Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
Not only did people crave A.I. intimacy, but the most engaged chatters were using Kuki to enact their every fantasy. At first, this was fodder for wry musings at the office. […] Soon, however, we were seeing users return daily to re-enact variations of multihour rape and murder scenarios.
I realized as I read this that my fiction writing is similarly very much about enacting my fantasies — or, at least, fixing them in tangible form — though perhaps not every single one.
When I was young, I would lose myself in fantasies every night before going to sleep. And at any time during the day, might find myself woolgathering, imagining all sorts of fantastic things.
I fantasized about all sorts of stuff. Some fantasies were pretty ordinary: I remember at point having fantasies about building a large enough model airplane that I could fly in it. But a lot of fantasies were pretty weird and highly sexualized. I started having these sexualized fantasies at a very young age: 6 or 7 or 8. These were a staple of my life throughout my youth.
When I was a doctoral student, I suddenly lost my ability to fantasize. I realized eventually it was because I was confronted with a problem I didn’t know how to resolve. My dissertation was like a mountain range. I spent a year going back and forth in front of the mountain range, looking for a pass through the mountains. Eventually, I realized there was no pass, and so I started climbing up one mountain and then the next and then another. In the middle, I couldn’t see any end: there were mountains in every direction as far as I could see.
During this time. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma: I couldn’t engage in a fantasy that didn’t involve either having finished my dissertation — and I didn’t know how that could happen — or having given up. And I wasn’t going to do that! So I was stuck. It was horrible and I remember worrying at the time that the effect would be permanent.
Eventually, years after I finished, I gradually began to be able to fantasize again.
During the pandemic, I found myself constantly tormented by negative thoughts. I called it the Hamster Wheel of Doom: one negative thought led to another and another and eventually back to the first. I rediscovered finding refuge in fantasies. And I began writing fiction primarily as a way to fix one part of the fantasy so I could move onto the next part.
As I read that article, however, I began to wonder how different my indulging in my fantasies to write is different from using one of these chatbots. Like them, I’m just playing with my ideas. The only difference is that I play all the parts myself, rather than having some kind of assistive support. But is it really all that different? I dunno.
Minimally, I’m not sharing my fantasies with some faceless corporation. I’m sharing them with the public. And on my own terms. So there’s that.
On November 9, I got to host James Cambias doing a presentation about Worldbuilding for the Straw Dog Writers Guild. He wanted to do a face-to-face presentation, so I reserved the newly built North Amherst Library Community Room. It’s a great venue with a large-screen display, four tables, and maybe 30 chairs.
Unfortunately, not many people came. He pointed out that if the number of presenters outnumbered the audience, we were obliged to take the presentation to bar and we avoded that, but only barely.
But it was a fantastic presentation and I’m sorry more people didn’t attend.
Here’s the little introduction I wrote:
Hello. I’m Steven D. Brewer and I would like to welcome you to Worldbuilding 101 with James Cambias presented by the Straw Dog Writers Guild.
Straw Dog is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the craft and transformative power of writing, designed to serve writers throughout the region by promoting individual growth, community outreach and enrichment, and community building.
Our mission is to support the writing community by strengthening, engaging, and connecting writers at all levels of development.
Some upcoming events
Tonight: Everyone Reads Second Sundays Open Mic
Wednesdays: Straw Dog Writes
Nov 13: A Writer’s Night with Linda Cardillo at Longmeadow Adult Center
I first saw James Cambias at a reading with Elizabeth Bear and Max Gladstone at the Odyssey Book Shop in South Hadley. Since then, we’ve crossed paths at science fiction conventions in Boston, like Arisia, Boskone, and Readeron, where we’ve done readings and served on panels together.
Born in New Orleans, educated at the University of Chicago, James has been a professional science fiction writer since 2000. Among his novels are A Darkling Sea, Corsair, Arkad’s World, The Godel Operation, The Scarab Mission and his most recent, The Miranda Conspiracy. He also designs roleplaying games, and is an advisor to the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance.
This afternoon, he’s presenting Worldbuilding 101: In science fiction and fantasy, the strength and depth of the author’s world building can make the difference between a forgettable story and a classic. He will breakdown how to make convincing and interesting worlds for your stories, while still respecting realism and scientific accuracy.
And, with that, please welcome James Cambias for Worldbuilding 101.
