The seven-year-old, emphatically: “I would NEVER kill a robot.”
A few moments later, “Wait a minute, I WOULD kill a robot. If it’s evil.”
Permanent Ends
I’m up to season 7 of Girlfriends, and while it’s sad to lose Toni as a character, it’s really nice to see a show actually deal with a long term friendship ending in a sudden and permanent way.
Because that happens in real life. And I don’t see it reflected in fiction much. Continue reading “Permanent Ends”
Happy New Year!!!
You made it to 2021! Congratulations!
What better way to start the year than by reading a pair of space opera stories about new beginnings? Continue reading “Happy New Year!!!”
I Am Mazillion
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in All Worlds Wayfarer, March 2020
One of my scouts flies through the space station’s ductwork. Another flies out among the aliens who are crowding through the dock and maneuvers above them, looking down, seeing where I am, what this space station is like. Most of me clusters in a high corner out of sight, near the airlock I’ve painstakingly flown through, one body at a time, unnoticed, tiny, unimportant. The spaceship I arrived on doesn’t know it had a stowaway, let alone a thousand, bound together telepathically. A thousand tiny bodies, each many-legged with shimmering pairs of wings. One mind. I am Mazillion, and I am the first of my species in space. Continue reading “I Am Mazillion”
A Sense of Clarity
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Chrysalis: A Fairy Tale Anthology, February 2020
He was the kind of guy who would give a fake name. Clarity could tell by the way he tentatively tried sitting at three different tables before settling down on a seat at the bar; also, the way his bulgy, protuberant eyes kept glancing around nervously; and, finally, the way he glared piercingly at his mottled green, slumped reflection in the mirror behind the bar before answering her question.
“So, what’s your name?” she asked. Continue reading “A Sense of Clarity”
Two Ways to Gender-Flip Songs
When I was a kid, I loved the beginning of Adventures In Babysitting where Elisabeth Shue dances to the Crystals’ song “Then He Kissed Me”:
I also loved The Beach Boys and was excited to find they’d covered the song “Then He Kissed Me”… but bewildered by the way they changed the lyrics in gender-flipping it to “Then I Kissed Her.” Continue reading “Two Ways to Gender-Flip Songs”
2020 Awards Eligible Work by Mary E. Lowd
This is my round-up of original fiction I had released this year. I’d be honored if readers would consider these works for award nominations, but I’d also be really happy if people simply read and enjoy them.
Novels
My novel ENTANGLEMENT BOUND was published by Aethon Books in December, 2020. Continue reading “2020 Awards Eligible Work by Mary E. Lowd”
New Years Eve, Low-Key
Our traditional New Year’s Eve activity/dessert:
Destroy our gingerbread houses with dinosaurs and eat them.
Closing out the year by introducing the kids to Fantasia (original & 2000). It’s a soothing, low-key way to spend the evening. Continue reading “New Years Eve, Low-Key”
Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter
Here’s the thing about Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1: he loves her — she doesn’t have long hair or tight clothes; doesn’t babble, do emotional work, or soothe egos — he just loves her for the brilliant, awkward human she is. Continue reading “Jack O’Neill and Samantha Carter”
Misspelling Cardboard and Remembering Frank Sinatra
That feeling when you turn on an album you haven’t listened to in a while and realize you first got hooked on it when you were three years younger than your elder kid is now.
As it turns out, when I can’t remember anything useful, my brain is still storing a ton of lyrics to Frank Sinatra songs that I listened to repeatedly when I was ten but haven’t listened to for possibly a decade or two. Continue reading “Misspelling Cardboard and Remembering Frank Sinatra”