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Blog

Interview on Daytime Ottawa

Yesterday I was on Daytime Ottawa with host Dylan Black.

I was incredibly nervous, which probably shows. Dylan has a gift for putting his guests at ease, though, so I managed to get through the 5 or so minutes without sticking my foot in my mouth too seriously.

The best part was meeting the other guests, including a candy store owner who brought a Japanese whistle candy and a prominent local doctor, Dr. Lise Bjerre, publicising a report by her working group Rational Therapeutics.

Dr. Bjerre was very interesting to talk to: she’s both an epidemiologist and a family physician. But if I were watching the show at home, I don’t think anything would’ve topped that whistle candy.

There’s always new SFF to discover…

In a perfect world, I’d have time every month to read every sff magazine and zine and listen to every sf, fantasy, and horror podcast. In the real world, of course, I rarely make it beyond my 4 or 5 favorites. But… sometimes I’ll write a story, or a poem, and when it’s done, it doesn’t seem quite right for any of the magazines or zines I read every month… Hooray, it’s time to go market-hunting! I get to explore and discover new magazines, zines, websites, podcasts, communities, etc. I’m nominally looking for a place for a given story, but the fun is really in reading the free issues online. Continue reading “There’s always new SFF to discover…”

Philosophy and Science Fiction

I first encountered Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel’s work in the Sept. 2017 Clarkesworld, which published his story Little /^^^\&-. (That’s neither a typo nor an encoding error. If you haven’t seen the story, I recommend it.) Dr. Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside, writes philosophical SF and also maintains a list of philosophical spec-fic recs here: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/PhilosophicalSF.htm Continue reading “Philosophy and Science Fiction”

W1, S1

Last month, I stumbled across a partly-abandoned website with a terrific idea. write1sub1.com was a writing club following Ray Bradbury’s advice to write one story and submit one story each week.

“If you can write one short story a week — doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing. At the end of the year, you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done.”  
– Ray Bradbury

The writing club seems to be over, but it struck me as such good advice that I’m trying to follow it, too.

Pros: More Stories! More Submissions!

Cons: I’m having trouble finishing anything but flash in one week.