Elizabeth Bonesteel's Blog, page 6

v2022.5 Nothing Lasts But Nothing Is Lost

I sold my parents’ car today.

This is long overdue. The last time it was driven was fall of 2018. It’s been sitting in a parking garage in Boston since then…waiting.

When I was little, I anthropomorphized our cars. I still remember going to the dealership with my parents when I was about 5 to buy a new car. I was so excited. I didn’t understand we would be leaving the old one behind. When we left in the new car, I was inconsolable, and my poor parents were left trying to decide whether to ...

v2022.4: Small Things

The world is so fragile right now, isn’t it? Fragile, and shattered. Shards everywhere, and chaos. If we’re lucky enough not to be in the spotlight, we’re fighting to stay on our feet every day.

Just me?

Didn’t think so.

Everything around me feels like it’s about to break, but I think most of that is illusion. It’s so hard not to see chaos everywhere. And me being me, I start seeing everything close to me as fragile, even when it isn’t.

Probably isn’t. I don’t want to curse anything....

v2022.3: Well.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to write about Ukraine.

I know nothing, personally, of war. I have friends who’ve served, whose spouses have served; both my grandfathers were career army, but they both retired when I was very small.

I know a bully when I see one. And I know decades of US history, and how we–and, in all fairness, a lot of other countries–treat bullies differently depending on how well armed they are. I was raised with this concept of “mutually assured de...

Random Thoughts, v2022.2 or: what will I do when cognitive dissonance ends?

I read a lovely Twitter thread today on grieving:

It's worth asking: are americans able to express grief?

Like, do americans have any socially acceptable way to express mourning, indicate they are experiencing psychological distress at loss, etc

— Anosognosiogenesis (@pookleblinky) February 13, 2022

Every once in a while, as I’m ticking items off my daily to-do lists, it occurs to me that I’ve been grieving for a long time. Years now. I still remember the day I got the phone call from the ...

Random Thoughts, v2022.1

There’s nothing new except what has been forgotten.

And in SFF, stuff gets forgotten a lot.

I’m not (this time) thinking of how every five years or so the media suddenly discovers people who are not white guys are writing SFF. I’m thinking of the age-old argument: is it possible to sell a story that’s both SF and fantasy?

I mean, yes. Obviously. This has always happened. It’s always been done. People still argue about whether Star Wars is SF or fantasy, whether anything involving ghosts...

Who Sets The Agenda?

Yesterday, I caught an article on Twitter:

Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed https://t.co/Uoebs29Zlb

— Cora Buhlert (@CoraBuhlert) January 15, 2022

This is an interesting analysis of the state of the genre. I read the blog referenced, but did not listen to the podcasts; my reactions are entirely in response to Buhlert and Felapton’s analyses.

I think there are a lot of good points here, and some fascinating observations (discussions about how and why writers write are always ...

Dear Fellow Writers

There is a lot of roadkill in publishing.

We all instinctively know this. We’ve all heard stories, rumored or otherwise. Publishing is a business, and business is about money, not art. We know. We get it.

Except really, we don’t.

Publishing is not a meritocracy. Well, I mean, it is, up to a point. You have to be able to write well enough, but that’s a pretty squishy bar. We all know books that sold buckets that are just…not great. (No, I’m not naming names. People love what they love, a...

Goodreads Giveaway

Remember my little book of short stories? I’ve set up a Goodreads giveaway for it! Five print books, which I will sign in purple (because I always sign in purple, because why not), and send to the five people Goodreads selects for me.

Let’s see if this widgety thing works, shall we?

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; background: white; } .goodreadsGiveawayWidget ...

Survival Tactics: Some story backgrounds

There’s a temptation, when publishing a short story, to explain it.

This is probably not a great impulse. The power of art is that it’s different for each person that consumes it. Ideally, a story threads itself into a reader’s identity and becomes an individual thing, an emotional experience as unique as a fingerprint. (That’s of course assuming the story resonates.)

But this is my blog, and I remember writing each story in Survival Tactics. And I’ll write it down here, as a reference for...

Father’s Day

The other day I was talking to the nurse from my parents’ assisted living facility, and she asked me a question, with an eye toward “grading” my dad’s most recent cognitive test.

“Did he go to MIT?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did he have a job designing Weapons of Mass Destruction?”

She asked me this question with great dubiousness, obviously expecting this was some sort of Chuck Barris-level delusion. I laughed.

“Yes,” I told her. “I suppose he did.”

When I was a kid, my da...