James provided a brief preamble: Worldbuilding is a form of storytelling, in itself: An act of literary creation. That said, story considerations should remain paramount. When building a world, the purpose is to support the story. And he offered his own test:
The Cambias Test: Any alternate world needs to support adventures/stories that you can’t do here.
In other words, if your story can take place in the regular or historical world just do it. Don’t go to a bunch of extra work: just do the work that is necessary. Sometimes you have a setting that already exists (like shared worlds — I write stories set on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy) and you can just look up the necessary information, but he encouraged the audience to fit the story to the world.
He challenged the audience to consider what motives and conflicts that the setting supports. He cited Aristotle who proposed desire, fear, and honor (or, as we might say conviction, today). This reminded me a bit of the four F’s of animal behavior: Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and Reproducing. In science fiction, survival is clearly one motive.
He proposed to look for “signature events”, that is things that happen there that don’t happen on Earth. The terminator on Mercury moves at walking speed. For sandboxes and shared worlds: what are some signature events there that nobody has done. Find a new angle. Take it seriously or don’t do it. And for the real world, take it seriously — Do the research! You can often use the results to add details that will contribute to the verisimilitude of the story.
He then let the audience in an exercise in worldbuilding, to design a world and its alien inhabitants. He offered a worksheet that indexes planet size against temperature to help determine the characteristics the world will have. What kind of planet do we want? How habitable? Can humans live there?
He began with the star in terms of size and brightness (luminosity, which describes the brightness as compared with the sun). Large stars frequently don’t last long enough for the establishment of a stable biosphere within its solar system.
He then moved to the planet. It’s characteristics include distance from the the star, the size and density, which together determine the gravity.
Running short on the time, he touched on life. Isaac Asimov wrote an influential article, Not as We Know It: The Chemistry of Life that provides a good introduction to what is required for life: a liquid, a solvent, and some kind of information molecule. (Personally, I would approach defining life differently, not in molecular terms.)
Aliens don’t have to be from the planet the story is set on. They can play a variety of roles: as people, a threat — as individuals or a society — as victims, or a mystery. And can transform: from a mystery to a threat to people.
Aliens can be of a variety of types. Talking beasts, super brains, an elder race, warriors, hive minds, or weird things. These often come with implied roles: for example, talking beasts are generally threats and weird things are generally mysteries.
It was a fantastic presentation and got me to think a lot about my own writing. In my writing, I’ve generally felt that aliens are extremely unlikely to have a compatible biology to our own. So the idea of “away parties” visiting alien worlds and talking to aliens… I just don’t see it happening.
A local poet I follow on Mastodon posted something about WriteOut which sounded to me like a fun excuse to write some haiku. For many years, I wrote haiku nearly every day. In the past few years, however, I’ve written fewer. But I decided I could write them more often during the three week period.
I’d kinda meant to write one every day, but in the end I only wrote five. Still, it was a lot of fun.
During the period when I was writing haiku most frequently, I decided to publish a chapbook: Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. I enjoyed the experience enough that I made several more. I still use the artwork from my books to supplement the posts here. But, for various reasons, I mostly quit writing haiku and have only written them occasionally over the past several years.
Writing haiku has always been for me, like a moment of zen. I mostly don’t write haiku except from direct experience. Writing them gives me a chance to look at the things around me and just be present in the moment. It was fun to recapture that experience.
I can’t say I’ll start writing more haiku. But maybe. And maybe when #writeout rolls around next year, I’ll do it again.
Fall has begun. It’s always a dark time for me, as the seasons change and the days grow shorter. I have settled into my phased retirement, however, so the semester is not so onerous as it once was. And each thing I do professionally, I have the opportunity to reflect on how it’s the last time — or nearly the last — that I will ever have to do that.
After the wonderful experience with the panel about the evolution of dogs at Worldcon, I decided to have my students research and write about dogs for my scientific writing class. I always try to pick a theme I haven’t chosen before. I have had my students study many things in the 23 years I’ve taught this class — tardigrades, autumn leaves, cockroaches, garlic mustard, frogs, monocots, terrestrial gastropods, leaf miners, earthworms, millipedes, etc. — but I’ve never done dogs before. I think it’s going pretty well.
