I hear rumors that the current issue of Asimov's is out. I don't have my copy yet, but hold on to your butts, guys: I wrote about dogs. Not these dogs though.
Solutions to Story Problems
This is always the hardest part of writing a story: you've got it all down, and it works... mostly. There's something missing, and you can't quite figure out what it is. Here's my current process for getting through those "I just don't know what to do to fix this story!" days. What is this story …
Norwescon 2018: This Time I Swear I’ll Stay Up Past 9
UPDATE! I'm on two additional panels now. Comedy! Horror! Writing mechanics! It's my life, except my real life also has a lot of dog hair in it too! I'll spend the majority of Norwescon volunteering with the Fairwood Writers' Workshop, but I'm making a few other appearances as well. Thursday The Moral of the Story: …
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Evolution, Process
In the past few months I have been perfecting the skill of Writing Anyways. This is something I thought I had already honed, but apparently not; perhaps it is a skill that you’re never completely done learning, like being kind, or not eating the entire pizza. One year ago I quit my real job. “Real” meaning I got …
Portrait of My Lover as a Zebra
Portrait of My Lover as a Zebra Tegan Moore O grant me, Lord, one night beside a zebra, one perfect sandy night beside a zebra that lets me rest my head against its neck. -Selima Hill While Jim is upstairs she decides, what the hell, she’ll try it. She has heard they …
Click This Thing for Science Fiction and Fantasy!
Late-breaking news over here, but I’m in week five of the Clarion West Write-A-Thon. My sponsorship page includes a piece of unpublished flash fiction called “Portrait of my Lover as a Zebra.” I almost never write flash (like, one other time?) so this is a rarity for me. I’m $80 short of my goal and the …
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Fill Your Flasks
Norwescon is NEXT WEEK. I have been spending so much of my time lately training dogs (mostly puppies) that I wonder if I am even capable of explaining writing things to humans anymore, or if at some point during the weekend I will pull out a baggie full of string cheese bits and try to lure …
More Firsts
One: My Asimov’s story, “Epitome,” which was my first sale (by about two days), was not only reviewed in this month’s Locus but selected as a recommended story. It’s been a weird, intense, rewarding-but-rough stretch lately and I can’t overemphasize how good this feels. Similarly, I’ve received a couple notes via social media from strangers, or friends of friends, …
When Someone You Love Hurts You and You Love Them Anyway
I have the worst dog. This is not unqualified hyperbole, either. I am a dog trainer, by hobby at least, and I’m not terrible at it. Vesper is the kind of dog… okay, there have been a couple times where professional trainers watched me working with her and said, “yeah, I couldn’t do that.” By which …
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Epitome
If Vivian dies before I tell her I’m in love with her, will I regret that more than telling her I’m in love with her? Because I don’t know what happens to me if I say it out loud. Even if she can’t hear me. “Epitome,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2016
