Author: StevenDBrewer

Author of speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. (he/his)
Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Desktop image

With the end of the semester, I decided to update early to Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS which just became available. I wanted to give myself as much time as possible if it failed or had serious problems. But, knowing System76, I needn’t have worried. The whole process only took a short while and went very smoothly.

At first, I was bit worried when I checked the requirements. My laptop, a 2018-ish System76 Oryx (oryp3) has an NVIDIA graphics card, so I assumed I would want to use the version for NVIDIA. But that version required a 16xx card or higher. The oryp3 only has a GTX1060. Luckily there was a separate generic upgrade that supports this class of hardware.

The biggest difference is that System76 has developed a new desktop interface called COSMIC. I’ve never been particularly happy with GNOME and actually preferred the previous Unity interface quite a bit more. The main reason I wanted to update, however, was to jump to the newer LTS release of Ubuntu upon which it’s based, to make sure I’ll be able to stay current with security patches. And I didn’t want to have to update during the middle of the semester when there might be time pressure if things went south.

So far, I’ve encountered only a handful of minor differences from the previous version. Some of the utilities are different. I needed to install the third-party packages I had installed separately (e.g. Zoom and Pulsar). And some of the configuration options are slightly different. But I’ve not encountered any showstoppers. Everything just works. My audio works. The Camera works. My portrait monitor is seamlessly supported. I can put the dock where I want it. All of my apps just work, including the X-windows app (Digikam) that I run from my home server. I was even able to easily make a screenshot (see above).

Note that the wallpaper is not from COSMIC, but rather is the cover graphic from my new book A Familiar Problem — Buy your copy today! 🙂

Kudos to System76! I never fail to be impressed with the high quality of their hardware and software.

old jelly jar

As I reflect on my year of writing in 2025, it was a somewhat discouraging year. I did quite a bit of fiction writing, but almost none of it got published. I wrote 26,000 words of short fiction and did 20 submissions. Zip.

I also worked on longer fiction. I finished the 19,000 word manuscript for Ecorozire! the third novella sequel of Revin’s Heart. It’s not clear when they might ever see the light of day. I also finished a 43,000 word rough draft of my new novel The Ground Never Lies. It still needs a lot of work and fleshing out, but I haven’t managed to get to revising it.

The high point was that my first novel, A Familiar Problem finally came out. I wrote it in 2022 and it was rejected five times before being accepted for publication. I signed the contract in 2024 and the original scheduled publication date was December 2024. But it was delayed, first until January and then June. And it finally came out December 10, 2025. I had planned to use 2025 to promote it and scheduled myself to appear in conventions. But, over and over again, I was going without the new book to promote. This was rather discouraging.

I also had the discouraging interaction at Worldcon that left a rather bad taste in my mouth. I ended up having to interact with the other author again at LOSCon. If I hadn’t already made the arrangements to travel to Los Angeles, I probably would have canceled going. We got through it, but it really raised the tension — at least for me. I otherwise had a good time. I had many other positive interactions and, uncharacteristically for me, I managed to meet a lot of new people. And it was fun to unbox A Familiar Problem. Having a new book come out counts for a lot.

So, not everything this year was discouraging.

I did write a lot of blog posts — more than 80. Most are about stuff I was doing. A few were about news or writing. I wrote an Awards Eligibility post. OK. That was a little discouraging.

I also wrote an article about bookselling for SFWA Planetside that is scheduled to appear in January. I have a companion blog post that I will release at the same time.

I was re-elected to a full term as Secretary of SFWA. The difference between service last year and this year is striking. When I joined the Board, SFWA had lost essentially all of its leadership and staff. With fresh leadership, we hired new staff who hit the ground running and really engineered a transformation. The Board has been able to return to developing strategy. Whereas, last year was all frenetic activity, this year has been more relaxed. That’s not to say there haven’t been moments of controversy and high drama (like yesterday). But, no matter how bad it’s been, it’s been better than last year.

