Tidbits of Stargate, Parenting, and Writing

I’ve spent a great deal of the last week entirely focused on helping my 15-year-old focus on all the schoolwork they need to get done as the term wraps up… and I’m pretty burnt out.

So, now, it’s time to spend an evening with my mom watching space vampires in Stargate Atlantis. Continue reading “Tidbits of Stargate, Parenting, and Writing”

Writing Groups and Their Theoretical Principles

My local writing group has strict rules about how we critique the story, not the author.

Nonetheless, when I put “Anger is a Porcupine, Sadness is a Fish” through, the then-leader decided it was about her & I was subjected to several senior-most members—people I thought of as friends—picking apart every aspect of my feelings & intentions. It was humiliating, heartbreaking, and my trust in the group never really recovered.

Honestly, I’m still kind of broken up and angry about how I was treated over it to this day.

Topher Grace in Scream

My sleeping brain, apparently, can’t tell Topher Grace and Noah from the Scream series apart, so it tried to do a Home Economics dream last night… got as far as Topher Grace, thought, “oh, he always hangs out with Audrey,” added her character in, continued trying to write a sitcom dream, but kept adding in characters from Scream until the killer showed up, at which point my brain was like, “this one is clearly a secret murderer!” and the whole dream snowballed into a Scream-style murder mystery.

Anger is a Porcupine, Sadness is a Fish

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Electric Spec, Vol.13, Issue 1, February 2018

“If Iassandra’s words could change Dara into a porcupine of anger, a fish of sadness, then Dara would cast her own spell of words.”

The child with a malformed arm, bent like a bird’s folded wing, had passed through Troway Village a year ago.  Now Dara was a traveler like he had been.  Would her old village welcome her?  A prodigal daughter returned?  Or would she be hurried along like the child and his parents had been?

Dara and Iassandra had been the town’s truth-tellers together back then.  When the villagers had come to them, not knowing what to think of the strange child traveling through their village, Dara had sung a song of gods’ blessings, how they bent the unborn child’s arm, marking him and setting him apart as he grew.  She sang that he should be welcomed and taken in, a child touched by a god. Continue reading “Anger is a Porcupine, Sadness is a Fish”

Waking Up in the Genie Shop

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, January 2018

“You came to us as a female amphibioid and paid us to change you into a male canid. You’re a Heffen now, one of the most common species here on Crossroads Station.”

Sloanee opened her eyes and felt her heart racing.  What was she doing?  Lying down?  She was on the lam.  She should be running or hiding.  Nowhere was safe from the royal guards pursuing her.  Queen Doripauli and her army of photosynthetic tumbleweed-like aliens would stop at nothing to catch and punish the amphibioid who had betrayed them.

Betrayed her. Continue reading “Waking Up in the Genie Shop”

Home Remodeling

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, March 2020

“This spaceship doesn’t want to attract attention. I can tell it’s doing its best to look like the set from a thirty-year-old sitcom… after thirty years of gathering dust.”

A spaceship crashed down at the end of my street this morning.  Its inertial dampeners and camouflage shield must still be in working order, because it looked like nothing more than a parabola of blue light followed by a puffy white clump of cumulonimbus cloud streaking down from the sky.  After the crash, the puffy cloud dissipated with the morning fog, leaving behind a boxy, non-descript, ranch-style house, painted a bland shade of tan.  The paint is even peeling.  Sure, the lot at the end of the street had been an empty field all winter long, but somehow people have a way of forgetting that. Continue reading “Home Remodeling”