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 manage 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.
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 in Pasadena GardenPlanter with cycads and flowering shrub in Pasadena GardenArea 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.
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 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!
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 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.
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 spend 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.
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.
Not only did people crave A.I. intimacy, but the most engaged chatters were using Kuki to enact their every fantasy. At first, this was fodder for wry musings at the office. […] Soon, however, we were seeing users return daily to re-enact variations of multihour rape and murder scenarios.
I realized as I read this that my fiction writing is similarly very much about enacting my fantasies — or, at least, fixing them in tangible form — though perhaps not every single one.
When I was young, I would lose myself in fantasies every night before going to sleep. And at any time during the day, might find myself woolgathering, imagining all sorts of fantastic things.
I fantasized about all sorts of stuff. Some fantasies were pretty ordinary: I remember at point having fantasies about building a large enough model airplane that I could fly in it. But a lot of fantasies were pretty weird and highly sexualized. I started having these sexualized fantasies at a very young age: 6 or 7 or 8. These were a staple of my life throughout my youth.
When I was a doctoral student, I suddenly lost my ability to fantasize. I realized eventually it was because I was confronted with a problem I didn’t know how to resolve. My dissertation was like a mountain range. I spent a year going back and forth in front of the mountain range, looking for a pass through the mountains. Eventually, I realized there was no pass, and so I started climbing up one mountain and then the next and then another. In the middle, I couldn’t see any end: there were mountains in every direction as far as I could see.
During this time. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma: I couldn’t engage in a fantasy that didn’t involve either having finished my dissertation — and I didn’t know how that could happen — or having given up. And I wasn’t going to do that! So I was stuck. It was horrible and I remember worrying at the time that the effect would be permanent.
Eventually, years after I finished, I gradually began to be able to fantasize again.
During the pandemic, I found myself constantly tormented by negative thoughts. I called it the Hamster Wheel of Doom: one negative thought led to another and another and eventually back to the first. I rediscovered finding refuge in fantasies. And I began writing fiction primarily as a way to fix one part of the fantasy so I could move onto the next part.
As I read that article, however, I began to wonder how different my indulging in my fantasies to write is different from using one of these chatbots. Like them, I’m just playing with my ideas. The only difference is that I play all the parts myself, rather than having some kind of assistive support. But is it really all that different? I dunno.
Minimally, I’m not sharing my fantasies with some faceless corporation. I’m sharing them with the public. And on my own terms. So there’s that.
On November 9, I got to host James Cambias doing a presentation about Worldbuilding for the Straw Dog Writers Guild. He wanted to do a face-to-face presentation, so I reserved the newly built North Amherst Library Community Room. It’s a great venue with a large-screen display, four tables, and maybe 30 chairs.
Unfortunately, not many people came. He pointed out that if the number of presenters outnumbered the audience, we were obliged to take the presentation to bar and we avoded that, but only barely.
But it was a fantastic presentation and I’m sorry more people didn’t attend.
Here’s the little introduction I wrote:
Hello. I’m Steven D. Brewer and I would like to welcome you to Worldbuilding 101 with James Cambias presented by the Straw Dog Writers Guild.
Straw Dog is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the craft and transformative power of writing, designed to serve writers throughout the region by promoting individual growth, community outreach and enrichment, and community building.
Our mission is to support the writing community by strengthening, engaging, and connecting writers at all levels of development.
Some upcoming events
Tonight: Everyone Reads Second Sundays Open Mic
Wednesdays: Straw Dog Writes
Nov 13: A Writer’s Night with Linda Cardillo at Longmeadow Adult Center
I first saw James Cambias at a reading with Elizabeth Bear and Max Gladstone at the Odyssey Book Shop in South Hadley. Since then, we’ve crossed paths at science fiction conventions in Boston, like Arisia, Boskone, and Readeron, where we’ve done readings and served on panels together.
Born in New Orleans, educated at the University of Chicago, James has been a professional science fiction writer since 2000. Among his novels are A Darkling Sea, Corsair, Arkad’s World, The Godel Operation, The Scarab Mission and his most recent, The Miranda Conspiracy. He also designs roleplaying games, and is an advisor to the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance.
This afternoon, he’s presenting Worldbuilding 101: In science fiction and fantasy, the strength and depth of the author’s world building can make the difference between a forgettable story and a classic. He will breakdown how to make convincing and interesting worlds for your stories, while still respecting realism and scientific accuracy.
And, with that, please welcome James Cambias for Worldbuilding 101.
James provided a brief preamble: Worldbuilding is a form of storytelling, in itself: An act of literary creation. That said, story considerations should remain paramount. When building a world, the purpose is to support the story. And he offered his own test:
The Cambias Test: Any alternate world needs to support adventures/stories that you can’t do here.