My service to the Straw Dog Writers Guild continues. I run Straw Dog Writes and serve on the program committee. I ran the online meetup nearly every week for the second — going on third — year. The regular group is small, but lively, with a mix of less frequent participants. On behalf of the program committee, I invited and hosted several talks during the year. I also served on a committee to review candidates to potentially update the website. I was excited and encouraged to draft the recommendation that was taken to the Board but, unfortunately, nothing ever came of it. Maybe that was another discouraging thing.

Wandering Shop Stories is an ongoing pleasure. We have 168 followers on Mastodon and 69 on Bluesky. Asakiyume frequently boosts and offers thoughtful comments on contributions. We’ve held genuinely enjoyable quarterly meetings aligned with the major solar events (solstices and equinoxen). And we’ve brought on one or two new curators. I write to the prompt most days, although occasionally I use snippets of works-in-progress or even bits of published works. It’s a great creative warm-up exercise in the morning. And reading the contributions by other authors and interacting with the small community that has sprung up around the project is always a treat.

I also participate in a number of other writing prompts on Mastodon and Bluesky, including #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #Writephant, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and probably others. The community of writers on Mastodon is particularly strong and supportive.

The year was also the middle half of my phased retirement. It’s weird to think I’ll teach Writing in Biology just once more this spring. I’ve been teaching this particular class since 2002 and am ready to be done. It’s been hard to keep it fresh and, honestly, seeing the end of the road ahead, I haven’t tried very hard. I realized recently that, when I fully retire in August, I will have spent 30 years — basically half my life — employed by the University. That seems like something that calls for further reflection — and should probably be the subject of its own post.

It was a slow year for me. Although I wrote a lot and submitted a lot of stories, the only work I published this year that is eligible for awards is my novel A Familiar Problem.

Brewer, S.D. 2025. A Familiar Problem. Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose. 202pp.

I had another story accepted for publication last spring, for which I’ve signed a contract, but it’s not going to appear until sometime in 2026.

cover for A Familiar Problem

On December 10, 2025, A Familiar Problem is finally available for purchase. It’s been a long, weird road to publication. But I’m very grateful it is finally available and I hope people enjoy it.

In May, 2022, I had an idea for a story. I sketched out a rough outline and then, in just a couple of hours, wrote the first chapter. It was a simple idea: A young man who is supposed to get his magical familiar, instead is captured as the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up to enter him in an illegal familiar-fighting contest.

Over May and June, I wrote the rest of the novel. With a rough draft, I passed it it along to my beta readers. They offered a lot of helpful comments about story structure and pacing.

I had an epiphany while revising. I had originally drafted the story to end at a particular point when the main conflict of the story was resolved. But, while I was revising, I kept thinking of fun, funny things that the characters could do after the end. Eventually, I realized that, as I was the author, I could just keep writing more. In the end I wrote two more fun-filled chapters and created a far more satisfying ending.

During July, I fleshed out the rough draft: I added richer descriptions and worked to make sure that the timeline was consistent. My records indicate I submitted the manuscript for the first time on August 1st. I got five rejections before it caught the attention of an editor and was accepted for publication.

It’s a somewhat strange book. Like all of my writing, it doesn’t fit cleanly into a single genre I had tried to pitch it to one publisher as a “cozy fantasy.” They rejected it saying

We were concerned about the overt themes of sexual abuse and sexual coercion. […] While we recognise that abuse can be a theme in cosy fantasy, a synopsis whereby the protagonist ultimately marries into their abusive situation is more fitting for dark fantasy than cosy.

Currently, I’m calling it a “cozy, dark fantasy.” It does have dark elements but, overall, it’s a story about a young man who discovers that it can be better to want what you have than to have what you want. It’s also about finding the middle way when presented with a seemingly binary choice.

I was super excited to have my first novel published. I scheduled myself to hit the convention circuit during 2025 to promote the book. Then the problems started.

The book was originally scheduled to be released in December 2024. But the release date got pushed back to mid-January ― after Arisia. Then the cover artist artist got sick. Boskone happened. Then the editor ended up in the hospital. The book wasn’t available for Watch City. Or the Nebulas. Or Readercon. Or Worldcon. Finally, in late August, the book production began moving again.

I had hoped it would available for the Northampton Book Festival. Or LOSCon. And, finally, on the morning of the last day of LOSCon, I was able to actually put my hands on a paper copy of the book.

