The acknowledgments to Semiosis begin, “I owe thanks to Gregory Frost, whose writing exercise about a special kind of wall led to this novel.” That exercise took place in 1996 at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Greg was one of the instructors, and he assigned several exercises over his week of teaching, one … Continue reading Imagine a wall…

I first got paid to write when I was in high school as a columnist for the local newspaper. It was fun, and how many jobs are fun? By fun I mean it was creative and difficult enough to keep me from getting bored, since you could never fully master the art of writing. It … Continue reading How to get published, or, are you smiling when you write?

Let's Talk about Plant Sex In this podcast from the Newberry Library, Katie Sagal tells how women writers in the 18th century engaged with botany, which was considered both an activity for cultivating feminine virtue and a weedy thicket overrun by the perils of intellectual rigor and plant sexual reproduction. Ten Plants Used to Spice … Continue reading A few links about plant science, human sex, and what we can learn from trees

My essay “We Lost Control a Long Time Ago” is available for your reading pleasure at From Earth to the Stars, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine’s blog for authors and editors. In my post, I discuss Barry N. Malzberg’s sometimes uncomfortable idea about what sets science fiction apart from “literary” fiction: external events matter more than … Continue reading My post at Asimov’s blog

I’ll be attending WisCon, a feminist science fiction and fantasy convention in Madison, Wisconsin, from May 25 to 28. I’ve been attending off and on since the 1990s, and it’s always a fun, exciting weekend. On Friday at 2:30 p.m., I’ll be on a panel for Speculative Fiction in Translation with Rachel S. Cordasco, Arrate … Continue reading I’ll be at WisCon this weekend

The contracts have been signed, the manuscript has been accepted, and Semiosis will have a sequel. In it, Earth sends a mission to the planet Pax, and — no surprise — things don’t go well, for a variety of reasons. Stevland is forced to act. I’ve begun revisions with my editor at Tor, Jen Gunnels, … Continue reading “Semiosis” will have a sequel!

Left Bank Books and Archon will present a SciFi STL and Tor #FearlessWomen event at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 10, at the St. Louis Public Library - Schlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid Ave. I’ll be there with Tessa Gratton, author of an epic fantasy about deposed kings and betrayed queens called The Queens of Innis … Continue reading I’ll be in St. Louis on Thursday for a #FearlessWomen event