Category: writing

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!

Since 2002, I have been teaching the course Writing in Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Every major is obligated to offer a course of writing in their discipline for juniors. Different instructors are offered broad latitude to teach the course as they want. But my focus has always been on scientific writing.

Most students come into the course having recently taken a creative writing class, the Writing Program’s College Writing course. Most of them believe the they already know how to write well and are skeptical that my course is going to teach them anything. Frequently they’re surprised. I describe my course as “Uncreative Writing.”

By their junior year in college, most students have written a vast number of review papers. And I’ve found that if students have sources to draw from, they can write amazingly well — especially with the spell-check and grammar-check that modern word processors offer (provided they use them which, sadly, not all students do.) But in my course, I invite them to do projects where they have to describe their own actions scientifically. And, all of a sudden, they don’t have models for the language they need to write. When that happens, you hear *their* voice. And it’s not scientific at all. That’s what I want them to work on.

I found an excellent resource many years ago that I use to help support them learning the characteristics of scientific discourse. Talking Science, by Jay Lemke, is actually a study of the semiotics of science classrooms. On page 133 is a list of stylistic norms of scientific language: Be verbally explicit and universal. Avoid colloquial forms of language. Use technical terms. Avoid personification. Avoid metaphorical and figurative language. Be serious and dignified. Avoid personalities and references to individuals. Avoid reference to fiction or fantasy. Use causal forms of explanation and avoid narrative and dramatic accounts.” Lemke comments this is a recipe for “dull, alienating language”. In fact, the chapter of the book is actually about constructing educational environments that could demystify science and reduce dependance these norms. But I provide them to my students as a set of heuristics, or hacks, to help their writing pass muster with other scientists.

By the end of the course, many students tell me how surprised they are to have learned so much. And, after the course, I’ve had students tell me in subsequent years how what they learned has helped them get better grades and prepare them for work in science. One student told me he had a “love/hate relationship” with my class: he hated it because it made him do something difficult that he could tell he wasn’t good at, but — at the same time — he recognized the importance of improving his abilities.

I will get to teach this class four more times before I retire and wrap up my career.

Being an author has ups and downs. It’s a constant rollercoaster. When you submit manuscripts you get acceptances and rejections. The same when you apply to present at conventions. Or apply for grants. You can torment yourself by watching the book scan sales numbers. Or Amazon ranking. Or reviews at Goodreads (and elsewhere).

When good things happen, it’s wonderful. Getting a manuscript accepted is a great feeling.

When bad things happen, you just have to grit your teeth and go on.

But sometimes you have a long run of bad luck. It can get very discouraging when everything seems to get rejected or turned down. When that happens, you question what you’re even doing. Why keep trying? Why bother? Why not just do something else.

I got to see John Hodgman perform in Northampton a few years ago. This was around the time he was promoting Vacationland. One of the themes was the ineffable quality of celebrity. People kept asking him how he became a celebrity, as if there was some secret or recipe. He said he spent a lot of time trying to figure out why *this* thing had gone viral whereas all these other things he’d been doing before or after did not. Eventually, he decided there wasn’t any difference. It was just luck or happenstance. But, even though you couldn’t predict what might lead to success, it was clear that the only way to be sure to fail was to not keep doing your art. It could only happen if you were making stuff and putting it out there.

So, even when I’m down. Even when I feel like nothing is getting traction. Even when I feel like there’s no point. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and soldiering on. And maybe — just maybe — one of the things I write will find an audience and lead to greater things. Maybe.

Twenty-eight years ago, I joined the Biology Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As a freshly-minted PhD in Science Education, I was hired to the direct the Biology Computer Resource Center (BCRC) — a small computer lab that was both a computer classroom and drop-in space for undergraduates.

I really enjoyed the educational and technical work I did for the Department and University. The Internet was new and we built a lot of interesting and innovative educational resources. When I was hired, I had no formal teaching responsibilities, but over time I developed a number of face-to-face and online classes which offered unique learning opportunities for students.

During the pandemic, the Department closed the BCRC and my job responsibilities became solely teaching. When I was no longer obligated to spend all of my summers, breaks, and intersessions maintaining computer systems, I decided to repurpose that time for writing fiction. Since then, I’ve published several short stories and two books of fiction. And written a number more that are, as yet, unpublished.

