An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
Wow, my teeth-crumble-in-my-mouth nightmares have gotten stubborn.
Generally, if my teeth crumble, I know it’s a dream, so it’s over soon. In the latest though, I kept explaining how I must be dreaming all the way through a hospital trip. Continue reading “Crumbling Teeth”
That feeling when you’re trying to pace yourself on a long project but also push yourself to write as fast as you can, and you can’t seem to agree with yourself on a leadership style for dealing with yourself.
The more I see of pandas, the more I love them.
Look, pandas are just really lovable.
I’m approaching the end of Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and I’m just totally baffled about how they’ll give it a satisfying end, given that it’s a prequel to a movie that’s set post-gelfling genocide and mid-podling genocide.
That’s a challenging mark to hit. Continue reading “Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance”
That feeling when you’re trying to balance the names of the characters in a space opera novel so that they don’t all start with the same letter, and you end up staring at a bunch of letters, shuffling them around, until written language doesn’t mean anything anymore…
That feeling when you’re tempted to write an essay explaining how Heathers is a better musical than Les Miserables. But there are probably better uses of your time, so you try to let the feeling pass.
Under 1978 copyright law, Spider-Man would have entered the public domain in 2019.
I just saw someone arguing that public domain Spider-Man would be a nightmare, cause then people could make him trans/gay/bi/etc.
Copyright law right now is on the side of evil and fascism. Continue reading “Grow the Public Domain”
Me: I should really focus more on my writing…
Also me: puts lure on coffee shop PokéStop
The story-telling part of my brain is acting like a dog who I’ve put on a leash but doesn’t want to go on a walk… just lying there on the floor, pretending to have no feet and insisting that if I want it to write stories, I’ll have to drag it.
T.K., Truggster, and Kermit urge me to add words to my blank page, but instead, I stubbornly go buy another drink because this place has one called “German chocolate cake in a cup,” and I must try it.
Update: it is A-MA-ZING.
There is soooooo much sugar in this German-chocolate-cake-in-a-cup drink. Sooooooo much.
Stomach: why are you putting this much sugar in me? oof
Brain: we will bathe in the brilliance of sugary goodness forever! feed us sugar and you can write again!
Me, working on a story that makes no sense: “Wait, wait, no, stop, what if there was an octopus… that… used to be eight mice????”
I am told that letting me buy a giant inflatable narwhal on this much of a sugar high would be like letting someone get a tattoo while drunk. But giant inflatable rainbow-and-sparkle blue narwhals are waaaay less permanent.
So, I came down from the sugar high of the German-chocolate-cake-in-a-cup drink… but there was still a third of it left… and it was mine… so… I mean… I had to drink it… And now I’m flying again. I do not know how they cram that much sugar into one drink.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Exploring New Places, July 2018
The evacuation of Heffe VIII occurred when Jeaunia was only a pup. Her memories of waiting in the long lines on the hot spaceport tarmac were dim. She did remember playing games with her cousins on the crowded flight to Crossroads Station afterward, and she thought she could remember the view of the swollen Heffen sun through the spaceship’s rear windows. She couldn’t be sure, though. The bloody smear of red giant sunlight in her memories could have been a fabrication. She had been very young. Continue reading “The Promise of New Heffe”