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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

It’s a beautiful day here, all blue fall skies and fluffy white clouds, and birds singing in the back yard. What, one might wonder, did the landscape sound like in eons past? Before technology? Even before humans? 

There are still a lot of questions to answer, particularly about dinosaurs and other creatures with soft tissue that has not traveled to us through time, but insects? That, we now have a better handle on.

What Did Jurassic Forests Sound Like? Like This.

Scientists spent over a decade reconstructing the calls of nine species of ancient insects to create the first accurate Jurassic soundscape.

Something to think about if you are a writer building a soundscape for your world. And having spent much of the weekend with mosquitoes buzzing in my ears, I can only say that insects certainly can make an impression!

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Like many people, I sometimes flash back to mistakes I’ve made in writing or elsewhere. It’s annoying, how they pop up unbidden, their lessons knocking gently (or otherwise) as if I’d forgotten. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that it may be easier to move on from those moments if, instead of trying to ignore them, I respond with “yes, and…” It’s a classic technique in improv comedy, of course, but it can also help mitigate the sting of past negatives by acknowledging them while also making space for the positive. Balance out the scales.

“Yes, that thing that’s been swirling around in my head for a week was kind of a silly thing to do, and remember when I also did that other thing that was awesome?”

A little trick I find useful:)

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“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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“…I guess what I’d say is that the best way to predict the future is just observe very closely the present. So it’s close observation of what’s going on in at a moment. And it’s also, the other thing is being interested in the thing you’re interested in rather than the thing everybody’s talking about… that’s good because it means that it’s gonna be fresh and different.” — Michael Lewis

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“Zero is the only amount that gives your body nothing to build on.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger [strike-through added]

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I may have mentioned before that I had a transformative encounter with a scary movie as a child (and still don’t like Dutch Colonial architecture) and don’t enjoy horror. I don’t often read it or write it, at least not on purpose, but my sleeping mind sometimes forgets that.

I woke this morning with a six-word story in my head.

Go away! We buried you yesterday.

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Before MacKenzie Scott became one of the world’s most generous philanthropists, she was a novelist. Turns out she still is.

MacKenzie Scott has given away $26B. Now she’s releasing a novel—but you won’t find it on Amazon 

Scott is releasing her new novel piece by piece, having dropped the title, epigraph, personae, and contents on Saturday, the prologue on Sunday, and the first chapter called “Monday” on Monday. It appears the entire novel will be out by Aug. 31.

Interestingly, the story is being serialized on Substack and is still being released, but this link takes you to the main page. 

Last Days in Two Nations

Start with the August 8th post, “Last Days in Two Nations.”

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Well, this is cool. Robert J. Sawyer, who I believe is still Canada’s most decorated sci-fi author, just won the Aurora Award for Best Novel for The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine.

Sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer among winners of the 2026 Aurora Awards | CBC Books

In the book, a starship crew and ex-convict Roscoe Koudoulian upload their digital consciousnesses into cyberspace as an asteroid is about to crash into the earth. While in the digital world, they come face to face with ghosts from their past — and learn that the existence of the human race could soon be destroyed.

I’m looking forward to reading this, and the rest of what looks to be a very promising slate of science fiction and fantasy!

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To continue yesterday’s theme of literary cartography, here’s a closer look at a map of the locales in classic American literature.

American literature, charted in one monumental map – Big Think

From Stephen King’s Maine to Steinbeck’s California, Big Think’s “A Literary Map of the United States” charts the stories that changed how we see a nation.

They’d love to sell you the map, but there’s also an image you can expand to see the detailed poster, and examples of the stories and the places that shaped them.

Ah, geography!

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I like books and I like maps, which is why I was excited to run across this website combining the two:

Reading Maps – Maps & Travel Routes from Books & Films

The site’s tagline is “Journeys from fiction drawn on the real world.” That won’t be much use when it comes to Middle Earth or Star Wars, but is very cool when considering more local stories. Like Homer’s The Odyssey. Or Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Or Little House on the Prairie, which was somehow not where I expected it to be! 

They have lots of classic books and also movies (like Raiders:). Have fun!

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