You know the scene in adventure movies where the protagonist, digging feverishly where the "X" on the map has led, hits metal in the mud? That was me last weekend, only I wasn't excavating earth, just the closet in my home office. And the telltale clunk wasn't a spade striking a strongbox, but an heavy... Continue Reading →
Turning the Page: 2019 Annual Review & 2020 Writing Resolutions
If I see one more decade-in-retrospective listicle, I’m going to shred my calendar. Entering the 2020s doesn’t necessarily mark the portentous turn of some cosmic page. January 1 has no more inherent significance than December 31, or any other planetary spin cycle. Silly humans, inflating the importance of our own arbitrary frameworks (ironic in this... Continue Reading →
Flash Fiction with #VSS365: October 2019
Sometimes #VSS365 flash fiction prompts are perfect opportunities to share glimpses of my longer works. October's collection, with its macabre Halloween theme, proved ideally suited to the visceral elements of my cyberpunk novel Binary Chop. Every installment this month is an excerpt from the book, modified for length where necessary. Prompts are in bold, and... Continue Reading →
Sexism IN SPACE (and how sci-fi can fight it)
"...The story of an astronaut as she struggles to adjust to life on Earth!" the radio ad promised. My car's dashboard briefly transformed into the glowing cockpit of a space shuttle. Space, psychology, and a female protagonist? That sounded like a movie I'd see (or a book I'd write). But when I looked up which... Continue Reading →
Flash Fiction with VSS365: August 2019
Since I tend to fall off the daily flash fiction wagon after the first week of each new month, I set myself punitive parameters for August: every prompt missed would have to be used in the next piece I wrote. Some days I accumulated as many as four mandatory words. This challenge, unexpectedly, resulted in... Continue Reading →
Walk the Moon: A Sci-Fi Book Launch Honoring Apollo 11
Fifty years ago today, emissaries from Earth--riding in a command cabin the size of a car, and guided by a computer less powerful than a modern smartphone--landed on our Moon and left Homo sapiens' first footprints on another world. In honor of the Apollo 11 anniversary, I chose this date to launch the print edition of my lunar-based... Continue Reading →