An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
I’m working on a story for my 9-year-old about a super-fast purple pangolin named Cosmic. It may have been inspired by a video game about a blue hedgehog.
Anyway, in my sleep last night, my sleeping brain became convinced I should also write a story about an orca named Ekko. Continue reading “Two Sagas”
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”
Our Bengal cats are mesmerized by our preparations for the younger child’s Sonic-themed birthday tomorrow.
We’ve turned our house into a giant blue spheres level by taping balloons everywhere. It’s amazing. Continue reading “Blue Spheres Level”
So, apparently, I’m gonna spend the next two weeks, until the term ends, playing Candy Crush.
The 14-year-old is doing distance school, and if I sit next to them and prod them, they get work done. If I get distracted—by doing anything more absorbing than Candy Crush—they don’t. Continue reading “Surviving the End of the Term”
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”
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 “A Quiet Place, Bird Box, and Spoilers”
Teen to the cat: “Why are you chewing on knives???”
Me: *looks over to see Hazel gnawing on the knife handles sticking out of the knife block*
Hazel: *scurries away in seeming embarrassment at being caught, before I can get a picture* Continue reading “Hazel and Knives”
Conventions are strange temporary villages that blip into existence for a weekend and disappear for a year. Kind of like Brigadoon.
Corollary:
Being a famous furry author is like being a celebrity in Brigadoon — if you can get to the city/con before it disappears into the mists again, you can have a really awesome day.
Most of the time, though? It’s just a memory of a feeling wafting through the internet.
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”