Fiction For Now
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 →
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 →
"...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 →
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 →
Despite his popularity as a science fiction writer, the late author Douglas Adams championed the value of planet Earth. In the late 1980s, he teamed up with zoologist Mark Cawardine for a BBC radio series called Last Chance to See, in which the pair tracks endangered species around the globe. Adams' 1990 book chronicling the... Continue Reading →
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 →
