Steven D. BREWER

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 And written a number more that are, as yet, unpublished.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.

Four years ago, I discovered what shimenawa were and I made one for my beloved sakura tree. But it was time for a new one. The old one had gradually disintegrated in the weather and only part of a single shide remained. So I gathered supplies over the past week and reminded myself how to construct the tassels and shide to put up a new one in time for the cherry blossoms

Our tree was grown from cuttings gifted to the Town of Amherst by the Nation of Japan in honor of William Clark. The tree has struggled in recent years since we needed to have a trench cut in the front yard that impinged on its roots. But we’ve been working with an arborist to nurse it back to health.

I look forward to the cherry blossoms every year and this year, perhaps, more than ever. Now I’ll have a nice, fresh shimenawa to go with them.

On May 11, 2024, I will be bringing a Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) vendor table to the Watch City Steampunk Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts. I’ve never attended Watch City before, but it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Currently, we are scheduled to have four or five authors sharing the table. I will be sure to bring Revin’s Heart, which is steampunky fantasy adventure. (And I’ll also bring a few copies of Better Angels: Tour de Force, just in case.) But Water Dragon Publishing has a few other steampunky offerings. And, as I say, there will several other authors there as well.

The SPBU model has been doing very well! It lets indie and small-press authors share the cost of a vendor table and avoid the need to get a tax identity or manage the purchasing system to sell books independently. A big traditional publisher might be able to just justify a table of their own, but very few indie or small press publishers could. We tried out the approach experimentally at Worldcon in Chicago and we’ve had tables for SPBU at Baycon, Arisia, and Boskone. It’s been a boon for authors who want to attend a con and they can tell people where they can buy their books.

Recently, I was gratified to receive two extremely generous reviews of Revin’s Heart. Reviews are critical for getting the word out about new books.

The first was by The Faerie Review. The reviewer, Lily Shadowlyn, had read the entire Revin’s Heart series at the time the final novelette came out and had written a series of enthusiastic reviews about each of them. In the last review, she had said, “I would love to see all the stories compiled into one larger book or even a box set bundle someday, although it would be a hefty tome, the stories it would contain would be worth it!” So, when the collected edition came out, she reread the stories and the additional material had many nice things to say.

[T]hink Treasure Planet with magic and LGBTQIA+ rep. The story moves along smoothly, and the action will get your heart racing. The characters are unforgettable, and you won’t see the twists coming.

Lily Shadowlyn

The second review was a complete surprise to me. Damian Serbu wrote a review for Queer Sci Fi. In his review, he speaks glowingly about the worldbuilding, story structure, and pacing of Revin’s Heart. But his description of Revin made me feel wonderful that someone really got what I was aiming for.

Revin himself is a fabulous character. You pull for him from the first. He possesses a charming combination of hurt because of not being accepted for his true nature with a hope for a better future and acceptance for those around him, no matter who they are. And Revin blends a youthful naïveté about the world, especially within the realm of the pirates, with a bravery and courage in his exploits.

Damian Serbu

I’m so grateful for the excellent reviews. It’s really hard to get reviews. Every author wishes that more people who read books would share a review — even if only to say, “I read this and it was OK.” But to get such lengthy, positive reviews is extraordinary and I hope they lead to more people discovering Revin’s Heart and enjoying it.

In 2023, I had been scheduled to appear at Boskone, but ended up instead in the hospital. It was a big disappointment and so I was excited this year when I was again selected to appear on the program.

The second weekend in February happens to be also the second week of the semester, so I had a regular workday on Friday. I drove to Boston the night before and then had an early morning meeting and office hours. I had just enough time between office hours and class to run down to the parking garage to meet my confederates to open my car and help move in the books for the Water Dragon dealer table. After class, I was able to get registered, pick up my packet, and then spend a little time selling books before it was time for my first panel.

My first panel was Write My Doctoral Thesis: Science Edition. When I had signed up, I hadn’t noticed that this was supposed to be comedic event (another participant told me that they were under the same misapprehension, which made me feel better for having missed this crucial fact.) After the fact, it was a lot of fun. But during the session it was rather stressful: It was rather like playing madlibs with very smart opponents in front of a live audience. But I felt like I made good contributions and got some laughs. And I was pleased to meet the other participants who all seemed like great folks.

