An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
Well, I made it 6.5 episodes into Silicon Valley before breaking down and crying about how hostile and sexist that tech environment is, and how that’s pretty much why I ended up an isolated stay-at-home parent instead of able to have a paying job that would suit me.
I started writing a thread about my experience trying to break into the tech world as a ridiculously smart college student attending one of the top tech colleges in the country… Continue reading “Silicon Valley”
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original, June 2022
This is not a story about Spider-Man, because Spider-Man is owned by a company. This is a story about a young boy, on his first day of high school, who was bitten by a spider and fell asleep like a princess in a fairytale. He fell asleep for the life of the author — which in this case would be his parents — plus seventy years. Continue reading “Not Spider-Man and the Seven Angel Donors”
A Quiet Place is overall a good, valuable movie, and I actually quite liked its sequel…
But I’m never gonna forgive it for its first ten minutes.
If I’d known what to expect from the beginning of A Quiet Place, I’d have probably skipped the movie entirely. Or maybe I’d have been prepared and thus able to forgive it. Continue reading “Bird Box and A Quiet Place”
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original, May 2022
Selina knelt in the middle of the empty Hamilton Middle School room. She’d pushed the desks and chairs up against the walls, leaving the floor clear for the bull’s eye pattern she’d drawn with salt. The only light came from the soft cold glow of the moon behind the shuttered windows and a flickering warm radiance from the ring of candles around the outer edge of the bull’s eye. In the middle, the very middle, she carefully placed the brittle body of a dead bumblebee on the circle of salt. She had considered using a wasp, but she was looking for justice, not vengeance. A solution, not escalation.
Continue reading “Sting Once and Die”
As promised, for anyone who missed the #Nebulas2022 panel, “Getting It Done On Time,” or who just wants to be reminded of some of what was said, I’m going to convert the notes I made preparing for the panel into a thread…
The central theme is: know your own capabilities. Continue reading “Nebulas 2022 Panel Recap”
Apparently, today is the day to catch the younger child up on classics they’ve somehow missed — so far we’ve watched Lilo & Stitch and The Secret of NIMH.
Now we’re watching Spirited Away.
I think Younger Child missed out on Lilo & Stitch because we watched it SO MUCH when Elder Child was little. Continue reading “Lilo & Stitch and Spirited Away”
My kid has to write a short story for a creative writing class, so they have me texting every five minutes to check their word count, while they hide out in their room.
This means, I have an alarm go off every five minutes and have to send a text that just reads, “Word count?” Continue reading “Harrison Bergeron”
So, I’m now reading the manuscript for Otters In Space 4 from the beginning, looking for errors or parts that need smoothing, and the opening scenes are ADORABLE.
Kipper and Trugger go to recruit a mouse gymnast for their space program and take her to a sushi restaurant… Continue reading “Editing Otters In Space 4”
Last night, I decided I needed more angry music to handle this week. My main angry music is American Idiot, which I love, but wasn’t hitting the right note.
So, I remembered that there’d been a bit of a newish Alanis Morissette song on Grey’s Anatomy a few weeks ago… Continue reading “Angry Music”
That feeling when you notice that the story you just submitted through Moksha had the wrong title (like for a TOTALLY different story) in the subject line, because you changed your mind halfway through about which story to send & apparently didn’t get all the fields fixed… Continue reading “Submission Mistakes”