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Wandering Shop Stories, a writing prompt that began in January and recently migrated to wandering.shop, has now taken a new step to be more available to the wider SFF community: We ‘re now on Bluesky too!

It looks like the announcement that birdchan would start using everything everyone posted to train its AI finally roused a huge number of people to get up and leave the Nazi bar. And it appears that Bluesky is where the SFF community is going to land. Personally, I find this a bit disappointing as Bluesky is funded by venture capital. It’s currently very nice, but I suspect it will inevitably become enshittified. But, like it or not, that’s where the vast majority of the SFF community is going.

I decided, therefore, to see if I could create a bot to share the Wandering Shop Stories prompts at Bluesky in addition to Mastodon. I still prefer the vibe at Mastodon and am not planning to leave. But I’d like to be able to cross-post stuff. So it would be nice if the #wss366 hashtag would reference something. And there may be people that would like to play along at Bluesky. So, I decided to see how difficult it was to adapt the python script I use for Mastodon to also post at Bluesky.

It turned out to be super easy. Well… Sorta.

It also turned out that when I installed the atproto library, it updated something else that caused the Mastodon bot to quit working. I hate when that happens. After spending a few hours fighting with it, I decided to just do a side-install of a newer version of python and use a virtual environment to make sure that everything was separate from the system install of python. I should have done that in the first place, honestly.

Then, everything worked. Well… Almost.

It turns out you can’t just emit text and have it auto-format it, like it does if you post it. You have to run it through the filter on the client side to build rich-text using a utility called “textbuilder” before you submit it. That was a bit cranky and not well documented. But, eventually, I got that to work just tickety boo.

I used to do this kind of technical work all the time. It’s nice to see that I still can navigate programming and building reliable unix services. But, honestly, I’m pretty glad it’s not my day job anymore. My father always described these kinds of things as “just like using a computer.”

In the end, I’ve found spending a few minutes a day writing a very short story — especially when I’m otherwise too busy — to be really helpful at sustaining my creativity. The prompts that we choose are aimed to be ordinary words that have multiple meanings, so you can spin them a bunch of different ways. I love how it makes me feel to write something short and sweet.

Even more, I love seeing the contributions that other people make. I’m looking forward to seeing what people on Bluesky choose to contribute!

In 2023, I had been scheduled to appear at Boskone, but ended up instead in the hospital. It was a big disappointment and so I was excited this year when I was again selected to appear on the program.

The second weekend in February happens to be also the second week of the semester, so I had a regular workday on Friday. I drove to Boston the night before and then had an early morning meeting and office hours. I had just enough time between office hours and class to run down to the parking garage to meet my confederates to open my car and help move in the books for the Water Dragon dealer table. After class, I was able to get registered, pick up my packet, and then spend a little time selling books before it was time for my first panel.

My first panel was Write My Doctoral Thesis: Science Edition. When I had signed up, I hadn’t noticed that this was supposed to be comedic event (another participant told me that they were under the same misapprehension, which made me feel better for having missed this crucial fact.) After the fact, it was a lot of fun. But during the session it was rather stressful: It was rather like playing madlibs with very smart opponents in front of a live audience. But I felt like I made good contributions and got some laughs. And I was pleased to meet the other participants who all seemed like great folks.

Saturday was my busy day with a reading followed immediately after by a panel, then a break, the book festival, and another panel immediately after. The reading was reasonably well attended: I read The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss, an excerpt of The Third Time’s the Charm, and The Better Angels and the Super Sticky Situation. Then I had to run to the Speculative Evolution panel. The participants were well selected, with people representing diverse perspectives. I was bit disappointed that the Book Festival was kind of a bust: I had a handful of people who came to speak with me, but it was a general problem: there just weren’t many people there. My last panel, Romance in Speculative Fiction was fascinating: it was an interesting group of participants. A number of audience members, afterwards expressed how much they valued my comments that provided representation for queer and non-binary perspectives.

I spent Sunday in the dealer room selling books. Revin’s Heart bundles sold well, although it became clear that people were planning to get copies of the fix-up which is now out (although I did not have copies to sell at the con.) This should surprise no-one. I was a bit more disappointed that, although people liked my pitch for Better Angels, it did not sell particularly well. People would listen to the pitch, say it sounded good, and then not buy the book. So realized a little tweak. Rather than calling it “light-hearted space opera” I’ve started calling it “fluffy military space opera” which will hopefully generate the right amount of cognitive dissonance.

