Raima Larter's Blog, page 4

Blogging Tips

I've started blogging again. And I'm noticing that many people are doing the same, but calling their posts "newsletters" or "long form reads" or some other thing, but we are all attempting to do the same thing: write something that exceeds the character limit on whatever micro-blogging platform we use.

I started this blog late in 2008 and very enthusiastically started posting, sometimes several times a week. You can see from this graph that the early enthusiasm lasted only a few months, when I fell back to a posting schedule that was more like once a week:

That continued for a few years until I started writing books...and you can see what happened then. The year 2015 was especially bad, but 2021 wasn't much better.

I learned a few things in my early blogging years that some people who are new to this may wish to heed: keep those posts short! People don't want to read anything longer than 500 words. 300 words is better. (This post is 220 words.)

And use visual images: photos, graphs (as here!), anything to illustrate the words you are writing.

I've set some goals for 2023 and one of them is this: post more on my blog. I'm hoping for once a week. This is the first installment of the year. More to come!

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Annual Writing Report

Another year and I'm still writing! Much of this activity has been fueled by this stuff (*coffee*) and supported by lots of long walks and runs, which is where I get a great deal of my writing and thinking-about-writing done.

This year I published four short pieces (two flash fiction stories, one poem, and one creative nonfiction piece) as well as a book. In that sense, it was a very good year, but the publication list is only that: a list of the things that were finished and made it out into the world. 

It doesn't include the many pages of things I'm still in the process of writing: one novel, for which I have a finished draft, another novel, for which I have an unfinished (!) draft, and about two dozen short stories and poems. At least. There may be more than two dozen, but this count is an ephemeral one, since the number of items changes each day.

It also doesn't include the finished items that I've submitted to various places for publication. These include a number of short stories and poems, but also one science fiction novel and a novella, Silver Rush. The latter is a companion piece to my novel, Belle o' the Waters, and tells the story of Maggie and Silas, who are secondary characters in that earlier story. 

Since this is my annual writing report, though, I need to list the new publications. First, the two short stories, one of which (Solve for X) was actually a reprint of a piece that was published by a journal that went defunct:

Solve for X, Linden Avenue Literary Journal (September, 2018); republished by Doubleback Review (April, 2022) 

The second short story is a funny take on an all-too-familiar situation that anyone who has worked for a place with an HR department will probably recognize:

Team Building Exercise, Intrinsick Mag (October 2, 2022)  

I was also thrilled to have a poem published by Whale Road Review. This is only my second published poem ever, which (again) shows me that I need to start submitting more of my poetry:

The Great Red Spot, Whale Road Review (September 15, 2022) 

Finally, I was grateful to have a piece of creative nonfiction published in the long-running literary magazine Gargoyle, now Gargoyle Online. I'm especially proud that this piece was picked up by the first place I submitted it to. That almost never happens, and to have it occur for a genre I really don't write in much, is especially nice:

Pillar of Salt, Gargoyle Online (October, 2022)

As discussed in earlier posts, I made the decision in the spring to pull together all my published short stories as well as a handful of new ones and self-publish my second short story collection. This decision came about when I discovered that several of the literary magazines that had published my work had gone out of business, taking my stories with them, and making it impossible for readers to find my work.

The resulting book, Motherhood and Other Magical Realms is now available in both paperback and e-book format. You can find it online wherever books are sold (Amazon, B&N, Bookshop.org or IndieBound.org) or I can send you a signed copy for just $10. Send me an email at raima (at) raimalarter (dot) com or visit my online bookshop here: https://raima-larter-books.square.site/s/shop.

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Nearly Wordless Wednesday

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For more Wordless Wednesday, see the main site.

For more of my photos, see Flickr.

Find me on Mastodon!

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Blog Anniversary

On December 11, 2008, I started this blog, and I never would have predicted it would still be going strong fourteen years later, but here we are! My first post was short and sweet:

"Welcome to my new blog! I will be writing here about complex systems science, aka complexity science or the theory of emergence...maybe other names even I don't know. In the old days we called it chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics or a bunch of other things but times have changed because the science has changed!

More later..."

And I did write more later. Lots more. I haven't written much on the blog about this topic lately, but I have written a book about it. Spiritual Insights from the New Science: Complex Systems and Life has many sections that I tried out in my blog posts before attempting to pull them into a book. So, the blog served its purpose well, which was to give me a place to play with ideas I was attempting to turn into a book.

Along the way, I've covered many other topics: writing, e-publishing, gardening, family events and milestones, photography, yoga...in short, anything that interests me. 

Here's to a few more years! I may not be blogging 14 years from now, but there's no telling....

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Author Signing a Success!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out for Colorado Local Author Day at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver! This is one of the few very successful indie bookshops left and it did not disappoint.

Here I am with my collection of books. All of these can be ordered through Tattered Cover or your favorite indie bookstore. Check out bookshop.org or IndieBound.org, both of which allow you to search for your favorite local store and order through them.

All of my books are also available through Amazon or directly from the publisher in some cases. I also have a few signed copies available through my online bookshop.

And even if you’ve already bought my books (thank you!!), remember that books make great holiday gifts. Word of mouth is THE BEST WAY for books to find their way to new readers, so thank you, as always, for your help with spreading the word.

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Author Signing Event

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be signing copies of my books, including my most recent book, Motherhood and Other Magical Realms, at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado on December 3, 2022 from 11am - 2 pm. The store is located at 2526 E Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80206.

