Farewell, I’m off to Ghana!
Tomorrow morning I meet with the rest of my class for a last-minute orientation and packing of certain supplies, and then in the afternoon we head to Baltimore Washington International Airport, from there to JFK in New York, and from thence to Accra, where we’ll arrive early Thursday. Making this my last blog post for some time. I hasten to point out that they do have internet access in Ghana. The country as a whole is completely into the 21st century, and they have more cell phones than...
Read MoreHeads-up to my email contacts
This morning I logged into my Yahoo! account to see 45 autoreplies and failure notices…for emails I hadn’t sent. Yes, I’ve been hacked. I think I recognize the particular method of hacking, as I’ve been receiving those spam email messages (titled, as it happens “message” in the subject bar) for a week or so now from another friend’s account. I thought I’d taken care to avoid clicking anything inside them, but, well. I’ve changed my password...
Read MoreSpring Break
I’ve returned home to Wisconsin for one last visit with my family and to get ready for the trip to Ghana! My mother and I spent yesterday running errands and picking up supplies. The above isn’t everything we’ve got, but it’s a good start. I’m especially pleased with the knee-length, flowing & cool, olive-colored skirt. It’s modest for any events and speakers we’ll be visiting in more conservative communities, but also rather pretty and it feels...
Read MoreProgress Update and How To Write A Lot
One of the sweetest perks of my internship is waivers for classes at the Writers Center of Bethesda. Today I attended the evocatively titled “How to Write A Lot”. The gist of the advice was simple–set deadlines, outline first, do not revise or reread on your first draft, write every day, keep your fingers moving (no staring blankly at an equally blank page or screen)–and there were some nifty tips I hadn’t heard before, like using Pavlovian conditioning to make...
Read MoreChallenge Accepted: The RPG-style To-Do List
A few weeks ago, a friend pointed me to GetYeDone.com, an interactive, fantasy game style online to-do list. You start by signing up and preparing a character sheet, complete with race, class, and skills/attributes. Then you launch your quest: whether it’s schoolwork, housekeeping, finding a job or managing the workload you already have, now you can get your daily dose of accomplishment! In each quest you can list a gathering of tasks (quests themselves can be grouped in meta...
Read MoreLast weekend for Ghanaian Microloans Campaign!
Our IndieGoGo Campaign to raise funding for a project providing microloans to women in 5 rural villages in Ghana, for which I’ve pledge & provided a free short story, is in its final days. It closes to contributions at midnight, March 4th. My student group will continue to accept funds for this project through PayPal, but this is your last chance to give and earn mementos of the trip and the impact of your contribution in exchange! If you can afford to give any amount at this time,...
Read MoreIs Malaria really that bad?
Today I visited Capitol Travel Medicine of Arlington, Virginia to get my immunizations ready for the trip to Ghana. I’m giving the full name because you can consider this post a wholehearted endorsement; they were very pleasant and extremely helpful. Yellow Fever shots aren’t the most painful thing in the world–mine ended with small welt and a lingering medicinal sting, the kind that reassuringly reminds you that you’ve just had a weakened but potentially deadly virus...
Read MoreCurrently Reading: William Goldbloom Bloch, The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel
This is a book that, fittingly perhaps, I am reading because I discovered it in the library. The library at American University, that is. Not the Library of Babel. Although this book could, conceivably, be discovered in the Library of Babel. I wouldn’t give much for your chances of finding it, but it’s possible. The central challenge Jorge Luis Borges poses to any writer is that he has, at least on a meta level, surpassed and completed us. Any story we can ever write has...
Read MoreMy 48 hours of the 24 Hours of Gallifrey One
After last year at Gallifrey Network 23, which seemed to last forever (in a good way…and, also in a good way, its effects never quite ended…) this year it flew by way too fast. I think mostly because I missed Thursday night LobbyCon and Friday’s opening and panels. Last year, my school and volunteerism schedule was much more forgiving and allowed me to take 5 days off from them. When I registered for a second helping, I had no idea I’d be in Washington, D.C. this...
Read MoreThe Family: A Story for A Cause
“The Family” originally appeared on my old LiveJournal page as part of Crossed Genres’ Post A Story for Haiti project. The idea of the project was that writers would post a free short story, and readers could show their appreciation by donating what in their minds the story was worth to a cause assisting Haitians after the devastating earthquake early in 2010. A bit like sponsors supporting someone racing for the cure. But instead of doing something easy like running a...
Read MoreAbout Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.