On December 10, 2025, A Familiar Problem hits shelves. Or would, if any brick-and-mortar stores were carrying it. But you can find it online at all of the major book sellers. I hope you’ll buy a copy.

My wife saw a poster in a local restaurant advertising yet another writing group in the Pioneer Valley which I hadn’t heard of: The Western Mass Writers Guild. I poked around their website and saw they had a Discord Link, so I joined it. And then I saw they had a meeting scheduled for today: Support and Accountability for Novel Editing (the first Saturday of each month at 3:30pm at the Forbes Library in Northampton), so I decided to give it a try.

I had seen that several of the regulars were unable to attend, so I wasn’t sure if anyone was coming. But after a few minutes one person showed up, and then another. Two of us were new, but one was familiar with the organization and could give us some background.

The organization began as the Western Mass regional group for NaNoWriMo. But, after the collapse of that organization, they decided to reorganize as the Western Mass Writers Guild. Originally, they were primarily focused on novel writing in November.

They’re mostly a quiet working group: a little socializing and mostly just working on writing together. They don’t do readings or critiques, as a rule, but people can self organize relationships with members if they want to form critique groups.

Most of the activity is on the Discord. There are a number of channels where people can ask questions. They also have a channel where people share useful links to resources.

I stayed for a bit more than an hour and got to show a copy of my new book (A Familiar Problem). Then, I needed to leave. But I will probably attend again, sometime.

With an hour to kill at LAX on my way home from LOSCon, I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect on the experience. It was generally good: my travel arrangements went well (at least so far) and the accommodations were satisfactory. And in spite of a family member coming down with a cold before I left, I did not become symptomatic during the convention. We’ll have to wait to see whether I managed to dodge the bullet again after I get home.

I had a light schedule this time, with three panels in total, one for each day of the convention.

I was a participant for the first: Biology in Science Fiction and Real Space moderated by Jane Shevtsov. She did a presentation just before the panel which gave me an opportunity to learn more about her. She hadn’t contacted us beforehand, so we didn’t have any sense for how the panel would be organized. But it went reasonably well and I was able to think fast enough on my feet to feel like I made reasonable contributions.

I was the moderator for my second panel: Poetry and Songs in Speculative Fiction. This was a panel I had proposed. I had noticed the one of the participants was on my previous panel, so I made a point of introducing myself. The other two were on another a poetry panel the previous day, so I attended that one to hear them speak and, again, to introduce myself.

There were a couple of disappointing outcomes. The venue was half of a room separated with a divider and the session on the other side was extremely noisy. The con staff made some attempt to ameliorate the noise, but it was still pretty bad. The attendance was also quite poor. The poetry panel on the previous day had also been poorly attended, so I wasn’t surprised. But it was still disappointing.

I had forwarded to them a set of questions the previous week:

Please introduce yourself and, since we mentioned Tolkien in the panel description, was there a poem (among the ~60 or so) in the Hobbit or Trilogy (or elsewhere) that particularly resonated with you and why?

Poetry and meter were probably memory aids for stories in an oral tradition that carried over to the earliest written stories, cough, Gilgamesh. What other reasons do authors use poetry?

Songs present unique difficulties to represent on the printed page. What are some of the challenges to using poetry and songs in fiction? What are some ways it can fail or miss the mark?

Do you write poetry and songs yourself to include in your fiction? would you like to share some?

Movies provide a more natural medium for including music and song. How do their uses differ from printed fiction.

If we haven’t mentioned KPop Demon Hunters yet, what were particularly effective — even revolutionary — uses of song in that movie?

What are other authors and stories that use poetry and song particularly effectively?

They each brought interesting and unique perspectives on the questions. I was surprised that one of the participants had never read The Hobbit or Trilogy. And two of them had not seen KPop Demon Hunters. I was really surprised by that. But we had a good discussion about the topic and I learned a lot.

