Author: StevenDBrewer

Author of speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. (he/his)
icon for wss366

On November 1, 2024, the curators of Wandering Shop Stories met up via Zoom for the first time. We had, in fact, cast a wider invitation, but we were the only ones who came. We had a good discussion.

We spent a bit of time just meeting one another (some of us for the first time) and talking about writing in general. But we quickly turned to Wandering Shop Stories. I spent a little time just reviewing the history of how wss366 came to be and contrasting it with vss365, which had been the inspiration.

All of us are very satisfied with how the project is working. We talked a bit about choosing prompts. We agreed that our current practice of choosing ordinary words that have multiple meanings gave us the most satisfactory results. We debated the importance of avoiding repeats (probably worth doing, but not always worth the time or effort).

Our initial impetus had been to discuss how we approach writing our story fragments. Each of us approaches it somewhat differently and it was fascinating to hear the various strategies.

Finally, I was able to announce that wandering.shop had approved allowing us to migrate from botsin.space that recently announced they were shutting down. I had originally chosen botsin.space because they welcomed bots and I sorta kinda personally knew the guy that was running. He had recently come to the conclusion that he needed to either substantially gear up to support the increased demand or shut down. He decided he really didn’t want to make the commitment to run the service, so he announced it would shutdown in mid-December. I approached the staff at wandering.shop and, after some discussion, they established a set of rules for allowing bots (from known members in good standing under defined conditions).

On November 3, I reviewed the documentation and made the necessary changes to migrate the bot. I was reminded of how straightforward it is to work with Mastodon as compared with when I did set up bots for birdchan and Discord. It only took me a a couple of hours to create a new account, configure it to receive the posts from my script, update the script, test, and then trigger the migration of followers from the old to the new account. It went about as smoothly as could be imagined.

We hope to have more meetings periodically. Perhaps we can have the next one between the holidays to talk about getting ready for the new year.

This semester, my writing students are studying lichens. Mostly not by choice, but because every semester I try to pick a different theme for my students to study and this semester seemed like a lichen kind of semester. To be fair, the students have been good sports, gamely looking at lichens and thinking deeply about how to study them.

On campus, there are lichens pretty much everywhere: on trees, rocks, buildings, light poles, benches, etc. But mostly not on the ground. Lichens get excluded anyplace where plants can grow well, so you generally only see them on very poor soil. But there are a few places in the region like that. One of them is the Montague Plains.

The Montague Plains are a delta where water from the glaciers flowed into glacial Lake Hitchcock during the last ice age. When a stream flows into a body of water, it creates a triangular (delta) shaped structure with sorted sediments: the gravel drops out first and then the sand. The silt stays suspended, but settles out on lake bed during the winter, producing varved clays. So most of the the delta is just sandy. Very sandy soil is tough for plants to grow on. It tends to be very well drained (i.e. dry) and there’s little organic matter, so few nutrients. And nothing for fungi to grow on, so few mycorrhizal relationships to help plants.

Few plants grow there. Some sparse grasses and trees, mostly pitch pine and scrub oak. Moreover, there tend be frequent fires, which end up burning off most of the organic material that might otherwise accumulate in the soil. So this is a recipe for lichens to grow. You have to look under the grass, leaves, and pine needles to find them, but they’re there.

It’s probably too far for any of the students groups to study there this semester. But I thought I’d stop by to take a few pictures to share with them anyway. Moreover, I always like visiting places with interesting geomorphology and botany to help me write fiction.

On October 23, 2024, I was elected Secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Thank you to everyone who supported my candidacy! I learned I had won from the Interim President (who will be Vice President going forward) who met with me via Zoom.

We had a good conversation. We discussed the expectations of the Secretary and a number of the upcoming activities: the business meeting and current thinking about how to organize the Nebulas.

He commented that I had received a very respectable number of votes — a surprisingly good showing for a write in candidate. I was gratified that my efforts of outreach — drafting a post to introduce myself, making postings in the SFWA Discord and Forum, and attending a SFWA Writing Date — were effective at introducing myself to the membership.

SFWA is currently facing a number of challenges. There have been a significant number of staff and officer resignations. And most recently, a newly elected board member had to be removed for cause. But it appears to me that the fundamentals of the organization are strong. I am hopeful that with new leadership, we can restore the organization to smooth operation.

My term is scheduled to begin on November 1, 2024 and will run through June 30, 2025 (since I am completing the term of the former officer). That should be plenty of time for me to determine whether I am a good fit and should continue in the role. I have typically enjoyed serving as Secretary: it’s work that I’m generally good at and allows me to play to my strengths. I look forward to meeting the rest of the board and getting to work!

