Monthly Archives: January 2025

Another gray, gloomy day in Portland. I wander around the neighborhood, catching up on things that have changed since the last time I did these wanderings, and dropping off books in assorted Little Free Libraries (while checking to see if there’s anything I might want to pick up for myself).

This particular neighborhood lacks sidewalks for a good portion of the area. Several short-stay places are tucked back on the long lots, once standard in this section of PDX but now frequently converted into flag lots or short-stay backyard tiny homes. When we bought in this area over twenty years ago, it was in transition from poor to lower middle-class housing to solidly middle and upper-middle class housing. That transition is still in progress but it’s moving along quickly these days. Some houses underwent extensive remodeling while others were torn down, to be replaced by bigger, multiple houses on those big lots. Block-sized apartment complex rise around the main traffic corridors. As building occurs, down come the remnants of the second-growth Douglas firs in the neighborhood.

Not that the area lacks vegetation. Oh no. There’s lots of vegetation, including vining plants of various species, and enough thickets of brush hanging over sidewalks that make me think the place could benefit from the pruning job administered by a herd of town deer.

And that’s where I get into the “it could happen here” vibe.

These days I spend a lot of my time in a more arid climate, near forests and grasslands, in places that have already seen a lot of wildfire. Even in town one doesn’t see the degree of brushy vegetation near houses that one finds in PDX. Oh, there’s some, but it’s not like I see in this neighborhood.

That makes me shudder, because in spite of Portland’s wet reputation, the place has dry summers. More frequent hot summers. While the conditions leading to the 2025 Los Angeles conflagration don’t happen here as often as they do LA, they do happen—as the fires in September, 2020, proved.

This neighborhood briefly underwent a Level 1 evacuation warning during those fires. It didn’t last long and nothing happened, fortunately, but…I look at the brush around so many houses and can’t help but be concerned.

Oh, I understand the instinct. Paradoxically, this section of Portland is also labelled as one of the places that has heat issues due to lack of trees. It’s a lot easier to encourage the growth of shrubs and vines.

But still…I look at a lot of what I see and shudder.

We often think of the Portland wildfire danger as lurking in the West Hills, because of Forest Park and the number of houses built in and amongst the second-growth Douglas firs in that area. It’s not the only part of town that needs to be concerned.

And that doesn’t even get into the bug issues, because vegetation right against the house also gives carpenter ants an easy route inside…and other bugs as well.

But most of all, I just walk through the neighborhood on a foggy gray day and think about fire. Worry about fire.

It’s unlikely but all the same…it could happen here.

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Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, the Netwalk Sequence is my featured series. It’s the first series I published and as I went through a recent update, I was surprised at how relevant it is, even though the books are over a decade old.

Housekeeping note: all related posts will be linked at the bottom on the Substack publication.

One thing that pops up very early in the Netwalk stories is the role that skiing plays as a part of the main characters’ everyday life. Diana and Will use casual encounters on the ski slopes to hide their relationship from their powerful parents. Their daughter Melanie was a former World Cup skier, and uses skiing as a means of getting her ADHD brain in focus for the day (when she’s not riding horses or hiking). Melanie’s daughter Bess plays a role in establishing dust skiing on the Moon, not just as an eventual tourist activity but as a means for emergency rescue and travel.

But why skiing and cyberpunk?

Why not?

The final form of the Netwalk books came about while I was teaching on Mt. Hood and had a brief (around ten years) period where I spent a lot of time on skis and around ski culture. While the interest varied by year, a lot of my students dreamed of being the next big thing in ski movies, ski racing, or X-Games culture. They skated and/or mountain biked in the off season. Some of them temporarily left school during the ski season to attend a ski racing academy. Many students participated in open skate nights at another academy, Windell’s, which focused on developing competitive skaters and park ski/snowboard competitors.

I spent a lot of time skiing at Timberline Lodge, from when it would first open up to the last days of the regular season, before summer season and the really high lift ticket prices (Timberline is one of the few places in North America with a nearly year-round schedule. Summer skiing focuses on ski teams and ski team clinics). I saw Hood/Wy’East in a lot of its moods—from those gorgeous bluebird days to stormy wet snow days with clouds drifting around to obscure the run above the tree line so that it was impossible at times to discern what was snow and what was air.

