Dora M. Raymaker's Blog, page 3

Journals, Planners, & Pens – Daily Journal

I’ve always loved journals, planners, and pens but the past few years innovations (and rediscoveries) have uped my game. I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from others, so here I start to pass along the love. Or maybe I just want an excuse to go on about leather, stationary, and pens.

This is my daily journal set-up. It’s a traveler’s notebook with two inserts, three fountain pens, and a pen case that I love to look at (it is a loved gift

I’m obsessed with traveler’s notebooks–leather c...

Avoiding some early errors in academic writing

By chance, Ive done a lot of mentoring lately about academic writing. Earlier I posted about rejection. This post is just a collection of random n00b-type things that Ive found myself explaining to students a lot. Now I can just direct them here bwahaha

Disclaimer: My experience with academic writing and publishing is primarily within applied social science journals related to public health, social work, medicine, psychology, systems science, disability, and engineering. I cant speak to how...

REJECTED! What academic paper rejections are about from both sides of the process

Academic papers are a lot of work. Your research is dear to you. Youve loved this study enough to see it through, to write it up, to find a home for it. And then you get rejectedperhaps without any indication as to why.

Whats that about? Are you a bad researcher? Was your paper bad? Your research stupid? Should you just give up? Particularly students and others who are new to the process can be devastated by a rejection.

Butreally!-there is no need for devastation! Even senior researchers...

Work from Home Tips

Ive been working from home for over a decade largely as a disability accessibility thing & some people have asked me for tips. (Disclaimers: Im a natural introvert and have no children.)

Set up a work space that is for work. Do not do other activities in it until AFTER you have mastered work-from-home.Set up a schedule for when you will be working and write it down. Share the schedule with others in the house and make sure they know to respect your work-time boundaries.Set up some transition...

Hearts & Tails: Spacetime and Mathematics

FIRST LAW OF THE REACHABLE NOWS: No alternate versions of a person may be in eye-line of each other within the same now, or both will suffer immediate death by fire.

My novella “Hearts and Tails” in Spoon Knife 4: Spacetime is set in a soft-SF multiverse where WWI never ended, it just kind of petered out into a devastated landscape and a chemical-weapons cold war. There are 90’s tropes galore: magic, bio-engineered mutant powers, impossible psi-ops, and neon-glow cyberspace–depending which of...

New Book Excerpt & Interview on All The Things

I’ll write more–maybe too much–about this as time goes on but here is the very first post squeeeee. I am too excited/terrified. Terricided? Excitified? I am a weirdo. HERE ARE ALL THE THINGS

1. The wonderful folks atWordgatheringinterviewed me about disability fiction, Hoshi, my next book in Hoshi’s world, and other cool stuff! Read my interview!

2. They also published an except from said next book in Hoshi’s world! Read the excerpt!

3. Oh, yeah, there is a next book in that world and here is...

Hearts & Tails: Source and Memory

My twenties were belligerent. A few decades of living in fear will result in belligerency, apparently. They were also creative, beautiful, and engaged in the 1990’s post-punk industrial world of queered-up vampires, feminist philosophies, anarchist role models, cyberpunk promises, and aggro-rage mixed-media music, poetry, performance, fuck-this-shit manifestos. This photo of me says, “Fuck you buster, I’ve got a bad-ass custom-built dream-computer, boom box, no gender, and a bad attitude, and...

Mathpunk Novella “Hearts and Tails” in Spoon Knife 4

Exciting fiction news! My short mathpunk novella “Hearts and Tails” will be appearing in this year’s anthology Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Space-time! 

The story takes place in an alternate 1991 where there are no computers, but there just might be magic, as well as a space-time connection to alternate realities. Math! Magic! Synaestesia! Mean secret agents trying to keep our heroes down! Hooray!

The anthology will be coming out later this year from Autonomous Press 

Stories and Media in the Liminal Universe

Hoshi and the Red City Circuit is set in the liminal universe. I call it the “liminal universe” after the first book I wrote about it, which may or may not ever see the light of day. Other stories, though, have seen the light of day, and here is the list so far if you want to play in the ‘verse:

Hoshi and the Red City Circuit is my novel from Argawarga/Autonomous Press. Due to their unique neurology, only the enslaved Operator caste can program the quantum computers that run 26th century Red...

Backstory: Revolutions 1 & 2 and a Post-post-apocalyptic Universe

I joke that the liminal universe, where Hoshi and the Red City Circuit is set, is a “post-post-apoclyptic” universe. But, seriously, it is! Earth dies, almost for good, and everything is awful, but then it (or at least humanity) recovers, and a few centuries pass and there’s space ships and interstellar colonization and everything is awesome. If you’re not an Operator. But, still!

In 2001, I wrote the scene where Earth is almost destroyed. A character stands, shocked, in the burning, ashy rub...