Desperation

Desperation by John Kessel So you’re coming to Clarion. I don’t know you or your personal reasons, but I think I know something about what might drive somebody to make this commitment. One of my favorite albums of all time, one of my top three of the 1990s (along with Radiohead’s OK Computer and Moby’s……

Writer’s Craft #22 – Not the dress!

Reading Jaleta Clegg’s novel, Nexus Point, I encountered a scene that struck a resonance with one of my own about a female protagonist rejecting a dress. Here is Clegg’s heroine, Dace, threatened with a pink dress:       “Keep thinking pink, Dace. Tell me enough of the truth and I’ll find something much more suitable for……

Spec Tech: Conlanging 1 – Introductions

This is the first in a series of posts “live-blogging” the creation of a fictional language from scratch, with the help of our readers.  We plan to construct a functional language one piece at a time, incorporating suggestions and preferences from our audience along the way.  But first, because the “who” and “why” of a……

Writer’s Craft #21 – Nobody wins a fight, not even the writer

This week’s guest author is John Preet. John teaches martial arts and has military experience. (Lynda) I decided to write this after watching The Green Hornet in the same week that I read about kids trying what they saw on televised fights and getting seriously hurt. I blame popular visual media for creating a completely……

Spec Tech: Spacecraft Subsystems

Sometimes it helps just to know the right words when you are looking for more information on a topic. If I had only known to search for “Vortex shedding induced roll” last spring I would have saved myself many months of work. But I digress. Today’s spacecraft like the space shuttle have millions of parts.……