Forecast Friday: Mars on the Cheap

(I’m sorry – I know it probably seems that I obsess about going to The Red Planet. I do. I know there are so many more extraordinary things I could be thinking about. But Mars is SO DOABLE. After spending my youth watching our Astronauts make multiple trips to the Moon, I saw no reason … Continue reading →

Writing Wednesday: Getting a Hand-Up Onto the Wriding Horse

This seems to be my year for falling off that horse. I was wriding along at a pretty good clip and then stalled (what I thought was BRIEFLY), but then soon afterwards we were hit by the slab leak. Life…happens. And it looks like it will continue for at least another couple of weeks. But … Continue reading →

Meandering Monday about a Hole in My Soul

As I remain adrift in our home repairs and unable to get back to seriously writing (this blog is just not the same thing as the creative activity of writing fiction) I realize more and more how I depend on my writing to keep me grounded in reality. That may seem like an odd thing, … Continue reading →

Sum-it-up Sunday: Riots, Review, Respect

Riots are not a form of protest, and solve nothing. It’s a terrible thing when someone dies needlessly. Determining HOW and WHY the needlessly happened is important – but you can’t get there by treating every situation as though it has the same cause without including and considering the individual facts. This is the REAL … Continue reading →

Selling Saturday: Smashwords Coupon for “Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND” and Other Promotions

It’s time to switch my Smashwords coupon rotation from my individual stories to my collections (so if you keep up with the rotation each week, you can get all the collections REALLY CHEAP!) First up is Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND, which contains the following: “Passed Life” Talk about an identity crisis! … Continue reading →

Forecast Friday: What Do You Expect?

Someday, our robots will wander into that UNCANNY VALLEY where they appear or behave enough like us that we find them disturbing. We don’t expect our robots to act like humans – they’re supposed to act like… robots. Why is this unnerving for us? Perhaps it’s because we humans use a lot of shortcuts to … Continue reading →

Writing Wednesday: What Do You Do With Criticism?

Before I begin, a brief summary of my more recent writing history: I decided to resume writing as a serious hobby in 2004 (part of my Midlife Renaissance™.) I spent two years researching what to do, joined and participated in an online writing workshop (which involved craft discussions, and seeing and critiquing the early work … Continue reading →

Meandering Monday about Being in the Middle of Things

I’m annoyed with myself. It was JUST a slab leak – it damaged some floors and is costing us some money to fix everything. It’s not as though we were in the floods in Baton Rouge and lost all our possessions. This is temporary, and we will recover from it. I think. And yet – … Continue reading →

Sum-it-up Sunday: Perspective, Patience, Polls

So – the Clinton camp thinks they have a winning campaign topic by resurrecting the “Birther” conspiracy (Can you say DESPERATION? Sure – I knew you could.) It doesn’t matter that Hillary’s first presidential campaign started it, and that Trump hasn’t been bringing it up; after all, we’re living in a media circus where, if … Continue reading →

Selling Saturday: Smashwords Coupon for “Burial Details” and Other Promotions

This week’s Smashwords coupon is for “Burial Details”: Be sure to bury your charges deep. An old farmer scraping by after the Sahrian invasion buries his most precious treasures to hide them from the aliens’ “salvation”. A tired voice in my head that said “They’re all buried now”; and then I HAD to find out … Continue reading →