The Writer In A State

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

If you read mad genius club, you know I’ve been under the weather. And though it shouldn’t have psychological effects, this did. For a while there I was unable to choose anything. Like …. do you want ice-cream or rat poison was an actual conundrum. (Not that anyone asked me that, but yes, that was the level of “I can’t even.” And if I could summon words at all they came out flat.

This broke yesterday but of course I’m profoundly behind. And now I’ve hit the stage where I can write, but it all feels like utter drek. This is absolutely bog standard for when I’m very sick. But of course I still worry about what if it sticks like that?

Oh, yeah, and it’s probably nothing to worry about. I’m furious at myself for how slowly I’m recovering — this thing did a u-turn at least once — but almost everyone I know has had it, and the thirty year olds have as much trouble kicking it as the sixty year olds. And this one was so nasty Dan caught it before me. (And is still working on kicking it off, though admittedly better than me.)

I’d like to promise you that next week I’ll be up to snuff, but of course I can’t. I’m going to try really hard though.

And no, this is not the whole point of the post. So ahem, the spiel:

And yes, if you have one of the first books to come out, it came with a foreword explaining this, but I’ve decided to remove it and let the book stand on its own. Also, there’s stuff to explain, some of which will be new to you even if you have read about it before, or you’ve read the book. (And yeah, I promise to write the stuff I mention. Soonish.) And yes, this is a weird place to do it, but this allows me to link the post places that haven’t heard of No Man’s Land. So, bear with me a little.

As some of you know, No Man’s Land is special to me. Look, just like a mother loves all her children, a writer loves all her books. It’s just that some are favorites.

Why is No Man’s Land a favorite? That’s easy. Because it was my first world and because I spent so much time in it as a kid. For various reasons it was a good place to hide, partly because it’s so different from the real world, particularly the world I lived in at the time.

But it’s also the world I thought I could never publish. Why? Well, partly because in Elly, the world in question, everyone is a functional hermaphrodite.

What is a nice writer like me doing with a book like that?

Well– First, I’m not precisely a nice writer. One of the things M. C. A. Hogarth has achieved — I’m not sure she was aiming for it — is convince me that I’m not just a craftswoman but an actual writer. She’s achieved it it by posting things like this, because I have to admit she’s right:

If you’re on twitter this is the link. And if you’re not, this is the link.

Because this absolutely my process. Why would any rational human being, much less a rational human being to the right of Lenin want to jump into sexual/gender weirdness while the left is using it as one of their vehicles to destroy society.

Well, maybe because it’s when it’s needed. You see, the people in Elly don’t choose their gender/sex anymore than we do. They are a bio-engineered race and their ability to each both sire and bear children is a blessing and a curse. For one, because of how they’re designed they have a very difficult time forming relationships, and the only reason they have a semi-organized society is because they were invaded a few times (and fought it out, and invaded again) by a totalitarian empire. They managed to adopt some structures, like marriage (of sorts. They have trouble with it) and monarchy (of sorts. It’s more like tribal power writ large) and commerce (of sorts.)

For another, as the series continues, they’ll have a real disadvantage in relation to normal humans. Also an inability to integrate with greater pan-galactic society. This is complicated, since the only reason they survived at all is that their designers — who were brilliant and insane, geniuses with a My Little Genetics kit and cracked wide personalities — gave them nanos that enable any number of them to have a wide range of psi-powers. And those psi-powers are important to humanity at large AND vanish if more than five generations from Ellyan ancestry. What do you do with that? Normally being a minority hampered in the reproductive department, they’d be genetically swamped and disappear. But the Star Empire that first makes contact with them needs their psi-powers and can’t let them disappear.

So, the situation is fascinating to me, because at what point do humans become zoo animals kept in artificial barbarism so as to preserve their “specialness?”. (They don’t, but the whole thing is very complicated to negotiate.)

