Category life
Setting: A Sense of Place
Have you ever been on a cruise? I’ve only done it once, a small-ship cruise in Alaska’s Inside Passage. The ship had about a hundred tourists and we were able to go into smaller coves and closer to the glaciers than the big Princess ship we saw a few times along the route. The contrast […]
So, Back to Writing
I’m reading a very cool book, In Search of the Canary Tree, by Lauren E. Oakes. It’s early yet, and in it she’s just starting her Ph.D. research project analyzing yellow-cedar forests on an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska, near Sitka. What does this have to do with writing? I’m enthralled by […]
The Message That’s Missing from News of Climate Change
It seems incomprehensible to me that one senator can block legislation designed to literally save our way of life, but this is where we are. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) doesn’t like President Joe Biden’s climate bill, likely because the senator, made a millionaire by the coal industry, which he still makes money from (not to […]
Thoughts about the Emmys (This will be short)
Emmy nominations are out. Not exactly The Most Important Thing In The World right now (I just finished Tom Nichols’ piece in The Atlantic about how screwed we are on nuclear strategy), but I still have opinions. Not many since I haven’t seen 90, maybe 99 percent of the shows and people nominated. For Supporting […]
Is It Bad for a SF Writer To Be Unimpressed by the Webb Telescope?
The long-awaited first images from the James Webb* Space Telescope were revealed the other day. Would it be heresy for this writer of science fiction to be meh about them? After all, I just released a novel about, well, space exploration. But like much of what I like to read, it’s about more than that. […]
Worldbuilding
Each morning, when the weather is nice, I sit on my porch and eat my snack while my second cup of coffee perks. It’s now late June. The yard looks lush and at peak greenery. The mountain laurel are flowering—white and pink snowballs covering the bushes. The smaller sheep laurel dots the surrounding green with […]
Well, Toss that Blog Draft in the Bin
“As a matter of constitutional substance, the majority’s opinion has all the flaws its method would suggest. Because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approves States doing so today. Because those laws prevented women from charting the course of their own lives, the majority says States can do […]
There’s No Birding in Space
At heart I’m a nature girl, so it was hard to write a novel that takes place mostly on a space ship. In Endurance, Captain Lyn Randall even laments about wanting to hear bird song and feel the wind. It’s summer now here in New England and the days are long. I’ll wake up at […]
A Pause to Reflect, A Plea to Vote
I was going to post about my new book, with either an excerpt or a preorder link, but, now is not the time. The school shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, adds to a far too-long list. I, like, most people, feel grief and outrage that this continues to happen. That we […]
Writing Prompt: Dependence
The prompt was random, with 30 minutes to write this time, so here’s my take on it. Not fiction this week. Dependence I knew when I decided to move to a rural town with fewer than a thousand residents that I’d be entering a new world of dependencies. Most people think of rural folk as […]
Elaine Burnes 