Colleen Anderson's Blog, page 64

Defining Science Fiction

There has long been a battle, an attitude, a snobbery in the writing world where literary or mainstream fiction is real writing, and all that "genre" fiction is done by hacks and of little merit in the tales of the world. Anyone who writes in a genre knows this and has felt it. But what is a genre? It is the categorizing of a novel or story by some of its strongest elements.

No longer in favor but once very popular were westerns. They obviously took place in a time of the Wild West where...

The Worst Word of Malfunctioning Microsoft

I have used Word for years and years, through many version. Before that I had Word Perfect and WordStar, so I know my word processing. I'm fairly advance with word. I've used it for editing as well as writing. I can put in borders, graphics, tables (and create them), tables of contents, and do labels and envelopes. I can do a lot and figure out the bits I can't do.

I tend to use shortcuts. Ctrl C for copying and Ctrl P for printing. I can go to a dropdown menu and I know what is in each...

Galiano Island

Galiano Island ferry dock

 Last weekend I had the chance to go over to Galiano Island. It's one of  many Gulf Islands in the San Juan Islands and is a long finger of land. Galiano can be reached by a ferry that takes a little less than an hour. We walked on and paid about $20 for a round trip (prices vary going and coming and depending on the season). And for some reason on the ferry rides in both directions the people who left their car alarms on were always driving BMWs and Audis. Folks, if...

Solo Travels in Mexico

Many years ago, on a whim I decided to go to Mexico because it was cheap. So up I went and flew to Mexico City for a week. This was the first time I had travelled on my own and I figured it would be a safer country to try my solo travel in than farther away in Asia.

I knew pretty much no Spanish and had a little phrase book at the time with your essentials. I arrived in Mexico City, finding a hotel to stay at that was also a residence for some people. I don't even remember if I had a...

Dreams & Nightmares

The title is the name of a poetry magazine specializing in speculative forms. However, I'm talking about those things that hit you when you're asleep.

We all dream. It's part of the mind's way of processing daily events and emotions. If we don't dream we go mad. People who suffer from apnea risk never dreaming because they don't go into the right leve of sleep, REM (meaning rapid eye movement) where dreams take place. A person can develop a neurosis or suffer other health problems if they...

Cultural Flavors: Sex and Living Alone

When I went to India and Nepal, I travel for a month on my own. Nepal, compared to India, is very used to tourists, and understands they are part of the economy. India, at that time, had many restrictions, as well as poverty, and service or helping tourists was not very near the top of their list. Nepal was almost too much so.

In Kathmandu you can find all sorts of trinkets and souvenirs, and Western food. Well, it's sort of like Western food. It looks the same and has the same name but...

Training the Monkeys: Gym Etiquette

Most gyms are a mixture of people and ages. You will have the guys (and when I use "guys" I use it in the non gender-specific way, referring to a group of people) who are into body building. Yet others are there to give their hearts a good workout and make them strong. Other people will be working on keeping fit or losing weight. And who knows, there may a few whose main purpose is to socialize or get out of the house for a while.

My gym very much encompasses all of this. It's a community gym and

Writing & The Process

I recently had what can only be classified as a brain fart. I've been working on several stories. Sometimes this involves a simple idea, or maybe a what-if. Sometimes it involves an image. In this case I have one to do with elephants and monkeys and a primate researcher. The other has to do with a physicist and cats (no not Schrodinger).  The first came as a combo of someone I know and of reading about a third type of elephant, after African and Asian.

So, okay, I started thinking about the eleme

How Witch Hunts Came to Be

When I used the term witch hunt, I am in fact using it in its broadest sense. That is, where a group sets out to get specific people.  Witch hunts have happened throughout history for various reasons.

Here are a few of the more notorious ones:

The people of Navarre around the 14th century pitchforked, chased and killed the Gypsies (Rom), itinerant wanderers who were different and were blamed for the plague.Hitler's pogroms in WWII, caused the death of millions of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, the

District 9: A Movie Review

And this is your spoiler alert. I'm going to dissect the movie so move on if you don't want to know what happens in some of it.

There's been a lot of hype about District 9. It was discussed some on my writers group list and people have seen all the bus ads and trailers. My neighbor said, "Oh that's supposed to be one of the best movies of the year." It's produced by Peter Jackson of  LOTR fame and director Neill Blomkamp. And while I found the movie good, it wasn't great.

What works for it are...