#rsdiscussion — Public Fediverse posts

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.27 — Does 'humanity' as a concept figure often in your works? How so?

Humanity in all its dimensions figures in my works, as in the species and in the experience of the individual, often background but certainly always in mind. Case in point is this tiny #excerpt. Bolt is shadowing someone and ends up in a pharmacy (chemist) and decides to buy something.

My [day after] contraceptives were expired from lack of recent need, so I reached for them but stopped to read the sign posted above the boxes of tablets for women and the sheaths women could buy for men if the tablets made them ill.

Do not let recent news reports dissuade you from doing what you need to do for your health and happiness. An unhappy or resentful mother is a poor parent. Infertility is a fact. The world population dipping under 240 million is not your personal problem. Decades and centuries ahead are plenty of time to stem the decline. You having this child, or you having a child before you are ready, will not change the world. Nobody will thank you for your sacrifice.

—Rainy Days, the Director of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds

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#PennedPossibilities 1111: Do you respond to feedback, reviews, or comments? Why or why not?

Usually only if they are meant for me. Certainly not if they are an attack on the author.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.26 — What are good examples of texts written from a non-human point of view?

The books I thought of off hand, like Niven and Pournelle's A Mote in Gods Eye and C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series? I'm not sure they were written from a close POV inside the mind of the alien, though they all give a good view into what such a POV might be like. Even Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep (or a related story) may not have gone close into the POV of the modular mind aliens (can't recall for sure).

As an SF writer first, a fantasy writer second, and more recently a bit more literary in outlook than in the beginning of my career, I would point something out: Aliens are stand-ins for humans or a device for discussing something important about human nature. As @elfbiter stated,

Xenofiction is hard unless you assume [the] human mindset is somehow universal.

I generally agree that we cannot assume it is universal, though it hard to image that, but for differences in biology, alien mindsets can't help but be somewhat similar. However, if we don't assume it is similar, can we depict something that will be relevant to ourselves? To our readers? The raison d'être of the exercise becomes a philosophical question. Elfbiter's example of a dog's POV is illustrative, and I've tried that POV, but at least if we aren't assuming a transference of a human mind into a dog's body (like I did), at least what we see through a dog's POV will be relevant to an extent. Said dog has no choice other to live in a world heavily influenced by humans! Seeing ourselves through non-human eyes would be very relevant.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.25 — Can a story be told from the point of view of something unconscious?

Yes.

Humans are by nature animists. Give a young child a toy and watch what happens. They create imaginary friends. We routinely imbue the unconscious universe with imaginary consciousness. We exchange stories about rocks and lightning to explain what we don't understand, why we feel powerless in the face of others who have power over us. We create irrational gods to explain the irrationality of what we resign ourselves to do nothing about. Plenty of people are convinced our creations speak to us and command us, and accept their POV. None are actually conscious. They are but stories from the POV of something unconscious. Yet… they rule our entire existence—and influence us to force their stories on others, with typically disastrous, very human, results. It is impossible to escape the influence of such stories anywhere in the world because we have, in effect, woven the POV of something not conscious into our perception of reality.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.26 — What weather best matches your current work in progress?

The weather metaphor that best matches the mood of the WIP is actually two that are not necessarily incompatible:

1. Hot and sultry, damply sweaty. Street Car Named Desire is a good match.
2. Dark and stormy with thick oppressive mammiform cloud cover that blocks out all light and holds in heat.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.25 — If readers could keep one item from your story as a souvenir, what would it be?

May I suggest you ask for a day angel's† primary flight feather? Nicely. Politely, say, "Please." Day angels, despite the name, are very human and could interbreed with us, yet have wings and can fly. Flight has little to do with physical wing strength. Their feathers are not avian, but have an anatomy that could reveal secrets in the Reluctance universe for theoretical physicists or engineers in our world. Since many people sell molted plumes for use as quill pens, acquiring one will not prove difficult.

=-=-=-=-=
† Night angel wing hairs serve a similar purpose, but work together in difficult to fathom patterns, so one hair wouldn't teach you much.

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#PennedPossibilities 1109: What question does your MC long to find an answer for? What answer do they hope for, and which one would they fear?

For Bolt, "the question" could be the main mystery in the story, but I'm not approaching that as it is too spoilery.