I’ve been productive with SFF writing as well as fall begins. I finished a novelette, Bearly Believable; wrote a short story, Uplands; and have started working on a second, Tablelands, in the same series. (Both are sequels to Bottomlands, a story that has been accepted for publication, but for which I’ve not yet received a contract.) I wrote about using regular expressions to find other -lands words, so now I have a bunch of ideas for further titles in this series.
I have also written an article for Planetside, the newly renamed SFWA blog. I made a pitch back in August which was accepted. Once I submitted the manuscript, it was sent to a line editor for revisions, which went well. Now it’s with the lead editor for final review and to select some of the images I submitted to go with it. It’s been my first experience writing for Planetside and it’s been a real pleasure.
I’ve not been as diligent about getting work submitted for publication this year. I have two works “in press” though long delayed. But I need to do better at getting work submitted and promptly re-submitted once it’s rejected.
Around the equinox, I met with the amazing curators of @wss366 to talk about Wandering Shop Stories. It’s a great bunch of folks! We had a new curator join us since our last meeting and it was wonderful to meet her. I love our small community and it gives me immense pleasure every day to have a little creative exercise in the morning to start things off. Our next meeting will be around the solstice.
Although it’s depressing to watch the news, I am encouraged by more than just schadenfreude. Not everything is dark. People are waking up to the fact that AI is a hype and asset bubble. And it looks to me like, in running up against the real world, the Republicans are beginning to realize that actually governing is necessary. I rarely agree with what they’re doing but, occasionally — after exhausting all of the other possibilities — they do finally do the right thing. It’s something.
There’s a long, dark winter ahead. But spring will follow eventually.
I’ve just finished a new manuscript called Uplands. It’s a sequel to a story I wrote about a year ago called Bottomlands. They’re dark fantasy short stories about a witch and her familiar.
I was thinking I might want to write more stories in the series and was grasping for more words that end with -lands. I pretty quickly thought of grasslands and barrowlands, but then I was kind of stumped. I went to do a websearch, but how do you search for -lands?
I poked around for a few minutes to see if I already didn’t have a dictionary file on my computer, but pretty quickly I decided to just download this list of 479k English words for this purpose. The Internet is still useful for a few things.
Then I crafted my regular expression using the unix utility egrep. I went through a couple of iterations to get it just right, but ended up with this:
egrep '^[a-z].+lands$' ~/Downloads/words.txt
It looks through the file for words that end in “lands” and that aren’t capitalized (so you don’t get Netherlands, for example).
I ended up with 53 words. I think that’s more stories than I’ll want to write in this series. Some of the words are pretty good too! (e.g. badlands, borderlands, hinterlands all seem good for dark fantasy). Some don’t seem so useful (e.g. islands, lallands, playlands).
Interestingly, barrowlands wasn’t among the words. Go figure.
Two of the writing prompts I follow on Mastodon ask, “How was this month for you, writing-wise?” It was pretty good.
I had a couple of distractions: I went to Worldcon and Philip Brewer came to visit. Those each took about a week away from my writing. But otherwise, I got a lot done.
I’ve just about finished writing a new novelette called Bearly Believable. For several years, I’ve been writing little story fragments about a bear who acts as the fire-safety coordinator at a park. They’ve been among my most popular story fragments (which isn’t saying much, honestly). I think this is the very first one:
I wrote dozens of little scenarios about the bear as I fleshed him out in my mind. He changed a bit along the way and developed a backstory, which is what this story is really all about. Along the way, he was joined by a owl named Forrest who terrorizes litterbugs. And a little girl named Brunhilde who asks him thoughtful questions.
There’s a lot of world building embedded in the story. It has bits about the ecology of terraforming, lifestyles in a replicator-based society, and issues of freedom for non-human biological androids. At the same time, as with all of my writing, it’s silly fluff. I really don’t write anything to be deep.
It’s been fun to write. I just have a few bits to polish off over the next day or two. I would like to get it finished before the semester begins on Tuesday. If I quit writing this post and start working on that, there’s a good chance I’ll make it and finish writing for the month in style.
I have selected my theme for my writing course for the fall of 2025. Each semester I’ve taught the class since 2002, I’ve tried to pick a different theme for my students to research and write about. I can’t say that I’ve never repeated themes, but I always try to think up something different. This semester, I intend for my students to study the biology of Canis familiaris, the dog.