In other words, if your story can take place in the regular or historical world just do it. Don’t go to a bunch of extra work: just do the work that is necessary. Sometimes you have a setting that already exists (like shared worlds — I write stories set on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy) and you can just look up the necessary information, but he encouraged the audience to fit the story to the world.
He challenged the audience to consider what motives and conflicts that the setting supports. He cited Aristotle who proposed desire, fear, and honor (or, as we might say conviction, today). This reminded me a bit of the four F’s of animal behavior: Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and Reproducing. In science fiction, survival is clearly one motive.
He proposed to look for “signature events”, that is things that happen there that don’t happen on Earth. The terminator on Mercury moves at walking speed. For sandboxes and shared worlds: what are some signature events there that nobody has done. Find a new angle. Take it seriously or don’t do it. And for the real world, take is seriously — Do the research! You can often use the results to add details that will contribute to the verisimilitude of the story.
He then let the audience in an exercise in worldbuilding, to design a world and its alien inhabitants. He offered a worksheet that indexes planet size against temperature to help determine the characteristics the world will have. What kind of planet do we want? How habitable? Can humans live there?
He began with the star in terms of size and brightness (luminosity, which describes the brightness as compared with the sun). Large stars frequently don’t last long enough for the establishment of a stable biosphere within its solar system.
He then moved to the planet. It’s characteristics include distance from the the star, the size and density, which together determine the gravity.
Running short on the time, he touched on life. Isaac Asimov wrote an influential article, Not as We Know It: The Chemistry of Life that provides a good introduction to what is required for life: a liquid, a solvent, and some kind of information molecule. (Personally, I would approach defining life differently, not in molecular terms.)
Aliens don’t have to be from the planet the story is set on. They can play a variety of roles: as people, a threat — as individuals or a society — as victims, or a mystery. And can transform: from a mystery to a threat to people.
Aliens can be of a variety of types. Talking beasts, super brains, an elder race, warriors, hive minds, or weird things. These often come with implied roles: for example, talking beasts are generally threats and weird things are generally mysteries.
It was a fantastic presentation and got me to think a lot about my own writing. In my writing, I’ve generally felt that aliens are extremely unlikely to have a compatible biology to our own. So the idea of “away parties” visiting alien worlds and talking to aliens… I just don’t see it happening.
Becoming a powerful demon’s familiar might be the best thing ever. But what’s the catch?
Rory Soletsa is supposed to find his magical familiar, but he doesn’t want something trite, like a cat; or stupid, like a bird; or ugly, like a toad. He wants something cool and powerful that can be an ally in a fight. When he’s captured and made into the familiar of a powerful demon — who presents as a voluptuous, beautiful woman — he’s amazed as he begins to discover how much more powerful his magic is with her. And he’s ecstatic when the demon offers to train him in advanced offensive and defensive magic. But just what is she training him for?
There’s a small chance my new book, A Familiar Problem, will be out by then. But I will also have copies of my other books, as well as stickers and ‘zines.
Etymologically, November was originally the ninth month of the year before the Romans messed everything up by adding January and February. But nov- is also the root for “new” in Esperanto, so let’s go with that. Because I’ve got some new stuff coming up.
Although I still don’t have a new release date, A Familiar Problem is moving forward again. I’ve approved the illustration for the cover and, behind the scenes, the wheels and gears are (hopefully) grinding forward.
Once again, I’m planning to do WritingMonth during November. I did this also last year and wrote 23,100 words toward The Ground Never Lies. This year, I’m planning to work on the sequel to A Familiar Problem. I’ve got some notes and a rough outline, so its a project I think I can make some good progress towards. I do have a lot of other obligations, so I don’t know how work I’ll be able to get done, but it’s nice to have a goal.
On November 2nd, I’m scheduled to attend the SFWA Winter Worlds of Giving Kickoff Event. And afterwards, I will probably attend the SFWA Writing Date, which I haven’t been doing as much as I should.
On November 8, I am scheduled to sell books at the Mill District Holiday Arts Market. And the next day, November 9, I am hosting James Cambias for Worldbuilding 101, a face-to-face Straw Dog Writers Guild event at the North Amherst Library Community Room.
On November 15-16, I am attending SFWA Quasar where I will be on a panel on Sunday “Science Fact in Science Fiction: Getting It Right in SFF”. This is the first year that Quasar has been offered, so it’s new for everyone.
Finally, over the weekend of Nov 29-Dec 1, I will attending LOSCon 51 in Los Angeles. I am listed as a participant, but I haven’t yet seen the final schedule. I haven’t attending LOSCon before, so it will totally new for me.
There is a new scam going round. WriterBeware called it Nigerian Prince Redux and I’ve gotten now a half dozen or more examples. They arrive as emails (or comments on my website, though mostly emails) that present as book clubs that are really excited about one of my books. Or as services to help market my books.