Alternatively, her question would be: Who holds the blackmail that keeps her in thrall as a courier for the mob? Is it the syndicate director, Boss Mead? Is it the directorate of the syndicate, that is the confederated lesser formerly separate gangster bosses who look up to Boss Mead? (I know; not telling.) Bolt, thinking about it, hopes it is Boss Mead alone because she fears that if anything were to happen to Mead, having her dirty note, shared amongst the resulting fragmented factional bosses that would succeed him, would turn her life into a living hell. Boss Mead is a task master, at times cruel, but he's one person and has never tried to use her up; Bolt senses that, which may be why she still has hope.

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — Self-promo time!

I had been planning to attend Worldcon in Anaheim this year (LACon V), but the spouse had knee replacement surgery this morning and I don't think it's wise to attend even though it's local. The surgery was successful, so no worries other than recovery on that front. I'm sure I'll get to meet you Mastodon SF writers at other conventions. If you're attending, good luck networking—and have fun!

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — A bonus question: favorite dessert made fresh in a kitchen?

Zabiaone. It's a rich warm "custard" whipped up with egg yolk, sugar, and Marsala wine in a copper bowl. An Italian restaurant named Antonio's made it decades ago. I've never tried to make it myself, but at the restaurant they did it in front of you. Maybe it should find itself in a story one day!

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — A4 . Are there other kitchen tools that fascinate you, from graters to high-speed mixers?

Not enough to show up in stories. I've taken a shine to the spouse' s food processor, though I've cut myself twice washing the blades now, so maybe it isn't a good idea.

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — A3. Do any of your characters like to cook? Are they knife wielders when facing a vegetable?

Yes. My MCs almost always like to cook, and certainly they really like to eat if not. In one story, the main character cooks a meal which is best characterized as goat birria for her close friends and supporters while awaiting the results of an election that may make her prime minister. In another part of the book, she fights off aliens that resemble trees. Since we see hot blood sap, I assume she fought with a knife.

Do walking trees count as a vegetable for this question?

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — A2. What do you think about knives used in the kitchen versus in crafts or combat?

May be icky, but…

Combat. Don't wanna, myself. However, I researched knife fighting since I've written a few fight scenes, including stabbing. In one story, a character (who has no hands, btw) throws a knife, then ends up healing the antagonist once she has gotten the antagonist's attention. Most knife strikes bounce off the ribs. It's all in how the blade is oriented, and in the heat of the moment, that's hard/

I'm not crafty, so I've never used one in crafting.

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#Writephant 2026.0824 — A1. Do you love to cook? If so, what is your favorite thing to make? And if not, what is your favorite cooked meal?

Yep, I cook. Many of the characters in my stories do, too. I often improvise. I was watching an anime where a character complained that he typically ate his eggs fried with soy sauce instead of western style, which led to the picture which is three eggs with soy sauce, plus sautéed garlic and scallions, butter, and drops of smoked sesame oil, finished with goat gouda after flipping the eggs half-over; that's why it looks like an omelette despite leaking yolk.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.24 — Talk about a time you realised something about a writer through their works.

I became aware that Charles Dickens' serialized his stories in installments when I took a course in college and fell in love with his work. His stories originally appeared weekly (or so) in major newspapers and other publications. He's often denigrated for writing long and flowery in order to increase his word count. Of note is that he wrote his novels as he published them. His novels were certainly incomplete when newspapers started publishing them, which is heavily implied by how The Mystery of Edwin Drood was half-completed at the time of Dickens' death despite some number of installments already having been published.

I didn't understand what writing a story while publishing the already written parts truly meant until I tried it myself. It changed how I found I had to conceptualize the story. It forced me to find the confidence I needed to complete no matter what, even manufacturing ad hoc subplots if the first idea collapsed, with no take-back revisions possible†. I recall I started publishing after completing the fourth chapter, and only missed one announced deadline in twelve chapters, only discovering a few times whilst writing how I could make certain plot point actually work. It was a frenzied month and a half. Serialization while writing makes dealing with a revision deadline for a traditional publisher seem namby-pamby indeed!

I realize now that some of Dickens' long and flowery tracts may not have been entirely to increase his word count; they may have served to delay having to write critical scenes into a subsequent installment, until they had fully formed in his mind. Speculation, of course. Makes sense through circumstance.

I've a nothing but respect for full-Dickens serialization, and for those who do it today. I found it a good exercise, a confidence builder; don't think I'll do it again.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† I published on a fanfiction platform I shan't name because I wrote under a different alias. The platform allowed author notes at the beginning of chapters. I did revise very minor points in some previously published chapters and noted how it effected the current chapter. I'm no Charles Dickens.

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.24 — Salient?

I'm a touch-typist. It really helps. Not on a thumb keyboard, which exposes the flaw in the technology.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.24 — Which chapter or scene took the longest to get right?