Many years ago, when NaNoWriMo was new, I tried to participate. It didn’t go well. But this year, we’re calling it Writing Month.

November has always one of my busiest months. In my writing course, students are finishing their proposals and then launching their research projects. When I was BCRC Director, I found that there was also a bit uptick with people who were supposed to have started something at the beginning of the semester but now, since the end was in sight, were desperately trying to do something. And, there were always a few proactive people already thinking about next semester. It was always a busy time. Too busy to take on other commitments.

But, now, I’m semi-retired! I’m only teaching the one class (and doing my various other service obligations).

Furthermore, I have a new manuscript I’m working on: The Ground Never Lies. I’ve had this idea for a couple of years about a geomancer with an anger problem (who thinks of herself as unlovable) who gets involved with, and then has to rescue, a naive young woman who idolizes her. I wrote a pilot but couldn’t quite decide whether to leave it a short story or expand it into a novel. I have now completed the outline for a novel and am ready to start cranking on it.

The problem, however, is that NaNoWriMo has become toxic in the writing community. Several years ago, it was revealed that the organization was not responding effectively to complaints and evidence that some predators were using the organization as a means to groom and make unwanted sexual advances to young people. And, this year, they received an infusion of money from a company that builds generative AI tools and they issued a tone-deaf statement that ambiguously supported using generative AI for writing. For these reasons, a number of people have decided to abandon involvement in NaNoWriMo.

That said, many people are interested in trying to write during November. It’s a dark time (literally, due to the axial tilt of the Earth) and a lot of people need something to help them keep going. So one guy created a new website called Writing Month. I’ve signed up and will use it to track my writing. Will I succeed in writing 50,000 words in a month? I don’t know — and don’t really care. But I do want to write this novel before January and this seems like a useful vehicle to help provide some discipline.

Steven D. Brewer

Upon the withdrawal of the only announced candidate, I volunteer to serve as Secretary for the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers Association in the Special Election. But as the deadline for new candidates has passed, my candidacy can only be as a write-in. If you write me in for Secretary I will serve. Read on to learn more about me as a candidate.

I believe I am eligible to be a candidate. I am a full member and I have been a member in good standing for more than two years. I have an internet connection. And I am not and have never been an employee of SFWA.

I am currently beginning a two-year phased retirement from my career in higher education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I currently teach scientific writing half-time and serve as Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate. (That means I’m the guy that chairs the meetings.) At the end of academic year 2025-2026, I will be fully retired.

I have a long history of service. At the university, I have served on many boards, councils, and committees and in many officer roles, including secretary. Outside of the university, I have been the secretary of two non-profits that are of similar size to SFWA, at least in terms of budget: The Esperanto League for North American (DBA Esperanto-USA, where I also served a term as vice-president and 8 years as webmaster) and Amherst Community Television (DBA Amherst Media, where I served a term as secretary and two terms as president). I have also served for a number of years on the organizing committee for a regional technology conference: the Western Mass Drupal Camp which evolved into the New England Regional Developers (NERD) Summit.

As an author, I’ve had several short stories published in anthologies, but have also published two books with Water Dragon Publishing. One is Revin’s Heart, a steampunky fantasy adventure with pirates and airships and a trans protagonist which was serialized in seven novelettes and came out as a fix-up published January 2024. I’ve also published Better Angels: Tour de Force, an anthology of fluffy, military, space-opera short stories for the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy (a shared-world anthology) about a group of non-human biological androids that look like pre-teen girls who serve as magical-girl, singing-and-dancing idols, but who can change up their programming and become a covert military force. My forthcoming book, A Familiar Problem (due in January 2025) is a dark, cozy fantasy about a young man who desperately wants a strong magical familiar but who, instead, is captured and made the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up for something. But what?

I also speak Esperanto and, before I began publishing in English, I had several speculative fiction stories, haibun, and essays published in Esperanto, some of which won awards in the international Belarta Konsurso. I also self-published four chapbooks of Esperanto haiku, which you can still find and purchase via Amazon.

I hope you’ll consider writing me in for Secretary in the SFWA Special Election.

One year ago this week, I ran the first session of Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. And we’ve met basically every week since. I’m satisfied that it’s been time well spent. (It was also the week when my son’s boxer puppy, Tanuki, pictured above, came home for the first time.)

