Hold still, daffodils

Bumblebees are buzzing me. Do they hold still? No. Mysterious little brown bees are patrolling the ground. Do they hold still? No. They’re so quick, I’m not even sure they’re bees. Where can I get a picture? Daffodils. They hold still.

Flow: Writing vs. Solitaire

Even if you haven’t read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, you’ve probably read something that refers to it, and you’ve most likely experienced a “flow” or “optimal experience”, even if it’s just doing crossword puzzles. Often writing is given as an example of a flow experience. Oh, really?

Re: Shoggoths in Bloom

Professor Harding, educated at a college in Alabama (I’m guessing Tuskegee) and Yale, comes to Maine to pursue a line of inquiry no one else wants: shoggoths. “Shoggoths in Bloom“, by Elizabeth Bear depicts in wonderful, luscious prose the beauty of the Maine shore and sky, as well as the discomfort and wary approaches between […]

Re: The Political Prisoner

In a moody story of an internal spy caught in the sweep of a coup, “The Political Prisoner,” by Charles Coleman Finlay is so dominated by betrayals, interrogations, and imprisonment, it’s easy to lose track of the setting: a planet where the terraforming is going slower than hoped and religion seems to be the main […]

Species tulips

The first tulips are showing up, little guys that are closer to the original species than the big bright hybrids. Supposedly, they’re more robust, and here’s a couple that have worked for me. Like for instance these little pink and white ones here. It’s been a while since I planted them and left them to […]

Reading as a Writer

Since my official topic here is learning about writing from what I reading, I found a lot to think about in the latest Writing Excuses about Reading Critically, not as a critic, though, but as a writer.

Re: Baby Doll

The introduction to “Baby Doll,” by Johanna Sinisalo gives you an intriguing overview of the Finnish heritage in science fiction and fantasy. Then it curtly informs you that this story is dystopian SF about children losing their childhood and dumps you into sexhell.

Good old golden daffodils

Here you go: the obligatory spring bulbs, and you can’t get much more obligatory than golden yellow daffodils. The garden just isn’t complete without them.

Rounding the heel

It’s starting to look like a sock. Getting through all the awkward stages of creating the heel feels like rounding rounding a very small scale Cape Horn, what with the backtracking and dropped stitches, not to mention the occasional lack of conviction, disbelief, and baffled rereading the instruction. I still think the way this sock […]

Re: The Twilight Year

After enjoying “Mars: A Traveler’s Guide” and “Pride and Prometheus,” I kept flipping through that same issue of F&SF and got caught up in “The Twilight Year,” by Sean McMullen. It begins in Britain long after the Romans have left little behind but ruins. The narrator is a bard who seems to have an effect […]