Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
After 28 years of full-time employment, I am starting a new phase of life. This summer, for the first time since I started my career, I didn’t work over the summer. And this fall, I begin my “phased retirement” where I start working just half time. I’m excited to see what the new normal will be like.
Thirty five years ago, I began graduate school and have been working full time pretty much constantly since then. The last two years of graduate school, while I was working on my dissertation, I was also the full-time caregiver of my infant son, which was a fascinating experience but meant that I was busy nearly every waking minute.
I started my professional career in 1996 when I joined the faculty at UMass Amherst as Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center (BCRC). This meant that I was either running the BCRC and teaching a scientific writing class (during the academic year) or doing development and support during the summer (replacing hardware, updating software, building curriculum). I loved my work, but was constantly busy — I aimed for about 55 hours per week year round.
The year before the pandemic I was awarded a Professional Improvement Fellowship to develop a new honors course: Open Science Instrumentation and Data Collection, which let me bring together all of my skills. I proposed to mentor students coming up with a life science research question and developing an instrument that used a computing platform and sensors to collect and log data about their question. The fellowship offered me a semester off from my professional duties to create all of the instructional materials. It was glorious. But then the pandemic happened.
During the pandemic my department closed the BCRC and rewrote my job description as a teaching faculty member. I continued to teach the writing class and began my new honors class. Since I was no longer obligated to spend my time doing computer support and development, I decided to repurpose that time for writing fiction and have written two books, Revin’s Heart and Better Angels: Tour de Force (plus several short stories published in anthologies).
Last year, I proposed the idea of a phased retirement to the department. I offered to continue to teach my honors class. However, because the “credit” for teaching the honors class would go to the Honors College, my college (the College of Natural Science) was only willing to have me teach the writing class, for which they get “credit”. So that’s what we settled on. This week, I’m getting ready to teach the writing class beginning next week.
Last year, when it wasn’t clear which class I would be teaching, I began putting off doing a bunch of the work needed to teach the honors class. That class required me to maintain and update a lot of instructional materials that had complex dependencies because the technology moves so quickly. Each year, I had to stay current with changes to the operating systems, development environments, campus networking, and the software carpentry instructional materials (which I was using for teaching). I had created a long list of tasks that I would need to do before teaching this year. And when I ended up not teaching that class, I was able to just throw out that whole list. As I’m getting ready for the fall, I’m still taking pleasure in discarding the last vestiges knowing that I won’t ever have to do that work.
In the past, I basically didn’t have time to write fiction during the academic year. I could only write during intersession and summer. But I’m hopeful that, this year, I will find that I have enough time to continue to write fiction year round. It will be nice to have that become the new normal.
I remember after I’d been writing fiction for a while, my son asked, “Why don’t you have any female characters?” I was flummoxed.
“But what about Mary?”
“She’s a yōkai — that doesn’t count.”
“But what about… Aless?”
“Who?”
“Aless — in It’s Not Just Black or White?”
“She dies on page 9.”
“Oh. Um…”
I had to admit that he was right. I really didn’t have any female characters.
As I wrote my debut work, Revin’s Heart, I added several female characters, but I realized that it still didn’t really pass the Bechdel test. Given that the story is a young man’s adventure story (though with a transgender protagonist) that’s not too surprising. But I wanted to do better. So for one of the side-stories, I decided to tell the story of the protagonist’s transition. And this included a number of strong female characters and a trans woman.
I’ve now written a number of pieces of short fiction (not all of them published) that have female protagonists. One unpublished manuscript is about an elderly witch that helps a female friend move. I’m not sure whether Better Angels or my weird little story, Always a Destroyer (in Romancing the Rainbow) really count, because although they have female protagonists, they are not really human.