BUT when this started out it wasn’t even that. It was that I’d read the Left Hand of Darkness and was OFFENDED to the chore of my proto-writer soul. Because the biology made no sense. The society made no sense for humans of any kind and also REEEE. being fourteen, at the time, I knew everything. So I decided there and then I was going to write better hermaphrodites. (Which I obviously couldn’t. No, seriously. My first attempt was forty pages handwritten.)

However, being — shakes fist at Maggie Hogarth — an artist (ptui. Did she have to make me admit that?) and cracked, I woke up that night with a not quite prince in my head running towards the chamber where his womb-parent the king has just died.

For those who’ve read No Man’s Land, no, weirdly it wasn’t Brundar. It was his ancestor, 500 years ago, at the start of the War of the Magicians. (Yirt the Justice Bringer. Though Brundar has another nickname for him.) And yes, those stories will happen, probably in a series of novellas and shorts.

I did write the novels. Eight times. They got rejected everywhere. The final rejection was a demand I change the pronouns to “she/her” instead of male pronouns. At the time I didn’t/couldn’t because well, visually they look more masculine (not that they look particularly either. Rendering them in midjourney for the sound track is a trip, because it either gives them beards or breasts randomly. And sometimes both.) As in, they don’t have breasts. And if I use “she” everyone sees breasts. However and more importantly, as time when on I realized that using “she” turned it into another big plea for female supremacy or exclusivity of some sort, and frankly I can’t even. (However in the second novel, a female-view-point character keeps thinking a lot of them are more like women or in one case “Psychotic little girl” — this is said admiringly. It’s that sort of situation.)

Anyway, into the drawer it went for a good long time, until two years ago I realized I was getting old, and might die with it unwritten. And at the same time had the brilliant idea (if I say so myself) of introducing a more normal human character (Not that Skip is precisely normal. And I mean that in the good and bad sense.) to be our “seeing eye dog” in the completely new world.

So the book starts with what appears to be a standard mil sf chapter with Future British in Space. And then the second chapter is the death of the hermaphrodite king and his child of the womb inheriting much too early. And because they are barbarians and call their psi-powers magic, you’ll think you were dropped into a high fantasy.

Anyway it ended up at 265 words, which means I had to publish it in three volumes on Amazon. (And the second book, Orphans of the Stars is going the same way, I’m afraid.)

I put the first volume on sale for 99c in the Based Book Sale. I will keep it at 99c till the morning of the eighteenth. Since I don’t intend to put it on sale again for at least a year, this is your chance to grab it if you either haven’t read it OR you intend to give it to a bunch of friends. (Hey, I can dream.)

But isn’t it weird to put it in the Based Book Sale which is supposed to support traditional values and all that?

Well, no.

Because the book actually is disturbingly wholesome. Y’all know that into all of my books a broad stripe of darkness must fall, but really, in the fundamentals, not this one. Oh Skip goes through a disgusting interlude, but he gets better, and fundamentally he’s a decent human being bound by honor and duty. And Elly is practically a screaming advert for marriage and having a lot of babies. (No, seriously.) And emphasizes them as life and civilization affirming. Also the characters are fighting bravely and for a large part of the book seemingly hopelessly against one of the worst villainous societies in science fiction. (Would you believe cannibal slavers? Sure, I knew you would.)

Anyway, that’s No Man’s Land, and it’s in the Based Book Sale. The first volume is only 99c, which is 3.99 off and makes the whole book much cheaper.

MEANWHILE I hate to bother you, but, Done With Mirrors is on pre-order. It’s a collection, but it’s the size of a novel and though the stories are previously published, the one from Black Tide Rising is double the size, because I misunderstood the specifications. Also, some of you might have missed some of the stories, since they were published in various anthos. Now, the collection comes out Valentine’s Day, and I would like to get to at least 200 pre-orders, and it’s lagging short of 150. No, you don’t have to buy it, duh. But if you’re inclined to, please do so.

Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections)

DONE WITH MIRRORS

From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.

Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.

Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.

From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.

Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.

Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.

With an introduction by Holly Chism.

(If you want it printed, you have to wait till Sunday, because I got confused about when to upload it. Sorry.)

Okay — embarrassed — done with the sales spiel. You’ll be glad to know the songs have returned. I’ve done the next three on the sound track and will upload it when I have time. And there is one of the “Songs of Elly” cooking as well. I’d also like to do readings, but I need to stop coughing up a lung.

Honestly, I really am on the upswing. It just feels like I’m at the base of a very tall mountain! Hopefully next week I’ll be well.

92 thoughts on “The Writer In A State”

  1. If you feel like you’re at the base of a mountain, you may want to just stand up. It may not be as tall as you imagine lying down.

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  3. “The writer in a state”?

    I hope you’re not in California or New York state? [Very Big Crazy Grin]

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        1. Fuzzy, we need to stop sharing a mind. I was thinking that early this morning. Not literally — I have good friends both places. And in fact I have readers of this blog both places — but I was thinking of why the neutron bomb was invented and what it did.

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          1. Some Canadain singer/comedian (I wish I knew his name, but I only had the dubbed unlabeled tape…) in the 1970’s had a tune about it and how Carter was going to use it…

            Let’s have a nice, clean holocaust
            With a nice, clean neutron bomb!
            Building won’t be damaged at all
            But the number of survivors will be very, very small.

            He’s the Prince of Peace
            The Lord of Love
            Spearhead of the anti-war machine
            And he’s determined if we’re to have a nuclear war
            America will fight it clean!

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      2. New Jersey has gone so far left they’ve departed the real plane. (Okay, that’s for Dan.) Governor Sherrill is now claiming it’s illegal for ICE to drive on the state’s limited access toll roads.

        I swan, the left-exponents are peeling out of reality like some sort of narcotic-induced Rapture.

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        1. ‘s funny how all of a sudden the Dems are heavily pushing “states rights”, though they’d never call it that. Though ironically it’s in one of the few areas that the Constitution *explicitly* delegates to the Federal government.

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        2. Sherill is excluding ICE from the Garden State Parkway? If they were in trucks, I could see. Time to withhold NJ’s road funds. The Parkway MAY be supported by state funds, but there are a bunch of other federal roads (I 95 being the one that comes to mind first) in the state. And honestly with money being fungible I suspect all the road funds kind of flow together.

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          1. “money being fungible I suspect all the road funds kind of flow together.“

            –

            Will not disagree that money is fungible, given what we’ve seen come out of MN and other locations. (What else is fraud? Fungible.)

            OTOH, I’ve seen first hand what happens when government auditors show up (both state and federal) and how they are supposed to track it by both those awarded the money, and the auditors who are supposed to verify usage. Tracking the money was the whole point of the Cost Accounting System. The software was originally written, late ’80s, on AS400/COBOL, for Public Works (i.e. Roads). Expanded far beyond that over the next 30+, and counting, years. (I started in 2004.) Note, I have no clue if software has reached NJ area or not. It was still pretty much west coast (CA, WA, CO, and OR), when I retired. OTOH, now owned by a Montana (or was) entity buying orphaned software companies.

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            1. Money may be fungible, but it didn’t stop Sacramento from screaming when Trump moved to pull the Federal financing of California’s Highspeed Rail (to Nowhere).

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      4. Pity about all the leftists

        And how we’re inflicting the crazy mind virus on other states. First our zombies overwhelmed Oregon and Washington. Now it’s on to other red states. Please somebody, get Glenn Reynold’s welcome wagon/deprogramming camps up and running.

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  5. I keep hitting the wall with Substack’s quirks, but the little bit of the next novel that I have been able to read has me waiting patiently (for values of patience) for the opportunity to pre-order that one.

    Skip’s mother sounds like a very interesting character…

    Mirrors is on pre-order. Sorry, no friends or relatives who read SF/fantasy, so no gifting.

