It's a Jumble

My science fiction story, “ Disconnected, ” is now live at The Future Fire! It’s a story about protein folding and optogenetics and cognitive augmentations. And it’s also about capitalism, and family, and the enduring need for human connection. This particular issue of The Future Fire happens to mark the tenth anniversary of the digital publication. That’s quite an achievement, and I am thrilled to be part of it. I haven’t finished reading all the other stories in this issue yet, but so far what I’ve read has been amazing—dark and lovely and sad and moving, original in form and content. I am so honored to be sharing space with this group of authors and artists. Speaking of artists--Miguel Santos’ illustrations for my own piece are wonderful, and showed me something about my story that I didn’t even realize. STORY NOTES BELOW    .................................................................................... The Science Protein Folding Gam...

I’ve been wanting to start posting regularly about short fiction. I’m way behind in my reading (what else is new?), but since Christmas I’ve still found pieces that thrilled me, surprised me, made me fall in love. Most of the stories I list here were published in January, and some even earlier… but as I said, I get behind. And I’ve been thinking of a tweet I saw: that if you love a writer’s work, one of the best things you can do is share your love of it in a review. Sometimes I read a story that blows me away, but it seems to get no attention in the SFF community-- not a single tweet or review or mention. So consider this my mentions. Family and Love “ The Absence of Words ” by Swapna Kishore in Mythic Delirium Writer Ken Liu, among others, has spoken of how fantasy literature can act to “ literalize metaphors .” Kishore’s story is a perfect example of this: the barriers of communication between mothers and daughters become, in her story, a physical barrier of engulfin...

Woot, just finished the last lines of my first draft of a 13,555 word novelette. Longer than I ever meant it to be. Probably unpublishable. Sleep is a willing sacrifice.

I disappeared into a medical writing assignment for a few weeks, then crawled out to find the house in chaos and the hurly-burly of the Christmas season well underway. All the neighbors strung lights in their yards when I wasn't looking; Christmas jingles play in the stores, lights and wreaths and Christmas trees are everywhere. Each year this season sneaks up upon me; this year it seemed to wait till the last minute before jumping out, waving its arms, crying Ha! Gotcha! Did you forget about me? My mind filled with the technical details of a dozen scientific journal articles. . . I nearly did forget. But the Christmas tree is up, the stockings are hung, and tonight was my daughters’ annual Christmas music recital. Both acquitted themselves well, if I do say so myself. My eldest finished a scarf she’d been weaving for me on her little loom kit, and I proudly wore it to the concert and all evening.  Dinner out (barbecue), bath time, bed. . . Outside the nights dip ever de...

On doing great work:  "The real trick to producing great work isn't to find ways to eliminate the edgy, nervous feeling that you might be swimming out of your depth. Instead, it’s to remember that everyone else is feeling it, too. We’re all in deep water. Which is fine: it’s by far the most exciting place to be." -- from "Nobody Knows What the Hell They Are Doing" by Oliver Burkeman at 99U From writer Theodora Goss’s twitter feed**: “I have rewritten this paragraph at least five times. Which is why wordcount is irrelevant, if they’re the wrong words.” “Authors telling other people how to be authors is like parents telling other people how to be parents. Because all kids are the same.” *Note: I don't know how to use Twitter. I don't know how to cite (?) it appropriately? I just sometimes use the Web to eavesdrop on other people's tweets. A lovely essay on a video game and the Asian-American experience      . . . beca...

On turning 40 and things I've seen and read: Fate/Zero, A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Magicians. Ways to make yourself melancholy during these gorgeous autumn days.  It’s two months before I turn 40. But I’ve been mourning the end of my thirties for the last year. 40 is when you have to recognize, finally, that there are doors you’ve passed which will never open to you; there are paths which are forever blocked. “ Way leads on to way,” as the poet said , and you will never find your way back to that turning point in the golden wood. Of course, I’ve been realizing this throughout my thirties. It’s just that the finality of that number, “40”—the thudding close of a decade—has a new hardness that drives the point home. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is failure, and of how it is not something talked about in our world. All our cultural narratives are of success. We tell our children that they can do anything, as long as they work hard enough and believ...

A children’s book review: " Petunia, the Girl Who Was NOT a Princess "   by M.R. Nelson My suggested age range: for kids 3 and up Disclosure: I received this book as an electronic advance review copy from the author. Nelson and I have followed each other on social media for some years now, and I consider her a friend. The Petunia of this charming children’s book is not a “princessy” girl. She doesn’t like frilly dresses and pretend princess parties. She would rather climb trees and play ball and build towers with blocks. She feels lonely in a neighborhood where are all the other little girls dress like princesses and seem to prefer more stereotypically “feminine” past times. In the end, Petunia learns a lesson about acceptance. But it’s not the lesson you might expect. Petunia doesn't have to learn to accept herself. She accepts herself and her tomboyish ways just fine. What she learns, when a new princess moves in next door, is an acceptance ...