Most recently, however, I’ve finished Lady Cecelia’s Journey, a sapphic romantasy road story. It’s told from the point of view of a somewhat naive aristocratic girl who, on the one hand, grew up very sheltered. But she also had many privileges and experiences that her girlfriend, a commoner, never got to have. Playing these contrasts off one another is part of the charm of the story for me. It’s a story I feel I can tell as I grew up in a well-educated, upper-middle-class family that moved to the countryside when I was in third grade, where many of my friends were members of the rural poor.
I’ve tried to craft three-dimensional characters for both of my protagonists. They each have a meaningful backstory that is not merely some dark tragedy. They each have goals and objectives in life that are not centered only around men. Or romance. They each have unique strengths and weaknesses. They each have a distinctive appearance, but they are not just their bodies. Or their clothes. And both grow and develop over the course of the story.
To be honest, I see many aspects of myself in both of them.
Men are frequently accused of writing female characters very poorly. The line that sticks in my head was the one attributed to Mary Robinette Kowal: “She breasted boobily down the stairs.” I think men who do this don’t see women as fully complete human beings: they can only see them through their own mental filter as an object. I hope ― and believe ― that I have done better.
But I guess I’ll just have to wait to see what people say.
I have been fortunate enough to travel rather widely in my lifetime which helps me create settings in my fiction. But, I have also studied both geomorphology and botany which informs the salient features to describe settings realistically in my writing. I believe these both contribute levels of detail which add to the verisimilitude of my storytelling.
Geomorphology is the study of landforms. The earth has many interlocking geological processes that combine to produce landforms. The canvas upon which geological process act are the rocks: Igneous rocks, generated by volcanic activity; sedimentary rocks, created by deposition; and metamorphic rocks, that transform igneous and metamorphic rocks, through heat and pressure, to adopt different forms. As rocks are uplifted, through orogeny, weathering causes them to erode. Often, during uplift, rocks are deformed, broken, or folded, and these patterns can be exposed by weathering. And, in many places, glaciation creates particular forms of erosion that yield many unique landforms that remain behind after the ice has retreated.
The geology coupled with hydrology represent the biotic factors that determine what kinds of plants (and other organisms) that will grow there. And they, in turn, create the conditions for a succession of communities of organisms that follow. Knowing the communities of plants can really help create the atmosphere for a setting: Are there evergreens? Or deciduous trees? Or just grassland? Or maybe just a crust of lichens on bare sand? All of these can really help bring a scene to life.
As a student, when I took the classes, I went on many field trips where I had the opportunity to see the land forms in real life. You never forget when you’ve seen an esker (a sinuous hill of gravel that forms in channels under glacial ice) or a swarm of drumlins (tear-drop shaped hills that were overrun by moving glaciers). Or the drama of a terminal moraine — a huge hill that formed at the furthest margin of a glacier where it left a huge deposit of transplanted sand, gravel, and clay. All of these can add to the realism of a setting’s description.
Last year, my son and I drove to California for Baycon. I got to travel through some regions I’d visited before. Like the Badlands (pictured above) which was formed of many layers of volcanic dust eroded way revealing the colorful layers. But others were wholly new to me: One of the most interesting was driving from the Central Valley of California to the Pacific Highway that runs right along the coast. It was more than 100° F in the Central Valley when we started driving through the Coast Ranges. It became increasing arid as we entered the rain shadow of the mountain range. But then, as we cleared the peaks, became a cool rain forest with giant redwoods as we approached the coast. It was chilly in the low 60s by the ocean, just 50 or 60 miles distant, as the crow flies.
Some of the characters in my fiction can only describe their settings in general, qualitative terms. But part of why I wanted to write a series of stories about Lady Cecelia is because she’s a botanist. So she knows the plants and can appreciate the significance of the various plant communities they pass through on her adventure.
Alone, Cecelia cautiously got to her feet and, keeping a hand on the bed, carefully stepped to the window to look out. The view quite took her breath away. She was in a high room of a grand chateau that was situated along the side of a mountain valley. In the depths, she could see a cascading whitewater river that tumbled over immense boulders. Looking upward, she could see the tips of snow-capped mountains peeking up out of a vast evergreen forest. She opened the window and let the crisp, cool air into the stuffy room. It was scented with a delightful piney smell and she could hear the roar of the river in the distance. She breathed in deeply and smiled.