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      1. OT

        First cataract is done, yesterday. Already good results. Follow-up show eye completed is already at 20/25, which is legal driving, and supposedly getting better.

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        1. Yay!

          Had mine done 3 years ago – worked great.

          But picked distance correction – so legal to drive but can’t really read the dashboard! Oh well. Expected that I would need reading glasses.

          Hey, isn’t being in a state better than lying in state?

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          1. I went with distance too. Difference is, unless changes, I can read dashboard without glasses now. It was road signs, until almost at a crossroad, that are/were the problem. Map on the phone, other than general lines, will be a problem. On screen? TBD. Don’t think the in-vehicle screen makes maps big enough.

            Left eye, Feb. 25.

            As far as reading? Will need glasses. Most print will be just a smidgen too blurry.

            Month after that, I start the next medical tests.

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            1. I went with double-refraction, the equivalent of bifocals. Now I can see both long and reading distances. I suppose some day if I continue to spend all my time on computer screens, I may need reading glasses again, but we’ll see.

              I take my attitude from Harrison Ford’s character in 1923, “I’m f***ing 80 years old. You think I care about the slow ones?”

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              1. Was not willing to risk multifocal. Tried them in contacts, once. It did not go well. I don’t do badly reading without close glasses, but makes reading a lot easier.

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    2. Also, have Mirrors on pre-order. I hate pre-ordering because I almost always have problems with delivery day, as in doesn’t. Not the author’s fault. It is Amazon’s. But I know I’m ordering on Saturday, so let me add to the pre-order numbers.

      Do not have anyone in the family that reads SF/Fantasy, so no gifting. Sorry.

      I too am looking forward to the next novel, er triplet of releases novel. Already have some answers because of the snip tease released. Wondering if Skip’s great-uncle visits, to stay, to Elly. It doesn’t appear that he is too old to be either a parent or a womb parent, based on hints already given.

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  6. Round and square pegs? That’s so binary! 😛

    Writers can be triangles, pentagons, half-circles, or trapezoids. A lot seem to be irregular polygons without a fixed number of sides, and a few appear to be tesseracts. 🤣

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  7. I’m most of the way through No Man’s Land. Honestly, I visualize the classic Greek “beardless youth”, but with age lines.

    Liking it so far, honestly more than I did Shifters or Darkship. It’s really good.

    Trying to remember if you ever explained just *what* about Left Hand of Darkness offended common sense so much – I never read the thing, so I can’t just infer.

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    2. LeGuin posits a human race that are hermaphrodites in a highly unlikely way: for most of the year, they are neuter, but during breeding season, they can become one gender, or the other, but only for the season (except the females who become pregnant).

      Also, there’s no indication (that I recall, I only read it once, thirty years ago) how humans populated an ice planet light years from Earth long enough ago that the hermaphrodism evolved. Possibly this was explained in one of the other books set in the same universe, but my patience for reading LeGuin is only slightly more than Sarah’s. :)

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      1. FM Busby did a novel where the hermaphrodite were the accidental result of vaccine development. The children of vaccinated adults manifested at puberty (loss of virginity to be precise) and then switched roughly every month unless they got pregnant. (Their partners remained in male phase for the duration of the pregnancy) I got the impression that hormonally the “new” humans were “flatter,” than normal, making a species much closer to being emotionally “unisex.”

        Not one of his best, but interesting for its sheer off-the-wall quality.

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      2. There’s an original human species (which can control fertility) that seeded the planets with various sexual configurations for — reasons. (Were the reasons ever given? I may have missed them.)