If you are in town, I would love to see you there. Other Colorado authors will also be present and signing their books, so you may find another favorite author if you drop by.

If you can’t make it to Tattered Cover, I can still send you signed copies of my books. You can order them from my online store here. And, of course, unsigned copies are available from any online retailer, including Amazon, Bookshop.org and Barnes & Noble.

Wishing all my US readers a Happy Thanksgiving. This year, I am very grateful for all of you!

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New Position!

I’m very pleased to announce that I’m the new Assistant Fiction Editor at Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. We’re a growing science fiction magazine, established in 2019, and devoted to publishing the best in optimistic, inspiring, and forward-looking speculative fiction.

As our Editor-in-Chief puts it, “We want enthralling stories set in futures we might want to live in. Counter to the recent dystopian craze, we publish stories that shine with a more optimistic future, one we want to believe in, one we would fight for.”

I discovered this magazine last year while looking for a publisher for my short story, Big Blue Marble. I really liked the editor’s philosophy about science fiction and its importance and role in the world of literature, but I also very much appreciated his editing work with my story. So, when the assistant editor position opened up, I expressed an interest, and here I am.

We publish fiction (short stories), speculative poetry, and nonfiction science articles. We also publish art and have a special Art Issue every year. Watch for the next one in December—next month!

Although we’re temporarily closed to fiction submissions, we are still actively seeking art, poetry, and nonfiction. We are especially looking for nonfiction science articles, written in a way that’s accessible to the general reader. Check out the detailed guidelines here: https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/submit

To all you writers and artists out there: Utopia pays writers and artists for accepted pieces, a rarity in the world of current literary magazines. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Twitter as we know it is ending

People announce they’re deleting their accounts. Many vow to find their followers on some other social media platform. Others exchange addresses and handles and promise to follow their friends in the new online places.

The hope is the same community that existed on Twitter will rise again in a new setting, and we can pick up where we left off.

The problem is it isn’t going to happen. Even if a new community is established on another social media platform, it won’t be the same community at all. The community we built on Twitter will be gone. Is gone.

So many people have already left, deleted their accounts, leaving wistful good-bye messages, or no message at all. And for those of us who haven’t yet left, there is mostly grief.

Real grief, the same feeling you have when someone or something dies. That’s because something has died: the community we built on Twitter is gone for good.

This has happened to many of us before: at the end of a workshop or retreat or, if you were one of those lucky kids, summer camp. Every time I was in one of those intense community experiences, we always earnestly traded addresses with each other as we said good-bye. We promised we would keep in touch, even while knowing we wouldn’t.

I still have sheets of paper filled with contact information from workshops and retreats over the years. I stumble across those papers now and then and remember how wonderful that week or weekend was, and how sincerely we promised to keep in touch. Even though we didn’t.

Twitter has been like that, but the difference is the community has been building itself for years. For me, it’s been almost 14 years, so the loss and pain are real. I’ve made true friends that I’m as close to as my IRL friends. (IRL is “in real life” for those who might not know).

Feeling sad about the demise of Twitter is appropriate, not because Twitter itself is dying, or at least changing. We are sad because we’re losing each other.

You can still find me on Twitter @raimalarter but also, now, on Counter Social (same username) and maybe Mastodon if I can ever find a server that will let me sign up.

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I've Moved!

I have been posting on my blog at raimalarter.com since December 11, 2008 - fourteen years! When I started, I really didn't expect it to last this long, and I've definitely had my ups and downs with it. The design has changed several times but the content has, too. 

I used to post much more about science than I do now, but as my life gradually shifted from research scientist, to administrator for a government science organization, to a science writer and, now, fiction writer, the content has changed along with me.

I am still a scientist, though (once a nerd, always a nerd) and am planning to start posting more science content soon. This blog will still be a place that I'll post news from my writing endeavors, including new publications, but I hope to diversify the content a little and am working out a plan to do just that.

The big news for today is that I'm now using Substack to distribute my blog posts, so I wanted to let you know where to find me. I hope to be able to put blog posts on this website (raimalarter.com) as well, but that remains to be seen. You can always find me here, though. This is my homepage!

If you'd like to subscribe to the blog and ensure that you'll receive a notice in your email each time I make a new post, simply click the following link and enter your email address. You can always unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive messages.

Thanks for reading Complexity Simplified! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Moving My Blog to Substack

I have been posting on this blog since December 11, 2008 - fourteen years! When I started, I really didn't expect it to last this long, and I've definitely had my ups and downs with it. The design has changed several times but the content has, too. 

I used to post much more about science than I do now, but as my life gradually shifted from research scientist, to administrator for a government science organization, to a science writer and, now, fiction writer, the content has changed along with me.

I am still a scientist, though (once a nerd, always a nerd) and am planning to start posting more science content soon. This blog will still be a place that I'll post news from my writing endeavors, including new publications, but I hope to diversify the content a little and am working out a plan to do just that.

The big news for today is that I'm now using Substack to distribute my blog posts, so I wanted to let you know where to find me. I hope to be able to put blog posts on this website (raimalarter.com) as well, but that remains to be seen. You can always find me here, though. This is my homepage!

If you'd like to subscribe to the blog and ensure that you'll receive a notice in your email each time I make a new post, simply click the following link and enter your email address. You can always unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive messages.

Thanks! And thanks, as always, for reading.