Last year, after a long stay in the local hospital, I was diagnosed with a chronic lung condition that makes it likely I will become very ill from any respiratory infections. I’ve been working remotely since then, and I’m so grateful that the University has provided this accommodation that has allowed me to continue working. But remote work is isolating and difficult. And I’d also like to have even more time for writing fiction.

This evening, I was notified that my application to do a phased retirement over the next two years has been approved. Beginning in Fall 2024, I will teach only half time for two academic years and then fully retire. I’m looking forward to making a gradual transition into retirement and being able to devote myself more to my new creative endeavors.

Early in my fiction writing, I really struggled with writing “stories.” By that, I mean using a narrative structure that presents a problem which is satisfactorily resolved — ideally well-paced, with rising action that climaxes at the right moment. I tended to write a rambling narrative of vaguely interesting events that raised all kinds of problems but did not resolve them satisfactorily.

Sometime — perhaps in early 2022, which is the first example I can find without visiting birdchan — I discovered #vss365: a hashtag prompt for which participants were encouraged to write a very short story (vss) that would be offered each day of the year (365) contained in a single, brief post. Baring my soul, typo and all, here is the first one I have recorded, from Feb 11, 2022:

She visited the garden center when she was depressed. The flowers didn’t cheer her up, exactly, but they helped her remember that better times might come. The annuals were too gaudy for her. She always loved tge reliability of the #perennial that would keep blooming in the years to come. Now that was something to live for.

It’s a story! She’s depressed. She visits the garden center. The perennials give her something to live for.

I found writing a brief post was something I could do, even during the academic year when I was working full time. It reminds me a bit of when I started writing haiku in Esperanto while I was a grad student and no longer had time for anything more. But it was enough.

I enjoyed #vss365 and I have hundreds of examples of brief story fragments I wrote. Some served as the nucleus of a story. And some I would string together, writing a whole rough draft one bit at a time.

But then a narcissistic billionaire purchased birdchan, turned it into a Nazi bar, and I couldn’t bear to visit the Nazi bar anymore to get the prompts. But someone had created a website that would scrape the prompt and share it on the open web. So I started participating even though I had jumped to Mastodon (first to mastodon.lol and then to wandering.shop). But then the site shut down: they where having to pay the narcissistic billionaire money to scrape a single word each day from birdchan. And he finally, perfectly sensibly, decided to quit paying.

So I wrote my last two posts on Dec 31, 2023 and commented that I wouldn’t be participating anymore. A friend, @asakiyume, suggested that we could start our own prompt game on Mastodon. I roped my brother, @philipbrewer into the conversation and we agreed to pick some words, favoring simple ordinary words with more than one meaning. (I had found it annoying to have words that had only a single meaning as being overly restrictive of the kind of post you could write.)

But then Phil suggested that maybe we should create an account to be an authoritative source for the prompt. As I thought about it, I realized that we also wanted a bot: something that didn’t need to be shared, but could be configured easily and contrived to post automatically at a particular time. So I investigating creating a bot for Mastodon.

This is not the first time I’ve done something like this: years ago, I created a bot for birdchan called “dupolusulo” that would randomly post either a proverb from the Esperanta Proverbaro or string of plausible text generated by a baysian algorithm that used the Proverbaro as a corpus. This plausible text was often utterly incomprehsible, but looked like it might mean something and sounded a lot like the proverbaro.

This time was pretty similar, though easier. I wrote a little python script that would figure out what day of the year it was, read in a CSV file, and grab a line matching the day number, parse it, and emit it as a formatted text string. Then, all I had to do was set up a Mastodon account, @wss366 configured to allow a bot to post to it. To be honest, what sold me on the whole thing was when I discovered that I sorta kinda personally know the guy who runs the botsin.space instance that was set up to support these kinds of bots.

It took me about a day to set up the Mastodon account, configure it, create an avatar, add a header graphic, write the script, configure a cron job to call it at 5am. But by the end of the day, I posted an announcement that the post was live and would post to #wss366 (for Wandering Shop Stories and 366 because it’s a leap year this year) was live.

This morning, it posted its first prompt: #brick.

I can’t wait to see what it’s going to post tomorrow. Now that’s something to live for.

Wizard Island at Crater Lake National Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several months after I joined Water Dragon Publishing the editor invited me to submit a manuscript to their shared-world anthology The Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy. This was just as the first other stories were being prepared to appear. But I was game to give it a try. It sounded like a lot of fun.