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      3. Ms LeGuin was never a Hal Clement hard scifi type as far as I can tell from what I read of her stuff (The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, Those Who Walk Away from Omelas ). Her stuff is very post modernist the Scifi is there as a trapping to let her make her narrative. I ran into Left Hand of Darkness in High school sophmore or Junior year in a Sci Fi class. At least on the biologic level my response Was similar to our hostesses, the biology/evolutionary part made no sense. If I hadn’t had to read it for a class it would have likely not been finished, not my cup of tea as a 15/16 year old (and honestly really not here almost 50 years later). Probably Lathe of Heaven is the only thing of hers I’ve ever enjoyed and that was more because of the PBS adaptation from 1980 than on it’s own.

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          2. Mr. Fleming I concur. That said I do find postmodernism jarring and even when well done not really my cup of tea.

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              1. Yes.

                I’m not sure what I want to read, but if I wanted to read freshman English papers, I could probably find someone who wants a grader.

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              2. All you get with navel gazing is a rather unpleasant view of some lint as far as I can tell. And honestly that view is far superior to much of modernist SciFi.

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        2. The societies were supposed to reflect monarchy and communism? I think. but the biology threw me out so hard, because do you know how biologically EXPENSIVE that would be? Then there was the birth parents not being attached to the kids they birthed. Like modern feminists, they just handed them off to the tribe back home to raise.

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          1. Our Hostess said

            Then there was the birth parents not being attached to the kids they birthed

            Yeah that does not work in an evolutionary sense. Humans are a low K (i.e. low birthrate) reproductive creature. We can’t just lob hundreds (or thousands) of progeny out there and hope some make it. Even handing your genetic inheritance to some other group and then walking away is going to fail more often than not as those caretakers don’t have skin in the game unless it is a herd like situation (like Elephants or some of the larger ruminants) and ALL progeny are being cared for in common by all members of the herd.

            And of course this fits the strange modernist feminist ideal that ignores nature. Humans have a built-in attraction to their children. Admittedly, the strength of it varies greatly from person to person, but unless there is some serious mental or other issue it tends to be present. This shared rearing also ignores existing data in the form of harems where the various mothers tend to compete to have their children favored by the father. Look at the biblical stories of polygamy like Jacob and David for the disfunction of this model (oh Absalom?). In a similar vein are step parent situations. Most step parents are good folk and love their adopted children, but there is a reason the evil step mother stereotype exists. SOmetimes Step parents do favor their genetic progeny (And Step mothers get almost all the bad press as when fairy tales were created/recorded Widowers were far more common than widows due to childbirth issues).

            I Suppose it is Ms. LeGuin’s prerogative as a writer to make such choices in the effort to enhance her narrative. However, it is my right as reader to decide that choiceis a dumb ass choice that throws me rudely out of my suspension of disbelief.

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            1. I read the book. As a piece of writing it is well written but dated. BUT from the height of slightly autistic fourteen, this stuff INFURIATED me and…. propelled me into writing. (Very badly for many years.)

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                  1. Pernese Dragons are mammalian? Warm blooded maybe, but they lay eggs. don’t nurse their young and are not at all hairy; all features I assume shared by their ancestors the fire lizards. Pernese dragons are a case of scientists going berserk with their My Little Genome kit and fire lizard genes maybe warm blooded was added ?. It is necessary for the story (kind of like Star Trek transporters) so I’ll permit it :-) . And The Dragons LIKE basking in the sun alot, although does not preclude them being mammals. I have a little black member of Felis Cattus desperately trying to catch some of today’s sunlight and he is definitely a mammal.

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  8. Something that caught me whilst getting Otto-bot (also bought) silly things under “Recommendations” under the condition of being so utterly sleep deprived I was not seeing so much double as quintuple with long blinks was the poorly designed artistic rendition of “ARTIST” that looked remarkably like “ARFIST.”

    So, I have decided that’s what I am. An arfist. Because sometimes you just need to beat those words onto the page.

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  9. There were things that bothered me about No Man’s Land. They mostly bothered me in a good way, but it lead me to re-read it a couple of times before I even felt like I understood what was going on. Somewhere into the third read through it suddenly dawned on me what it was about Skip that bothered me. It’s the way he relates to babies. His attachment style pings as female to me.