The first chapter. I wrote about the rewrite process here (and despite the hashtag, there's nothing graphic): https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/117109308169828892. I couldn't properly balance the tone of the character, presenting the primary mystery to be solved, and jumping into the action. I rewrote the original three times over the span of a year, but the last time the main character's personality shined through, along with the sense that her hopes and dreams had been crushed but maybe there's a way around that. It was what I was looking for.

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#PennedPossibilities 1108: Tell us something you like about your story. (Maybe something you find interesting, entertaining, or amusing.)

There is a truism, extant since ancient Grecian times, that the only interesting stories are of princes and heroes princesses and heroines. Bolt's story—an every man story, or in her case, an every woman story of a woman in a woman-centric society—defies that characterization. She's a sometimes crass, occasionally sexist, earnest nobody who's nobody special and maybe way too relatable in that—even though she's a day angel with wings who enjoys flying very fast, and fills her story with acrobatics and speed. She's a high school drop out, a jock with tons of pride in her athletic body, stuck in a job that is literally more dead​-end than most of ours: she's been blackmailed into working as a courier for the mob. Her hobbies are men, the gym, men, taking mundane photos of people living the normal lives denied her to paste on her wall (preferentially of men), and men. What happens to this former side character as she's ping-ponged between major MCs from prequels and sequels, capable SCs, and difficult antagonists as the world changes around her speaks to how we all weather unexpected storms in our life and brushes with celebrity. She's what I call a catalytic character.

Kinda sounds like a blurb, huh?

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#EroticMusings 2026.08.23 —Week 65 (August 23-29) Studio: Is your creative space tidy or chaotic? Is that important, or just how it is?

It's KAOS!!!

That's a Get Smart reference†, the title of which show is a double-entendre, making twice as fun for a writer. It's also a reference to my interior mindscape. I do think the state of my mind (not so much my environment) is important for writing about people nobody can see living in places nobody ever heard of doing all sort of impossible or embarrassing things nobody tries that would be banned in many southern states by nobody that will ever be remembered for other than banning books. And. Doubtlessly. Poo-pooed by grandma… who is somebody, actually.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† Get Smart is an American comedy television series (1965–1970) parodying the secret agent genre.

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.23 — Remember that time when...

Authors were bigger celebrities than pop music stars?

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.23 — What's one writing "rule" you've happily ignored?

Wut? Whatcha talking—? Are. You. Saying—! [Waves hand negatingly.] Don't know from any stink'n grammar 'cause this kid wuz one of those kids in high school that didn't get men​-tally no sentence-part-diagrams nor predicates, and the teach didn't care to beat it into this kid's head. C- English student. Proud of it. Author, too. And proud of it! Decided to write one day when I realized I could tell a better story; read my fav writers; studied them, then copied pages until I saw what they wuz doing, natch, then did. That. A lot. On an electric typewriter at first, imagine! You ask'n 'bout the rules I breaks? Never met 'em! So… how can I know?

Translation: I always tell the story the way it needs be.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.23 — If no one read what you write, would you still choose to write?

This is a PTSD nightmare scenario for me since I write to communicate. I burnt out in 2001 due to plenty of inventory but not getting sales. Recovered now. I am going to concentrate my mental energy thinking upon something else…

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.22 — Have you ever used a sensitivity reader? How did it go?

Not per se, but I did have a beta reader balk at a woman being crass and too sexual. Reverse those gender roles and I think he would have given the MC a pass. Knew I was on the right path then and there, and not because it was an explicitly feminist novel, either.

I expect my stories to challenge readers. What I care about is not whether the story is insensitive but whether I got cultural details wrong. Writing SF and fantasy goes a long way to avoiding such issues, but gender is still gender, and surprisingly people expect current gender roles, or those they grew up with, to stay stable in the future, in other cultures, or on other worlds. I try to write about the issues that interest me subtly, not necessarily to be sensitive to biases people have.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.22 — Which character would make the worst roommate?

It isn't the primary antagonist who would make the worst roommate, as one might expect. Bolt (the MC) and Boss Mead spend a chapter-worthy night at his place, watched by his bodyguards (and take that as you will), though she hates his guts. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun, or wouldn't be fun if more permanent. A dodecade ago, she tried to make that arrangement, but failed for inexperience.

Actually, it is Pigeon the Pilferer who wins the prize as worst. Not only does the punk gangster have a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder, that shoulder (and the rest of him) smells. Bromhidrosis, as diagnosed by another SC. It is a pretty harsh judgement when you consider their world is very hot and nothing like A/C exists. Everybody sweats. Every body has a unique smell, and I don't mean perfume. Worse, Pigeon prefers men—not that Bolt cares what preferences a person has. It seems like a waste to her, though. Another reason she wouldn't have him as a roommate.

