Feed aggregator

I wish I knew a place in New England that sells カステラ (castella). I looked at recipes, once, but it's super complicated and takes like two days to make. Sigh…

#WordWeavers Where in your world would you send an enemy?

"I should have strangled you in the crib, you worthless bint," he spat. 
"You are a base and loathsome creature," the Queen said. "I doubted you were truly as horrid as reports said, but I find them to be the truth. Your son has pleaded for your life, but my mercy extends no further. You are sentenced to life at hard labor on the penal island of Bighteray.
"Take him away," she called to the guards.

(from Devishire!)

#WritersCoffeeClub How do you visualise a scene when writing it?

I often begin with a setting. I recently wrote a blog post about using geomorphology & botany to help me flesh out settings: https://stevendbrewer.com/using-geomorphology-and-botany-for-settings-in-fiction/ These factors help me establish the sights & smells & textures of the environment. And I usually have an outline to help me understand what is going to happen, though frequently my characters will take a scene in unexpected directions. With these, the scene comes to life in my mind.

Cicely pushed the mop angrily around the floor. The floor wasn't even dirty. Mopping was just busy work that the mistress was making her do. She returned the mop to the bucket & slopped it around. When she bent over to #wring it out, she caught a gleam from under the sideboard. She got on her hands and knees, reached under the counter, and found a gold brooch. Then someone lifted up her skirt & placed a hand on her exposed backside. She lurched forward with surprise & banged her head.

#wss366

"David! David! Look what Bebe can do!"
The Better Angels had come to the #shore to vacation after finishing their tour on Cumulus.
Sitting under an umbrella, David looked up & watched while Bebe balanced on the back of a NovaDolphin. She squealed as it crashed through the waves. Then, she tumbled off into the surf and went under the water.
David sprang up ready to rescue her, when she suddenly shot out of the waves propelled by the nose of the NovaDolphin.
"Whee!"
David sat back down.

#wss366

#WritersCoffeeClub How do you write? Old-school or digital? A mix?

I very occasionally hand write correspondence, but for everything else I type. The most useful class I ever took was "secretarial typing" in high school. And I have been using word processors since college. Nowadays, I mostly write using a text editor (Pulsar) and then move the text to a word processor (Google Docs) to format it into a manuscript and share it with beta readers.

Why is the election even close? Who in the world would vote for this guy?

Revin came to in the dark, buried under layers of canvas & the ribs of the wrecked airship. He pulled his knife out of its sheathe & cut his way up until he could stick his head out. It was snowing on the mountaintop. Woozy, he put a hand to his head, which came away sticky with blood. Then he heard the muffled cries of an infant. He dragged himself out & then began digging through the wreckage. He found the boy, between a pair of dead bodies.
"#Poor mite," Revin said, pulling him out.

#wss366

The streets were full of drunken soldiers celebrating the end of the war. Roughneck put his hand on Curtains' shoulder to steady & steer him.
"It was just a dalliance, sir," he said, as Curtains staggered to the hotel.
"Ah. But, no. She's a woman of quality. A lady. An Aspidelle."
"Are those wedding bells I hear, sir?"
After a pause, Curtains spoke again.
"I hate how when I get drunk, you use this exaggerated politeness with me, Roughneck."
"Maybe you shouldn't drink so much. Sir."

#tipsytales

#WordWeavers Tell us about a character arc you're proud of.

*Revin's Heart* is about the development of Revin as a character. I modeled it on a boy's adventure story, with the twist that he's trans. He starts out a naive young man & develops immensely throughout each of the seven novelettes, learning about the world around him & finding his place in it. After the series completed, I wrote a side-story that covers his transition, which is not essential for the story, but complements it nicely.

Rather than AI (which I never want to interact with for any reason), what I would like is a real search engine, that just indexes the open web, and a good RSS reader. That's it.

We came to Bright Ideas Brewing in Westfield. It has great beer & a nice beergarden. #WesternMass

That night, just after Dr. Smith went to bed, he began to hear motorcycles racing up and down the street outside his house. They roared by the house, then squealed to stop at the end of the street, then roared back. He tried covering his head with his pillow, but it was hopeless. Sleeplessly, he began angrily thinking up a new polymer that would bind rubber to asphalt…

#wss366

"What the…" they said, trying to start their motors, but finding them entirely seized up.
Dr. Smith smiled quietly to himself. They hadn't called him the "Polymer Wizard" for nothing. The polymer he'd synthesized wouldn't form unless subjected to rapid motion or pressure. But then it was like rubber. It would take a complete teardown to clean the ducted propellers of the JetDoos.
He spent the afternoon very happily fishing off his dock.

#wss366

The next afternoon, Dr. Smith checked his watch, then went out in his little rowboat and sprinkled some powder over the surface of the water. He returned to the dock, tied up the painter, and then seated himself on a lawn chair to watch. At 3:15, he could hear the roar of the JetDoos as they approached. They went racing by the dock, but then the motors began to labor, sputter and they conked out, leaving the JetDoos drifting — dead in the water.

#wss366

After many years, Dr. Smith finally retired from his research position at the chemical company, wanting nothing more than to relax on his dock and go fishing in the lake. But every day, after school, the wretched Jablonski boys would go racing by on their JetDoos and make a huge #wake that shook the dock and scared all the fish. After a week, Dr. Smith had had enough. He went into his basement lab and spent the night performing a complex chemical synthesis.

#wss366

#WordWeavers What's the most destructive weapon/power that your characters get to use?

In Revin's Heart, some people, called "remmers," have the ability to form towlines that can exert a pulling force by tying into etheric flows. But one group has figured out how to construct a device that can dump all of the etheric energy in a region into the atmosphere to create a giant storm, called an Etheric Storm Generator. The storms are powerful enough to level a city — or perhaps a whole island.

#WritersCoffeeClub Do you go to book festivals?

I haven't gone to any book festivals specifically. To have a booth at one tends to be frightfully expensive . I have attended — and been a participant — at science fiction conventions. And helped my publisher operate a "dealer table" to sell books. But, due to my heightened risk of respiratory disease, I've mostly only attended conventions that were masks required. And fewer and fewer are taking any precautions to mitigate disease transmission.

Children don't go to school and come home a different sex. What happens is they gain enough confidence to tell others what sex they were all along.

subita silent' inter la arbopintoj… falinta cikad' / a sudden silence among the treetops… fallen cicada #hajko #haiku #esperanto #SilentSunday