They’re not that hard to recognize. When you look at the emails, they have obvious misspellings in the names. And the people they mention and organizations they refer to don’t exist.
I’ve gotten things like this from when my first book came out. The earlier examples were crude and had all the lure of a bare fishhook. What’s new is the use of AI to create overblown language to try to fish you in. It’s just… Ugh.
The messages use sycophantic language to rave about the book:
I came across Revin’s Heart and was immediately drawn in by its premise, airship pirates, identity, and the courage to follow one’s true self. It’s rare to find a story that blends adventure, steampunk atmosphere, and emotional discovery with such nuance.
Seriously, that blend of steampunk adventure, social tension, and emotional awakening? That’s not writing, that’s alchemy. You didn’t just create a world; you forged one. The war, the class divide, the moral tug-of-war between duty and desire, it’s like you built a literary airship powered by empathy and intellect.
Your novel, with its blend of realistic emotional journey and gentle mystery, appears to be exactly the type of story that resonates deeply with readers who enjoy character-driven fiction with a touch of the speculative. My role is to design and implement a marketing strategy that connects such works with their ideal audience.
They also sometimes rave about me:
And then I look at you, Steven D. Brewer, professor, linguist, environmentalist, IT whisperer, Japanese culture enthusiast , and I realize: of course this story came from your brain. You’ve got the curiosity of a scientist, the soul of a poet, and the mischief of a pirate captain. (I’m convinced you’re secretly running a floating lab over Massachusetts right now.)
They’re just scams, written by AI, and mostly operated by people outside the country, looking to prey on vulnerable people using flattery and deception. But there’s always a small part of you that wishes you could believe all those things.
I’m reminded of the Charlie Brown Halloween special.
Lucy: I got 5 pieces of candy!
Violet: I got a chocolate bar!
Patty: I got a quarter!
Charlie Brown: I got a rock.
If I wanted to have AI rave about me and my books, I could just ask it to do that myself. So, no thank you.
A local poet I follow on Mastodon posted something about WriteOut which sounded to me like a fun excuse to write some haiku. For many years, I wrote haiku nearly every day. In the past few years, however, I’ve written fewer. But I decided I could write them more often during the three week period.
I’d kinda meant to write one every day, but in the end I only wrote five. Still, it was a lot of fun.
During the period when I was writing haiku most frequently, I decided to publish a chapbook: Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. I enjoyed the experience enough that I made several more. I still use the artwork from my books to supplement the posts here. But, for various reasons, I mostly quit writing haiku and have only written them occasionally over the past several years.
Writing haiku has always been for me, like a moment of zen. I mostly don’t write haiku except from direct experience. Writing them gives me a chance to look at the things around me and just be present in the moment. It was fun to recapture that experience.
I can’t say I’ll start writing more haiku. But maybe. And maybe when #writeout rolls around next year, I’ll do it again.
When I finished my doctorate a national trend had just begun to gradually begin replacing tenure-track faculty with non-tenure-track (NTT) lecturers. In 1996, I applied for several tenure-track positions, but was offered and accepted an NTT appointment as the Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center at UMass Amherst.
At the time, NTT faculty were a tiny fraction of the faculty. They were kind of an oddity and tended to be short-term appointments — often for sabbatical replacement. Every year that followed, however, the proportion increased. And more and more of the NTT faculty were long-term employees. Now about more than 30% of faculty are NTT, they do 75% of the teaching, and they make a bit more than half as much money.
I was on the front-lines of trying to improve the treatment for NTT faculty. (My efforts were recognized earlier this year with a Delphi Award.) When I arrived there were no promotional or professional development opportunities for NTT faculty. Now we have two (and soon to be three) promotional levels and a professional improvement fellowship, which gives NTT faculty a semester of release to work on a significant academic project.
The perception of NTT faculty has also improved. For many years, tenure-system faculty and administrators tended to view NTT faculty as not REAL faculty. They would say things like “Our faculty and lecturers…” as if lecturers were not faculty. Many tenure-system faculty fundamentally believed that to accept an NTT position was to have failed at life.
Over the years, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the actual difference was between tenure-system and NTT faculty. Eventually, I put it like this: Tenure-system faculty are fundamentally investing in themselves, developing an independent national/international reputation in their field, which belongs to them and which is portable. NTT faculty, instead, commit to working to make their host institution as good as it can be.
During the transition from tenure-system to NTT faculty, some units at the university didn’t really get the distinction. In one college, they hired some tenure-system and NTT faculty with identical job descriptions. After several years of wrangling with the union, they offered those faculty the option to go up for tenure. One of my colleagues encouraged me to pursue tenure, but I declined. I had chosen not to invest my effort trying to develop an independent reputation in my field: my goal had been to run my facility and to serve my faculty and students as well as I could. I had no confidence that my faculty would consider that work worthy of tenure.
