The Emotional Experience of Writing

Monday – I am a literary god! People the world over will read my words and weep for joy!

Tuesday – This is crap and I hate it. Every word I have ever written must be burned, then buried in a hole in the desert.

Wednesday – This is brilliant! All I have to do is go back seventeen chapters and introduce X, then fix all seventeen chapters since then, and that will solve all my problems. Easy!

Thursday – My novel is horribly broken, and I will never, ever be able to fix it.

Friday – Why am I writing this again?

Clarity

Queer Sci Fi’s annual anthology is out, and I have a story in it for the fourth year running. This year’s theme is Clarity, and my story is entitled Male Female Nonbinary Other.

Clarity (noun)

Four definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell:

1) Coherent and intelligible
2) Transparent or pure
3) Attaining certainty about something
4) Easy to see or hear

Clarity features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

You can buy a print book or an ebook on most platforms here.

Pride and Passion

The rich tapestry of the LGBTQIA+ community is celebrated annually at Pride Festivals and Parades across the globe. For its first ever Queer Romance Anthology, the Rainbow Romance Writers chose to highlight these magical celebrations through the vehicle of the “meet cute”.

Five stories, from California to the UK with a few stops in between, showcase the love stories of those celebrating their identities and finding love on the way. A Pair of Aces find each other on a parade float. Two rival professional women come together over The Booth at the Pride Festival. Opposites attract when two men meet at the Pride Paddle on the Yukon River A chance meeting between two women leads to a romantic dance in Swing with Pride. And a Halloween Kiss results in something much more years later when a trans woman runs into her high school friend at Pride.

Get Pride and Passion today and explore these authors. All proceeds from the sale are donated to LGBTQIA+ charities.

Ink

Queer SciFi’s annual Flash Fiction Anthology is out, and the theme this year is:

INK (Noun)

Five definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell:

1) A colored fluid used for writing

2) The action of signing a deal

3) A black liquid ejected by squid

4) Publicity in the written media

5) A slang word for tattoos

Innovation features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

My story The Skinchanger’s Art won an Honorable Mention.

Innovation

Queer SciFi has released their annual anthology – this year’s theme is Innovation – and my story A Spell for Leila is included.

Book Blurb:

IN-NO-VA-TION (Noun)

1) A new idea, method, or device.

2) The introduction of something new.

3) The application of better solutions to meet unarticulated needs.

Three definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell. Here are 120 of our favorites.

Innovation features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Migration

MigrationQueer Sci Fi has just released the annual QSF Flash Fiction anthology. This year, the theme is “Migration.”

MI-GRA-TION (noun)

1) Seasonal movement of animals from one region to another.

2) Movement of people to a new area or country in order to find work or better living conditions.

3) Movement from one part of something to another.

Three definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell. Here are 120 of our favorites.

Migration feaures 300 word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Other Worlds Ink | Amazon | iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | QueeRomance Ink | Goodreads


Giveaway

Queer Sci Fi is giving away a $20 gift Amazon certificate with this tour – enter via Rafflecopter for a chance to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d4774/?


Excerpt

MemeEach year, hundreds of writers send in stories for the Queer Sci Fi flash fiction anthology. Here are the opening lines from some of the stories chosen for the 2019 edition – Migration:

“Darkness has substance. It is tangible; different shades within the black, sounds, a taste. It is accompanied by self-awareness of time and thoughts, even when other senses fail.” —Hope for Charity, by Robyn Walker

“The sky has been screaming for five straight days when the shrimps come to take us away. They’ve been boxing up the others and hauling them off. Now they’re here for us, soaking wet, dragging cords and crates behind them.” —Shrimpanzee, Sionnain Bailey

“Allister always had faultless hair. He’d comb and gel it to perfection while gazing in the mirror. One day a pair of eyes stared back.” —Zulu Finds a Home, by Kevin Klehr

“On her sister’s wedding day Ari noticed that one of her ears had migrated to her hand. It was right after her high school crush, Emily, arrived with Cousin Matt.” —Playing It By Ear, Aidee Ladnier

“The wound was fatal. Their vessel wouldn’t live much longer. This is what came from leaving loose ends. Frantically they sought out a new vessel to migrate to. “ —The Essence, by L.M. Brown

“That night, we were sitting in the bed of her daddy’s old pickup truck and the radio was playing the best song. We had a pack of cigarettes between us and her hand was almost touching mine. The wheat field was silver in the moonlight. When they came, we weren’t surprised, just disappointed that our time was up already.” —Our Song, by Lauren Ring