    I was mister mom to my daughter for most of the first two years of her life. I stayed home and took care of the baby and her older half-sister while my wife worked at a fairly prestigious corporate job. (For much of that time we were living in Germany for that job.) We knew other families with babies, but my attachment to my daughter, while close, was different in character from the way mothers I knew seemed to relate to their children. While protective, I was not bothered by every little bump or scrape. It did not bother me to let her explore with very little interference, especially once she could crawl on her own. When she got tangled up in the structure of the legs of her high chair, before I helped her get out of there I first got a picture to show my skydiving friends that she was practicing here arch.

    Skip seems to me to crave the closeness of wearing babies in a sling. He seems to get preoccupied with babies in ways that I never really was. The people of Elly seem to relate to babies more like I did. They love them and even dote on them, but don’t seem to get quite as wrapped up in that bond as Skip and most human women do. Ellyans seem like they exhibit a more masculine style of attachment to their babies, especially to their sirelings.

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    1. Actually it’s more that he got used to having Kitten on a sling, so he got the “Oh, I had this thing on me.” He’s perfectly normal dad to his kids.
      Also — just occurred to me — he’s AWARE of what Kitten means to Eerlen because of the mind-share. So Kitten becomes “all too precious” to him too.

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    2. Skip’s the one person who doesn’t have a hugely important job that must be done, right now, and there’s a premature infant whose survival to that point is a miracle.

      Of course he’s going to dedicate himself to that, same way he dedicated himself to issuing orders until he passed out when that was what was needed.

      Liked by 4 people

  10. So the books with the explanation will be collectors items? Drat, I bought the ebook, planning to get a paper copy for your autograph when the time came.

    Does context matter to the appreciation of the art? There’s no final answer, but I liked having it. If the context question bothers, the explanation might go at the end … maybe?

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    1. Agree. Not enough generations to 100% eliminate the magic.

      Warning, if you haven’t read the books, spoiler coming:

      .

      .

      .

      When they transfused Skip with blood containing the nanites, he got a boost of magic. Prior generations (mom?/dad?, do not remember which), including great-uncle, would have more magic. Already possible for throw-backs on Elly to be fully male or female (exposed or abandoned on other planets, especially their invaders), so not surprised most of Verra’s offspring line are. The difference is now, those who have access, and have reason to insure offspring are fully hermaphasic genetically will. But those who can’t, now have a safe location to have their infants raised and valued. Just because single sex, does not mean no magic. Magic is what is valued by the rest of the universe (ability to naturally transport between planets).

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  12. My writing progress of late has been tied up by the people around me seeming to think that my time is infinitely elastic, and therefore they can add one after another “little task” and I can still get everything else done. Add the annoying priority carousel, which is being disguised as “just reminding you” (sorry, but the interruption is just as disruptive when you’re “just reminding” me of the other thing as when you’re trying to move me to it with the previous one unfinished).

    And now we’ve got to sort out a health issue with our cat. I’d thought he just had indoor allergies, because our house is dusty (you want me to sweep and dust? OK, what comes off my schedule to make room? *silence*). But when I took him in to the vaccine clinic today to get his shots, the vet there is concerned that it’s some kind of respiratory infection, and he needs to see a vet who can treat that before he can get his shots.

    The fun never ends /sarc

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      2. Akshully, it has only been eight years.

        President Vance is in his second term.

        Vice President Rubio is splitting his duties as Secretary of State with running a dozen countries.

        Gabbard is running Gulags in ANWR, has kidnapped most of the world supply of archeologists, and her White Mice have put another pretender on the throne of the Commonwealth.

        In another forty days, President Gabbard will follow Rubio.

        (but, seriously folks, I expect realignment and am not making or trusting any forecasts about leadership positions that far out.

        Someone told me that Parliament can change out the royal families of the UK. Someone else told me that Parliament can regulate smoking in Paris. In principle, Parliament could make Takaichi or Rubio or Theirry Breton the Emperor of China.