Lady Cecelia’s Journey, a sapphic romantasy road story will be serialized as six novelettes.
Worldcon in Glasgow wrapped up today. I didn’t attend any of the last day’s events. Of course, I didn’t end up attending Worldcon in person and only attended a few events remotely. I had signed up very early (I had a badge number in the 3000s as opposed to 15k or 16k by the end.) And I had purchased plane tickets and made hotel reservations before January. I signed up before they announced their “disease mitigation policy.” (Due to my chronic lung condition, I have to be very careful of respiratory infections that are likely to put me in the hospital.) I had been hopeful they would adopt a masks-required policy. But they didn’t. Even so, I planned to attend until I learned that I hadn’t been afforded a place on the program. At that point, I decided to cancel my plans to attend.
I was able to recover some of my sunk costs. I had (at significant expense) purchased fully-refundable airline tickets, so I was able (at some significant effort) to get the airline to refund them. The hotel had required us to basically pay for our stay upfront as a non-refundable deposit, so that was a huge loss. And, of course, I had purchased attending memberships for myself and my son, which were worthless. I offered my attending membership to someone on Mastodon who might want to attend in person, but no-one expressed interest. So I ended up using my membership to attend online. (Someone suggested that I could offer the memberships via other networks, but I said, “F— ’em. If they can’t bother to follow me on Mastodon, they deserve NOTHING.”)
I had been planning to travel to Glasgow with my son, my brother, and his wife. Instead, they flew here (as we had originally planned) and then we just hung out and spent the week together visiting. It was wonderful. I had just finished constructing a new patio with comfortable patio furniture, so we had a marvelous time.
I did attend a few events online. Although, to be honest, it made me feel bad every time since I had been so excited about attending and it was merely a reminder of what I was missing.
I did notice, however, that — in spite of the “disease mitigation policy” which said “We strongly recommend that every member wears a mask, particularly indoors or in crowded areas, such as the registration area and programme rooms” — the number of people actually masking was extremely low. I got several views of the audiences in presentations and counted masked and unmasked participants, and the ratio was between 1/5 and 1/10. So, if I had attended, I probably would have spent a lot of time having to cower in my room. Brrr.
Instead, I had a great time with my brother. My mom, who is over 90, lives with me and I always feel a little guilty that my brother doesn’t get to spend as much time with her. So it was great to have us all hang out together. And we’ve been going on fun adventures. We went to Hawley Bog together today. We’ll go to the Bridge of Flowers tomorrow. And we’ve visited a number of breweries — totally appropriate for Brewers.
In a couple of days, they’ll head home and then it will be time to start getting ready for classes to begin in the fall.
So, in the end, it was an expensive lesson. But it’s just money. We had a nice time anyway, even if I didn’t get to go to Glasgow or have the opportunity to promote my writing.
If you want to be a writer, that’s cool. All you have to do is write.
It doesn’t really matter if you get published. Or show anyone what you write. If you write, you’re still a writer.
The more you write, the better you’ll get. If you want to be a good writer, you have to write a lot.
There’s no certain path to being a great writer. Nobody knows what makes a great writer. But all great writers were good writers first.
If you want to be a famous writer, it’s the same. There’s no sure path to fame. But you can’t become a famous writer unless you write and keep writing. Each time you write something and put it out there, there’s the chance it will catch fire and go viral. And that can’t happen if you don’t keep putting things out there.
There’s no right way to write. Just as there’s no wrong way to write. Just write.
For some people, writing is easy. For some people it’s hard. But there are all kinds of writers and you can be one of them.
If you show your writing to other people, some of them will like it and some of them will hate it. But if you like your writing, that’s enough.