Boskone is just a month after Arisia, but the two events are quite different. Boskone trends older — maybe 25 years older. And the participants seem clearer on what they want. And what they want is traditional sci fi like they read when they were younger. They seem therefore less interested in the new offerings of a small press. The booth just next to ours was MIT Press selling, among other things, books by Stanislav Lem (mostly written in the 1960s and 1970s) that seemed very interesting to the participants.

Sunday afternoon, we packed everything up and I drove home, getting back just before sunset.

I attended Arisia for the second time as a participant. Last year, I was only one one or two panels and had a reading. This year, I moderated a panel, served on four more, and had a reading. I dressed up in cosplay for the panel “Steampunk isn’t dead.” Well. Sorta.

I moderated the panel on Gender and Sexual Identity Representation in Media. Originally, there were supposed to be four participants plus me moderating. Normally when there are four, the moderator can focus solely on facilitating the conversation. Unfortunately, one of the participants was unable to join us and so I tried to both moderate and participate in the conversation. I was satisfied with providing enough structure to keep the discussion on track and making sure that all of the participants were able to make contributions.

I served on three additional panels which were all fun. The Food in Science Fiction and Fantasy left me with an appetite to write more about food. The Bi+ Panel provided new insight into bisexuality, pansexuality, and current thinking in queer culture. And the panel on Invertebrates and Entomology in SFF was fascinating due to the other interesting participants that each had useful stuff to contribute. I felt like I made good contributions on each of the panels.

I got to offer a reading on Sunday afternoon. The audience was around a dozen. I think they were mostly there to hear the other participants, who all write much more poetical stuff, so my weird space opera stuff left me the odd-man out — quite literally. But the selections I had made (Military Morale Mishegoss and Super Sticky Situation) worked well together I got a polite, enthusiastic response. The other authors were jealous of my giant poster of my cover.

Water Dragon had a dealer table again this year. Last year, I was the lead in running it, but this year another author and his wife attended and took the lead. It was great! Four other authors from the publisher took turns at the table as well and it was great to get to meet them as well. I really value the vital community of authors that Water Dragon Publishing fosters.

I had a new book just out Better Angels: Tour de Force as well as the novelettes that form Revin’s Heart. The copies of Better Angels arrived just in time, but the additional stock of Revin’s Heart didn’t arrive in time. So I plenty of one, but ran short of the other.

I was grateful they required masks. Due to my underlying health conditions, I can only attend events where everyone is masked. Knock wood, it appears I came through the Convention without contracting any respiratory infections.

Next month, we’ll all be back for Boskone.

Wizard Island at Crater Lake National Park

I generally had a good year writing. But I was hospitalized for 12 days in early 2023, which caused me to miss being a participant at Boskone and required much of the spring to convalesce before I was really back to normal. In spite of that, I had many significant writing accomplishments.

I only made 17 fiction submissions, most of which are the previous stories that still haven’t sold. I’ve given up on several manuscripts that I will either need to abandon or rework significantly.

During the first half of 2023, the final two novelettes of Revin’s Heart were released: In March, Then They Fight You and in June, Rewriting the Rules.

I wrote two pieces of flash fiction for Valentines Day on the Truck Stop: The Better Angels and the Super Sticky Situation and The Better Angels and Lambda and Tau. I think Super Sticky Situation may be the best piece of flash fiction I’ve written so far. (Both of these are included in the Better Angels: Tour de Force, described below.)

I gave several readings. I was selected for the Straw Dog Writers Guild January Author Showcase for 2022 and gave a reading from Crossing the Streams. I did a reading at Arisia with James Cambias and A.J. Murphy. And, in April, an hour long reading at an online convention.

While at Arisia, I also served on a panel about Gender and Sexual Identity in Media. I also was the primary organizer of the Water Dragon Publishing dealer table. After that positive experience, I was well prepped to sell books at Baycon.

I had been hospitalized and was convalescing during the time participants were being selected for Baycon so I didn’t make it onto the program there. But ultimately I decided to attend attend anyway and drove to California with my younger son. We had an epic road trip and I was available to help support the dealer table at Baycon, where I sold out of copies of Revin’s Heart.