I’ve always tried to select something I don’t know much about. It allows the students to be the experts. And it prevents me from becoming too directive (which happens all too often when I already too much about the subject). It also keeps the course fresh for me and has let me learn a vast amount of biology over the years.
Some themes have worked better than others. Students tend to be strongly biased toward animals, so although I’ve been very pleased with the semesters we studied plants or fungi, students were often less satisfied. I’ve generally shied away from vertebrates, simply because there are a lot of practical and regulatory complications for conducting research on them. So we’ve studied planarians, tardigrades, terrestrial gastropods, worms, millipedes, wood lice, spiders, and many types of insects, which has usually made students happy. (They didn’t like the semester we studied cockroaches, tho. Go figure.) But dogs will be something new.
My thinking was undoubtedly influenced by the excellent panel on dogs I participated on at Worldcon. There’s a wonderfully rich literature about dogs that students can dig into. The real question will be, what kinds of research projects can students propose and conduct? My course asks students to write a proposal — preferably about something they could actually do — and then to select a proposal to actually undertake as a research project.
I encourage students to follow their interests. If they’re genuinely interested in some topic that we can’t actually do, they’re welcome to write it up as a proposal. I often use the example of studying the biology of Mars. We don’t have the resources or time to visit Mars to conduct a project. But that shouldn’t stop them from proposing that, if that’s really what they want to do. It’s typically more fun to pitch something we can actually do. And it’s fun when your idea gets chosen by the class for a whole course research project.
I don’t require that the whole course pick just one project. Each group can choose to do their own proposal or any of the other proposals. Or something different altogether, if something more interesting has occurred to them. But it does sometimes happen organically, that one proposal rises to the top and everyone coordinates to conduct 8 or 9 projects all centered around a single proposal.
I wonder what kinds of projects the students will propose. I think there’s a lot we can do. We could observe dogs at local dog parks. Or simply by walking downtown. Some students will undoubtedly have pets. Or we could look for evidence of dogs in the environment.
Before we write proposals, I have the students perform a “METHODS Project” where they make a multi-panel figure that relates to the theme to get them thinking about the kinds of data they might collect. This year, I’ll ask them to collect photographic evidence of the presence of a dog in the local environment. The challenge for this project is how to collect data that is replicable: Can they think of something to photograph that another student can reliably also document? I can think of a few ideas, but it’s tricky. I’ll enjoy seeing what they come up with.
I’m always happy when I come up with an idea that I’m excited about and that I think the students will also enjoy. I think this is going to be a winner. Now I just need to come up with one more idea for next semester, which will be the very last time I ever teach this class.
Today, the #WritersCoffeeClub prompt at Mastodon asked contributors to “Talk about an affirming experience you’ve had among your writing peers.” This was really difficult, only because it was so difficult to choose. There are so many people and groups that I value and appreciate. After some consideration, I decided to write about Wandering Shop Stories:
I really appreciate my brother, Philip M. Brewer, and my younger son, who serve as alpha readers of my fiction. When I write my initial draft, it’s really useful to have a few eyes to look it over and help me think about story structure and pacing. My brother is particularly good at coming up with ideas to strengthen the story and heighten the drama. And Daniel likes to mock the weak points, in a friendly and supportive way. His raillery always leaves rolling on the floor in hysterics. I am filled with gratitude for their support
In addition to #wss366, which I organize and manage, many other Mastodon writing communities are wonderful and supportive. They include #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and others. It’s interesting to reflect on the questions, to read the responses that others write, and to receive positive reactions from the community.
I love serving on the Board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). The organization is such a positive force in support of the genre writing community. The Board is really excellent. It’s the best non-profit Board I’ve ever served with, composed of deeply committed people who are both talented and dedicated to supporting the community. When I joined the Board, SFWA was in a crisis with a loss of leadership and staff. Now, we have great leadership and are fully staffed with truly outstanding people. The organization is really hitting on all cylinders. Somewhat perversely, it’s much less work for us on the Board and truly wonderful things are happening all the time. Everywhere I turn, people are commenting how they like the direction SFWA is taking. It’s been incredibly rewarding service.
I also love the Straw Dog Writers Guild. I enjoy serving on the Program Committee and helping organize interesting workshops and presentations. I’ve been able to invite really excellent people to contribute to our programming. And I really treasure my small community at Straw Dog Writes. There are a handful of us that meet nearly every week on Wednesday evenings to write together via zoom and a number of others that drop in and out periodically. Everyone has been very supportive and friendly.