Patricia Monk wrote an interesting review of shared universes in 1990 and concluded that they represent an extension of collaborative writing that can become an effective way to foster in-group bonding among authors. And they can be an effective way to help readers bridge the gap to becoming writers.

I hadn’t been there for any of the initial discussions and creation of the shared-world setting so I didn’t really have any idea what it was all about. But, in a couple of days, I knocked out a weird short story and ran it by the editor, who was enthusiastic. It was about a somewhat odd man named David who is trying stop a bad guy from selling non-human biological androids, called “Little Angels,” as sex slaves.

David knew from past experience that the “Little Angels” did not exhibit a programming interface. All androids, whether biological or mechanical, were required by law to exhibit a public programming interface, even if locked, that would allow anyone to confirm their status and the responsible party: the owner or manager of the android. But it wasn’t just a feature of daytime dramas for rogue androids to have their interface turned off.

from Better Angels

By the end of the story (not to give too much away), the Little Angels have been rescued and have been returned to their original mission as singing and dancing idols called “Better Angels”.

It was just a short story, only available on-line as an eBook, but I really enjoyed writing it. And I particularly enjoyed playing with the characters. As a daily writing exercise I participate in the #vss365 group, which offers a prompt word every day. Early on, I actually found participating very helpful to let me sharpen my ability to tell an actual story with a problem, rising tension, and some kind of payoff — in just a few characters. I found myself telling some Better Angels stories this way.

In many of them, the Angels make David’s life difficult:

“Play dodgeball, David!” the Better Angels called.
Reluctantly, David joined the game. One by one, the girls were eliminated until it was just David and Zaza.
Zaza tossed it to David who tried to not catch it, but it stuck to his hands.
“I’m out!” shrieked Zaza. “David wins!”
“Wait! Who covered the ball with glue?”

Or where Zaza is one step ahead of the other Angels:

“Let me hold your hand, David!” Zaza said. David held his hand out and Zaza took it.
“No fair! No fair!” the other Angels called, crowding around.
“Here!” David said. “You can each have a finger.”
After two steps, Zaza said, “I have a thumb!”
“No fair! No fair!”
David sighed.

Most of them could have the caption “Poor David”:

“What should we eat tonight?” David asked.
“Fun Meals!” shrieked the Angels.
“No!” David said, putting his foot down. “You need a balanced diet. You can’t keep eating Fun Meals everyday!”
“Look, David,” Zaza said with a sly look, opening the replicator. “We already made Fun Meals for tonight. But we made you a Fun Dinner.”

For Halloween that year, a friend persuaded to me to write a Better Angels story which I did:

The lights suddenly cut out and there was darkness. There were a handful of screams in the giant space. Then the drums started up and the space stadium erupted with cheers. The bass picked up the beat. Then a spotlight stabbed down illuminating Zaza, wearing a pink-and-blue magical girl costume. She made a dramatic gesture and the stage lights came up, illuminating the rest of the Better Angels who struck a pose while the crowd went wild. They moved smoothly into their first number, a cover of a favorite PuzzyCure song.

The Better Angels and the Very Scary Halloween

My editor was interested enough that he encouraged me to write a few more stories. And then I found I couldn’t stop. He finally suggested constructing an anthology to contain them all. Eventually we got to sixteen and I thought a title might be The Better Angels and Sixteen Seriously Sweet and Significantly Sanguinary Stories Set on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy. My editor suggested that would simplify creating artwork for the cover, since there wouldn’t be room for any. But then I wrote one more story so the number wouldn’t work anyway. And, after much discussion we settled on Better Angels: Tour de Force. I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was a bit lazy another year:

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

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

This one was one of my favorites:

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

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

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

Lately I’ve been getting weirder:

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

And this semester is even weirder yet.

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

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

Pamela's Panties over the Bridge of Flowers

After a long, dark winter and a busy spring, summer finally begins! Being hospitalized in February and then spending the spring trying to recover and stay current with my teaching, I got very little writing done. But summer promises to be better.

The final installment of Revin’s Heart, Rewriting the Rules, comes out June 23! I’ve been writing posts for a blog tour that should happen the week before it comes out. It’s been fun writing the posts, but it’s meant I haven’t been posting anything here.

