#PennedPossibilities 637 — Does your MC have a past that haunts them?

May Ri watched from Mars orbit as Herschel Crater got nuked, having failed to knock out all the missiles with her railgun. Her eldest daughter worked in the capitol, in the domed city situated in that crater. Had. She has nightmares of the flash and a mushroom cloud rising. Sort of like in the attached vid.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/38985/sarychev-peak-eruption-kuril-islands

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Credit: NASA Johnson

Finished the classic supernatural tale The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. (Now I can watch the adaptations!) Short but exceptional 5-star novel that I most definitely enjoyed. A nice snapshot of America back in the late 50’s, as well! #sff #horror #ghosts

Upon further investigation on why my TikTok video with #HugoAward predictions from last night wasn't getting views, I discovered that it had gotten a content restriction and was ineligible for the For You Page. I've appealed, but literally the only thing I think might have set off the algorithm on this is the number of times I said the word "voters." In the context of "Hugo voters."
#booktok #bookstodon #sff

We're getting the #HugoAwards shortlist today, so last night I made some predictions on TikTok about what we'll see nominated for Best Novel. How wrong am I going to be???
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https://www.tiktok.com/@thefancyhatladyreads/video/7490078212664446254?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=6897480734862378501

Betrayal, love, forgiveness and revenge. Though our bodies evolved to be very different, our social brains remained. For better or for worse we are still #human. My novel HUMAN is still available free to the #fediverse until Wednesday. Visit https://bretthodnett.com/FreeHUMAN.html and use the code ‘fedihuman’ to get your free EPUB!

I have never in my life uttered or even thought to utter the phrase "oh this just gets better and better" except now while reading When the Moon Hits Your Eye by @scalzi

#PennedPossibilities 636 — Are your characters superstitious? CW: A-theism.

In Mars Needs Women, May Ri when caught not praying during school prayer (in a public school!), her anger flares and she proclaims she's an a-theist. Note the spelling. May Ri is so NOT superstitious that at one point in the book (when she's trying to terminate an unplanned pregnancy and is being forced to watch videos) she says:

"I'm an a-theist, raised Clear Thinking by my father. My mother died when I was 5. She ceased to be, that's all. Your invisible friend is a farce; there's no 'better' place to go. Like all animals, [my mother] stopped being; this will, too. I have to take care of now, and will."

I can't speak about other characters in the story. Some are religious, but the topic doesn't come up. However, in May Ri's world view, there is no place for anything super-natural. She's an engineer, after all.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2504.06 — SC POV: Are you capable of killing a person? CW: Spoilers

[The Onēsanue, Reina Īto from Mars Needed Women:]

These men were threatening women's lives and terrorizing them and their children. Why? Because of some biblical rights that may have been applicable centuries ago on Earth, but on Mars? Then they were going to take over the space station in an effort to destroy all the progress we'd made as women on Mars. If you mean, could I kill someone like a samurai with a sword were I trained? Probably not. I did ask my friend to see if she could repurpose some technology to knock a shuttle out of the sky. That would have washed my hands of it—but when she said she couldn't do that, I reprogrammed some flight software. I guess the answer is yes.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.02 — What do you want to work on this month?

1. Now that I've completed Mars Needed Women, I'm going to turn it into a book. I've already figured out how to create an ePub for my beta reader. The web version will disappear, so if you haven't gotten to it, you've got until about April 10th. So far, I've added material to almost all the chapters, and a glossary. Since it's only 25k, I am thinking of adding some writer's processes appendices. Since I was restricted to 5,000 words for each of the 31 chapters, 350 of which were hashtags, I had to practice samarai concision, becoming hyper focused on word choice, and ellipsis such that the words implied what needed to be said but couldn't be included. The prose is sometimes too sparse. I'm also correcting some science errors and fixing foreshadowing faux pas.
2. I am returning to writing Reluctant Moon.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.05 — Sum up your current WIP in five words.

Daemon astronaut angel's best lover.

Okay, it's a kick in the head, innit? Actually a fair summation of plot lines in Reluctant Moon. This one should go with it:

The moonshot novel is SF.