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.22 — Fantasy stories are frequently inspired by medieval societies. Why do you think people are fascinated by that time period?

My opinion? Literary inertia. Plenty of classics written in the English language going back to middle English and during the democratization of the novel ( Don Quixote thru Ivanhoe) have made it continually familiar, studied, and analyzed as literature. Then the milieu got cemented into the modern literary consciousness with works like Tolkien's and C.S. Lewis'. A medieval milieu offers simplicity that strips away modernity combined with the romance of lawless power and unfathomable evil; it makes for a compelling genre. It is fun. Its familiarity means there are so many acceptable tropes that it becomes easy to write. Authors are all but guaranteed readers will understand their settings and accept the rules they might otherwise balk at without critical thought or resistance.

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#PennedPossibilities 1106 2/2: SC POV: When was a time where you had to make an impossible choice.

Does it change anything that Blue is a man?

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#PennedPossibilities 1106 1/2: SC POV: When was a time where you had to make an impossible choice.

Still making that choice. On what was originally a lark, nothing serious just me stretching my wings, I have been hired to perform an unfathomably important job my gender is not usually allowed, protecting the most important woman in the world—thanks to my friend Bolt teaching me an unfathomably difficult skill she actually taught herself. This, disastrously, means I'm in a position where I have to choose between a job people would kill to even have a chance to compete for—let alone be chosen for!—and raising a family, something I was brought up always wanting to do, training to do, and always thinking I would do, such that it's how I think of myself.

I can't do both.

Continued…

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RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/117130116756058541

#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.21 — Link to or summarize yesterday's poll and reveal the answer.

The telepath spy led almost to the end and was the correct choice; she never appeared in a story. The DJ was the most disbelieved, but I wrote four novelettes and one short-story about her. She lost the ability to properly fear for her life if other lives were at stake. So, yes, essentially suicidal. Except for in her last story, she gets mauled worse in each story whilst saving thousands anonymously. Most readers recognized my prizefighter character; thanks for paying attention to my posts, y'all! The prizefighter fooled almost no one.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.21 — What's a trope you enjoy writing, even if it's unpopular?

A woman or girl in an unlikely, normally male, or powerful role as a protagonist. Plenty of people think it hackneyed. Until people won't look at the role as unlikely, normally male, or too powerful for a female, I'm writing stories with that trope.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.21 — What's a mistake you see a lot of writers make when writing about people with your lived experience?

Maybe more for screenwriters than for print writers: No. Emphatically. You can't walk up to a random terminal/computer to hack into a computer system or gain entry to a facility, especially inside a government agency or reasonably competent company. There's guards, keycards, biometrics, expiring passwords, multfactor authentication, surrendering your cellphone, usb keys, and laptops, and jumping through lotso other hoops, as well as trying to get information stored in isolated machines and isolated networks inside secured computer rooms. Heck, the data and computers may be off-site in a five+ 9s data center. You ain't dropping a bot. You're either going to be working in IT for an inside job, doing social engineering, or resort to wares and be working externally looking to take advantage of stupid or highly technical vulnerabilities anywhere on the net. You will almost never be able to hack a specific target, and if that's your goal, it may take months. You may have to develop software. The job is HARD and requires experience and expertise. Don't base a story on this working easily or quickly. Even decades ago when I got into systems as a student and security was rudimentary, it wasn't easy. Access through vulnerabilities happens mostly through social engineering, laziness or overwork of key personnel, or through undiscovered equipment issues in routers and other external network connections. Try lampshading these factors and your story will seem more believable.

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#PennedPossibilities 1105: What secret does one of your characters keep that is dangerous to them? Does anyone else know about it?

There are two characters with secrets much more dangerous to them than Bolt's secret is to her. However—because spoilers are, well… you know, right?—like @floofpaldi said…

I’ll go with the safe option for this answer.

The MC's secret is known to the reader as it is in the title: Reluctant Courier (for the Mob). "Reluctant" has multiple meanings in this context, but what matters is that when Bolt's street photography gets discovered, celebrity, plenty of coin, and new friends follow, as does partial relief from an apathy that has left her having blacked out parts of her life. Being a mob courier has its moments—few of them, mostly scary. While she worries discovery will drive away her new friends, and will likely draw the attention of the constabulary, she's also afraid what the mob will do to her friends—whom she's grown to feel are more important than her own blackmailed life.

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