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More of the Milky Way

on September 06, 2021

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Forget the Audience, Who Are You Writing For?

In a writing class of mine was one writer whose story was actually painful to read. It was so overwrought with lurid, convoluted language that often his sentences made no sense at all. All of his characters were martial-arts supermen. All of his characters were philosophers. All of his characters were the strong, silent, mysterious type. As I slogged my way through his story, I wondered how he could read his own writing and not see what was blindingly clear to everyone else. And then he started discussing his story and the answer was obvious. He was speaking just like his characters. He was laboring to use Latinate phrases and obscure words that didn’t quite mean what he was trying to make them mean. He was young, and a little nervous, and he was trying to project an image of a learned, confident, mysterious philosopher. If he’d had an opportunity to demonstrate some martial arts, he probably would hav...

EACH SEPARATE STAR appears in Analog today

EACH SEPARATE STAR is in Analog today. I wanted to write about a significant scientific discovery at its earliest, most boring, down-to-earth stage. Scientific discoveries aren't found like they are in the movies, with an explosion of insight—they're through mundane work that keeps chipping away at a nagging question. So, I wanted to explore that. One odd thing about this story is that it was written by flipping open an issue of New Scientist and randomly pointing at an article and writing about it. My finger landed on a piece about orbital mechanics, so I read it and then just started writing blindly. Very happy with the result.

HUNT at Stupefying Stories

This is one of my favorite pieces of flash fiction. HUNT is episode #21 in The Chronicles of Odin, which is published today in Stupefying Stories, and will be released as a full anthology in late 2022. Here's the opening: There is a moment when you realize it’s gone too far. You’ve lost control and in the blink of an eye everything is about to become horrific. Hadiza kept the butt of her rifle tight to her shoulder. One eye looking through the scope. Finger hovering over the trigger. And realized this was that moment. “Joe,” she whispered, hoping she spoke loudly enough for her ear comm to pick up her voice. “Joe, I think it’s here.” Around her, the vast blue bamboo forest swayed in the constant breeze. A never-ceasing clatter of windchimes, mixed with the rustle of the bamboo’s upper leaves and the hiss of the light rain. Her knee sank into the mud. “Joe,” she said louder. “Hadiza,” Joe’s voice crackled in her ear. His voice echoed her strain. “Are you sure?” “Dammit,” Had...

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