An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
I’ve been feeling pretty disillusioned and hopeless about writing lately…
But underneath it all, I know nothing could have ever stopped me from writing Otters In Space. And no matter what, I’ll keep writing more books like it. Continue reading “Hope and Writing”
I may be stuck on Earth in the middle of a pandemic… but Kipper just made her way back to space in Otters In Space 4.
I remembered liking the Angel episode (S2E13) about the physics grad student trying to stop time… I hadn’t remembered its techno-babble about entangled particles was basically the same as the premise for my book Entanglement Bound.
It’s weird rediscovering your influences.
If you like Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, you should probably check out SuperBob (2015). It’s a quirky, funny, day in the life, super hero movie, written by and starring Brett Goldstein, who not only plays Roy Kent but is also one of the Ted Lasso writers. Highly enjoyable.
The kids’ schools finally announced that all teachers and staff will be vaccinated, because the governor is forcing them to be.
This is a huge relief, but also, I’m just so deeply angry that it took them this long and being strong-armed to take this basic step. Continue reading “Public Schools and the Pandemic”
I see newly successful writers with book deals talk about their careers, & it feels like watching a lottery winner describe their windfall as a career.
I see newly agented writers give advice, & it feels like watching a lottery ticket-holder explain how they bought the ticket. Continue reading “Lottery Ticket Chances”
One of the hardest parts of working on Otters In Space 4 is letting all the lessons I’ve learned about how to write “well” over the last sixteen years fall away, and let myself just write down what I know about this amazing little universe I’ve made.
Otters In Space has always been about telling the reader what’s going on with the cats & dogs, the politics between them, and the changes in their world. I’ve learned in the last 16 years to encode those kinds of messages in scenes where you show what’s happening… but… Continue reading “Don’t worry about telling vs. showing…”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Queer Sci Fi’s Innovation, August 2020
“What’s the catch?” I ask, watching her pet the silky soft fuzzball cupped in one palm. It’s green like the inside of a kiwi fruit, and about the same size.
“What do you mean?” She lowers her head, touches her brow to the curve of the fuzzball’s… back? I can’t tell what kind of anatomy it has. The thing doesn’t seem to have a head or face or eyes or mouth… anything recognizable. But it does purr. A soft cooing sound that soothes a troubled soul. Continue reading “No Catch”
For more than a year and a half my five-person bubble has functioned completely smoothly when it came to risk assessment and choices about how to engage with the outside world. The three adults were all on the same page, and we hardly had to even talk about it.
And then delta… Continue reading “Delta and Risk Assessment”
I need to finish this short story I’ve been working on so that I can go back to focusing on a novel.
I love writing short stories… but you can’t lean on them the same way as a novel. While writing a novel, that world and those characters are there for you the whole time. Continue reading “Interrupted by Short Stories vs. Leaning on Novels”