If my title irritates you, it should. We got Zen breakfast cereal, and Zen memes of someone in a leotard on a mountaintop. No mention of how that fresh feeling comes from rigorous if not painful continuous attention to reality. This post is about actual Zen and how it relates to concise writing, based on …
After my second year Fogcon has become my favorite conference. Modeled after the elder Wiscon, it’s a feminist sci-fi/fantasy/horror con. Like Wiscon, it’s not only feminist but commits to overall representation: gender, race, disability, sexuality, neuro-divergence. However, having also enjoyed Wiscon, something I like about Fogcon is it’s focus on reading and writing, where Wiscon …
Reviewing Wings Unseen in my last post, I articulated my feelings about time travel and prophecy in speculative fiction: “Two strong themes in this novel are rarely to my liking: (1) an emphatic good and evil binary, and (2) prophecy or destiny as a plot driver … Prophecy is like time travel for me: it’s …