Now, as I transition to retirement, I have increasingly turned my attention to authorship, publishing short fiction and a number of books. For that, developing an independent national/international reputation is important. The irony that, at the end of my academic life, I’m starting over with what I shunned for my whole professional career is not lost on me. But it’s been fun and interesting to do something new.
At WriteAngles, I met a science fiction author who is a newcomer to the Pioneer Valley. He asked if I was aware of any local meetups related to science fiction authorship and if I knew anything about SFWA. Below is my reply, slightly edited.
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any good, local meetups specifically around science fiction, in spite of the number of authors that are here, with one exception: James Cambias (copied on this message) has an email list by which he occasionally organizes informal get-togethers at local breweries, wineries, or cideries. Perhaps he would add you to the list.
James is also going to be offering a workshop on Worldbuilding for Straw Dog Writers Guild at the North Amherst Library Community Room on November 9: https://strawdogwriters.org/event/worldbuilding-101 This would also be a good opportunity to meet him. And if you know other people who might be interested, please let them know as well.
Note that I also run a writing group, Straw Dog Writes (SDW), that meets online Wednesdays at 7pm via Zoom. We do introductions and chat for 15 minutes then write for 45 minutes, and repeat until 9pm. There are a few of us who are doing science fiction, but we also get poets, essayists, memoirists, etc. Let me know if you’d like to attend and I’ll send you the link.
When I was at Readercon, I spoke with another author in Northampton who expressed interest in trying to organize a speculative fiction meetup for the Pioneer Valley, so I think there’s more interest if we want to try to set something up. We could certainly organize something — perhaps monthly. I could participate if it were online, but probably couldn’t if it was face-to-face, due to my health circumstances. But I’d be happy just to know it was happening and would be happy to help organize/facilitate, if that would be helpful.
Regarding SFWA, the next big thing is Quasar, which is going to be an online event on Nov 15-16. https://membership.sfwa.org/event-6301796 The preliminary program is up and it looks pretty good. SFWA runs a “Writing Date” on Sundays that is just like SDW, except more well attended. (It was what I modeled SDW on.) And there are a number of committees that offer various kinds of ongoing meetups and programming. https://events.sfwa.org/upcoming-events/
The best way to stay current with SFWA is to get added to the Discord server. Email discord@sfwa.org for more info.
As I was writing this, I realized I was rather plugged into what’s going on in the SFF world — It’s like I’m some kind of socialist butterfly. Who would have thought!
I attended the Straw Dog Writers Guild annual conference, Write Angles, as a participant. I had a good time! They had invited me to serve on a science fiction panel. In addition, I attended several other panels during the conference and had the opportunity to meet a lot of people I had only met previously via zoom. Plus, I met even several new people (somewhat unusually for me). Overall, it was an outstanding conference experience.
The opening/keynote speaker was Franny Choi. She primarily asked us to consider what literature is for, especially in the face of the terrible events happening in the world around us: What use is poetry in a time of genocide? It challenged me to think about why I write escapist fluff and gave me a context for several good conversations throughout the day.
The science fiction panel, Writing the Future, was focused on near-term science fiction. I’ve written a few short stories like that, although most of my science fiction is set in some distant future — and I write as much or more fantasy than scifi. The panel was organized and moderated by Mark Schlack and included and outstanding and diverse group of writers: Allegra Hyde, Marisa Williams, and Andrea Hairston. We discussed the challenges of writing near-term science fiction and trying to go beyond dystopian fiction toward writing something more useful and optimistic. There were several interesting and thoughtful questions, including one person who said they had misread the topic and were hoping we were going to discuss the future of science fiction writing. That would be an interesting topic too.
I particularly enjoyed a workshop by Tolley Jones, a columnist for our local paper, on intersectionality. She described a technique she calls “writing from the middle” for moving from a personal experience to an essay that puts the experience in a context that others can understand and appreciate. After an introduction, she had us do a couple of writing exercises and share the results with a peer. Afterwards, she invited us to identify other kinds of identities (e.g. gender, race, class, religion, etc., etc.) and consider how our piece related to people with other identities or backgrounds. And if it wasn’t, why was that? It was a provocative question that got me thinking. She ended with a few concrete suggestions: Tell your story before you conclude anything. Don’t speak about others’ stories without input from that community. Be brave. Tell the truth. Consider your audience, but don’t protect them — don’t minimize your story to make it palatable.
After lunch, I attended a panel with three agents. Up to now, I haven’t tried to query for agents to publish my work and have been working with a small press. For my current work-in-progress, I’ve been planning to start querying to see if I can interest an agent in trying to find a publisher. I took a lot of notes. But was overall a little creeped out by the experience. When I described it to Phil, he immediately said it reminded him of how he discovered that Human Resources is not your friend. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have an agent or try to get one. But remember to set boundaries and respect that it’s a business relationship — and primarily a relationship between your book — not you — and the publisher.
