Very sad to learn of the passing of writer Jeffrey A. Carver. I don’t think I ever met him in person, but he became a friend through our shared work at the writer’s cooperative Book View Café. This is his website: https://www.starrigger.net/

I finally embarked on a task I’ve been putting off for years: cleaning out old writing files. I’ve gone through the business files, where there was correspondence with editors and agents… Oh, I should be clear. This is print correspondence, hailing from the days when we still sent letters through the mail. Also, stacks of printed royalty statements, each one more discouraging than the last. Most of the latter I’ve tossed; most of the former I’ve kept for “historical purposes” in case some hapless descendant should be interested in how things used to be. Otherwise, all this ancient history can get tossed when I’m gone. All that’s really necessary to keep are the reversion letters, returning all rights to me.

Anyway, the business part of this is basically done. I’ve now hit the forty-year-old ( plus or minus) files containing my early attempts at short story writing, stuff printed out in faded dot matrix (do you know what a dot-matrix printer is?). I really don’t want to look at it. I think I should just toss it all. But I’m not good at just throwing things away and my conscience says I should at least glance at it, and spend a few minutes remembering that early enthusiasm and despair.

“Maybe later today,” she says, procrastinating again.

I should mention my motivation for this effort: I promised myself that once I get rid of these file boxes, I can finally look into getting new carpets for this part of the house—the existing carpet being roughly as old as the stories.

Oh my goodness… one of these boxes contains my mother’s The Bobbsey Twins books, from her childhood and almost a hundred years old. What in the world do I do with those?

(This is cross-posted from my newsletter. If you’re not already subscribed, follow this link to sign up.)

I had a lovely Thanksgiving planned. My daughter, son-in-law, and my 14-month-old grandson were flying over from Honolulu to visit for several days. And then last Monday I came down with a nasty cold and on Tuesday, I tested positive for Covid-19. I advised the kids to change their plans.

I never had Covid before. I’ve been vaccinated and boosted, and I still mask when I’m out in public, but I caught it anyway. So be careful out there!

This was the first time I’ve been sick since December 2019. I’m recovering now, but still taking it easy.

When the waltz of the absurd began between Twitter’s Board of Directors and Elon Musk, I blithely assured myself it would lead to nothing—so you can see how skilled I am at predicting the future. My own Twitter experience hasn’t really changed, except I’m trying to break the habit and so I’m hardly there anymore. I have been spending time scrolling on Mastodon, though not posting much. It’s a quiet time for me. I don’t feel like I have a lot to say right now—the lateness of this post being evidence of that.

As I come to understand Mastodon, I find the way it works quite interesting. The biggest factor in its favor is that no single person or Board of Directors can ever control it, which is awesome. The confusing bit is that you have to select a server—or be admitted to one—that will be your home base.

A cool thing is that any person or organization willing to take the trouble and spend the money can set up their own Mastodon server, aka “instance.” Why would you want to do this? Probably because you’re a curious techie willing to take on extra work! But the advantage is you can invite only who you like and who you can get along with to be on that server. Why is this good? Well, because Mastodon offers multiple timelines. One of these is “local” and the local timeline lets you follow posts and boosts (similar to retweets) only from those who “live” on your server.

But, whatever. I’ve been looking only at the “home” timeline which shows me posts and boosts by those I follow. This is the same way I interacted with Twitter and it worked for me. So it doesn’t really matter what server I’m on. I think, from my few weeks of observation, that small servers are subject to the same hazard as small towns—content moderation might become overly strict as in “we don’t want to talk about that here.” In contrast, big servers might enjoy the anonymity of big cities and only the most egregious behavior will be called out. But that’s just speculation.

I’m on a big server run by the founders of Mastodon which seemed like a safe and available choice at the time I signed up (though I think it’s closed for new signups now).

If you’re on Mastodon or decide to give it a try, find me here:
https://mastodon.online/@LindaNagata

Or in the Mastodon search box:
@LindaNagata@mastodon.online

Oops. I’ve realized I haven’t posted anything here since June. Have I been distracted? Well, yes. A lot going on! I have been keeping up with my newsletter. If you’re not subscribed to that, please do! It’s every four weeks, except for those rare times when I have a time-sensitive announcement.