        I do not think any such thing is likely, or a practical possibility.

        There are a lot of people I am not gonna say will have their jobs tomorrow, because I dunno. We shall see.)

        Liked by 3 people

            2. Bob is hilarious and scary.

              Hilarious because, what he wrote is “Wait? What? No way!”

              Scary because as far out there as it is, it is too possible. Not plausible, but possible. Makes good fiction. But good fiction has to be believable. Real life doesn’t. This is too believable; scary.

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    2. People who don’t think for a living don’t understand what an interruption does. I’ve likened it to jogging the elbow of a waitress balancing six or seven plates, where the plates are the ideas we’re trying to hold as we get them arranged.

      In =The Sciences of the Artificial= the author (?Herbert O. Simon?) has an analogy with a watchmaker who has to hold too many parts in place to ever get the watch closed up.

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      2. Very much like the metaphor I use, of having to pick up all the pieces of my thought-stream and get them back in order before I can get back to work.

        At Christmas my youngest brother and I were talking about this, and he commented that I’ve always had trouble with interruptions, as long as I can remember.

        But then the signs of neurodivergence are all over our family tree. If Great-grandpa didn’t like a food, he didn’t want it on his end of the table — and Great-grandma would cook a little bit of this and a little bit of that for whichever of their nine children didn’t like the main meal. And this was in the 1920’s, when children were generally expected to eat what was put before them, which strongly suggests Great-grandma knew there was a very real issue there.

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      3. Wife tries, but even now (30 years in) she sometimes struggles with the “do not interrupt” thing. She does generally avoid interrupting, but struggles to understand why I tend to get bent out of shape about it. She’s nerd-adjacent (I’d say normie, except for having a kind of “speaker to Odds” ability) and does the kind of visual/crafty stuff that mostly doesn’t suffer if you have to set it aside without warning. Which is a good kind of creative outlet to have if you’re raising two little kids. (Which we’re not anymore; they’re in their 20s.) But if you’re writing, developing a TTRPG rule set, writing a song, or learning to play one? Interruptions no bueno. No…bu…e…no.

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        1. My wife was also a writer. We never interrupted the other when we were creating because we both knew what was going on and how important it was.

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  13. “And though it shouldn’t have psychological effects, this did. For a while there I was unable to choose anything. Like …. do you want ice-cream or rat poison was an actual conundrum.”

    Been there. Of course physical illness affects the mind, the psyche, and the brain. Pretty sure it’s because of the gut flora.

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    1. Well for certain the squirrel will be a better conversationalist than your average blugoisie. And likely have a longer attention span…

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  16. I-95 in NJ runs on the toll-supported NJ Tpke. And trucks are allowed on the GSP from the southern terminus to interchange 105, in part because there are stretches where the GSP and US 9 run concurrently.

    When in that House MPs divide/If they’ve got a brain and cerebellum too,/They’ve got to leave that brain outside/And vote just as their leaders tell ’em to. —W.S.Gilbert, Iolanthe

    Being a Democrat seems to require rejecting reality in favor of the Dystopia-of-the-Month.

    Maybe that’s the Donkecrat’s real identity: the Dystopia-of-the-Month Club (DotMC) ?

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  17. Princess Margaret is exactly right although I refuse to follow anyone on ex-twitter. I spend enough time commenting here, thank you very much. What writers need is freedom to reflect the way we see the world, or see the world heading. True prophets in the Bible were tolerated at best rather than approved of. Of course there were always plenty of yes-men who styled themselves prophets.

    I’m very religious, but I doubt Advance Guards is religious in ways my pastor might find orthodox.

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    1. I challenge anyone to figure out I’m Catholic from my books.
      THOUGH they might in future, since the first Ellyan Saint has colonized my mind.
      To those who read NML: He’s already been mentioned in the book. (Evil Grin.)

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