Fame

The past few years have seen an explosion in discussions about the role of gender in the nerd & geek communities. In case you've been stranded on an island with Oliver Queen, a hashtag search for #GeekGirls should give you plenty of reading material.  I've contributed to these discussions myself, notably with this post: Hear it for the Heroines.  A video posted recently, and a post by friend and fellow author JC Cassels, prompted the following entry.

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I am a geek. I am a nerd. I am a female.

I am memorable.

I have always been these things.  I watched GI Joe and He-Man cartoons, purloined my brother's comic books and begged to play D&D with him.  I spent as many hours with the Atari Basic programming cassette as I spent with "Missile Command" and "Pac-Man".  I adored "Turtle Tracks".  I kicked my brother's whining ass, beating Castle Wolfenstein and DOOM long before he did.  The very first story I ever wrote was science fiction.

You'll remember me.


Yes, this made adolescence rather painful.  I doubt, however, that it was more or less painful for a nerd/geek boy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what other people thought or said about me. Those snide comments and date-less nights, though, made me who I am.


Don't you know who I am?

I don't take the easy road.  Anything worth doing is hard.  You want me to do something?  Tell me I can't.  I knew that using Cassandra Davis as a pen name would hurt sales.  I decided I didn't care.  If someone is so ignorant as to live in this century and still believe that the quality of storytelling is dependent on the gender of the storyteller, then I don't want that idiot reading my books. I'll sell fewer books, but as long as that is a reflection on the idiocy of a few and not on the quality of my writing, I am unconcerned.

Remember.


When you grow up marginalized, when you grow up "different", you become a grown up who dares.  You dare to believe. You dare to fight for what you want.  You dare anyone to stand in your way. You set the sky on fire.

I am unafraid, unapologetic, unswayed.

They'll remember.

If I'm doing my best, it won't matter what name I use.  I will live forever because my story will learn to fly. Every boy or girl, woman or man, who reads my books, will take a part of it with them.  The story will become a part of their lives.

Fame, and a name, are what you make of them.

Space is Cold

Space is cold.

It’s a fact drilled into little heads during those first colorful lessons about the solar system.  Those lessons with the spinning planets and the bright orange Sun are meant to stick with a child long into adulthood.  Space is cold, the teacher always says.

Except when it isn't.  "The Universe is filled with exceptions to known constants”, a different teacher says, many years later. Space is cold unless you are being cooked in the radiation from a star. Then space is not cold, it is burning you from the inside out.

Space, Maggie thinks, is a lot like love.

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Just a few thoughts from the head of Maggie O'Connell.  She's out there, right now, exploring the universe, making new friends and hunting old enemies.  You'll see her in the next book, I promise! (If you haven't read about Maggie's first (published) adventure, go check-out Dremiks )

SFF Saturday 5-25-2013

Click on the picture link to read more wonderful snippets of fantasy and science-fiction!

When last we saw Prisoner 1138, he was convinced the life support systems in his cell were malfunctioning.  This is one scientist who forgot his clinical training...

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Entry 10

This is more effective than any experiment I could have devised.  If I am truly being watched, then surely my captors would have intervened by now.  Uneaten food lies  piled beneath the food dispensing slot. The air reeks of sweat and that particular "sick-room" smell that can never quite be eliminated by aerosolized disinfectant.

At this point I must assume that my med-chip data is not being monitored either, or it is and they are collating data points on my symptom progression. I have not risen from my bed in over a day.  The linens around me are smeared with mucous, some of it, to my horror, now containing blood.  Is this their plan?  A final cruel irony--that I face the misery I inflicted, and will inflict, on so many others?

I am Prisoner 1138.  I am Dr. bin Navi.  I am dying.