I fed the birds. In the forest garden, I've seen a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a gray catbird, and a brown thrasher. I also saw a ruby-throated hummingbird, poking into the irises under the maple tree of all places. :D 3q3q3q!!! Fortunately the barrel garden with its fire-colored flowers is already established, so there are plenty of suitable flowers available.
The Return of The Wiccan Wheel Mysteries by Jennifer David Hesse
I’ll be republishing all six books this year—each one slightly revised and with a bit of new content. After that, I’ll pick up where I left off and get to work on subsequent installments in the series. The writing is already well underway.
To kick things off, the 10^th anniversary edition of Book 1, Midsummer Night’s Mischief, will come out on the Summer Solstice: June 21, 2026.
This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...
Physics is the science of studying matter (like atoms), its motion (like inertia), and related aspects like force and energy. We all experience aspects of physics everyday; the difference between steering an empty grocery cart and a full one is a matter of mass and inertia. It's just that inept teachers make it seem hard and unfamiliar instead of a normal part of life. But you can use physics to optimize your skateboard stunts or any other sport; it's there in video game design; it's all around us. Aspects include astrophysics, biophysics, electromagnetism, hydrodynamics, optics, quantum physics, and solid-state physics. Here on Dreamwidth, check out common_nature, environment, interested_in_that, science, and scienceworld. space_swap is a rocket-inspired fanwork fest.
I will be signing for Penric's Intrigues, and whatever else of mine folks want signed, this Saturday May 16th at 1 PM at Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore here in Minneapolis.
Finding suggests humans have added value to forests in lasting ways.
For decades, First Nations people in British Columbia knew their ancestral homes—villages forcibly emptied in the late 1800s—were great places to forage for traditional foods like hazelnuts, crabapples, cranberries, and hawthorn. A new study reveals that isolated patches of fruit trees and berry bushes in the region's hemlock and cedar forests were deliberately planted by Indigenous peoples in and around their settlements more than 150 years ago. It's one of the first times such "forest gardens" have been identified outside the tropics, and it shows that people were capable of changing forests in long-lasting, productive ways.
That is what agriculture looked like before some Middle Eastern and European folks got the idea of monocropping fields. Most of the planet was food forest for a very long time. People planted things alongside the trails they used, around where they lived, anywhere they went. They planted not just food crops but also craft materials, medicinal plants, and whatever would attract their preferred prey species.
This might be a hard book to appreciate if you don’t understand a little Latin, the way reading a book about the history of algebra might be frustrating if you don’t understand a little algebra. It also might help to know a little about European and world history because this “biography” recounts the development of Latin and how its use and misuse shaped the Roman Empire, then Europe and the world up to the present day. It gets into the details, with plenty of footnotes and appendices. That is, this book is a deep dive, but if you take the plunge, you’ll find pearls.
I was particularly intrigued by the way Latin as a language affected events after Rome fell, eventually giving rise to New Latin. Language shapes human communication, and for a time, it was Europe’s common language. But the rise and fall of Latin depended on who needed to communicate with whom about questions not only of intellectual importance but about political power. This book explains the ways in which the world and its need for Latin changed and keeps changing over the millennia. (Millennia itself is a word combining elements from both Latin and New Latin).
Latin is a language of the past, but we will hear its echoes for a long time to come. We still need it, just not very often.
By the way, I also know Spanish (as well as English, which seems obvious but needs to be said), and I can hear and speak Spanish every day here in Chicago. (And I can hear Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and more — Chicago is a big, wide city.) Latin … is hard to come by. Conversational Latin? Maybe at the Vatican, but not many people there, either. Latin doesn’t live where I do, so studying it takes me elsewhere. Sometimes this feels like a relief.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen much activity yet.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 5/13/26 -- We went out plant shopping. First stop was Graber's in Tuscola. They had 'Gypsy' peppers! :D 3q3q3q!!! I bought six, plus a few other things. I got a firecracker plant for the barrel garden, and a 'Truffula' pink globe amaranth. Those are the last of the main flowers for the barrel garden, although I'll wedge in some marigolds if possible.
We also went to Backyard Gardens in Chesterville. There I picked up a purple petunia with white spots and a white superbell for the big blue pot, plus a fancy coleus for the grape pot and a few other things. I still need to visit Home Depot for things like 8-packs of marigolds, lobelia, and so on. But today I found all the planned things and some others that I needed, so that's a big improvement. \o/
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I planted the whole Graber's flat of 10 plants. \o/ *accomplished*
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I planted the white-spotted purple petunia, white superbell, and purple torenia in the big blue pot. I planted the 'Vintage Violet' yarrow in the septic garden. I planted the Indian mint in the trough pot on the old picnic table, which finished that. \o/
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 5/13/26 -- I planted the 3-pack of gazania in a trough pot by the new picnic table garden.
The weather got warmer again, though we're warned winter is still on the way. At least it's been easier to get around, important when your transport is an e-bike.
For my own amusement and anyone else's who wonders just what you do when you're carer for an elderly person, here is my last few days.