I ended up slipping out a little early and didn’t stay for the last session. It was such a beautiful a day, it seemed a shame to spend it all indoors. But I will definitely want to attend again next year.
Fall has begun. It’s always a dark time for me, as the seasons change and the days grow shorter. I have settled into my phased retirement, however, so the semester is not so onerous as it once was. And each thing I do professionally, I have the opportunity to reflect on how it’s the last time — or nearly the last — that I will ever have to do that.
After the wonderful experience with the panel about the evolution of dogs at Worldcon, I decided to have my students research and write about dogs for my scientific writing class. I always try to pick a theme I haven’t chosen before. I have had my students study many things in the 23 years I’ve taught this class — tardigrades, autumn leaves, cockroaches, garlic mustard, frogs, monocots, terrestrial gastropods, leaf miners, earthworms, millipedes, etc. — but I’ve never done dogs before. I think it’s going pretty well.
I’ve been productive with SFF writing as well as fall begins. I finished a novelette, Bearly Believable; wrote a short story, Uplands; and have started working on a second, Tablelands, in the same series. (Both are sequels to Bottomlands, a story that has been accepted for publication, but for which I’ve not yet received a contract.) I wrote about using regular expressions to find other -lands words, so now I have a bunch of ideas for further titles in this series.
I have also written an article for Planetside, the newly renamed SFWA blog. I made a pitch back in August which was accepted. Once I submitted the manuscript, it was sent to a line editor for revisions, which went well. Now it’s with the lead editor for final review and to select some of the images I submitted to go with it. It’s been my first experience writing for Planetside and it’s been a real pleasure.
I’ve not been as diligent about getting work submitted for publication this year. I have two works “in press” though long delayed. But I need to do better at getting work submitted and promptly re-submitted once it’s rejected.
Around the equinox, I met with the amazing curators of @wss366 to talk about Wandering Shop Stories. It’s a great bunch of folks! We had a new curator join us since our last meeting and it was wonderful to meet her. I love our small community and it gives me immense pleasure every day to have a little creative exercise in the morning to start things off. Our next meeting will be around the solstice.
Although it’s depressing to watch the news, I am encouraged by more than just schadenfreude. Not everything is dark. People are waking up to the fact that AI is a hype and asset bubble. And it looks to me like, in running up against the real world, the Republicans are beginning to realize that actually governing is necessary. I rarely agree with what they’re doing but, occasionally — after exhausting all of the other possibilities — they do finally do the right thing. It’s something.
There’s a long, dark winter ahead. But spring will follow eventually.
I’ve just finished a new manuscript called Uplands. It’s a sequel to a story I wrote about a year ago called Bottomlands. They’re dark fantasy short stories about a witch and her familiar.
I was thinking I might want to write more stories in the series and was grasping for more words that end with -lands. I pretty quickly thought of grasslands and barrowlands, but then I was kind of stumped. I went to do a websearch, but how do you search for -lands?
I poked around for a few minutes to see if I already didn’t have a dictionary file on my computer, but pretty quickly I decided to just download this list of 479k English words for this purpose. The Internet is still useful for a few things.
Then I crafted my regular expression using the unix utility egrep. I went through a couple of iterations to get it just right, but ended up with this:
egrep '^[a-z].+lands$' ~/Downloads/words.txt
It looks through the file for words that end in “lands” and that aren’t capitalized (so you don’t get Netherlands, for example).
I ended up with 53 words. I think that’s more stories than I’ll want to write in this series. Some of the words are pretty good too! (e.g. badlands, borderlands, hinterlands all seem good for dark fantasy). Some don’t seem so useful (e.g. islands, lallands, playlands).
Interestingly, barrowlands wasn’t among the words. Go figure.
Since the pandemic, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has provided a robust online experience for the Nebula conference. It was fully online during 2020 and then resumed in 2022. Since then, there has been a commitment to offering a full (if not always perfectly integrated) online experience during the Nebula Conference. This year, SFWA is trying something new: an online only professional development conference. We’re calling it Quasar.
If you already paid for attendance to either the face-to-face or online Nebula conference, you’re eligible to register for Quasar at no expense. Otherwise, it’s only $50. Register before September 15 to receive the panel participation forms and office-hour surveys.
It will be a weekend of seminars, office hours, and flexible event scheduling with a keynote by the Nebula Grand Master Nicola Griffith.
It should be interesting, informative, and a lot of fun. Anyone interested in writing speculative fiction should strongly consider attending to learn more about the craft and business of writing and to network with your peers. Join us!
Today, I shared one of my Mastodon posts with friends, one of whom commented, “Weirdos posting stuff to social media ” So I took a few minutes to explain to them why I like Mastodon.