More than that, a lot of those skiers/boarders are risk-takers, especially the ones interested in doing the jumps and obstacles in the park courses. A lot of the younger ones embrace a certain degree of outlaw mentality, especially in the era when I was plotting the Netwalk books and putting them together. Sometimes I had the chance to talk about cyberpunk concepts and dust skiing on the Moon with people on the lifts with me—and I came away surprised by the number of people who were eager to consider dust skiing on the Moon, or hanging out on space stations, and so on.

It wasn’t just the slopes. It was Hood/Wy’East in its own right. The feel of both the day lodge and Timberline Lodge, the mixture of families and risk takers. Lower down, with the rivers and the deep damp woods. Roads leading off into wildernesses that have had people disappear…with no sign of where they went. The perpetual rain in winter that adds to a particular mood. Losing cellular service within a short distance of the main highway. The sign at Timberline’s Wy’East Day Lodge which talks about the “Mt. Hood Triangle”—referring to the way that the slope twists from the summit down to the Lodge, sending unwary climbers, skiers, and boarders into the canyons to the west of Timberline instead of directly down to the Lodge.

The self-reliant culture of many of the residents of the area, because a good storm can pretty much isolate the villages along the highway.

I encountered those situations lots of times. The windstorm that not only shut school down early for the winter holiday due to trees falling everywhere but sent a landslide across the main highway. Driving to work only to see workers cutting up a big tree that fell across the highway due to high winds. Losing power during the day and continuing to teach classes.

There’s more to that mountain culture. The number of isolated residences along the small logging roads off of the highway, and people who camp out on Forest Service land nearly year-round. The drifting families who appeared when it was time to work at the resorts during the ski season. The very closely-knit Hispanic families living on the Mountain. Students who hadn’t even gone all the way into Portland, forty miles away, much less any other places. People who were hiding out from other people, for assorted reasons.

A mixture of high poverty and high wealth.

All of those elements go into the backstory and worldbuilding of the Netwalk series. The independence and outside-of-the-box thinking that drives the younger members of the family who were raised in that culture which tends toward an obscured outlaw attitude, even amongst those who don’t necessarily embrace it.

A cyberpunk attitude, so to speak. Which carries over very nicely into the Netwalk world I created.

Hood/Wy’East isn’t the only setting in the Netwalk books, but in so many ways it is the dominant one because it plays so big a role in making Melanie, then Bess, who they are. It hints at the eventual estrangement between Melanie and Diana. It creates Bess as a risk-taker comfortable in space, for her own reasons.

Want to read the books that meld skiing and cyberpunk? Try the second book in The Netwalk Sequence, Netwalk, here. Link includes Kindle

Or get Netwalker Uprising, the third book in the series, on sale this week for $2.99 at all major ebook outlets. Link includes Kindle, find it here.

Skiing on the Moon shows up in other volumes, namely Learning in Space and Netwalking Space.

Or if you’d like to chuck a few coins in my direction, here’s my Ko-fi.

One thing that popped up on Bluesky today was a discussion of opening paragraph hooks and just how necessary they are. I’ve had thoughts about such discussions for some time now, though mine relate more to the opening of novels rather than short stories (which are completely different things, in my opinion).

But what constitutes a “hook” depends on who you talk to. There are many writers for whom a hook has to involve action of some sort. I’ve seen this over and over on one writing blog where a particular writer has a regular first paragraph “turn the page” challenge—and far too often the hook that wins the poll is based on a concept known as in medias res, interpreted as “story must begin with action!” Fights! Swashbuckling! Car chase! Clash of armies! Murder! Mayhem! Alarums! Then the reader has to figure out what happens in the world, what world they’re in, and just what on earth is important besides this very active, dramatic scene.

On the flip side, there are writers who decide to begin with massive worldbuilding bloat. Panoramic views of the setting, lovingly described in exquisite detail, but no sign of a potential conflict, a particular writing voice (other than lovely words), or a character who might just turn out to be engaging. Or else the reader gets subjected to a long chronicle of history that makes the New Testament “begats” somehow seem thrilling.