Saturday was my busy with a reading following immediately after by a panel, then a break, the book festival, and another panel immediately after. The reading was reasonably well attended: I read The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss, an excerpt of The Third Time’s the Charm, and The Better Angels and the Super Sticky Situation. Then I had to run to the Speculative Evolution panel. The participants were well selected, with people representing diverse perspectives. I was bit disappointed that the Book Festival was kind of a bust: I had a handful of people who came to speak with me, but it was a general problem: there just weren’t many people there. My last panel, Romance in Speculative Fiction was fascinating: it was an interesting group of participants. A number of audience members, afterwards expressed how much they valued my comments that provided representation for queer and non-binary perspectives.

I spent Sunday in the dealer room selling books. Revin’s Heart bundles sold well, although it became clear that people were planning to get copies of the fix-up which is now out (although I did not have copies to sell at the con.) This should surprise no-one. I was a bit more disappointed that, although people liked my pitch for Better Angels, it did not sell particularly well. People would listen to the pitch, say it sounded good, and then not buy the book. So realized a little tweak. Rather than calling it “light-hearted space opera” I’ve started calling it “fluffy military space opera” which will hopefully generate the right amount of cognitive dissonance.

Boskone is just a month after Arisia, but the two events are quite different. Boskone trends older — maybe 25 years older. And the participants seem clearer on what they want. And what they want is traditional sci fi like they read when they were younger. They seem therefore less interested in the new offerings of a small press. The booth just next to ours was MIT Press selling, among other things, books by Stanislav Lem (mostly written in the 1960s and 1970s) that seemed very interesting to the participants.

Sunday afternoon, we packed everything up and I drove home, getting back just before sunset.

Trying to publicize your books is hard. It’s one of the things that you don’t think much about until you try to transition from “writer” to “author.” At least I didn’t. But I had seen enough authors talking about the need to do publicity that I had some idea what I was getting myself into. What I didn’t know anything about, however, was advertising.

Last summer, I saw a Facebook group that was going to offer a free starter class for people who wanted to learn about advertising using ads at Amazon. I decided to spend a little money up front just trying out the advertising system. I first tried letting Amazon construct the ad (basically just showing a book among search results, I think). But I think I clicked something wrong and it didn’t work at all. It didn’t cost anything because nobody clicked on it — whatever it was (I couldn’t figure out how to get it to show me what the ad was that it was even showing). But it tried again and got some tiny number of clicks. But it was clear that a lot more fine tuning was required. So I tried the class.

The class was based around long screencasts. I quickly found I couldn’t stand to watch the screencasts at all. But accompanying the screencasts were click-by-click directions for the activities. This I could do, so I set up a handful of experimental ads like they recommended. The results were quite discouraging. I didn’t get any sales (as far as I could tell) and, when I spoke with another author who had taken a similar (but more advanced class), he indicated that you needed to get orders of magnitude larger responses in order actually see appreciable sales. And he had decided it wasn’t worth it.

Several people said that Facebook ads were a better fit, so I decided to hold my nose and give those a try. I truly and wholeheartedly despise Facebook. But I gave them some money to “boost” a post I had already written to promote Better Angels: Tour de Force. The interface was less complicated and it seemed like I got better results. So, after that ad finished, I decided to run another. When I did, however, I discovered how enshittified the Facebook ad system is.

The first ad you buy has reasonable defaults that make sense: it defaults to $14 for a week with a goal of getting people to click on your link. But when you try to do the next one, it dicks with the defaults. It tries to get you to spend $42 or $56 or some much larger amount. And it defaults to other weird goals like “get more engagement” or “get more messages via Facebook Messenger”. And it tries to get you link Instagram and What’s App accounts with your Facebook account. Ugh. I feel so unclean.

Since I’ve been playing around with my book promotion posts already, I will probably continue to purchase ads at some low level. Since it does seem to actually put my ad in front of people who do, at some level, click through to the book page. And maybe some of them actually buy a book. If nothing else, it gives me some additional metrics on which book promotion posts are more effective.

It still feels a lot like just rolling the dice.

Last year, I was scheduled to appear at Boskone, but ended up going into the hospital the week before. Tempting fate, I have again proposed myself as a participant and have now received my final schedule.

On Friday Feb 9, since this is during the academic year, I will have office hours at 10am, and then will teach class (remotely) from 1:25 until 3:45. Then, I will be free to participate in the convention for the rest of the weekend.

At 7pm on Friday, I will serve on a panel Write My Doctoral Thesis: Science Edition (in Burroughs). This looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Saturday is my busy day: I have a reading (in Galleria – Cabaret) at 12:30, then Speculative Evolution (in Marina 4) at 1pm, followed by the Boskone Book Party (in the Galleria) at 6pm, then Romance in Speculative Fiction (in Harbor 2) at 7pm.

