Author: marylowd

I kind of stopped caring about pedantically precise consistency in most fiction when I realized that humans aren’t very good about being pedantically, precisely consistent in the real world.

I never got as far as emailing Furvana. I spent all day trying to figure out if I could go to a con that wasn’t making safety enough of a priority and accept that I might need to skip it.

Then this morning Furvana emailed to clarify that they will not allow eating in the dealers den. Continue reading “Dealers Den Lunches Resolved”

Oh no… Furvana just emailed dealers to ask if they want to buy lunch boxes…

This is bad because I’m realizing they almost certainly expect (and will allow for) dealers to eat those lunches at their tables… Continue reading “Dealers Den Lunches”

I’ve been feeling pretty disillusioned and hopeless about writing lately…

But underneath it all, I know nothing could have ever stopped me from writing Otters In Space. And no matter what, I’ll keep writing more books like it. Continue reading “Hope and Writing”

I may be stuck on Earth in the middle of a pandemic… but Kipper just made her way back to space in Otters In Space 4.

I remembered liking the Angel episode (S2E13) about the physics grad student trying to stop time… I hadn’t remembered its techno-babble about entangled particles was basically the same as the premise for my book Entanglement Bound.

It’s weird rediscovering your influences.

If you like Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, you should probably check out SuperBob (2015). It’s a quirky, funny, day in the life, super hero movie, written by and starring Brett Goldstein, who not only plays Roy Kent but is also one of the Ted Lasso writers. Highly enjoyable.

The kids’ schools finally announced that all teachers and staff will be vaccinated, because the governor is forcing them to be.

This is a huge relief, but also, I’m just so deeply angry that it took them this long and being strong-armed to take this basic step. Continue reading “Public Schools and the Pandemic”

I see newly successful writers with book deals talk about their careers, & it feels like watching a lottery winner describe their windfall as a career.

I see newly agented writers give advice, & it feels like watching a lottery ticket-holder explain how they bought the ticket. Continue reading “Lottery Ticket Chances”

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…”