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Showing posts from June, 2021

The Space between Atoms 43

  Windquake.   The concept described what it felt like to be in houses literally shaken by the wind.   The spiteful aspect of the weather often forgotten until it arose, aeolian damage could be heard in real time as the gusts became sustained.   As if the sky were trying to tear civilization itself apart.   Dickinsheet wasn’t built to code. Queequeg and Terah rode out the storm in Cicero’s house with his bones.   The place shook like a frightened old man.   No rain fell, but the violence of the wind rocked everything.   “At least with a thunderstorm you know when its done,” Queequeg called out.   The wind would blow itself out only to begin again with even more rage. Terah felt terror.   “It’s like hurricane Sandy,” he shouted above the din.   He’d been in New Jersey for that. “Least we don’t have to worry about losing power,” Queequeg smiled.   Where had he been during that storm?   It’d left an indelible impression on Terah, although he’d experienced others.   In his fear he began re

The Return of Space

  I’m so excited.   I’ve finally received a report from the data recovery center and it looks, at this point, like I’ll be able to recover The Space between Atoms .   If so, I’ll be able to resume where we left off starting next week. Recovering data is very expensive.   You see, I had thousands and thousands of files on my backup drive that failed.   It cost more than I’d like to think (let’s just say a new computer would be cheaper) to recover it.   There’s no way I could reconstruct literally over a decade of daily writing. The company I used was kind enough to suggest some better storage solutions.   Hell, these machines look serious.   They also cost a lot of money.   I guess most of us would really not like to think how fragile are data are. Speaking of data, one of the English language watchdog groups—I forget which one—has now declared that singular verbs can be used with “data.”   Data is the plural of datum, but we tend to use   the word as a bloc of information, making its m

The Joys of 30

 One of the most difficult parts about being creative is that you get carried away with ideas.  I've had four nonfiction books published and lately I've been taken—I mean really taken—with an idea for a fifth.  I've started writing it even before hearing if I'll get a contract for it. In the midst of the mania behind that writing (and I've got so little time to write that it's painful) I received the good news that fiction story number 30 has been accepted for publication.  Not only that, but it has been accepted in  Corvus Review .  I've published there before, but it's exalted company for me and I'm thrilled they like my fiction. Since my disc is still crashed and since I don't have access to The Space between Atoms (never trust a single disc!), this seems like a good time for a celebratory post.  This particular story is called "The Hput" (yes, a hput is a real thing), but it's a thing I can't tell you what means. This parti