I didn’t get NO writing done. I wrote a piece of flash fiction A Bad Night in Cloudrise, which I submitted to the Queer SciFi Flash Fiction Contest. And I also wrote a Better Angels story over spring break: The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss. But, other than my #VSS365 fragments, I didn’t get much fiction writing done at all.

That makes sense, in that my students come first. My writing class was among the best I’ve ever had! They really brought passion and commitment to their Proposals and Projects. I was impressed and touched to see their drive and excitement. Just a few students can really tip the “feel” a course has, but this was like a groundswell. It was wonderful. My honors students were, as always, an ongoing source of inspiration. It’s simply amazing to get to know students throughout a whole year and watch them develop skills and self-confidence. I’m so grateful I get to teach this course.

This summer, I have two projects I need to wrap up and then a big project I want to focus on. While writing Campshire! (a Revin’s Heart project) a story occurred to me that I wanted to tell. Lady Cecelia’s Flowers is about 2/3 written and I just need to write the buildup, the climax, and the epilogue. I know what’s going to happen — I just need to let the events flow onto the page. And while I was writing the triple-M, I had an idea for an ambitious Better Angels story: The Complicated Camping Catastrophe. I’ve got it outlined and have written a dozen scenes, but I want to get it wrapped up before I move on to the Big Event: The Ground Never Lies.

For about a year, I’ve been writing scenes and vignettes for a story about Veronica Bellox, a geomancer with an anger problem, and Sophie, the sheltered girl who falls in love with her. I wrote a kind of pilot short story that went off the rails. But there’s a fun story here and I think it will need to be a novel to tell it properly. And that’s what I hope to spend the balance of the summer on.

Due to my uncertain health, I was unable to plan to attend events during the winter and so was unable to propose myself as a participant for BayCon, but I’m still hoping to attend, to meet people and sell books at the Water Dragon Publishing dealer table. It’s not yet certain I’ll attend, but I’m working on it. Watch for details soon. I may also be at a local Queer Pop-up Market on Saturday for Pride. Fingers crossed.

During the academic year, I don’t have much time for writing. I’ve managed to do a few things. But I can’t wait for summer!

My serial, It’s Complicated (aka “The Mary Stories”) has begun coming out at Kindle Vella. The first three chapters are free-to-read. Chapters will release weekly on Fridays until June 9.

On April 22, 2023, I submitted the final manuscript of the Revin’s Heart series: Rewriting the Rules. This is the last novelette in the series and it ties up all of the loose ends in a very satisfactory way.

I was also invited to write the Foreword for the Spring 2023 Dragon Gems anthology. My first effort was praised for being excellent, but only for — ahem — a more specialized literature. So it was conserved against such time as such a thing might be published and I was invited to try again. So I did try again and (as a joke) wrote one for a horror anthology. And then the editor said, “Hey! We’re doing a horror anthology in the Fall and I’m totally saving this for that. So can you try one more time?” So, I did and produced a satisfactory Foreword. So, you should totally buy the anthology to read my awesome Foreword. Oh! And there are some excellent stories in the anthology too.

I’ve written a new story that’s pretty exciting (if I say so myself): The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss. The Angels are on a morale boosting tour on the planet Palisade when fighting heats up.

“‘Pedes incoming!” was blasted over the loudspeakers.

The soldiers, with good discipline, began to scatter to their positions. The Angels fell back to the cargo hatch. Cap’n Tau started the engines which first whined and then grew to a grumbling roar. David from his perch, spotted movement coming from the west.

“‘Pedes on the base!” he reported, and took aim with his Ublyudok particle rifle.

The ‘pede soldier morph was a large centipede-like creature. They had little intelligence and carried no weapons, but were vicious and single-minded. They were highly flattened with thick exoskeletons, huge pincers, and many legs, that could roll at great speed like a hoop. There were dozens rolling across the tarmac toward Angels’ Wings.

David fired the Ublyudok, which emitted a deafening scream, and hit five ‘pedes in rapid succession. But there were many more coming.

from The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss

And there’s yet another Better Angels story in the works. And I’ve got several manuscripts out to markets. Hopefully I’ll have more good news soon.

In just a few weeks, the academic year will wrap up and I’ll have the summer to focus on writing. I’m hoping to finally start working on The Ground Never Lies. I can’t wait!