I've been getting some reading done - more library books from two libraries - and a bit of writing when I'm not being distracted. I abhor AI for anything creative, but I did try it out to make a list for me of what a doomsday prepper should take if he was put into a retirement home! It banged out a long list so fast you would think it got asked this frequently. That, I think I will find useful, though I need to adapt the list for Australian purposes. I've got a scene where Trump is zombified; might post that here if folks are interested? I don't know if I'll keep it, it was mostly for my own amusement. Probably if the thing ever gets to publication, I will need to feature an imaginary President. But you'll know who I really had in mind.
Life is full of things which are hard or tedious or otherwise unpleasant that need doing anyhow. They help make the world go 'round, they improve skills, and they boost your sense of self-respect. But doing them still kinda sucks. It's all the more difficult to do those things when nobody appreciates it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our accomplishments and pat each other on the back.
What are some of the hard things you've done recently? What are some hard things you haven't gotten to yet, but need to do? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your hard things a little easier?
Seas recover. That’s the working assumption behind most marine conservation planning – heatwaves arrive, fish flee or die, then the water cools and the count resets.
A new study of 19 enclosed seas found that resets after heatwaves may stop happening. Some are on track to spend more than 330 days a year locked in heatwave conditions. Not a temporary extreme. A new permanent state.
This isn't "maybe," this is "definitely." The world's oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide and heat. Those sinks will eventually fill up. The oceans will become much more acidic, large parts will become anoxic, and most of the water will get hotter and stay that way until the climate shifts again. We know this because it has happened before.
Does "The Great Dying" ring a bell? The oceans then became hot and anoxic, wiping about almost everything in them. And it's happening a lot faster now than then. The current mass extinction looks to be faster than anything except the massive meteor strike of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction. This might be considered a problem.
Until this summer, I thought I had my writing process down to a science—my perfect desk setup, music playlist, iced coffee, phone away and on Do Not Disturb. However, when I sat down to work on a novel I’d taken a break from, I found myself stuck, hit by writer’s block. When none of my usual tools and strategies worked, I decided to ditch my perfectly curated setup and try something new. I hopped on my treadmill and started dictating my novel into my phone instead. And, remarkably, this was just what I needed. At the time, I thought of this as a last-ditch strategy to overcome writer’s block. Now, however, writing while walking has become a core part of my writing practice and has had a tremendous impact on my writing craft and process.
Increased Creativity
When I’m in the brainstorming phase of a project, I get my best ideas while walking. If I get stuck on a scene, chapter, or section of my manuscript, everything always seems clearer when I get back to my desk after a run. While I’ve observed this anecdotally, a 2014 Stanford University study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition has shown similar findings in the lab. In their study, “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking,” researchers Opezzo and Schwartz found that participants who walked on treadmills, walked outdoors, or were pushed in wheelchairs scored higher on Guilford’s Alternate Uses Test (which assesses creative and divergent thinking) afterwards. These results—though not found in relation to writing specifically—suggest that writing while walking might help us come up with creative solutions to narrative problems and figure out what comes next.
Increased Immersion
While I initially thought adding the extra component of walking to my process would break my immersion in the story, I have found the opposite. Walking actually helps me visualize my settings, improve my dialogue, and get into my characters’ heads. Since I’m not staring at the words on my screen, I can better picture the settings my characters are in and see them in my mind with greater detail. Because I’m saying my characters’ thoughts and dialogue out loud, I get a better feel for their personalities, word choice, sentence structure, and emotions.
Turning Off Your Internal Editor
The “internal editor” is something that plagues many of us throughout our writing careers. It keeps us staring at the blank page, deleting sentences as we write them, and tweaking the same paragraph for an hour. However, when I’m dictating and walking on my treadmill, I find this voice is strangely quiet. This is, in part, because I don’t look at the words while I’m dictating, and thus, my internal editor can’t analyze and pick my sentences apart. The combination of walking, generating ideas, and dictating keeps my brain occupied enough that it can’t find a way to edit as I go.
Increasing Physical Activity
Physical activity has so many benefits for our physical and mental health. Numerous studies have shown that exercise leads to enhanced cardiovascular health, sleep, bone strength, creativity, self-esteem, balance, memory, cognitive flexibility, attention, problem-solving, and overall sense of well-being. Improvement in all these areas not only results in better overall health, but it can have a positive impact on our writing as well. However, in our busy schedules, trying to fit in both writing and physical activity amongst everything else can be challenging. By dictating while walking, we can combine these two activities and better integrate them into our daily lives.
Feeling the Flow
Reaching a creative flow state is something I crave as a writer. Those writing sessions where hours pass without me realizing it, words flood the page, and it feels as though the story is writing itself. I’ve tried many tricks over the years to reach this flow state—the right writing setup, great music, a unique writing ritual—but none of these methods have worked as well for me as writing in motion. While I don’t get to the flow state every time I use the treadmill, I find I reach it more frequently.