But Sunday, I’m totally free!

Mostly, when not otherwise scheduled, I’ll be at the Water Dragon Publishing table in the Dealer Room. I’ll have plenty of copies of Better Angels: Tour de Force, as well as bundles of Revin’s Heart. Stop by and visit!

David was still on the bridge of Angels’ Wings, the Better Angels’ starship, when Bebe came out in her nightgown.

“Bebe can’t sleep,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Can I get you something? Some warm milk maybe?” David asked.

“Bebe wants you to read her a story.”

David felt his hackles rise.

“What story would you like?” he said, apprehensively.

“Bebe wants you to read Cap’n Capybara and the Case of the Curious Crocodile!”

“Again? Didn’t I read that last time? And the time before?”

She grabbed his sleeve and tugged, “Come. Come!”

David tucked Bebe into her bed, then seated himself. Eyes shining, she wriggled with anticipation under the covers.

“Close your eyes,” David admonished.

Bebe complied and David began to read.

“Cap’n Capybara and the Case of the Curious Crocodile. By Cat Cattwaddler.

“‘Catch, Cap’n’!” called Crocodile.

“‘Can’t,’ quipped Cap’n Capybara. ‘Carrying coffee!'”

Bebe began giggling.

“Cup caught casually chucked chunk.”

Bebe started snorting with laughter.

“Crocodile cried, ‘Captivity crummy!'”

“Aw!” Bebe said, plaintively.

“Go to sleep!”

David read the rest of the book to Bebe. By the last page she was finally asleep, her chest rising and falling evenly. He laid the book down and tiptoed out as quietly as he could. Then he turned and found the rest of the Better Angels standing in their nightgowns.

“We can’t sleep, David! Read us a story too!”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “What story do you want?”

“Cap’n Capybara and the Case of the Curious Crocodile!” they all said in unison.

“But…” David said, turning to look back at the door. Then he put his foot down. “No. You’ll have to pick something else.”

This story was originally written for a set of prompts for #wss366.

Better Angels: Tour de Force is now available at The Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy.

I’ve been rather surprised to discover that I seem to be pretty good at selling books. It doesn’t hurt, of course, to have books that people want to read. But a huge part of successful selling is to have a pitch that lands with the prospective buyer. And that’s what I seem to be good at.

I think it derives from the years I spent doing educational assemblies. To make those performances work, you need to hone a series of stories and statements so that the wording and timing resonates with the audience and they get caught up in the performance. When it works best, the audience will play along and you can hear them respond and engage with what you’re saying. It’s not a conversation, but you can hear through their laughter or groans when they’ve understood something or gotten the silly joke you were trying to tell.

The first step is judging when to engage with someone approaching or at the table. Some people stand back or refuse to make eye-contact. Or are clearly focused on looking at the books themselves. I usually just offer a quiet “Hello.” Or “Can I help you with anything?” Or, if they seem unsure, I might ask, “Would you like a tour?” Or, occasionally, “What do you like to read?” I’d rather not ask that, because I want to steer them to what I want them to read.

When I’m selling Revin’s Heart, I often begin by pointing at the Airship Pirate ribbon and asking, “Would you like to be an airship pirate?” Most people at science fiction conventions would like to be an airship pirate, although there are exceptions. The ribbon is particularly good because its immediately recognizable to LGBTQIA+ folks who can tell immediately that the book might appeal to them.

I leave a beat while they consider the ribbon and then, as they take it, I say, “It’s for my steampunky fantasy adventure with pirates and airships and a trans protagonist.” I usually tick off on my fingers as list the items.

I leave another beat and say, “It was serialized as seven novelettes. They’re five dollars each, but — if you buy all seven as a bundle — you can get them for $25… [beat] which is like two free!”

If they express interest in the first one, I point at the Third Time’s the Charm and say, “Pro tip: don’t name the first book in a series ‘the third’ something.” This almost always generates a smile, if not a laugh.

At this point, I generally point to Better Angels and say, “This is my newest book. It’s about a group of non-human biological androids [beat] that look like pre-teen girls [beat] and serve as magical girl singing-and-dancing idols [beat] but they can change up their programming [beat] and become a covert military force.” Usually, by this point, people are totally caught up in the pitch and are expressing wonderment or laughing. When I did this pitch at the Steampunk Isn’t Dead panel at Arisia2024, I had been honing it all weekend, the audience responded, as I performed it, with a rising volume of amazement, “aaaaaAAAAAAH!” ending in laughter and applause.