“Willow said she was my wife, but I knew it wasn’t her, not the right her, anyway. Sure she looked like her with olive skin and bright pink hair. She even smelled of mango flowers, just like I remembered, but there was something about her smile that was slightly off, something about when she said she loved me that didn’t sit well in my old heart.” — They Said It Would Be Her, by Elizabeth Andre

“Agnes is eight when she first sees the river. Cutting its way through town, the only thing she knows not coated in coal dust. She sticks her toes in, comes home with wet socks and a secret. See, the river hadn’t been there yesterday.” —Stream of Consciousness, by Ziggy Schutz

“Terry twirled in her green synthsilk dress, looked at her reflection, liked what she saw. She felt good in her own skin, for maybe the first time.” —Altball, by RE Andeen

“The thing was in the corner. It had come through the window and had slid down the wall. Scratch went the sound. The noise of a hundred nails clawing at the wood. Nails of white bone. Alex pulled the sheets up quickly, covering every inch of skin and hair in a warm darkness.” —Whose Nightmare, by Jamie Bonomi


 

LOGO - Other Worlds Ink

Total Eclipse

My wife and I went to see the total eclipse on Monday. I’m not one for bucket lists, but I’ve always wanted to see a total solar eclipse in person. I was not disappointed. The only complaint I have about the experience is that damn song running through my head all week.

We had lunch at 17th Street Barbecue in Marion, Illinois – best brisket I’ve ever eaten – and we watched the eclipse from the parking lot.

The first thing I noticed about the eclipse was … not much. We were still inside eating lunch during first contact, but that was okay. The first forty minutes or so of the eclipse was cool enough to watch through our eclipse glasses, but very little changed on the ground. It was only when the sun was 70% occluded or more that we noticed the temperature dropping, and it was well over 80% before the bright afternoon really seemed to dim. Think about that for a second – our human visual systems can scale up and down between full daylight and just a fifth of that, and they can do it so effectively we don’t even notice.

As totality drew nearer, the changes grew more drastic. The sun shrank to a crescent, and the light level dimmed to something like dusk. The local Harley dealer made a light show with their sign. Then the crescent sun narrowed to a smudge and disappeared altogether, and the totality was upon us. The nocturnal insects came out (grasshoppers, I think), and the earth was engulfed in darkness. Not middle-of-the-night, out-in-the-woods darkness; more like suburban lights and a full moon, but still. We were surrounded by a 360° sunset, which I should have expected but didn’t. And up in the sky, where the sun should be, there was a black disk surrounded by a bright ring.

The partial eclipse was cool enough, especially as the sun got really occluded. But the total eclipse was something else entirely. The difference between 98% and 100% is literally the difference between night and day. For the next eclipse in the US, seven years from now, if you have any reasonable chance to get into the path of totality, you should take it. As usual, XKCD is exactly right.

The most amazing moment of the whole experience was the instant when totality ended. A single bright point of light appeared in the ring surrounding the black disk of the moon, and in just a few seconds it bloomed into the brilliance of daylight. The phenomenon is called the diamond ring effect for good reason. The image will be burned into my memory (though fortunately not my retina) as long as I live.

Even more than the beauty and strangeness of the experience, a total eclipse is a window into nature at its most awesome. We are beings clinging to the surface of a big ball of rock, whipping around a much larger ball of gas and fire, inside a swirling collection of many more such systems, which in turn group together into clusters and filaments. The universe is unfathomably vast and unfathomably old.

And that brings me back to the first part of our trip, our visit to the Creation Museum, and how limited the creationist view is of the universe. In their tidy little world, God created the Earth six thousand years ago, put the sun and moon in the sky, divided the land from the sea, and created each and every kind of plant and animal, until finally creating us. And that’s it. God is a gardener. Everything is arbitrary – it is the way it is because God wills it to be so.

The story science tells us is far more interesting. Thirteen and a half billion years ago, give or take a few weeks, a single bright spark (created by God, or Nature, or nothing at all) burst forth from the void and a universe came into being. The closer you look at the universe, the weirder things get, but almost nothing about it is arbitrary. Everything works the way it does because it couldn’t work any other way. Alter the rules even a tiny bit – maybe increase the mass of the electron by a few percent – and everything is different. Stars never form. We are here because our universe is perfectly tuned for our existence.

Given those two visions of the universe, which do you find more awe-inspiring?