Decreased Distractions
Though having your phone in your hand to dictate might sound like the perfect recipe for distraction, I’ve found the opposite in practice. Because I’m so focused on generating ideas, walking, and dictating, my mind is too busy to wander. Too busy to watch another cute koala reel on Instagram, see what friends are up to on Facebook, or refresh my e-mail. Because my mind is occupied and I can only have one program open on my screen at a time, I’m less likely to fall down a research rabbit hole mid-writing session. When I get to a point in the scene where I need more information, I’m forced to dictate a placeholder rather than spend an hour researching how a character might repair an internal combustion engine.
Increased Inspiration
While most of my writing is done on a treadmill, I do also take my craft outdoors. When I write outside, whether I’m in an exciting, new location or in my neighborhood, I find infinite ideas for my settings. For example, seeing the variety of colors in the fall leaves on my usual route sparked an idea for a world where the magic system changes with the seasons. Outdoors, I’m also naturally forced to experience the world with more of my senses—to pay attention to more than just what I see. Hearing hawks calling to each other, feeling the oppressive heat of the humid 90-plus-degree summer, and smelling the blooming wildflowers remind me to use a variety of sensory details in my scenes.
Getting Started
As with all new strategies, writing while walking does have a learning curve. Speaking the words aloud can feel strange and awkward, getting used to your software’s quirks can be frustrating, and editing mis-dictated words afterwards takes time. However, with practice and patience (and a little time devoted to setting up), this method increases my enjoyment of writing, improves my productivity, and feels just as natural as typing at my desk. As you’re getting started, walking at slow speeds, using all safety features of your treadmill such as handrails and safety keys, setting your phone on the treadmill’s console, and walking in outdoor areas you are familiar with can all be ways to ease into this new method.
Whether you use this strategy as a core part of your process, as a weekend treat, or as a way to just mix things up to get over writer’s block, writing while walking can be an incredible addition to your creative practice.
I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a grackle, and a gray catbird.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I planted a white dogwood in the forest garden. I put a jug over it and mulched around it.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I covered and mulched around a previously planted persimmon seedling.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I raked the westernmost of the north-south strips through the prairie garden which will get sown with seeds.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I planted a persimmon tree along the north edge of the forest garden, covered and mulched it.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I raked the middle of the north-south strips through the prairie garden which will also get sown with seeds. The easternmost one is meant to be the middle path and kept mowed, although I will also sow that with grass and clover seed rather than wildflowers or native prairie grasses.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I raked the long east-west strip where the Monarch Butterfly Seed Mix will go. This also contains flowers that bees love, and that strip runs near the bee tree. :D
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I raked the notch at the north edge of the prairie garden where I'll sow flower seed later.
EDIT 5/12/26 -- I raked the eastmost of the north-south paths, which is meant to stay mowed as the cross-cut path across the prairie garden. And that's all five of them done! \o/ *goflopnow*
As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply.
Linguistics is the science of studying language, with related branches into neuroscience (how the brain processes language), anthropology (language as a medium of culture), literature (storytelling), and so forth. Aspects include famous people, historical linguistics, language acquisition, language revitalization, psycholinguistics, and others. Xenolinguistics is the study of alien and/or invented languages. Here on Dreamwidth, check out 1word1day, conlang, first_nations_freaks, language_learning, linguaphiles, science, scienceworld.
It’s the usual, 1k words of plot-ish story, per prompt, with the option of adding at least a hundred words to the count for each of the person’s quick signal boost to point new people this way. I’ll keep the prompt call open until Wednesday night because of the chaos around here, which gives people more time to think of something interesting.
The theme is apologies, and while I’ve included a few in stories, I’d love to explore the kinds of apologies that suit each reader, so feel free to be as specific as needful. Some prefer words, some prefer actions, some prefer a quiet, indirect acknowledgement but not an open discussion. Be as specific as one likes for characters, events, and so on, because there are plenty of events in the existing, posted stories which might require either a first apology or a returning one.
Rosemary Edghill (June 1956–07 April 2026), also writing as, eluki bes shahar and James Mallory, was a prolific novelist, short story writer, comic writer, and essayist. She is known for her genre-spanning work, writing both alone and collaboratively. Mad Maudlin, her third Bedlam’s Bard collaboration, was a 2002 Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA) selection as one of the best Horror and Fantasy novels of the year.
Starting as a comic book and then a regency romance writer, Edghill debuted in science fiction and fantasy writer with the space opera Hellflower series, and continued to write across genres and media, collaborating with several of the bestselling women authors of the day. Dozens of her short stories were published, and dozens of collaborations of varying length, along with her own novels, including the Bast series, and the Twelve Treasures. Edghill continued writing and collaborating through the mid 2010s.
Edghill loved collaborative writing as a way to explore both another writer’s mind and the multitude of interpretations different people find in the same phrasing of language. She enjoyed her experiences at conventions, meeting and talking with other writers, and especially loved her English Toy Spaniels.
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Corrine Kumar is a science fiction and fantasy writer with a love of martial arts, cooking, and learning languages. Her greatest writing influences are Brandon Sanderson, Fonda Lee, Pierce Brown, and Christopher Ruocchio. She is an alumnus of the Futurescapes Writers’ Workshop, and her articles “