I’ve got a few other pitches. I learned an effective one for the Grimaulkin series from the author. And for two of the Water Dragon anthologies, I will say. “The Future’s So Bright is the bright, hopeful, optimistic stuff while Corporate Catharsis is all the dark stuff you wish you could do to your boss.” This usually generates a laugh and immediately helps the prospective buyer situate those books in their mind.

After making the pitch, there are plenty of other things I can tell buyers about the books. But I’ve realized that having an effective pitch that’s delivered as a performance, sets the stage for everything that follows.

I attended Arisia for the second time as a participant. Last year, I was only one one or two panels and had a reading. This year, I moderated a panel, served on four more, and had a reading. I dressed up in cosplay for the panel “Steampunk isn’t dead.” Well. Sorta.

I moderated the panel on Gender and Sexual Identity Representation in Media. Originally, there were supposed to be four participants plus me moderating. Normally when there are four, the moderator can focus solely on facilitating the conversation. Unfortunately, one of the participants was unable to join us and so I tried to both moderate and participate in the conversation. I was satisfied with providing enough structure to keep the discussion on track and making sure that all of the participants were able to make contributions.

I served on three additional panels which were all fun. The Food in Science Fiction and Fantasy left me with an appetite to write more about food. The Bi+ Panel provided new insight into bisexuality, pansexuality, and current thinking in queer culture. And the panel on Invertebrates and Entomology in SFF was fascinating due to the other interesting participants that each had useful stuff to contribute. I felt like I made good contributions on each of the panels.

I got to offer a reading on Sunday afternoon. The audience was around a dozen. I think they were mostly there to hear the other participants, who all write much more poetical stuff, so my weird space opera stuff left me the odd-man out — quite literally. But the selections I had made (Military Morale Mishegoss and Super Sticky Situation) worked well together I got a polite, enthusiastic response. The other authors were jealous of my giant poster of my cover.

Water Dragon had a dealer table again this year. Last year, I was the lead in running it, but this year another author and his wife attended and took the lead. It was great! Four other authors from the publisher took turns at the table as well and it was great to get to meet them as well. I really value the vital community of authors that Water Dragon Publishing fosters.

I had a new book just out Better Angels: Tour de Force as well as the novelettes that form Revin’s Heart. The copies of Better Angels arrived just in time, but the additional stock of Revin’s Heart didn’t arrive in time. So I plenty of one, but ran short of the other.

I was grateful they required masks. Due to my underlying health conditions, I can only attend events where everyone is masked. Knock wood, it appears I came through the Convention without contracting any respiratory infections.

Next month, we’ll all be back for Boskone.

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, @wss365 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.

My schedule for Arisia 2024 has been finalized. I will be moderating one panel, serving as a panelist on four more, and offering a reading:

Gender & Sexual Identity Representation in Media
Marina Ballroom 3 Friday, January 12, 2024, 7:00 PM EST

Invertebrates and Entomology in SFF
Faneuil Saturday, January 13, 2024, 7:00 PM EST

The Bi+ Panel
Marina Ballroom 3 Sunday, January 14, 2024, 11:30 AM EST

Sunday Afternoon Readings
Faneuil Sunday, January 14, 2024, 2:30 PM EST

Food in Fantasy & Sci-Fi
Marina Ballroom 1 Sunday, January 14, 2024, 5:30 PM EST

Steampunk Isn’t Dead
Alcott Monday, January 15, 2024, 10:00 AM EST

In addition, Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe will have tables in the dealer room where I will be most of the time when not in panels.

Look me up! I hope to see you there!

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.

In the spring, Water Dragon Publishing released the last two novelettes of Revin’s Heart, I self-published It’s Complicated via Amazon Vella, and, in December, The Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy released Better Angels: Tour de Force.

• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Better Angels: Tour de Force. Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy, Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose, California, including
  • “Better Angels” pp 1-10,
  • “The Better Angels and the Very Scary Halloween” pp 11-24,
  • “The Better Angels and the Super Sticky Situation” pp 25-26,
  • “The Better Angels and the Really Rapid Rescue” pp 27-40,
  • “The Better Angels and Lambda and Tau” pp 41-46,
  • “The Better Angels and the Monomaniacal Menageriste” pp 47-62,
  • “The Better Angels and the Repugnant Rampant Rumor” pp 63-72,
  • “The Better Angels and the Nighty-Night Nurses” pp 73-84,
  • “The Better Angels and Bebe’s First Kiss” pp 85-86,
  • “The Better Angels and the Military Morale Mishegoss” pp 87-94,
  • “The Better Angels and the Complicated Camping Catastrophe” pp 95-118,
  • “The Better Angels and the Totally Topsy-Turvy Tournament” pp 119-126,
  • “The Better Angels and the Absolutely Apropos Arrangement” pp 127-136,
  • “The Better Angels and the Persistent Proposals of Prince Philip” pp 137-144,
  • “The Better Angels and the Giddy Genial Gag” pp 145-146,
  • “The Better Angels and the Parable of the Prodigal Pirate” pp 147-154,
  • “The Better Angels and the Insidiously Intolerable Invasion” pp 155-202.
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. To What Do I Owe in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZLVPX7H
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Take My Word for It in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZLVN7MB
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. It’s Magic in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZLVLLXY
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Tricks of the Trade in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQJJRSQ
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. It’s Better to Know in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQDMK19
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Not a Wolf in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQHZK8V
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. What Friends Do in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQGDMN2
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. You Can Bank On It in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQFYPH2
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Three’s a Crowd in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQGQ7V9
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Bears Will Be Bears in It’s Complicated, Amazon Vella. ASIN: B0BZQDTS2X
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Better Angels and Lambda and Tau. Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy Valentine’s Day, Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose, California. Available at: [truckstop.waterdragonpublishing.com/make-the-...](https://truckstop.waterdragonpublishing.com/make-the-truck-stop-your-romantic-destination/better-angels-and-lambda-and-tau/) [Feb14, 2023]
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Better Angels and the Super Sticky Situation. Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy Valentine’s Day, Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose, California. Available at: [truckstop.waterdragonpublishing.com/make-the-...](https://truckstop.waterdragonpublishing.com/make-the-truck-stop-your-romantic-destination/better-angels-and-the-super-sticky-situation/) [Feb 14, 2023]
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Rewriting the Rules. Part Seven of Revin’s Heart, Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose, California.
• Brewer, S.D. 2023. Then They Fight You. Part Six of Revin’s Heart, Water Dragon Publishing, San Jose, California. 47pp.

For years, I mostly scorned LinkedIn. I had made a profile early on, but mostly didn’t bother to maintain it. Luckily, I never lost my job at the University, so I didn’t need to look for work. I was kind of surprised when the CIO of the University talked about having used LinkedIn to make connections with employers saying (in effect), “Hey! Did you know you have X number of UMass graduates working for you? Maybe you should be more involved to help with recruitment.” And then some Department told me that LinkedIn was how most of their students found work. I was stunned, because it always seemed like kind of joke or wasteland. Still, I decided to take it a little more seriously and I’ve actually kept my profile more-or-less up-to-date.

With the demise of Twitter, LinkedIn is making a more serious effort to become a social media player. About a year ago, they changed my categorization to reflect that I posted regularly to my news feed. And they invited to join their “authors and writers” group, which I did. Although, as far as I can tell, nobody actually reads any of the stuff people post there. The whole site feels like a place where people post stuff that nobody reads. Most recently, they’ve started inviting me to contribute to “collaborative articles”.

Right around the time they did that, I saw a parody that absolutely nails LinkedIn and their “collaborative articles.”

Today, they wanted me to share “what are the best apps to help you be most productive.” Well, I had something to say about that. In terms of apps to…

Plan and organize your writing projects

In spite of (or perhaps because of) being a technologist for many years, I’m inherently suspicious of apps and use as few as possible. Apps on mobile devices are mostly funded by surveillance capitalism and I would recommend against installing any. I use a text editor for writing (currently Pulsar) — it’s very simple, generates universally readable text-files and offers no distractions.

Block out distractions and stay in the flow

I like to write in fits and starts, so I don’t mind having a browser running alongside my editor and keeping up with social media while I write. Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but I can’t be productive if I’m only writing anyway. Oh, I also listen to K-pop music and stand up and dance when favorite songs come on. Since I don’t speak Korean, I don’t get caught up in the lyrics and its a good idea to get up and move frequently, so it kills two birds with one stone.

Track and improve your writing habits

I hate being tracked. I check word counts as I’m finishing a manuscript for submission, but I don’t like paying attention to things like that otherwise. I also don’t like the structure of having particular blocks of times or a schedule: I write when I want to write and do other stuff when I don’t feel like writing. And I don’t use any apps because they’re mostly evil.

Edit and polish your writing

I do leave a spell check running, though I rarely need it. And my grammar is good enough that the grammar checkers are nearly always wrong for me. I have human beta readers that read early versions of my manuscripts to identify problems with pacing or story structure and then I have an editor to edit my manuscripts before publication. Apps are the devil.