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NEW EPISODE: Matt & Derek, fellow BookTubers, join Jim for a full spoil discussion of Lightfall, the debut fantasy novel from Ed Crocker. Our thoughts are all over the place. Check it out: AFTER you read the book. Which you should. #Lightfall #Fantasy #SFF https://youtu.be/d4y-P4aXbnc

#PennedPossibilities 635 — Are there any specific cultural influences that shaped the world or characters in your story

Two major cultural influences, one not so good and one good. Contrast.

The main character comes from an end-stage religio-fascist oligarchy. She live's in Chicago. She's also an atheist and bristles under restrictions put on women. I work to give an impression of an Anglo-Saxon culture suffused with religion and hypocrisy, but I never describe the main character other than at least one of her children have dark hair like her. With a name like May Ri, you wonder about her heritage. Constricted by patriarchy, she chooses Mars hoping for opportunity.

On Mars, the first child born on the planet was borne by a Japanese refugee. She learns Japanese from her mother and teaches it to the other Nisei (first generation Martians in Japanese), and the cultural aesthetic plays a part in the plot, as do some specific Japanese words.

Beyond that, I drop hints all over that the colonists are culturally diverse and are from across the planet—and poor because who signs what's essentially a slave contract to work on Mars and bear children? The Nisei with absent fathers and overworked mothers (who build the colony) are raised communally and increasing develop their own society free of gender roles and constrained sexuality. A trans character plays a role, and skin color is seen a beautiful.

The people back on earth don't like this. Mars Needed Women is a story of cultural and planetary conflict.

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#PennedPossibilities 634 — MC POV: How much do you value companionship? Do you always keep people around, or do you prefer to be alone?

[Devil-girl] An odd question. I've never really thought about it. Companionship is good, and I enjoy it when people are around, like when I train at the gym or am at work. What I do is all about teamwork, so I'm good with people. Yet, I don't always keep people around. I really do like to throw open all the windows and study a good book. I live in a converted dance studio, so two walls open to the outside and the other two are mirrored. Laying on a mat, with the breezes, and the quiet you get living in a university town. Hmm. I guess I'm finding more use for what people call friends. I've certainly found a lot of use for men…

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.03 — How do you navigate scenes with many characters?

Carefully. I don't want to step on anyone's toes or disrupt them saying their lines.

In the Saying the Quiet Part Aloud department, I will admit that most of the advice I give is actually analysis of what I've written. I don't necessarily plan these things out, or have check lists. Sorry. What I do is simply write what I think sounds right, then go back and study whether it worked. I have plenty of experience (close to 2M words written), so I often get the sense of it right.

"Intuition!" you scoff, adding, "That's not helpful."

Here's a speed bump I navigated. Kyv is the current POV. I'm handing off to May Ri (the so-called princess).

...The book plate lit up. Kyv recognized the woman on vid[,saying]. "The Princess of Mars and her Five Daughters!"

May Ri, in her alighter outside, watched the growing crowd of men, wiry, lightly muscled, androgynous for that, all moonborne, adapted to 1/6th gravity. No weapons. She sighed. "You saw the vid of the nuking of Hershel?"

Handing off a POV is one way of navigating, I did that between those two paragraphs by transferring succinctly from the book plate (think cellphone doing FaceTime) Kyv is looking at to who he is looking at on said book plate. This is a 3rd person technique.

Beyond that, dialogue attribution is another technique I use. He said, she said. And you get to add a bit of visual or noise at the same time, which I call character tags. Indeed, you can avoid the said-ism in back and forths if the characters have an accent or manner of speech, but you have to be careful about that. While this seems like 3rd person also, keep in mind 1st POV characters often describe what's going on around them, and they do that in 3rd person, more so if they are telling a story of what happened to others.

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NEW EPISODE: Jim reviews the final book (for now) of The Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse. And what a collapse! (But in a good way?) Check this out. #SFF #SciFi #Murderbot https://youtu.be/4SC8dxR0vFQ

Things About Being a Writer in Japan #9. If the Stars Are Lit is the debut speculative mystery by Sara K Ellis, exploring the implications of AI, memory, and loss. Cover by Tara Bush. Out April 15th. Pre-order now! www.lunapresspublishing.com/novels
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