And if you don’t like your own writing, you can write more. And the more you write, the better your writing will become.
Don’t let anyone discourage you from writing if that’s what you want to do. If you want to write, write.
As July ends, I typically find myself consumed with regrets. With August imminent, I sulk as I see the end of summer approaching and recognize I need to start working to get ready for the fall. And I invariably feel like I didn’t accomplish enough during the summer. I didn’t relax enough, enjoy myself, write enough, travel enough, etc.
Enough. I need to let go of these regrets and just let myself enjoy the time that I have. So today, on the last day of July, I propose to do exactly that. It doesn’t matter if I don’t write. Or don’t organize my office. Or don’t register for some upcoming conference. I need to just not dwell on negative thoughts and let myself be happy.
Last year, before Baycon, I created a ‘zine about the Islands of Revin’s Heart. I had made a map of the islands (for my own purposes mostly) and saw this as a way to get it to people. Plus it was just a fun way to do something creative. I like playing with graphics and design and page layout.
I did the page layout using Scribus. Scribus is free software for desktop publishing. I’m told Scribus is similar to QuarkXpress though I’ve never used the commercial software. I learned it twenty years ago and have laid out five books of haiku and art with it. I have also taught countless students to use it to make scientific posters. When I ran a poster printer, you could count on Scribus to generate correctly-structured postscript files that would actually print accurately — unlike most other apps people use (cough Powerpoint cough).
When I wrote the Better Angels, I had the idea for a ‘zine that would be a guide to each of the Angels that would include a snapshot and other information. I originally had the idea when we did the cover, but we were both busy and so I didn’t push the issue then. But this summer, I finally got around to requesting the artist to create the snapshots of the Angels for me.
The snapshots turned out great! She provided nine (one for each Angel), plus one bonus “freebie.” The artist, Kelley York of Sleepy Fox Studio, does fantastic work. She really captured a whole series of cute expressions for each Angel. (Note: the images are computer-generated (CG), but not AI generated. Although, since the Better Angels are non-human biological androids, I rather like the uncanny-valley-esque appearance of the CG photos.)
Originally, I was planning that the photos would be just headshots. But that proved to be difficult, because their costumes are off-the-shoulder and so they simply looked naked! After some consideration, we zoomed the photos out just a bit so you can see the top of their magical-girl dresses.
I had originally planned to give the ‘zines away at Worldcon, since I would be unable to sell copies of my books there directly. But, when the organizers declined to allow me to be a participant, I canceled my travel plans altogether. So now I have the ‘zines, but don’t have any immediate plans to attend a con where I could give them away.
Instead, you can get a copy of the ‘zine by ordering a signed copy of Better Angels: Tour de Force from the publisher. I will include a free copy of the ‘zine with every book. It’s a really nice book, BTW — especially the hardcover edition! And signed by the author!
I don’t imagine this promotion will somehow kick off a whirlwind of purchases but you never know, right? Sometimes you just have to sow the wind and hope for the best.
In May of 2022, I had an idea for a new story. I had basically just finished the last part of Revin’s Heart and was looking for something new to write. At the SFWA Writing Date I banged out a 1,900 word pilot and immediately knew that, what I had, was the first chapter of a novel. The semester was just ending, and so I had plenty of time to write. I worked assiduously and, in little more than a month, I had finished the rough draft of a 50,000 word novel.
A young man desperately wants a strong magical familiar but, instead, is captured and made the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up for something. But what?
When I reached the end of what I had intended to write, I kept having fun ideas about what the characters could do afterwards. This happened about three times until I remembered that I was the author and I could just keep writing. I ended up writing two more chapters and another whole ending.
I revised and polished the manuscript over the summer. I got good comments from my faithful beta reviewers. My younger son, rolling his eyes, commented that he had been worried about his own writing being too weird until he read this manuscript. Sometimes the meaning of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. By fall, I was ready to start trying to submit it for publication.