These bookselling successes, prepped me to get a tent and table to set up a dealer table at the Amherst Farmer’s Market Artisan’s Alley. They were pleased to have another draw and I was welcomed with open arms. I sold books there a couple of times at the end of the summer and also ran a booth at the Mill District Holiday Arts Market.

As a guest interviewer, I interviewed Kathy Sullivan for Small Publishing in a Big Universe. I had met her at Arisia and thought she had a lot of insight about the relation between fandom and authors that I wanted to learn more about. Our conversation did not disappoint.

I had hoped to get back to writing The Ground Never Lies but ended up spending most of my time writing Better Angels stories which will appear on December in Better Angels: Tour de Force, which includes 17 stories (including the original Better Angels story plus 16 more, including the flash fiction stories from Valentines day.)

While I was working on Better Angels stories, I hit on the idea of a group of cooking girls on Volpex who sometimes get mixed up with the Better Angels called the Butter Angels. I’ve got this story mostly finished, along with a piece of flash fiction. I also wrote a flash fiction story for Christmas on the Truck Stop called Just One Question.

I’ve also been working on two new Revin’s Heart novellas, Devishire! and Campshire! plus a new Revin’s Heart series, that begins with Lady Cecelia’s Flowers. These have not been accepted for publication. Yet.

In the fall, I established Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. It’s a program modeled on the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers Association Writing Date. I’ve gotten about 20 participants (about half of whom might show up on any particular week). And about half are pre-existing members, half new members (who’ve signed up to participate), and a handful of people who are not yet members but who are considering it. This has been about as good as I could possibly have hope.

I’m looking forward to 2024 with plans to attend Arisia, Boskone, Norwescon, and Worldcon in Glasgow. And writing, of course: lots and lots of writing.

For years, I mostly scorned LinkedIn. I had made a profile early on, but mostly didn’t bother to maintain it. Luckily, I never lost my job at the University, so I didn’t need to look for work. I was kind of surprised when the CIO of the University talked about having used LinkedIn to make connections with employers saying (in effect), “Hey! Did you know you have X number of UMass graduates working for you? Maybe you should be more involved to help with recruitment.” And then some Department told me that LinkedIn was how most of their students found work. I was stunned, because it always seemed like kind of joke or wasteland. Still, I decided to take it a little more seriously and I’ve actually kept my profile more-or-less up-to-date.

With the demise of Twitter, LinkedIn is making a more serious effort to become a social media player. About a year ago, they changed my categorization to reflect that I posted regularly to my news feed. And they invited to join their “authors and writers” group, which I did. Although, as far as I can tell, nobody actually reads any of the stuff people post there. The whole site feels like a place where people post stuff that nobody reads. Most recently, they’ve started inviting me to contribute to “collaborative articles”.

Right around the time they did that, I saw a parody that absolutely nails LinkedIn and their “collaborative articles.”

Today, they wanted me to share “what are the best apps to help you be most productive.” Well, I had something to say about that. In terms of apps to…

Plan and organize your writing projects

In spite of (or perhaps because of) being a technologist for many years, I’m inherently suspicious of apps and use as few as possible. Apps on mobile devices are mostly funded by surveillance capitalism and I would recommend against installing any. I use a text editor for writing (currently Pulsar) — it’s very simple, generates universally readable text-files and offers no distractions.

Block out distractions and stay in the flow

I like to write in fits and starts, so I don’t mind having a browser running alongside my editor and keeping up with social media while I write. Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but I can’t be productive if I’m only writing anyway. Oh, I also listen to K-pop music and stand up and dance when favorite songs come on. Since I don’t speak Korean, I don’t get caught up in the lyrics and its a good idea to get up and move frequently, so it kills two birds with one stone.

Track and improve your writing habits

I hate being tracked. I check word counts as I’m finishing a manuscript for submission, but I don’t like paying attention to things like that otherwise. I also don’t like the structure of having particular blocks of times or a schedule: I write when I want to write and do other stuff when I don’t feel like writing. And I don’t use any apps because they’re mostly evil.

Edit and polish your writing

I do leave a spell check running, though I rarely need it. And my grammar is good enough that the grammar checkers are nearly always wrong for me. I have human beta readers that read early versions of my manuscripts to identify problems with pacing or story structure and then I have an editor to edit my manuscripts before publication. Apps are the devil.

