Don’t worry about telling vs. showing…

One of the hardest parts of working on Otters In Space 4 is letting all the lessons I’ve learned about how to write “well” over the last sixteen years fall away, and let myself just write down what I know about this amazing little universe I’ve made.

Otters In Space has always been about telling the reader what’s going on with the cats & dogs, the politics between them, and the changes in their world. I’ve learned in the last 16 years to encode those kinds of messages in scenes where you show what’s happening… but… Continue reading “Don’t worry about telling vs. showing…”

No Catch

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Queer Sci Fi’s Innovation, August 2020

“I’ve seen enough movies to know something this… cute… perfect… it has to have a catch. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but with a purr?”

“What’s the catch?” I ask, watching her pet the silky soft fuzzball cupped in one palm.  It’s green like the inside of a kiwi fruit, and about the same size.

“What do you mean?”  She lowers her head, touches her brow to the curve of the fuzzball’s… back?  I can’t tell what kind of anatomy it has.  The thing doesn’t seem to have a head or face or eyes or mouth… anything recognizable. But it does purr. A soft cooing sound that soothes a troubled soul. Continue reading “No Catch”