My word for February is “explore.” I got spikes for my hiking boots and am learning to hike in snow, which has been fabulous. Snow-covered forests are special, thoughtful places. I’m working on some new kinds of art, lining up new books to read. Art like lino block printing and artistic book binding, and books like David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree, which is about Darwin and endosymbiosis and horizontal gene transfer. I’m glad I didn’t read about this while I was working on The Naturalist Society and The Glass Slide World because it pretty much would have blown up the whole idea of Arcane Taxonomy. Do species actually exist or is that just a human-centered method of categorization? Who knows!

What new discoveries are you making right now? What’s captured your curiosity?

This month’s lesson is a topic I have more questions about than answers: Character questionnaires. Structured methods of building characters for your stories. Yes or no? Do you use them? If so, can you talk about why you like them?

In case you missed it, my novella “Gremlin” is now an ebook. Links are here:
Kindle
Nook
Apple Books
Kobo

Media consumption: I’ve started rewatching the British cozy mystery series Midsomer Murders from the beginning. I call it cozy mystery but there’s an undercurrent of darkness to the whole thing which is a bit unsettling, to be honest. The murders are frequently brutal. But there’s comfort in the familiar characters and story structure. I suddenly want to transpose that structure to a really off-the-wall setting, such as high fantasy like Westeros or space opera like the Expanse.

There’s a writing prompt for you! *makes notes*