Maybe, after this, they won’t bother to ask me to contribute again. I wouldn’t cry about that.

The Better Angels. Entertainment. Music and Dancing. (And Rescues!)

Life is tough for non-human biological androids trying to make their way in a big galaxy. You have to be prepared to install whatever programming modules are needed for any given circumstances. Join the Better Angels and their associates as they launch their careers on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy.

Tour de Force, an anthology of Better Angels stories, comes out December 15, 2023!

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I joined Twitter in March 2008 and, after initially puzzling about what it was for, found it to be an amazing place. I particularly appreciated the focus on text, rather than copypasta pictures that seemed to dominate most of the other social media environments. I loved the requirement to be concise. I enjoyed taking the time to carefully craft a complete thought in 140 characters.

But it was also who else was there. Authors, scientists, journalists, historians. It was like a 24-hour cocktail party — especially when events were happening. It was also where you could call out a corporation and they would immediately respond to head off having your issue go viral.

And I used the Twitter API for a number of projects. I had created a twitter bot that could post Esperanto quotes. I had set up system to capture my tweets and save them at my website. I had a block on the front page of my blog to show my tweets. I frequently embedded tweets to support posts I was writing. I had set up Discord bots to gateway tweets for my publisher.

When I became a published author, my publisher encouraged me to create a separate social-media account for my publishing work, and so I created a new twitter handle and began developing a readership focused primarily on science fiction, fantasy, and publishing.

On Oct 27, the purchase of Twitter was completed. And, unlike some who immediately bailed, I thought I would wait and watch for a bit. But it didn’t take long to perceive what the new owner was going to do. And so, I began looking for alternatives.

I had actually created a Mastodon account in June, 2019: @limako@esperanto.masto.host. I was very much in favor of the idea and the model. (And, actually, I also had created another account for an instance created by a student.) But most of the people I was interested in interacting with just weren’t there. So I’d logged in a handful of times, but had not spent much time there.

On Nov 10, I created a new Mastodon account and began to wean myself away from Twitter. This was during a huge exodus and the entire fediverse was straining to accommodate so many new users. I could see that wandering.shop was probably the best instance for SFF authors, but I couldn’t get an invite code. And, rather than waiting patiently, I decided to create an account at another instance that seemed interesting: mastodon.lol: “A Mastodon server friendly towards anti-fascists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, hackers, and the like.”

It was a rather heady time, with vast numbers of new people trying to figure out this different thing. The guy who ran mastodon.lol was adding capacity like mad to accommodate all the people looking for new accounts. It went from 8000 to nearly 80,000 users in just a few months. He set up a patreon and people contributed money such that, in short order, it was financially self-supporting. But he quickly decided that trying to run such a service on his own wasn’t any fun. He never said exactly what happened — at least not that I ever saw — but he evidently became disillusioned and, by February, had flamed out. He posted a bitter message that the service would be shutting down in a few months. And then he vanished.

By this point, I was easily able to get an invite code for wandering.shop and, on February 9, 2023, I migrated my account to @stevendbrewer@wandering.shop.

For a while, my publisher had encouraged me to continue to post book promotion tweets at Twitter. And I did so until Jun 21, 2023, when the owner of Twitter asserted that “cis” and “cisgender” were slurs and would result in people saying them being suspended. This was a bright line for me and I informed my publisher that I would no longer be posting at Twitter. He indicated that this was fine.

By this point, I had largely finished grieving. I was already no longer visiting Twitter. But it was sad to watch all of the cool services around the Internet that had depended on Twitter gradually vanish. The block on my blog quite working. The bots for my publisher quit working.

Every so often, I would see another high profile defection as people gave up and grieved what they had lost. I still feel some pain, like a phantom limb. I like the new community at Mastodon. But it’s not the same.

It’s still astonishing to me how many people are still ostensibly there.

Even more astonishing to me are the people who, after watching their whole online world purchased and set alight to satisfy the ego of an unbalanced lunatic, are migrating to other commercial properties, like Bluesky or Threads. Did you learn nothing? Sigh…

For more than 20 years, I’ve taught a course in scientific writing. In the course, students write a proposal. A number of years ago, I realized that a particular challenge for students was crafting a persuasive argument.