I do like Mastodon. I get more and higher quality engagement with what I share on Mastodon than anyplace else these days. But, more than that, I really just like it. It’s peaceful and relaxing. And a few months ago, I realized why: It reminds me of Usenet.
Usenet was a kind of terminal-based messaging system that scientists and technologists used in the earliest days of the Internet and the before times (i.e. when it was still “NSFNet“). It was an amazingly interesting and useful community of people having high-level discussions of topics both academic and non-academic.
My brother, who was an Unix systems-engineer at the time, had told me about Usenet. Honestly, the main reason I decided to go back to graduate school, was so I could gain access to it. Even at my university, it wasn’t easy. The campus IT group didn’t make it available to the general university community, so I had to request a guest account from the computer science department. As a doctoral student, my request was honored and I used that as my primary computer account, and email address, the whole time I was a graduate student. That was also why I started learning Unix, which became a key factor in landing the job that became my career.
As a student, I used Usenet professionally to further my academic career and research. I had high-level conversations about science education and life science. I used it to recruit subjects for my doctoral research, developing a model of expert performance in phylogenetic tree construction. But that wasn’t all I used it for. I also lived in soc.culture.esperanto, the newsgroup for Esperanto speakers, where I could have conversations with samideanoj from all over the world. This was a genuine novelty at the time, where you otherwise might have to sign up with a penpal service to exchange paper letters with people to have similar contacts. (I did this, in fact, and had interesting correspondence, but it often took many weeks to get responses whereas Usenet allowed you to have conversations in just days — or sometimes even just hours!)
Usenet began to die when AOL came online and there was a constant influx of new non-academic people. People called it “eternal September“. The Usenet community worked for busy academics and professionals because most people respected the conventions. You could use it for high-level discussions because it was high signal and low noise. Once those conventions broke down, the really interesting people mostly abandoned it because it wasn’t worth trying to wade through all of the irrelevant crap that novices tended to post. It was very sad.
Thirty years later, I was surprised to join Mastodon and discover that it reminded me so much of Usenet. It has the same high-quality engagement by interesting, thoughtful people. And it has social conventions that make the environment functional and useful. But then I realized that Mastodon didn’t just remind me of Usenet: It’s literally the same people. There’s Gene Spafford. And Steve Bellovin. And many, many others.
A whole bunch of the old, interesting people I remember from Usenet are here! We are pretty old, too. Most of us are retirement age, if not retired. But it’s been wonderful to reconnect with so many of these folks after so many years.
It’s not just that it has many of the same people, though. It’s the thoughtful design of the software environment. And the social conventions that favor high-quality engagement and reduce both the “copypasta” and the viral “oh, snap!” types of engagement that have come to characterize most social media. It’s always a pleasure to immerse myself in a thoughtful community of people engaged in creative pursuits, whether it’s taking pictures of mosses and lichens or sharing story fragments or responding to prompts about writing pursuits.
Two of the writing prompts I follow on Mastodon ask, “How was this month for you, writing-wise?” It was pretty good.
I had a couple of distractions: I went to Worldcon and Philip Brewer came to visit. Those each took about a week away from my writing. But otherwise, I got a lot done.
I’ve just about finished writing a new novelette called Bearly Believable. For several years, I’ve been writing little story fragments about a bear who acts as the fire-safety coordinator at a park. They’ve been among my most popular story fragments (which isn’t saying much, honestly). I think this is the very first one:
I wrote dozens of little scenarios about the bear as I fleshed him out in my mind. He changed a bit along the way and developed a backstory, which is what this story is really all about. Along the way, he was joined by a owl named Forrest who terrorizes litterbugs. And a little girl named Brunhilde who asks him thoughtful questions.
There’s a lot of world building embedded in the story. It has bits about the ecology of terraforming, lifestyles in a replicator-based society, and issues of freedom for non-human biological androids. At the same time, as with my of my writing, it’s silly fluff. I really don’t write anything to be deep.
It’s been fun to write. I just have a few bits to polish off over the next day or two. I would like to get it finished before the semester begins on Tuesday. If I quit writing this post and start working on that, there’s a good chance I’ll make it and finish writing for the month in style.
I have selected my theme for my writing course for the fall of 2025. Each semester I’ve taught the class since 2002, I’ve tried to pick a different theme for my students to research and write about. I can’t say that I’ve never repeated themes, but I always try to think up something different. This semester, I intend for my students to study the biology of Canis familiaris, the dog.
I’ve always tried to select something I don’t know much about. It allows the students to be the experts. And it prevents me from becoming too directive (which happens all too often when I already too much about the subject). It also keeps the course fresh for me and has let me learn a vast amount of biology over the years.