The extremes of both approaches are—bluntly—wrong. Story must begin where the story really begins. Sometimes that’s a quiet opening that doesn’t throw the reader right into the middle of a scene with pew-pew-pew happening all around, but…there’s that little twist hinting at a potential conflict or some sort of disjoint with the world the author is building that makes the reader settle in for a good read.

Then there’s the need to care about the characters. I feel that a sense of one of the main characters and how they think and feel needs to be conveyed in, if not the first line, then in that opening paragraph. Doesn’t have to be much, just a little twist here and there that makes me alert and go…hmm, this might be a good read.

What do I mean?

Some examples to consider:

“My life fell apart when I was sixteen. Papa died. He had such a strong heart, yet he died.” Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death.

“We were not born,” said Linette out loud, “to sit and look at the rain.” Sanders Anne Laubenthal, Excalibur.

“Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don’t be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anasi story.” Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber.

“A week before she was due to bring me out, I overheard Mrs. Maynard saying I was “not quite…” That’s just how she said it. “Elvira’s not quite…”” Jo Walton, Half A Crown.

“The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, splatters of blood staining the snow around it. It was minus fifteen degrees Celsius and a storm had just passed hours before.” Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice.

“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.” N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season.

The enticing factor of each of these openings for me is not the action. It’s the presence of a clear voice for both author and character. There’s movement but the other factor is that the voice makes you want to go on further. We aren’t dropped in the middle of action with characters we don’t care about yet.

What do we know about each of these characters from the opening?

Well, we know that Papa has a strong influence on young Onyesonwu’s life, and that his death not only came as a surprise to her but completely changes her world. That’s clearly a change point for our viewpoint character.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that Linette is dissatisfied with the course of her life before the opening of the book, and resolving this disconnect is going to be a big chunk of the story.

We get a strong sense that the story of Tan-Tan is gonna take us for quite the ride when the narrator cautions us not to be frightened, and that they want you to trust them.

Elvira obviously somehow doesn’t fit into the society that Mrs. Maynard is bringing her “out” into.

And, well, there’s a dead body but the viewpoint character is very matter-of-fact and detail-oriented. That suggests a particular outlook upon the world where detail and being unreactive is important to that character.

Finally, the end of the world is viewed as…well, something to move beyond. Which provokes curiosity—how could the end of the world be less interesting than what happens after that?

All these openings draw me in. All have a compelling voice that tells me somewhat about the characters that are going to be depicted in their relative books. I’m looking at the pile of books I pulled these openings from and it’s all I can do to set them aside and keep on writing instead of revisiting them (except perhaps for Excalibur, which comes from the early ‘70s and…may have been visited by the Feminist Suck Fairy, from associated points that I remember. But it also leans very heavily on tropes from C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and Charles Williams’s Taliesin through Logres).

Needless to say, I’m not a Big Name Author or Editor. I’m sure I’ve fallen into the same traps that I shake my head at in this short essay (fighting back the urge to start bringing up books in Vellum to make sure—right now I’ll confess that I have a tendency to start with dialogue).

But I do strive to have voice in my work, both my own and my characters.

Even when I fail.

Like what you’ve read? Feel free to toss a little coin into my Ko-fi here. The horses appreciate it.

Welcome! This year I’m creating a set of posts/blogs/whatever you want to call them about the “story-behind-the story” for my backlist. This month, the Netwalk Sequence is my featured series. It’s the first series I published and as I went through a recent update, I was surprised at how relevant it is, even though the books are over a decade old.

Housekeeping note: all related posts will be linked at the bottom on the Substack publication.

Generational family politics. Rebuilding government structures after several decades of political unrest. The impact of several disruptive, mysterious technologies on worldwide stability. The effect of a secretive family history on its descendants when all is revealed. Redemption for several difficult characters throughout the series arc.

All this and more makes up The Netwalk Sequence. I first started crafting the worldbuilding behind these stories in the ‘90s, as speculation about what future interactions on the internet would look like. I also wanted to think about bioremediation technology as well as politics. While I’ve lost a lot of the notes and early short stories I crafted as part of this series, I remember much of it.

The initial foundation has a couple of roots. Part came from a trunked thriller/horror novel I crafted back in the ‘80s. Not much of the novel remains in the Netwalk books, except for the character of Sarah Stephens and her history before we see her in Life in the Shadows.