It’s so important to have community to fall back on when things are rough. I really value everyone’s support.
Representing disability is important in fiction. Many years ago, I saw someone who said that, rather than calling some people “disabled,” we should call everyone else “temporarily abled.” Because if you don’t have a disability now, you will. If you live long enough, almost everyone will go through some period of their life with a disability: a broken foot, gout, a bout of depression, etc. After I was hospitalized, I discovered that I have a disability: a chronic lung condition that limits my life in significant ways.
Today, my wife and I attended a flag raising for Disability Pride Month. The Town Council of Amherst wrote a proclamation and raised a flag to recognize and celebrate people with disabilities. And to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been transformative for ensuring access for disabled people. It was an opportunity for to me to reflect on the writing I’ve done representing disabled characters. I have several stories that represent characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. But one character stands out.
One of my favorite characters in the Revin’s Heart series is the Professor. Revin’s first meets him when he sees a glider fly from the mountain top of the island where the pirates have their base and land on the beach.
[The glider] skidded to a stop, and then flipped over. Revin, with his sharp eyes, could see someone strapped into the device with a harness.
Revin sprinted down the switchbacks of the trail to the sea. A few of the most athletic pirates got ahead of him by running straight down, bypassing the switchbacks. But five or six of them arrived at more or less the same time to see the man — for they could see now it was a man — with wild white hair and a gray beard scramble out of the harness. But Revin could see something was terribly wrong. The front half of him was crawling out of the harness, but he was leaving his legs behind.
“Aaaa! What’s happened to your legs?” Revin asked in shock.
“Those aren’t my legs,” the man growled. “Those are just for balance.”
“But you don’t have any legs! What happened to your legs?” Revin persisted.
“Airshark got ’em,” the man replied, gravely. “Have you ever seen an airshark? Terrible creatures.”
Revin was dubious. He started to open his mouth, then realized that all of the pirates were standing in a circle, watching his facial expressions, and trying not to laugh. He turned bright, bright red and they exploded with laughter, rolling on the ground. Gently hazing the new cabin boy was a popular pastime among the pirates. And now the strenuous efforts of the pirates to get there ahead of him were explained.
The backstory of how the Professor came to not have legs is never described in the books. Revin discovers soon, however, that the Professor brilliantly supervises the team of pirates that maintains the airship and keeps it airworthy. He uses hand-braces to move around and is clearly a genius inventor, scientist, and engineer. He’s blunt, plain-spoken, and gruff, but you soon learn that he really cares about Revin and the other pirates.
Grip […] sent Revin to the Professor to request he construct a practice sword with similar properties to the real sword. He looked at the sword, then looked at Revin fiercely from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you play with these things,” he grumbled.
“I want to be able to protect my friends,” Revin said.
“Worry about yourself first,” the Professor said. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”
“Please?” Revin said, sweetly.
“Ugh. It’s your funeral,” the Professor said. “We’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”
It isn’t until much later that Revin learns that there’s larger backstory to the Professor than he realizes. They travel together on a secret mission when Revin discovers that the Professor is actually a famous member of the Royal Academy. Everyone in academic circles knows the Professor.
[Revin] stood conferring with the Professor about what to do for the night when someone said, “Professor Grexin? Is that you?”
“Eh?” the Professor said, turning toward the newcomer, a middle‑aged academic wearing University garb.
“It is you!” the man continued excitedly. “You probably don’t remember me: Niles Ender. I saw your talk five years ago on hydrogen generation using algae and we spoke for a bit at the reception that followed. What are you doing back here?”
“I’m just visiting my nephew,” the Professor said, clapping Revin on the back.
“Wow! You must be so proud to have a famous uncle like Professor Grexin!
When they’re attacked by highway men, Revin learns that there is more to the Professor than meets the eye.
Revin and the Professor got ready to sleep. They were about to get into the bedrolls when Art [their coachman] appeared around the corner of the wagon accompanied by two other men. With their swords drawn, they charged toward Revin and the Professor.