The last panel I served on was Developing a Creative Habit. This was a great panel. By this point, I had seen all of the participants and so I had a pretty good sense for how the panel would go. My main objective was to present myself as the anti-habit. Although I’m pretty settled in terms of my daily schedule, I’ve learned from long experience that my productivity is extremely variable. I used to stress about it and wanted to encourage others to not worry about it. I described my approach which is to have multiple projects and just write whatever I want whenever I feel like it — or not. This earned the comment, “You, sir, are a weirdo” by M. Todd Gallowglas, which I warmly accepted in the spirit in which it was intended. I also managed to mention Structured Procrastination and Philip’s essay about being routinely creative. And a lot more.

I balanced the rest of my time between other panels and working at my publisher’s table in the Dealer Room. Sales were rather poor — and not just with us. All of the other dealers seemed pretty disappointed by sales.

I was excited to finally get to put my hands on some copies of my long-delayed book A Familiar Problem. It didn’t arrive until Saturday evening, so I could only try to sell them on Sunday. By the time the Dealer Room closed, I hadn’t sold one. That’s how it goes sometimes.

I had several hours between when we finished load out and time for my flight. I decided to leave the hotel and spend most of the time in the airport. I’m kind of glad I did because the traffic to get the one mile to the airport from the hotel was miserable and it took almost an hour. Then, going through security, they had to call over some specialist to check the personal oxygen concentrator I need to fly. That took another half hour. But I got through fine and had more than an hour to spare.

And I’ve finished this post at 10pm with just a few minutes before boarding. Ojalá, I will be back home tomorrow before noon.

hotel plan showing pool and three gardens: California, Japanese, and Spanish.

When I checked into the hotel for LOSCon, I noticed that there were four courtyard gardens on the floor where my room was. In fact, the room had a sliding-glass door that opened into the one where the pool was located. But the others looked interesting — in particular the Japanese garden. Japanese gardens are a particular passion of mine. The first night, I was exhausted from 14 hours of travel, so I only visited the pool (well, actually the hot tub), but when I went to peek into the “California” garden, I noticed the sign in the hallway now called it the Malibu Garden.

I wondered what that might bode…

This morning, I finally around to visiting the other two. They have been similarly renamed. What used to be the Spanish Garden is now the Pasadena Garden. And the Japanese Garden is now the Hollywood Garden.

plaza and planters
Plaza and planters in Pasadena Garden
planters with cycads and flowering shrub.
Planter with cycads and flowering shrub in Pasadena Garden
Astroturf for dogs
Area for dogs to relieve themselves in Hollywood Garden.

Discouragingly, they were all generically similar. They had large open areas with planters and tables with ashtrays. And trashcans with ashtrays. They seemed to be intended mostly to be a place for smokers. They’re not unattractive, but I was disappointed to not have any defining characteristics to distinguish them.

My disappointment was mostly just due to seeing the original names and imaging that they might once have been differentiated thematically. Well, with one exception.

What used to be the Japanese garden is now the place where they’ve sited an area for dogs to relieve themselves. When I first spotted it, I wondered if maybe it was a putting green or something. But then I saw the post with the bags for dog poop. And, if that wasn’t enough of a giveaway, there was actually some dog poop that a dog owner had not picked up.

I debated whether it was more offensive to turn a Japanese garden into a dog park. Or to use the Hollywood garden for that purpose.

Still, it is nice to have a place for the doggies to do their business, rather than to make them go all the way down to the street.

name tag and lanyard

Back in July, I pitched a panel for LOSCon. It turns out that my panel was accepted! On Saturday, I will moderate a group of panelists to discuss Poetry and Songs in Speculative Fiction. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve got some idea for questions. I reached out to the panelists, but haven’t gotten much back yet. I think it will be easy to talk almost endlessly about the theme. It’s a fascinating topic.

On Friday, I will be a panelist discussing Biology in Science Fiction and Real Space. I was nicely prepped for this one by the recent presentation on Worldbuilding 101 by James Cambias. And, of course, if you stick a microphone in front of me to talk about biology, I can babble endlessly.

On Sunday, Developing a Creative Habit. This is kind of a funny topic for me, since my pitch is really the anti-habit. I wanted to talk about how, while many authors love to develop a habit to be productive, I would rather just let my creativity happen randomly. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.