The Creation Museum

As part of our trip to see the eclipse, my wife and I went to visit the Creation Museum in Kentucky. It was fascinating, in a rather depressing sort of way.

The basic premise of the museum, and creationism in general, is that the Bible says that the Earth was created in six days, in the spring of 4004 BC, and the Bible is the inerrant, literal Word of God, so that must be how it happened. From there, creationists attempt to build a coherent framework to explain how the world works, and to make that framework consistent with all the observations scientists have made about the world thus far – fossils, layers in rock strata, underground coal deposits, etc.

The result is … interesting. There are exhibits showing humans interacting with dinosaurs (the entry surmises that’s how we got the legends of dragons), and there is a great deal about Noah’s flood as the basis for a lot of geological phenomena would otherwise take millions of years to come about.

Many of the museum exhibits also discuss the conventional scientific view, placing it next to the creationist equivalent. This looks like an attempt to be fair-minded – see, we’re showing both sides! – but it’s not about fairness at all. The placement implies an equivalence between actual science and creationist pseudo-science, as if they’re of equal value. And given two choices of equal value, which are you going to choose – the word of man, or the Word of God?

Creationism isn’t science, despite the scientific veneer the museum and places like the Discovery Institute lend to it. Science is the process of making the theory fit the observations. If an observation contradicts the theory, then the theory has to change. Sometimes it’s just a little tweak; sometimes a theory gets thrown out and replaced with a brand new theory. Creationism is the opposite of science – making the observations fit the theory. The theory is the Word of God, so it cannot change. Any observation that contradicts the theory must be manipulated until it fits.

Creationists have invested an awful lot of time and into their Biblical pseudo-science, and the whole thing is an impressive intellectual edifice. It provides a way for fundamentalist Christians, who believe in the Bible as the literal, inerrant Word of God, to reconcile their religious beliefs with the world they live in. Lessons for the cool kids in Sunday school, so they know the Truth while they’re learning geology and evolution in science class during the week. It seems like pretty harmless stuff.

But it’s not harmless. An exhibit toward the end of the museum tour makes it clear that, despite the side by side displays earlier, science is not to be trusted. Any deviation from God’s word, as laid down in the Bible, can only lead to chaos and destruction. That undermining of science in the eyes of the faithful hurts us all.

When the creationists attack evolution, or geology, or cosmology, they’re taking aim at the whole idea of science. When they question established theories, not based on the evidence but in spite of it, they render all of science suspect, with real-world consequences. The rejection of science encouraged by creationism makes it that much easier to ignore climate change, to overuse antibiotics, to opt out of vaccinations. That sort of willful ignorance must be resisted and corrected.

The Bible isn’t a science textbook, and it shouldn’t be treated as one.

Jury Duty

I had jury duty last Wednesday and Thursday. I was not selected for a jury, and I was both relieved and disappointed. I won’t say much about the trial other than that it was serious stuff. The initial jury pool was seventy people, jury selection took two days, and the trial was scheduled for four weeks.

During voir dire, one of the prosecutors related his own jury experience, years ago, telling us he felt like the attorneys were asking all the wrong questions. He then asked us if anyone in the jury pool felt that way, if we felt there was anything they should be asking but were not. I didn’t have anything to add at the time, but twice during the defense’s question, I thought about that.

The first defense question that bothered me was “Do you feel comfortable sitting in judgement of another person?” I understand the defense’s reason for asking the question, but it seemed wrong to me. I raised my juror card (lucky thirteen), and when called on, I told the defense attorney that it wasn’t our job to judge the defendant; it was our job to judge the facts in the case and the defendant’s actions. Other jurors seemed to appreciate my comment, though I suspect the defense did not.

The second question bothered me even more. It was something like “Do you feel, at the start of the trial, that the balance may be tilted slightly toward one side or the other. Specifically, toward the prosecution?” Once again, I understand the defense’s reason for asking, but it’s the wrong question, and even asking it does a disservice to the defendant. I was not called on, so I didn’t get a chance to answer in court, but this is what I would have said.

In a criminal trial, the balance is tilted entirely in favor of the defendant. It’s not our job as jurors to smile and politely accept the fiction that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and then forget all of that as soon the prosecution describes the awful things the defendant did in the opening statement. Nothing the prosecution says – not even the charges themselves – has any value unless it’s confirmed by the evidence presented in court. Our job as jurors is to examine the prosecution’s case with skepticism, and to weigh it not only against the defense’s case, but also against the presumption of innocence.

I suspect the prosecution would not have liked that answer any more than the defense liked my other answer.