I checked with Water Dragon first, but they were in the middle of publishing Revin’s Heart and Better Angels, so it didn’t work into their schedule.
I briefly considered trying to pitch it to an agent. But I decided it wasn’t really long enough and was weird enough that it would fit better at a small press. I saw one small press looking for “cozy fantasies” so I pitched it to them. I mean, I think of it as cozy fantasy. Unfortunately, they didn’t see it that way, objecting to “overt themes of sexual abuse and sexual coercion” — which seems harsh and exaggerated to me. But, they can publish what they want. I tried a few other publishers but had a hard time finding a home for the manuscript: it’s too cozy to be dark and too dark to be cozy.
I was gratified when I got Water Dragon to take another look at it this spring, since I thought it would be a good fit. And, this time, they agreed! I have now signed the contract and it will be worked into the schedule to come out this winter.
I really like this story and I think readers will like it too. I can’t wait to get it into your hands!
On July 15 (less than a month before the convention) I was notified that my request to be a participant at Worldcon was declined. I was pretty disappointed. Since I had been given eight participant roles at my previous Worldcon, I had expected I would get at least some role — even if just to read. But I was not selected for anything.
Given the huge expense of traveling internationally coupled with the heightened risk of COVID transmission on long flights — plus the decision of the convention to not require masking — I decided to cancel my travel plans altogether and not attend the convention.
Given my health issues, I had purchased fully refundable plane tickets. I will have to pay a non-refundable deposit to the hotel. And, of course, I paid the registration cost of the convention. But the expense is little compared to the disappointment of not being a participant.
My younger son and I brought books for Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) to Readercon33. It was the first time we’ve tried to sell books at that convention. We did alright. Many of the other vendors said that sales were down from last year, which was a little strange as the number of attendees was higher.
I’ve now run — or helped run — a dealer table at a convention perhaps a dozen times. At most conventions, the dealer tables are much more diverse. Often, there are t-shirts, jewelry, gaming supplies, artwork, etc. But Readercon is almost exclusively book-focused. Since we’re also (almost) exclusively book-focused, it seemed like an opportune moment for reflection on our process: what we’re doing right and wrong. I thought I’d share my thoughts here.
As my first step, I decided to walk around and photograph all of the other dealer tables in the bookstore to reflect on differences between what we’re doing and what other groups are doing to gauge effectiveness and assess what we’re doing right and what we could improve.
It’s hard to make too many generalizations because a lot of decisions are site- and con-specific. In this case, our tables began second along the main aisle people took into the bookstore. The tables made an L with two tables along the main aisle and one at 90 degrees forming an aisle to right. Since people were entering and walking along the main aisle — and couldn’t see our banners at a distance — I put some signage at the end of the table that people would be facing as they came in the door. And, where there was a gap where tables abutted at the corner, I had a small aluminum table I could fit in the gap that gave us some extra space.
I also made some site-specific decisions about organizing books. In general, I put a book in front on a bookstand, a second book behind on a stack of books, and a third book on a taller stack of books at the back. I put the books by attending authors in the front along the section people came to first. I put the rack with the “Dragon Gems” short fiction books in the corner, and I put the anthologies just around the corner in a group. Finally, I tried to put authors with multiple books in a row so you could see book one, book two, and book three in a series in a row. I kept a two-book wide space open in the back for a spot where authors could sign books. And placed giveaway items (cards, ribbons, stickers, etc) in the front. Each book has a colored price tag tucked in between the pages sticking up where it’s easily viewed.
