seemed like my natural state. A respiratory therapist I worked with in the hospital said, “Wow. That must have been really hard.” I felt seen.

Although I didn’t need to go to an office anymore, I did take daily trips to visit and check on my son. This was particularly true after his hospitalization this winter. Since then, I’ve visited often twice a day to support him and take care of his boxer dog. While the students are in town, the buses tend to be very crowded through campus, so I decided to drive. And I didn’t think much of these trips until gas prices began to spike after our mad king’s unconstitutional war against Iran. Today, with the students gone for the summer, I decided to mask up and start taking the bus again.

It was fun to refamiliarize myself with the practices of riding the bus. The bus tracker website, that you can use to see when buses will arrive at the stop. The various bus routes and their vagaries. The unwritten conventions, like the fact that you don’t have to signal for stops at some places, like the middle of campus or Cowles Lane (my destination). And that you do have to signal for the stop nearest my house, but that you should wait to signal until you get past the previous intersection. (Over the quarter century I rode the bus, I learned that if you signaled too soon, the bus driver would occasionally forget and blow right through the stop. I saw that happen a handful of times when people signaled too soon, but never if you waited to signal.)

I was also reminded of the slower, more relaxed, pace of life the bus imposes. When you drive, you can stay busy right up until you leave. Then you’re busy driving. Then you arrive right at your destination. With the bus, you have a short walk to the bus stop, a brief wait until the bus arrives, a relaxing ride, and then you arrive at a short remove from your destination and have to walk a few steps to get there. It’s relaxing — and it fits well with my new-found freedom as a retired person.

Next fall, when the students come back, I might start driving again. But, for now, I’m having fun.

Money

The History of Money by David McWilliams (2024) is subtitled “A story of humanity.” It skims over a vast landscape, dipping in now and again for a deeper dive into moments when innovations in how societies created and managed money (or failed to do so) contributed to world-changing events. The complexity of our current world economy has grown up guided and constrained by the cautionary lessons of history, but ever spurred on by people’s greed and prurient interests. This book provides an enjoyable and useful introduction with a lot of fascinating details along the way.

He begins with the earliest known examples of commercial tallies, records of values, and transactions, going back to the stone age. The theme of money shifting between measures of commodities (e.g. grain or precious metals) or value (as anchored by fiat and monetary policy) plays out over and over throughout the book.

Many important historical figures are introduced with the roles they played in advancing innovations in monetary practice and policy. I’ve always lamented that, as someone in the sciences, I had little flexibility to study history and classic literature. McWilliams has prompted me to consider reading at least two important books out of history: Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, the foundational text of economics and Liber Abaci by Fibonacci.

The books ends with a pretty harsh dismissal of cryptocurrencies:

Over the years we have seen that money is a technology designed to solve a problem. I’m scratching my head as to what problem Bitcoin in particular and crypto in general actually solve. Despite the small foothold Bitcoin has gained in the mainstream US investment market, crypto looks set to remain on the fringes, a source of obsession for its supporters and aficionados, but not very useful or practical in reality. Bitcoin is to money what Esperanto is to language.

Other than the slur against Esperanto, I am in complete agreement. I mean, he’s not actually wrong about Esperanto either, but I would have preferred he slander Volapük rather than Esperanto to make his point.

If you’re curious about understanding how money works in practice and how it came to be the way it is, this book is a great place to start.