Me: We should watch the movie Dave!
Child: Is that the movie that “I can’t do that for you, Dave” is from?
Me: Okay, we should also watch 2001: A Space Odyssey
An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
Me: We should watch the movie Dave!
Child: Is that the movie that “I can’t do that for you, Dave” is from?
Me: Okay, we should also watch 2001: A Space Odyssey
As of next month, I will have been seriously writing for twenty years.
To acknowledge this milestone, I’m brushing up and re-releasing the first three short story collections I self-published nine years ago with new covers and additional stories. Tonight I wrote prefaces for two of them.
by Mary E. Lowd
A Deep Sky Anchor Original; written on January 25, 2015

Say the poem when it’s dark,
Pick up the fallen star,
The ground rumbles,
Some wishes should not come true.
I’ve been listening to a song by The Beth’s called “Expert in a Dying Field” for months and only now realized that it’s really just a breakup song underneath a clever metaphor… as opposed to, you know, genuinely, literally being about your career becoming obsolete.
I’m a little disappointed… Continue reading “Expert in a Dying Field”
Elder kid explaining to younger kid how it’s okay that we drove to the wrong school for their first soccer game because it’s an adventure:
“Indiana Jones did not want to be chased by a boulder, but it was awesome. So annoyance is sort of part of adventure.”
by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Otters In Space 2: Jupiter, Deadly. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to Otters In Space 3: Octopus Ascending.

Through the glass of the door, Kipper saw the pointy ears and orange fur of her brother and sister. They faced the other way, seated at a table and watching a television screen on the wall. The screen showed a pug dog gesticulating wildly. Trudith and Lucky also sat at the table, but they seemed preoccupied with something Kipper couldn’t see.
Kipper opened the door quietly. Keith stood behind her. Before going in, Kipper stayed in the doorway and simply listened to the voices of these people she loved and hadn’t seen in so long. Continue reading “Otters In Space 2 – Chapter 33: Papa Fido’s T-Bone Steakery”
I love the Buckaroo Banzia theme music. It’s on my Otters In Space playlist. And also, many years ago as a kid at a Star Trek convention, my sister and I got a band to play it for us live by shouting it out as a request. Good memory.
Me: this expensive artisanal plushie will make me perfectly happy and solve all my problems!
Also me: what if this plushie DOESN’T solve all my problems???
Also me: it’s okay; it’ll take months for it to arrive, so that’s months of getting to pretend it will
I’ve been feeling kind of lost and directionless lately… and then a friend said to me tonight with a truly bizarre level of matter-of-fact certainty that I should write twelve Otters In Space books. That twelve is the correct length for that series… Continue reading “The Future of Otters In Space”
After an awesome but long day of selling books and talking furry fiction at Furvana, I’m having cherry garcia ice cream, blackberry kombucha, am surrounded by stuffed animals, and am finally starting the Queen Charlotte Bridgerton spin-off. That’s a good day!