Aristotle identified the rhetorical characteristics of a persuasive argument: logos, ethos, and pathos. (Sometime people also include “kairos”). So I give the students a prompt and ask them to draft a persuasive essay that takes a position on some weird question.

The rubric essentially evaluates “logos” as checking that the argument is organized into clear paragraphs with good internal structure. It gives credit for “ethos” for using scientific citations and references. And “pathos” is kind of a giveaway in actually referring to some kind of human values as a rationale.

I don’t like to re-use the exact same assignment, so each semester I come up with a new prompt that students have to respond to.

The first one I wrote was really just an excuse for an elaborate joke.

A new retrovirus is killing domestic dogs at terrible speed: in a few months all domestic dogs are predicted to be extinct. However, scientists have developed enough vaccine to save one pregnant mother and her puppies: which breed of dog should be saved?

No matter what dog they selected, I would say “But we all know that the correct answer was ‘boxer dog.'”

I was a bit lazy another year:

Due to rising sea-levels, an island with a unique ecosystem is being inundated and its species will be lost. Should these species be introduced to other islands to preserve them?

Blah, blah, blah. I mean, it’s fine. You can make a case either way and there’s good science you can refer to.

This one was one of my favorites:

A scientific breakthrough has enabled the genetic engineering of cetaceans small enough to fit in the pocket of a shirt. Should corporations be allowed to create and market “pocket whales”? And, if so, what kind of whale (or dolphin) should be chosen first to be a pocket whale?

Almost everyone chose the “pocket whales are an utterly abhorrent idea whose marketing for sale should be condemned” angle, but one gal wrote a brilliant essay advocating for them:

Orca whales would be a good species to engineer, as they have distinct black and white coloring. With a neutral color base, they will match any color shirt pocket. The wearer will not have to worry about the whale clashing with their outfit. Whether it is a suit pocket, or a t-shirt pocket, orca whales are very versatile.

Lately I’ve been getting weirder:

A new genetic engineering technique has enabled people to grow animal ears on their heads, which corporations believe will lead to a popular, new fashion trend. Corporations claim the technique almost never produces undesirable behavioral changes (e.g. needing to use a litter box). Should corporations be allowed to market this technique and, if so, at what age should children or adults be allowed to use it?

And this semester is even weirder yet.

A corporation claims to have developed a medical process that enables people to pupate, where they enter a period of morphological degeneration and re-development, that can allow them to change any aspect of their physical appearance. Should corporations be permitted to market a process by which people could change into other species (e.g. otters)?

I can’t wait to see what students do with it. There are so many directions you could take it. I think there’s a “ship of theseus” argument you could make. Are you really the same person after pupating? And, if you’re an otter, how would you even tell? But who *wouldn’t* want to be able to become an otter? It’s a conundrum!

I remember as I became an adult, beginning to adopt responsibility for the actions of my country. I was a voter and, even though my candidates frequently lost, I accepted that I was a participant in the imperialist and capitalist society that was visiting harms on the rest of the world. And I started using the language of “we” when talking about my own culpability in these harms. Today, regarding the failure of the UN to achieve the sustainability goals, Ross Douhat says:

Lofty goals could be forgiven if they inspired progress, but I worry that they were sometimes less a spur to action than a substitute for it. Yes, the pandemic created setbacks, but let’s be honest: We dropped the ball.

That’s bullshit. I didn’t drop the ball. I’m being disenfranchised by fascists that are gerrymandering the shit out of the country. My voice and agency are being drowned out by a firehose of money coming from oligarchs that can hire whole stables of unscrupulous lobbyists that make sure that their voices are heard and not mine. I’m being overwhelmed by a flood of disinformation that rises like a tide from a stockyard waste pond over the civilized discourse of the country.

It’s not my fault. And I don’t have to accept responsibility for it.

We need to stop saying “we” and start saying “they.” It’s the billionaires and the unscrupulous greedy people that accept their money who are to blame. Not us. And don’t let them make you forget it.

Posted on by StevenDBrewer

“Demons sound kinda #antisocial,” Rory said.

“Heh. Demons have no society,” Tseluna said. “We have no need.”

“What about the D-Force?”

“That’s a kind of society,” she admitted. “And there’s a few others. But your point is well taken.”

Rory kissed the nape of her neck.

#vss365