Maybe, after this, they won’t bother to ask me to contribute again. I wouldn’t cry about that.

Revin, a young man from a poor mining town, has pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become the student apprentice of a law professor. But then, everything goes wrong: their airship is captured by pirates and Revin loses his mentor. Born female, Revin must make his way in a world oriented toward men while he struggles with his own identity.

Set against the backdrop of a war between island nations, a young man must navigate a world divided between the aristocracy and the common people. And, as a promising young man, he must choose whom to align himself with — and to serve. But what does Revin’s Heart say?

Originally serialized as seven novelettes, Revin’s Heart is being published in a collected edition with expanded material including interludes, three side-stories, and (maybe) a sneak peak of Devishire!

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 a, 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.

On Sunday, Nov 19, 2023, I set up a vendor table for Water Dragon Publishing to sell books. The event had originally been scheduled for the day before but the weather looked iffy, so they exercised their rain date for the following day. There were some 50 vendors there selling different arts and crafts.

I was in the second group to set up and arrived around 9am. I’m starting to get the hang of setting up and running a vendor table, but it’s still a lot of work to do by myself and I have recognized the need to set up a checklist to make sure I get everything and do everything in the right order. But I was easily set up well in advance of when the public began to arrive.

The occupant of the booth next to mine was a woman I had met earlier in the week via a Zoom meeting because she also teaches a course for the Honors College at UMass. She was as surprised to find that I was an author as I was to learn she was a potter. It was nice to have a friendly face nearby and we found several moments to exchange pleasant conversation over the course of the day.

Revin’s Heart once again sold extremely well. I didn’t sell out, but sold nearly half of the books I had received from my publisher. And a handful of other books, including a book of haiku. I had hoped to have Better Angels: Tour de Force ready, but we just couldn’t make it happen. The woman commented that she was impressed at how well Revin’s Heart sold and said that my pitch was very effective. From a strictly monetary perspective, I shouldn’t quit my day job. But it’s fun to meet with the public and talk about my writing.

In the morning, the weather was sunny and it was very comfortable. But by noon, the weather turned cloudy and a cold breeze started up. I nearly lost the canopy of my tent and had to take down the Water Dragon banner because it was like a sail blowing the tent around. I will need to get some weights to hold down the tent going forward — another thing to add to my checklist.

By the end of the day, I was utterly exhausted. Loading the car, setting up, spending a whole day interacting with people, and battling the wind had left me totally beat. I came home, just left everything in the car, fixed a strong cocktail, and then went to bed by 7:30pm. But I had mostly recovered by the next morning.

Overall, it was a very successful day. And I look forward to doing more of these events in the coming weeks.

The Better Angels. Entertainment. Music and Dancing. (And Rescues!)

Life is tough for non-human biological androids trying to make their way in a big galaxy. You have to be prepared to install whatever programming modules are needed for any given circumstances. Join the Better Angels and their associates as they launch their careers on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy.

Tour de Force, an anthology of Better Angels stories, comes out December 15, 2023!

I joined Twitter in March 2008 and, after initially puzzling about what it was for, found it to be an amazing place. I particularly appreciated the focus on text, rather than copypasta pictures that seemed to dominate most of the other social media environments. I loved the requirement to be concise. I enjoyed taking the time to carefully craft a complete thought in 140 characters.

But it was also who else was there. Authors, scientists, journalists, historians. It was like a 24-hour cocktail party — especially when events were happening. It was also where you call out a corporation and they would immediately respond to head off having your issue go viral.

And I used the Twitter API for a number of projects. I had created a twitter bot that could post Esperanto quotes. I had set up system to capture my tweets and save them at my website. I had a block on the front page of my blog to show my tweets. I frequently embedded tweets to support posts I was writing. I had set up Discord bots to gateway tweets for my publisher.

When I became a published author, my publisher encouraged me to create a separate social-media account for my publishing work, and so I created a new twitter handle and began developing a readership focused primarily on science fiction, fantasy, and publishing.

On Oct 27, the purchase of Twitter was completed. And, unlike some who immediately bailed, I thought I would wait and watch for a bit. But it didn’t take long to perceive what the new owner was going to do. And so, I began looking for alternatives.

I had actually created a Mastodon account in June, 2019: @limako@esperanto.masto.host. I was very much in favor of the idea and the model. (And, actually, I also had created another account for an instance created by a student.) But most of the people I was interested in interacting with just weren’t there. So I’d logged in a handful of times, but had not spent much time there.