Revin drew his sword and put himself en garde. Considering the Professor no threat, Art and the two men bypassed him to attack Revin. Revin began to panic, wondering how he could possibly defend himself against all three of them. Suddenly, the two other men staggered and, with their eyes rolling up in their heads, collapsed. Art looked surprised and distracted at the sudden loss of his allies. Revin lunged forward and caught him in the throat. Art fell over clutching at his neck and expired with blood spurting through his fingers.
Revin stared wild‑eyed at the Professor, who stood with his arm braces raised.
“What just happened?” Revin gasped.
“I keep each of my arm braces loaded with a poisoned dart,” he said. “They must have figured me for no threat. But they were wrong.”
When they arrive at the Hermitage (a research institute), the Professor is again recognized as the famous scholar he is and they are invited to attend a formal dinner, Revin learns yet something new about this enigmatic character. When a toast is proposed that celebrates using science for war, the Professor pours out his glass on the floor and hand-walks out of the room.
With the toast out of the way, Revin was concerned that his lack of knowledge about polite dining would make him stand out. But he needn’t have worried. The scientists couldn’t care less about etiquette and appeared to use forks and spoons randomly — or not at all — which allowed Revin to relax and enjoy the meal. Watching the servants, though, he began to awaken to how easy it was to become complacent about your station in life. And to become complicit in sustaining inequalities. His respect for the Professor went up, to be willing to be true to himself and publicly demonstrate his commitment to his principles. And he began to see how the Professor and Will, a captain of pirates, had found common ground.
The Professor is one of my favorite characters in Revin’s Heart. He continues to show up in the (as yet) unpublished sequels to Revin’s Heart. In Ecorozire, Revin visits the Hermitage, where the Professor has retired after the pirates disbanded.
“How is your second retirement going?” Revin asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” the Professor said. “I just come in, sit around, and argue with people all day.”
“Not getting bored, then?” Will pressed.
“Oh, no. No boredom here!”
“Well, then,” Revin said. “I guess you wouldn’t want to go investigate these mysterious coins with eternite in them.” Revin pulled out the necklace shook it at him
June was super busy, with the Nebula Conference and the two Pride bookselling events. July looks to be quieter. There are a bunch of events I could have attended, but I’m currently only scheduled to go to Readercon. Look for me in the dealer room where I will, again, be running the tables for Water Dragon and Small Publishing in a Big Universe.
If you’re an author planning to attend Readercon and you don’t have a place to sell books, there is probably still time to request a spot at the Small Publishing in a Big Universe table. It costs very little and gives you a place to tell people to buy your books. Plus you can stand behind the table yourself to meet with readers and sign copies. It doesn’t work so well for authors who are not in attendance but, if you’re there in person, you can really make a lot of sales that way.
I was so busy in June, I didn’t get much writing done at all. Some people can snatch moments here and there to write. For me that can work alright for the little story fragments that I write for #wss366, but it doesn’t work for making progress on my serious writing projects. I did, finally, get back to writing in the past week and wrote the final, climactic scene of one of the storylines in The Ground Never Lies. I had been putting it off for months. Now I only have one or two world-building scenes left to write and then I can try to merge the two storylines. After that, I hope to pass it off to my trusty beta readers to see if the whole thing hangs together. It will need a lot of revising, but July should be perfect for that.
In August, I will be attending Worldcon in Seattle. The schedule has not been finalized, but my draft schedule looks great. I’m currently scheduled for seven panels (serving as moderator on one) and a reading. The reading is from my forthcoming book A Familiar Problem which has been delayed since January. I’m really hopeful it will be out in time for Worldcon. (Of course, I also really hoped it would be out for Boskone and Watch City and the Nebula Conference and Readercon, but… Well… Sigh…)
I finally bought our plane tickets. The most convenient airport for us is Bradley, in between Hartford and Springfield. It’s nice because it’s a somewhat smaller airport and only half the distance to Boston. But Boston tends to have more direct flights. When I fly to Europe, I’ve usually flown out of Boston. I did a search and found that there were no non-stop flights to Seattle from Bradley. There were two from Boston. When I checked, however, they were operated by Alaska Airlines and the cost was nearly twice as much as having one stop. So, we’re flying out of Bradley.
After Worldcon, I will be busy with family and then getting ready for the fall. The fall… Sigh… I have to teach the writing class two more times (in Fall and Spring) and then I will finally be able to retire and be done with working. Then I can dedicate myself to writing full time. I’m really glad I did the phased retirement, but I’m looking forward to wrapping it up.
