Chicago TARDIS (November 29-December 1)
I’ve just returned from DC after a week away–back to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. Seeing my family again drove home just how much I missed them, but also how much I enjoy living on my own. It’s a balance between different sources of comfort and stress, I suppose, especially after as rough a year as this has been (you didn’t miss anything; I’m not giving details on this blog, at least for a while yet. Suffice to say this was the first time I’ve seen some...
Read MoreHappy National Novel Writing Month!
For several hundred thousand writers, the great challenge of the year has just launched: for the next 30 days, they will be scrambling to maintain a semi-functional life while also producing 1,667 words per day, to end with a 50,000 word story on December 1st. I wish them luck. While I can’t deny the glories of a creative adrenaline surge, I have never managed to get more than 35,000 words in November, and have several times had to step back and let the challenge go before I had a...
Read MoreReturn from the 18th Century
It may say something about how much I’ve traveled this year that I have not purchased a single bottle of conditioner, instead relying on the cute little bottles they give you in hotel bathrooms. I’d have the same record for soap but this weekend at Colonial Williamsburg their scented and fun-shaped “soap balls” were too much fun to resist. I got peppermint scented and “Castille,” which is actually not the name of the scent (it’s vaguely floral) but the...
Read MoreStory up at Perihelion! “Equations in the Mirror”
My science fiction story “Equations in the Mirror” is up at Perihelion Science Fiction. This is one of the few stories that ever required me to whip out a calculator (another is Ayema’s Fleet in the Battlespace Military Science Fiction anthology) and was based on a number of cool medical techniques I’d learned about. Being for a time a Paleolithic history/pre-history fan, I was delighted to learn that obsidian stone blades are still used by surgeons in the modern day....
Read MoreDancing to Replace PowerPoint: A Modest Proposal
I confess it, I’m a TED Talk fan–the videos are short enough to appeal to my attention span, interesting enough to make me feel smart of watching them, and free–and this is now one of my favorites. If you also enjoy modest proposals, the Onion Talks are excellent,...
Read MoreWisCon 37–A Partial Review
I was certain I wouldn’t make it to WisCon this year, coming as it did right before my moving trip to Washington, D.C. But with some last-minute crunch and a willingness to run around disoriented (I’ve learned these will get you far in life, or at least lead me very far afield), I made it for at least the weekend and Friday evening. Friday:After hurriedly packing for DC, I stuffed my backpack with my immediate needs for one weekend and set out to brave the Memorial Day weekend...
Read MoreThe Plants of Middle-Earth: Botany and Sub-Creation by Dinah Hazell
What a charming book! Like The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel, this was a find made in the American University library shelves. It stood out not only for the title (of all things it was sub-creation I was drawn to; the concept is Tolkien’s gift to the fantasy genre far more than any number of medieval worlds and elves) but also its soothingly soft green cloth binding with gold letters. Inside, it is gorgeously illustrated with drawings and...
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 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 MoreOn why I’m dressed as The Doctor in my Facebook profile photo
That’s my personal Facebook profile photo, not the one on my new author’s page–which I’ve recently created upon realizing that, if my only Facebook presence is my goofy personal profile, of course my goofy personal profile will start showing up anywhere Facebook touches. Which is exactly what’s happened. Oh, don’t fret (for that matter, I’m sorry to disappoint), there’s no scandal here. I was just amused when a Google alert led me to this cool...
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.