An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
We’ve loaded up our cargo bay with twenty-five stories — the complete contents of three science-fiction anthologies, Welcome to Wespirtech, Beyond Wespirtech, and The Opposite of Memory — and we’ll begin releasing the stories, several per day, on December 25th, 2015.
Many of the upcoming stories have been published online before, but some of them have only ever been available in obscure anthologies or small press magazines.
Get ready to read some science-fiction!
Over the last more-than-a-decade, I’ve submitted nearly one hundred stories to more than 150 different markets. A bunch of my stories have been published. Some of them haven’t been (yet). And, of course, I’ve received a lot of rejections. 969 so far.
As I approach 1000 rejections, I’ve been thinking about the publishing process — what it costs and the benefits it provides. I don’t intend to stop submitting my stories to markets that seem well-suited to them. However, I also don’t see a reason to stay dependent on other people’s e-zines to make my work readable online. Continue reading “Approaching 1000”
It’s very sad to play an ocarina and not summon a golden-eyed, ghost-faced, calico cat.
* fliers
* tape
* staples (once you’ve upgraded from packing tape to a brand new staple gun)
* energy (for asking strangers if they’ve seen the cat and then talking with them about how you miss her)
* breath (for playing the ocarina she loves) Continue reading “Things you can run out of while looking for your missing cat:”
‘Tickle One,’ noun, synonym for ‘cat’ in Wesley-speak. Usage: “That’s a tickle one!” (best said while pointing at a cat)
The two-year-old has been walking around with a backpack all day. I asked him what was in it, so he proudly unpacked: plastic food, the book eight-year-old’s been reading, a plate, and the TV/DVD remotes.
Every video confirms it. Otters sound like squeaky toys. I wish I’d known that ten years ago before I’d written two books about otters.
Research: watching videos of squirrels and looking at pictures of submarines.
Baking a vegetable casserole from the Redwall Cookbook, randomly in the middle of the night.
Ch. 1 – Dinosaurs
Ch. 2 – Dogs and Cavemen
Ch. 3 – Cats and Pyramids
Ch. 4 – Knights and Dragons
Ch. 5 – Ben Franklin and a Mouse
Ch. 6 – Dancing Hamsters and the Internet
Playing twenty questions with Elaine — the answer turns out to be a Rapunzel cat, which she just made up. Yep, she’s my daughter.
And now the answer to twenty questions is Dazzle Drop –a magical gumdrop that unicorns eat. Elaine is just like me.
Research: watching videos of Venus fly traps.
Being an editor is weird. It feels like the world has been turned upside down. Continue reading “Writing and Parenting Tidbits”