Some themes have worked better than others. Students tend to be strongly biased toward animals, so although I’ve been very pleased with the semesters we studied plants or fungi, students were often less satisfied. I’ve generally shied away from vertebrates, simply because there are a lot of practical and regulatory complications for conducting research on them. So we’ve studied planarians, tardigrades, terrestrial gastropods, worms, millipedes, wood lice, spiders, and many types of insects, which has usually made students happy. (They didn’t like the semester we studied cockroaches, tho. Go figure.) But dogs will be something new.
My thinking was undoubtedly influenced by the excellent panel on dogs I participated on at Worldcon. There’s a wonderfully rich literature about dogs that students can dig into. The real question will be, what kinds of research projects can students propose and conduct? My course asks students to write a proposal — preferably about something they could actually do — and then to select a proposal to actually undertake as a research project.
I encourage students to follow their interests. If they’re genuinely interested in some topic that we can’t actually do, they’re welcome to write it up as a proposal. I often use the example of studying the biology of Mars. We don’t have the resources or time to visit Mars to conduct a project. But that shouldn’t stop them from proposing that, if that’s really what they want to do. It’s typically more fun to pitch something we can actually do. And it’s fun when your idea gets chosen by the class for a whole course research project.
I don’t require that the whole course pick just one project. Each group can choose to do their own proposal or any of the other proposals. Or something different altogether, if something more interesting has occurred to them. But it does sometimes happen organically, that one proposal rises to the top and everyone coordinates to conduct 8 or 9 projects all centered around a single proposal.
I wonder what kinds of projects the students will propose. I think there’s a lot we can do. We could observe dogs at local dog parks. Or simply by walking downtown. Some students will undoubtedly have pets. Or we could look for evidence of dogs in the environment.
Before we write proposals, I have the students perform a “METHODS Project” where they make a multi-panel figure that relates to the theme to get them thinking about the kinds of data they might collect. This year, I’ll ask them to collect photographic evidence of the presence of a dog in the local environment. The challenge for this project is how to collect data that is replicable: Can they think of something to photograph that another student can reliably also document? I can think of a few ideas, but it’s tricky. I’ll enjoy seeing what they come up with.
I’m always happy when I come up with an idea that I’m excited about and that I think the students will also enjoy. I think this is going to be a winner. Now I just need to come up with one more idea for next semester, which will be the very last time I ever teach this class.
I don’t generally pay much attention to birthdays. But this year, my friends and family got together and made my birthday very special. It’s wonderful to have supportive family and friends.
The last time I had a special birthday was a dozen years ago when my friend Buzz Hoagland offered to throw me a party for my 50th birthday. He brewed some special beer to toast me and we invited all of my friends, family, and colleagues to come to his house for a party on the lawn. It was wonderful and I still have fond recollections many years later. In the interim, Buzz passed away and my life is much smaller and poorer for his passing.
Buzz was, in many ways, the center of my social life. He was outgoing and gregarious — and maintained a large circle of friends that I felt lucky to be a part of. He was always the one to send out messages to bring everyone together for a party or a dinner or a trip to the brewery. After he passed away, I tried to step into his shoes and set up a signal group to stay in touch with friends.
I called my group the Manly Men. This is a joke because we are probably among the least manly men in existence. We regularly share supportive messages and funny links and organize, occasionally, to get together to hang out and drink beer.
One of us, the Z-Man, is going through a rough time right now and, by coincidence, messaged me the night before my birthday to talk about getting together. (See left…)
He did message the Manly Men and they all agreed to stop by to wish me a happy birthday. The Z-Man came first and we sat out in the tent to chat with my brother, his wife, and my mom. The Ol’ Sprackler came by while the Z-Man was still there and we chatted some more. Then, after the Z-Man left, Bug Rodger called me on the phone and we put him on speaker and chatted for a bit. Daniel came out after a while and joined us. Finally, after the Sprackler left, we went to the Berkshire Brewery for pizza and beer, and then the Sifaka stopped by to chat for an hour or more
It was wonderful to spend pretty much the whole day visiting with friends and family. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. Since the pandemic, I hardly ever see people. I generally stay isolated to avoid exposure to respiratory viruses and, except for when people come to hang out in the tent, I don’t much socialize. But I really value having friends, which have always been an important part of my life.
One of my colleagues at UMass once joked, “I used to have these things called friends…” when talking about the isolation of being a faculty member. Faculty, because they evaluate one another, have a tendency to be unwilling to show weakness or vulnerability. As a faculty member, you feel a lot of pressure to present a carefully curated perspective on your life to other faculty. You can talk about the grants you’re applying for. Or how much work your teaching is and how it takes away from your research. But sometimes, years and years after having met a colleague, you discover that they play a musical instrument in a band. Or do oil painting or watercolors. They don’t share these facets of their lives with their colleagues because they don’t want to be perceived as having “free time” that they’re not dedicating to their research. It’s very sad.
I had a great birthday — one that I will remember for the rest of my days.