Two years ago, I helped the Program Committee conduct a survey of the membership to assess whether there were unmet needs among the community. One of the needs we identified was that members were looking for more opportunities to socialize and write together. There were also a substantial number of members who lived too far away, had health issues, or didn’t want to drive in the dark during the winter, that were interested in more opportunities for remote interaction.

I proposed Straw Dog Writes modeled on the SFWA “Writing Date”, which meets weekly via Zoom to socialize for 15 minutes, write for 45, then repeat. With the support of the Program Committee, I worked with the organization to set up the resources and agreed to coordinate and run the program.

In the past year, more than 50 people have attended at least once. During the winter, usually there were usually four or five participants ― occasionally as many as ten. Attendance was understandably lower during the summer. About half were pre-existing members and another half were new members who joined to participate. Participants tended to be evenly divided among writing fiction, poetry, and memoirs. One current participant is working on a graphic novel.

I tried to persuade the administrative assistant to create a webpage to advertise the program, but she refused, saying that she thought the website had “too many pages” already. That was a significant disappointment to me, as it made doing publicity significantly more difficult, since there’s no landing page — just individual calendar entries. That’s why there’s no link to the program on this page: there’s no place to link to.

I had originally hoped to recruit guest hosts to actually run the sessions, in part because it might be a useful hook to draw more participants. I did get a few members of the Program Committee to guest host and it was fun. I reached out to a woman who coordinates one of the other regional writing groups that offers paid consulting to see if maybe their instructors/consultants would like the opportunity to promote their programming to my participants. But she didn’t seem interested. Maybe I can do a better job of finding more guest hosts this year.

Most people who attend indicate they get a fair amount of writing done. I know I do. When I’m writing, I usually get more than a thousand words written. Once I got nearly 2000 words and one of these days I hope to reach it. But I sometimes use the time for outlining or revising, rather than just writing. (And occasionally even grading.) In any case, I’m happy to keep doing it just for myself, if no-one else. But everyone’s welcome. Join me!

sunrise over Orchard Hill

I submitted five pictures to the Head in the Clouds Amherst 2025 wall calendar and one was selected for April! This picture was taken just across the street from where I live, at the edge of the UMass Amherst campus looking toward Orchard Hill at sunrise. The picture was actually taken on December 15. My original caption was, “This photo shows the southern-most point of the ecliptic, when the sun appears to rise behind Orchard Hill. The hill causes our winter sunrise to be an hour later than local sunrise.” Since they wanted to use the photo for April, I instead proposed using a haiku from my 2013 chapbook senokulvitre about sakura buds. You can purchase copies of the calendar for $22.

Many years ago, I got interested in photography. For a brief time, I dreamed of being a wildlife photographer. Using a 35mm single-lens reflex camera, I tried taking lots of pictures using Kodachrome and got some really nice pictures. But relatively quickly, I discovered the difference between an amateur photographer and one who can take professional, magazine-cover-quality photos. I might walk by a field, spot a deer in the field, and get a great picture. But a professional would say, “This picture is OK, but the weather is all wrong.” So they’d come back day after day until the weather was just right and then say, “The lighting is wrong at this time of year.” Then they’d come back year after year until the weather and lighting were perfect, get an even better picture, and then say, “Now the deer needs to be facing the other direction.” I had no-where near the level of patience and persistence to get cover-quality picture photos. That said, I learned a lot about photography and composition.

I still like to take pictures — especially now that, with a digital workflow, you can take as many pictures as you want. Working with Kodachrome was very limiting: you needed to use a tripod (because the films were very slow), the film was expensive, the processing was even more expensive, and then getting a photo printed was even more expensive.

I really liked the other pictures I had submitted as well, so here they are.

This was where the playground of my children’s elementary school was, before the town short-sightedly closed it down.

This is the millpond in Easthampton. I liked the reflections in the water.

This sunken road is on the way to Hawley Bog.

This abandoned trolley line is in the Arcadia Wildlife Refuge in Easthampton.

I’ll never be a professional photographer, but its still fun to take pictures.

I used to love to write in cafes or libraries or other public places. But after I was hospitalized during the pandemic, I could no longer go into public places where people are unmasked. So, for a long time, that meant staying in my office.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my office! I have a big laptop with a portrait monitor and a fridge that’s usually well stocked with cold water bottles and beer. It’s located in the basement of my house and is quiet when I want it to be quiet — but I also have big speakers I can turn on when I want to listen to kpop or jpop. And I have poster boards with the covers of my books which make a nice background when I’m in Zoom for class or Faculty Senate or Straw Dog Writes or whatever else I do.