A few observations…
It makes a huge difference for an author to be there. There’s almost no point in having books available from authors who aren’t at the con. And certainly it doesn’t make sense to feature their books. Speaking of which…
I think we may have too many books on display. People seemed to be daunted by the sheer number of titles: we had around 50 Water Dragon titles (spread over 2.5 tables) and more than 20 SPBU titles on one table. It was a cacophany of different authors and genres. People couldn’t decide what to focus on. And, looking at other booksellers that have shelves, we didn’t get many people that would stay to browse, perhaps because people felt self-conscious with us just standing there. Having bookshelves might really help so people can more comfortably browse. I also wonder if we might do better having more books simply spread out on the table and fewer books on bookstands: so the books on bookstands stand out more. Currently, people seem overwhelmed. I think we’d do much better to feature a handful of books: the books by authors at the con and a handful of the newest books. But the others should be much less prominently displayed: people should be able to browse them, but they shouldn’t be set up in parallel with the books we’re featuring. Ideally, they should be in bookshelves. But see below…
We’re limited by the scale of our operation. It would be great to have bookshelves, but we need everything to fit in a volunteer’s car: we don’t have a package truck to move rolling bookshelves like the other book stores. Similarly with respect to signage: it would be great to have some kind of lighted overhead sign, but with only one or two people setting up — and needing to fit everything in a regular passenger vehicle, there are limitations.
Signage: We have banners hanging from the tables. Behind the table, we have a tall standing banner and I bring the covers of two of my books printed on foam board that stand up on easels. Other places have table-top signs, computer displays, or overhead frames with lighting and signs. I think our signage is pretty good — I saw someone taking a picture of my book covers and the standing banner, which made me feel pretty good. Our banners are 8 feet long which is too long when the table is only six feet. It might be worth getting 6 foot banners which will fit better on a 6-foot table, but still look OK on an 8-foot table.
Some of the vendors use QR codes extensively. If we had signage with QR codes, it might be helpful to make it easier for people to visit our websites. At first, I put QR codes on my book covers with the links for Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher. One guy used them. But with the book covers farther back, behind the table, it didn’t seem worth it. But maybe its worth putting up more QR codes.
I almost didn’t see anyone else using visible price tags on books. I have some inkscape files with price tags at the edges of paper. I print them on colorful card stock, cut them up, and stick them in between the pages of our books. A few groups that had books laying flat on the table (like the Clarkesworld table) had some price tags laying on the covers. I remember at Rhode Island Comic Con, having price tags was really important as everyone kept asking how much stuff cost. I keep meaning to make sure I get enough of each price printed (every time I end up having to write a bunch by hand which is not difficult, but annoying). Just having different colors is good, as it adds visual interest.It would also be good to have a consistent color scheme so that the different colors of tags “mean” something. If we used colors consistently and had a key (e.g. blue for fantasy, orange for scifi, pink for romance, etc). Still, it would be hard to pigeonhole the books since it might also be nice to mark which are LGBTQIA+ and what do you do about “romantasy” and other cross-genre books?
Some groups have various giveways or raffles where people can sign up. This would be a really good idea to get people onto our mailing list. One table had a kind of gumball machine that had little plastic containers with prices — maybe on slips of paper? At Boskone, MIT press had people fill out slips of paper for a chance to win a boxed edition of a beautiful, colorful edition of a D&D book. We need something like that. Alternatively, a tablet computer where people could enter their email address directly might be good. But that might need power.
Depending on how one could set up the bookstore, it might be fun to have some seating. People might look at books longer if they had a place to sit down while browsing. That couldn’t work in some setups, but it might sometimes be possible.
Sometimes, we’ve had some kind of display on the tables. Lisa had a treasure chest once. And Jay Hartlove had a mermaid mannequin for his Mermaid Steel books. I’m not sure it always makes sense, but something that adds visual interest is always worth considering.
The most important part of running a book table is having effective pitches for the books. As people walk by the table, I usually ask people either “Would you like to be an airship pirate?” or “May I tell you about my books?” People are usually amenable to letting me make a pitch. It only works about 10% of the time. But nearly all of the sales I make are directly the result of me making a pitch. If you don’t have some kind of pitch there’s no way for someone to pick your book out from all of the others. I would pitch all of the books except most of the authors haven’t provided a pitch for me to use for their books.