On Nov 10, I created a new Mastodon account and began to wean myself away from Twitter. This was during a huge exodus and the entire fediverse was straining to accommodate so many new users. I could see that wandering.shop was probably the best instance for SFF authors, but I couldn’t get an invite code. And, rather than waiting patiently, I decided to create an account at another instance that seemed interesting: mastodon.lol: “A Mastodon server friendly towards anti-fascists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, hackers, and the like.”

It was a rather heady time, with vast numbers of new people trying to figure out this different thing. The guy who ran mastodon.lol was adding capacity like mad to accommodate all the people looking for new accounts. It went from 8000 to nearly 80,000 users in just a few months. He set up a patreon and people contributed money such that, in short order, it was financially self-supporting. But he quickly decided that trying to run such a service on his own wasn’t any fun. He never said exactly what happened — at least not that I ever saw — but he evidently became disillusioned and, by February, had flamed out. He posted a bitter message that the service would be shutting down in a few months. And then he vanished.

By this point, I was easily able to get an invite code for wandering.shop and, on February 9, 2023, I migrated my account to @stevendbrewer@wandering.shop.

For a while, my publisher had encouraged me to continue to post book promotion tweets at Twitter. And I did so until Jun 21, 2023, when the owner of Twitter asserted that “cis” and “cisgender” were slurs and would result in people saying being suspended. This was a bright line for me and I informed my publisher that I would no longer be posting at Twitter. He indicated that this was fine.

By this point, I had largely finished grieving. I was already no longer visiting Twitter. But it was sad to watch all of the cool services around the Internet that had depended on Twitter gradually vanish. The block on my blog quite working. The bots for my publisher quit working.

Every so often, I would see another high profile defection as people gave up and grieved what they had lost. I still feel some pain, like a phantom limb. I like the new community at Mastodon. But it’s not the same.

It’s still astonishing to me how many people are still ostensibly there.

Even more astonishing to me are the people who, after watching their whole online world purchased and set alight to satisfy the ego of an unbalanced lunatic, are migrating to other commercial properties, like Bluesky or Threads. Did you learn nothing? Sigh…

During the academic year, my time for pursuing my writing is extremely limited. Almost all of my time is devoted to reading and commenting on student papers. But I do find time for a few things.

I do continue to do several small writing activities. Using the #vss365 prompt on Mastodon, I’ve started writing a story about the Butter Angels: A group of girls who are minor celebrities because they do a cooking show on Volpex and who occasionally get mistaken for the Better Angels.

On Wednesday evenings, I continue to offer Straw Dog Writes. It’s been very successful, with a growing attendance. It’s a fun support group of writers and it’s given me a little time for writing each week that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

I’m hopeful I will be a participant at several upcoming conventions. I have returned the participant survey for Arisia-2024 and have been notified I will receive the survey soon for Boskone-2024. I have also requested to be on the program of Norwescon-2024. I’m also planning to attend Worldcon in Glasgow in summer 2024.

I have joined the volunteer staff for Readercon. I’ve ostensibly joined the “tech team”. But I’m also doing some flyers and other simple graphic design stuff. I’m not really a graphic artist, but I can use vector illustration programs and simple page layouts.

I’m looking forward to the imminent release of Better Angels: Tour de Force. I’m hoping to have copies available for sale in time for the holidays. I’m planning to be at the Holiday Market in the Mill District in North Amherst and the Amherst Farmer’s Market. Books always make great gifts!

And we’re still on track for the release of the Revin’s Heart fix-up with additions and three side-stories in January! Watch for 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!

This morning at 2:10am I got an email from the organizers of LOSCon indicating that I was going to be offered an opportunity to be a participant. Unfortunately, LOSCon appears to be “mask optional.” Their COVID Policy page is actually totally unhelpful and doesn’t actually tell you what the policy is. But here is how I replied:

Thank you very much for the opportunity to identify additional panels of interest at LOSCon.

In July, when I proposed myself as a participant, I was anticipating that my pulmonologist would clear me to attend an event with unmasked participants. And, briefly, in August she did. But then, a week later, she personally called me from the ICU to say that, due to the rise in COVID cases, I should withdraw from events where participants are unmasked.

When I last checked, it appeared that LOSCon was planning to be “mask optional.” If that’s true, then — on the recommendation of my pulmonologist — I will have to withdraw as a participant.

I very much regret not  being able to attend. And if the policy has changed, please let me know so that I can make prompt arrangements to attend.

Best wishes for a successful con!

I’m particularly sad in that I have the new Better Angels book coming out and was really looking forward to being able to promote it at the convention. But my health really needs to come first.