In the past, when I was working full time, I was in my office for many of my waking hours. But this semester, I have started my new phased retirement. This means, that I don’t need to spent nearly as much time running class or having consultations with students.

During the winter, my office used to get pretty cold. I used to have to wear a sweater or fleece and use fingerless gloves to type. But, about a year ago, we got insulation installed in the basement that keeps the temperature nearly always in the 60s — very comfortable during summer or winter.

For a long time, we’ve had a little tent gazebo set up in the front yard. We used to have an old, weird picnic table under it, which was OK. But not really very comfortable. So I proposed getting more comfortable furniture. My wife, always practical, pointed out that, to do that, we’d need to have a patio for the furniture to sit on. So, this spring, we arranged to have a patio installed. And then I ordered the furniture and set it up.

It is glorious. Now, whenever the weather is nice, this is where you’ll find me writing. It’s not exactly quiet, as there is a busy road behind the arbor vitae. And sometimes the sun shines on my laptop screen. But I love it. It provides a nice environment for being able to write that is comfortable. I appreciate the fresh air and quiet stimulation of having people walk by on the sidewalk. And seeing the neighborhood children waiting for the school bus.

It’s also a nice place for me to meet with people. Due to my health issues, I can’t meet people in cafes or bars or restaurants anymore (although beergardens are OK) so it’s wonderful to have a comfortable place where people can come to hang out with me. It’s also a great place to have a beer or cocktail with friends.

It’s a bit of work to watch the weather and cover everything up whenever rain threatens. And, eventually, I’ll have to figure out what to do for the winter. I plan to move the cushions indoors and then cover up the furniture. Winters are long in New England and so I’m sure I’ll be looking out longingly all winter waiting for spring.

But, at least now — for the fall, while the weather is nice — this is where you can find me. Writing.

I’ve realized over the past couple of years that my writing has been significantly influenced by reading manga. I’ve been tracking upwards of a thousand manga and, therefore, have read tens of thousands of chapters of manga over the past 10 years.

Manga are a somewhat guilty pleasure for me. Undoubtedly part of the reason I like them is that in Japan there is much less pressure against cultural appropriation and male-gaze fan service. I particularly enjoy seeing Western culture appropriated and viewed through a Japanese cultural lens. It’s fascinating to see how holidays (like Christmas and Valentines day) or even the use of English language gets re-presented. And manga are well known for drawing females with exaggerated “charms.” But I also appreciate a number of uniquely Japanese perspectives that are fascinating from a Western perspective.

Japanese characters are allowed to have flaws that would never be permitted in the West. In Naruto, for example, the three legendary sannin are Jiraya (the “pervy sage” who lusts after young girls), Tsunade (a drunkard and inveterate gambler), and Orochimaru (who becomes a literal villain pursuing life extension through medical experimentation on prisoners). The characters are actually drawn from Japanese folklore and embellished in the manga.

There are a bunch of story structures that are so common as to be tropes in manga that are totally unfamiliar in the west. One of the currently most-well-known is the isekai, where the protagonist dies in the first chapter (often stereotypically struck and killed by “truck-kun”) and is reincarnated in some fantastic other universe with their memories and knowledge intact. Another is the “otome game” where the protagonist becomes a player in a visual dating simulation that typically involves a “heroine” that needs to match with a handsome prince while being tormented by a “villianess”. And there are vast number of romance (“shojo“) stories and “slice-of-life” stories, often revolving around food, cafes, and onsens (hot spring resorts).

I can see a vast number of influences on my fiction are derived from manga. I really like episodic and serialized fiction. Both Revin’s Heart and Lady Cecelia’s Journey are written in novelette length episodes that each have a unique story arc, but play a role in a larger, overarching story. The short stories of Better Angels: Tour de Force are similarly episodic in nature.

Some of the character types I enjoy in manga demonstrate “gap moe” which is when a character has two personality traits that are in opposition to each other. The classic example is the tsundere: a character who seems aloof or distant but who is actually very sweet or vulnerable and is covering it up with a harsh exterior. Another tropish example is character who looks like a delinquent, but is actually a good guy (or girl) with a rough exterior. This was my inspiration for the Better Angels who look and act like pre-teen girls, but with different programming modules, can act like singing-and-dancing idols or ruthless killers.

Reading manga as I do has probably detracted significantly from the time I used to spend reading fiction. I should try to spend more time staying current with Western fiction. But though it makes me feel guilty, I like really manga: they’re a window into a different cultural experience that I don’t get from reading most fiction published in the West.

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.