Today, the #WritersCoffeeClub prompt at Mastodon asked contributors to “Talk about an affirming experience you’ve had among your writing peers.” This was really difficult, only because it was so difficult to choose. There are so many people and groups that I value and appreciate. After some consideration, I decided to write about Wandering Shop Stories:
I really appreciate my brother, Philip M. Brewer, and my younger son, who serve as alpha readers of my fiction. When I write my initial draft, it’s really useful to have a few eyes to look it over and help me think about story structure and pacing. My brother is particularly good at coming up with ideas to strengthen the story and heighten the drama. And Daniel likes to mock the weak points, in a friendly and supportive way. His raillery always leaves rolling on the floor in hysterics. I am filled with gratitude for their support
In addition to #wss366, which I organize and manage, many other Mastodon writing communities are wonderful and supportive. They include #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and others. It’s interesting to reflect on the questions, to read the responses that others write, and to receive positive reactions from the community.
I love serving on the Board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). The organization is such a positive force in support of the genre writing community. The Board is really excellent. It’s the best non-profit Board I’ve ever served with, composed of deeply committed people who are both talented and dedicated to supporting the community. When I joined the Board, SFWA was in a crisis with a loss of leadership and staff. Now, we have great leadership and are fully staffed with truly outstanding people. The organization is really hitting on all cylinders. Somewhat perversely, it’s much less work for us on the Board and truly wonderful things are happening all the time. Everywhere I turn, people are commenting how they like the direction SFWA is taking. It’s been incredibly rewarding service.
I also love the Straw Dog Writers Guild. I enjoy serving on the Program Committee and helping organize interesting workshops and presentations. I’ve been able to invite really excellent people to contribute to our programming. And I really treasure my small community at Straw Dog Writes. There are a handful of us that meet nearly every week on Wednesday evenings to write together via zoom and a number of others that drop in and out periodically. Everyone has been very supportive and friendly.
It’s so important to have community to fall back on when things are rough. I really value everyone’s support.
In 2022, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and learned that I have a chronic lung condition that puts me at heightened risk from respiratory infections. Even before, during the pandemic, my family was being very cautious due to my 90-year-old mother living with us. The net result has been that, for us, the pandemic never ended.
For several years, I only attended events where everyone was masked. I attended Arisia, Boskone, Readercon, and Worldon in Chicago, while masks were required. But, as events — one-by-one — dropped masking requirements, I have gradually begun attending events where masks aren’t required. This year, I attended Worldcon in Seattle.
I mask everyplace I go indoors, except for my own house. Or inside my own hotel room. It really kinda sucks. No dining in restaurants, no bars, no nothing. (Unless it’s outdoors.)
At Worldcon, a small percentage of people — perhaps 10% — were masked. The numbers were a bit higher in the science panels I attended. At SEATAC, perhaps as many as 5% of people were masked. At DFW, I saw thousands of people during our two-hour layover as we transited between terminals and only saw one other person wearing a mask.
Masks are really not that uncomfortable. They don’t interfere with your breathing at all. When you wear them for hours, however — especially when it’s hot and humid — the increased humidity on your face is irritating. And if I have to do any serious exertion, my mask will become soaked with sweat, which is even worse. It also causes my glasses to be less stable, especially if I’m looking down. I’ve had my glasses literally fall off my face. And don’t get me started about when I use the Portable Oxygen Concentrator (which I need in order to fly) and have to run the oxygen tubes behind my ears too.
Wearing a mask is stigmatizing. People can’t hear you as well and can’t see your facial expressions, which makes you more difficult to understand. It’s isolating because you can’t respond as effectively to social cues. It’s especially bad when you’re one of the only ones masking. It makes you stand out in a bad way.
The modern Summit Convention Center in Seattle has very high ceilings and, reportedly, very high quality air filtration. But I still masked everywhere.
Even masked, I avoided crowded events. If there were a lot of people in a room, I don’t go in. Or I got out.
One of the main reasons people go to Worldcon is to attend parties in hotel rooms and suites. These rooms generally have very poor ventilation. There were a lot of parties on the same floor as our hotel room. We could hear the sounds of merry making in our room every night. SFWA held two breakfasts in their suite. I attended the first for about 10 minutes, when the room completely filled up with unmasked people and so I left.
The net result is that I can only get about half of the experience of going to a convention.
When I returned home, I watched the #disease-self-reporting channel of the Worldcon Discord as reports of cases came in. On my publisher’s Discord, people who had worked in the dealer’s room began reporting positive results too. Every time I saw another report, I would have psychosomatic symptoms. Is my throat scratchy? Why did I just cough?
I finally ran a test this morning, four day after departing the convention. Negative.
It appears I’ve dodged the bullets again. But that’s literally what it is: dodging the bullets. It’s constant and it’s exhausting.
” So I took a few minutes to explain to them why I like Mastodon.