I notice that, at “mask optional” events not even Neil Gaiman can get people to mask up. This is definitely not the best of all possible worlds.

This fall, I’ve launched a new program at the Straw Dog Writers Guild: Straw Dog Writes. Modeled on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Writing Date, I offer a Zoom session where Straw Dog members can come for some light socializing and two 45-minute writing sessions. I’ve found this as a really useful way to enforce a little productivity and networking. I’ll be offering these at least through mid-December and then we’ll decide whether to continue the program into the new year.

Recently on Mastodon there have been several interesting daily prompts for writers: #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, and #PennedPossibilities. During the academic year, when my professional responsibilities give me limited time for writing, these are a fun way to reflect on my writing and let me feel like I’m still engaged.

I also write a lot short fragments on Mastodon, some of which find their ways into finished works. I credit writing the fragments with helping me improve my sense of story structure: writing a complete story in 500 characters really forces you to cut the story down to its essential elements. It reminds me of when I was a graduate student and writing haiku was a way to keep doing Esperanto in a small way. I have a lot of fun with the fragments and they often give me ideas for larger stories. I often post mine using the hashtag #vss365.

In mid-September, I delivered the final manuscripts for the Better Angels anthology: Tour de Force. It’s like a TRIPLE entendre. We spent a long time workshopping titles. I had been inclined toward “The Better Angels and Sixteen Seriously Sweet and Significantly Sanguinary Stories Set on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy.” My publisher said, “Oh, great. Well, at least with that title we won’t need to worry about cover art.” The anthology should be out by mid-December.

I’m also working on the fix-up edition of Revin’s Heart. This will include the seven novelettes, but also three side-stories that tell stories where Revin isn’t present: Where There’s a Will (about how Will and Grip meet and fall in love), Curtain’s Rise (how Will and the Baron originally met), and Riva’s Escape (Revin’s transition). I’m currently writing pieces that will bridge between the novelettes. It’s giving me a chance to expand on things that readers have asked about, or expressed interest in.

I’ll be appearing in a local holiday market on November 18 at the Mill District in Amherst. I’ll have not only my own books, but also a selection of other books suitable as gifts. There are discussions about a winter market I may also attend. Stay tuned.

I’m hoping to appear at several upcoming conventions. But the current surge in COVID cases requires that I be cautious.

I had planned to attend LOSCon, but it’s looking less and less likely that I’ll be able to attend. The aren’t committed to masking and I had applied to be a participant, but they haven’t gotten back to me. time is getting short to buy plane tickets and secure housing.

I’ve applied to be a participant at Arisia (which is close by) and they’ve already committed to requiring masks. So, with any luck at all, I’ll be able to attend.

I’m hoping to attend Boskone this year. Last year, I was hospitalized and wasn’t able to make it. But, hopefully, this year will be different. I still haven’t heard that they’re requiring masks, however.

I will plan to apply to be a participant at Baycon. It’s fun to attend a conference that so many of my fellow Water Dragon authors can attend.

I’ve signed up to volunteer for Readercon. I will also apply to be a participant. I applied last year, but wasn’t accepted. Maybe by volunteering, I’ll get greater consideration.

I’ve already signed up to attend WorldCon in Glasgow in 2024. I’ve just filled out the survey to agree to be considered for participation. I had a great time at the WorldCon in Chicago and I’m super excited about going to Scotland.

I remember as I became an adult, beginning to adopt responsibility for the actions of my country. I was a voter and, even though my candidates frequently lost, I accepted that I was a participant in the imperialist and capitalist society that was visiting harms on the rest of the world. And I started using the language of “we” when talking about my own culpability in these harms. Today, regarding the failure of the UN to achieve the sustainability goals, Ross Douhat says:

Lofty goals could be forgiven if they inspired progress, but I worry that they were sometimes less a spur to action than a substitute for it. Yes, the pandemic created setbacks, but let’s be honest: We dropped the ball.

That’s bullshit. I didn’t drop the ball. I’m being disenfranchised by fascists that are gerrymandering the shit out of the country. My voice and agency are being drowned out by a firehose of money coming from oligarchs that can hire whole stables of unscrupulous lobbyists that make sure that their voices are heard and not mine. I’m being overwhelmed by a flood of disinformation that rises like a tide from a stockyard waste pond over the civilized discourse of the country.

It’s not my fault. And I don’t have to accept responsibility for it.

We need to stop saying “we” and start saying “they.” It’s the billionaires and the unscrupulous greedy people that accept their money who are to blame. Not us. And don’t let them make you forget it.