My publisher is going to have a table in the dealer room. My new book, A Familiar Problem, is scheduled to come out Dec 9, 2025 — too late for the convention. But there’s a chance a few copies will arrive in time. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

I usually suck at meeting people at conventions. But I’m going to make a particular effort to meet people involved with organizing the coming Worldcon in Los Angeles. Or, rather, Anaheim. Wish me luck!

Authors at the Straw Dog table at the Northampton Book Arts Fair

The Straw Dog Writers Guild arranged a table at the Northampton Antiquarian Book, Ephemera, and Book Arts Fair where authors could sell and sign books. I attended and had a two-hour shift at the Straw Dog table. Although I didn’t sell any books, I met some new people, reconnected with others, and had a great time.

The event was held at the Northampton Center for the Arts. It’s a fantastic building with many interesting spaces. The Straw Dog table was right in front of a counter that would have been great as a bar for a reception. Unfortunately they weren’t serving.

Most of the vendors were dealers in antiquarian and rare books, but there were a few literary organizations and specialty presses. As a group of current authors, Straw Dog was not a particularly good fit and few of the visitors seemed that interested in current work. It reminded me a bit of Boskone, where many attendees want to see books by Heinlein and Asimov, rather than new authors they’ve never heard of. And, at this event, what they really wanted were signed first editions.

I arrived very early, in hopes of getting a parking space and was rewarded by getting the very last one. I suspect that not arranging for vendors to be able to unload and park at a distance to let attendees use the limited parking probably limited the number of visitors a lot. But, at least, I didn’t have to schlep my books a vast distance when it came time for my shift.

I used the two hours before my shift started to wander through the whole space and see everything. There was a lot of really cool stuff. I love old books. The fact of the matter is, however, that I would be a very poor caretaker of them, so I never buy anything like that for myself. But it’s fun to look.

In addition to books, there were other interesting things. One artist had a book made with interesting handmade papers. There were various kinds of manuscripts (old property deeds and log books). One was printing with old type that had been recovered by the Yiddish Book Center. It was all fascinating.

Bookselling at the Book Fair

When my shift started, I set up my books. I only brought a few copies, since I wasn’t expecting strong sales. But I also had a sign-up sheet for my mailing list; and cards to give away for myself, A Familiar Problem, and my proposed Amherst Book Festival. Plus some Airship Pirate stickers.

I spent the most time talking to the author next to me at the table. She was easy to talk to and we swapped stories while we waited for people to stop by. We would trade off talking to people that expressed interest in our books. I ended up buying a copy of the book she was promoting, Jingle These Bells, an inclusive holiday-themed romance anthology. Her story sounded fun.

I was pleased when Andrea Hairston came by the table. She let me pitch my books to her and expressed enthusiasm. We had served together on a panel at WriteAngles and I had seen recently that she has been selected as the speculative fiction instructor for the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices this year. I mentioned that I had applied for the retreat last year, but was not selected. She warmly encouraged me to apply again this year, so I probably will.

In the end, I didn’t make any sales. But the time spent meeting and reconnecting with people was well worth it.

distorted image of girl's face

Jennifer Weiner, writing for the New York Times, describes a glaring omission in the coverage of the Epstein files. Her point is that most of the coverage has little or nothing about the victims.

[…] we’ve heard endless details about the predators and the men in their social circle, we have heard far too little about — and from — the victims.

There’s another omission, however, that I haven’t seen anyone talk about, which is the economic inequality that leaves women vulnerable to becoming victims of sex trafficking. Why is no-one talking about that?

The young women who get roped into sex trafficking do so largely for prosaic reasons: usually money. The 17-year-old girl who had sex with Matt Gaetz did so for money to pay for orthodontic work. If we had an effective social safety net and universal health care, young women would not be nearly at the risk for falling victim to these kinds of nefarious schemes.

Make no mistake: the wealthy pursue the policies they do in part in order to have a large population of vulnerable people that can be exploited. It makes no sense to pursue justice against particular perpetrators without pursuing the larger goal of fixing the conditions that lead people to become victimized.

Unfortunately, that’s not a story that the media, which is mostly owned by the same wealthy people, is ever likely to report.