One of the big events of the summer–announced in my newsletter–was the birth of my first grandchild. He lives in Honolulu with his mom and dad. Ron and I have already flown over several times to see him. 🙂

In other news, I was commissioned to write a short story. That is now finished, and is scheduled for publication later this fall.

I’m now working on a second commissioned short story. Yes, a couple of years ago I said I was done with writing short stories, at least for the immediate future…but time has gone by, and both these opportunities were too good to pass up.

Work on the third book of the Inverted Frontier series is progressing in fits and starts, but more on that later.

I’ll try to be a little more active on this blog!

Yes, this blog has a problem. I noticed it yesterday when I put up the post about the Locus magazine review of Pacific Storm. Evidently something changed on the server, because all of my posts older than yesterday now display nonsensical characters where there once was an em-dash, a curly quote, etc.

This is an encoding issue. I’ve been pointed to a resource that describes a potential fix and someday soon I may take on the project — though I’m not convinced it’s worth the effort given that the older posts get very little traffic.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know I’m aware of it.

I wish all of you who celebrate the holiday a happy Thanksgiving.

Years ago I would cook the full holiday spread on my own. The in-laws would fly over from Honolulu and spend a couple of weeks with us, giving them time with the grandchildren. But kids grow up and our elders become more frail. Eventually, the migration reversed, and Ron and I started to fly over to Honolulu for Thanksgiving, where we would celebrate with the extended family at a restaurant.

This year, for the first time in many years, we’re staying home and no one’s coming to visit. Still, I’m thankful for all our good fortune. Our family is small, but we keep in close touch, and we all continue to take precautions during the pandemic. I’m thankful for that, and for our good fortune to live in a community where a great majority of the people are willing to work together to stay safe.

Please take care. And let’s hope that by Thanksgiving 2021, we’ll be free to move around the country (and the world!) again.

Hi there! Today I’m sixty years old. That feels like a significant number. Big and round, LOL. The important thing though is that I got what I wanted for my birthday: the election of Joe Biden to the presidency of the United States of America, and the election of Kamala Harris as vice-president.🇺🇸 Rational, thoughtful, caring people in government. What a fine change for the country that will be!

I’m concerned for the next two months, but hoping for the best.

I offer my sympathies to the people of Georgia who are going to be ceaselessly inundated with political messaging until the January run-off elections for that state’s US senate seats. If you’re a Georgia resident, please, please, please give us a Democratic senate. Vote for the two Democratic candidates. That’s our most direct path to a better future for our country.

As for being sixty — I’m really fortunate, and it’s quite nice. I’m definitely getting up there, but I’m not done yet. There are still a few more novels I’d like to write. 😊🇺🇸🎉🎂

A few days ago, PBS Newshour showed brief interviews with American voters.

One Trump voter, dressed up pretty with several small children running about, proudly declaimed she was “pro-life” — never pausing to consider a quarter million Americans dead of COVID-19, children separated from their parents at the border, or all those doomed to die as fallout of global warming.

Another Trump voter, an older man, angrily declared Joe Biden would force socialism on the country. No doubt he collects social security and has Medicare.

Another claimed to be Christian, and to be upset with the way Trump speaks, but was voting for him anyway because of his great policies. What policies? Truly, I have no idea. Perhaps separating children from their parents? Demanding personal favors from foreign governments? Utterly incompetent response to the corona virus epidemic? Destroying desert ecosystems in the hope of building a wall for which Trump cronies have won extremely lucrative contracts? Striving to accelerate global warming? Opening a protected old-growth forest to logging? The ceaseless misogyny? Destroying government services to give a tax cut to the extremely wealthy? I could go on and on.

We writers are supposed to be able to adopt different outlooks, to get into the minds of different kinds of characters. But I admit it’s hard for me to understand what would move a person to support an obviously corrupt, criminal, ignorant, destructive, divisive politician who lies all the time.

It’s a good bet that if you enjoy my books, you’re not going to be voting to return this criminal to office. If you’ve already voted, THANK YOU! If you haven’t, please do, and vote blue all the way down the ballot. Joe Biden is not exaggerating when he says this election is a fight for the soul of our nation.

We are better—vastly better—than Trump.

I’m doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) in just half an hour! This all came together at the last minute, but if you happen to be in the neighborhood, please stop by! I’ll be answering questions between 3pm and 5pm, HST.
Find the AMA here.