The other part comes from a Fourth of July campout on the rim of Hells Canyon, just a short distance from the Hat Point lookout (i.e., the steepest part of the canyon). My husband and I were idly watching clouds blow out over the canyon and dissipate. We watched a big raptor—probably a golden eagle—soar over the canyon, and started speculating about what it might be like to have a raptor’s perspective on flight. Note: for you younger folks, this was long before GoPros were possible.

I started poking at the notion, off and on, as a side project while wrestling with the story that eventually became the Goddess’s Honor series (which has its own story). For whatever reason, the story twisted and became about wireless communication implants that would allow a form of telepresence in what I eventually ended up calling virtual (nothing at all like our current virtual reality. Alas, I can’t experience it because I am very prone to vertigo).

Add in the rather grim perspective I was starting to develop about where politics was headed, and the universe of the Netwalk Sequence started to take shape. A world where things had fallen apart for various reasons. But—also a world where four generations of powerful women were part of the crafters of new structures. Where, for the most part, even the most twisted of characters end up with the opportunity to redeem themselves while some of those considered to be “good” end up making mistakes or becoming twisted.

Did I succeed in writing the story I first envisioned? Yes—and no. A recent copy edit and update using a new formatting tool to get around the clumsy original depiction of subvocal communication showed me that while these books have their own flaws, they’re still pretty readable. Some of the themes present in the Sequence reappear in the Martiniere books, but…in a rather different form.

I also chose to write about the impact of this technology on powerful, wealthy leadership rather than the person in the street (which was one criticism the books received in their original form). For one thing, this world as envisioned limits access to this technology. For another, writing about how said technology impacts the everyday person is a completely different story. It also requires a deeper look at this particular world for the ordinary person and, frankly, that goes into a grimmer depth than I’m comfortable writing at this time in my life.

I would have preferred not to see elements of these books start appearing in our lives. Alas, we have the Parker Landreths out there, as well as the Sarah Stephenses.

That said, except for parts of the Martiniere books and the standalone Beating the Apocalypse, the Netwalk books are probably the darkest things I’ve written in long form. The ending is somewhat happy, even though there are still shadows on the horizon (which will always be the case). Again, I’m not particularly comfortable writing unhappy endings, though even the happy endings will have shadows lurking. It’s probably appropriate that this first book is called Life in the Shadows, with several short pieces also having “shadow” titles (“Winter Shadows,” “Shadow Harvest,” and “Christmas Shadows”).

Life in the Shadows is on sale during January 2025 for $2.99 at major ebook outlets (including Kindle), at this link:

https://books2read.com/lifeintheshadows

Stay tuned for more blogs about the Netwalk Sequence.

And hey, if you already have the book but want to toss a few coins in my direction, here’s the link to my Ko-fi.

Marker-boy is demonstrating how well he’s doing when it comes to being loosely tied to the pickup bed. Don’t worry, I spent plenty of time ensuring he knew what being tied meant, and working with him about scary stuff. Plus old Mocha provided plenty of examples about how to stand (um, we won’t talk about Mocha and waiting for the farrier because the old lady is…opinionated. But if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you already know that).

It’s been a relatively mild winter here. There’s some snow in the big pasture but nothing like in past years. Most of our precipitation has fallen as rain, or light snow that melts off. Fortunately, it appears that the mountains are doing better with snow accumulation. At our elevation, the biggest concern about lack of snow is whether it’s recharging groundwater. We do need that low-elevation snow.

In any case, the mildness of the winter (no temps below the teens F) has been good for old Mocha in some respects. She hasn’t needed to cope with trails through the snow to reach hay and water. On the flip side, the dampness and warmth led her to grow a small abscess in one hoof and possibly inflammation in one arthritic knee. I worry because the farrier is becoming a more stressful experience for her, in spite of him being very careful with her and working with her limitations. On the other hand, she seems to be staying warm with her mediumweight blanket and she’s gaining weight back that she lost in the transition between summer and fall.

She’s also becoming more responsive to my call at catching time. In part, that’s fueled by her desire for cookies, and the awareness that if she doesn’t come, Marker’s likely to get a lot of the stuff she really likes. But. She tends to stay at the edges of the herd. She does lie down and roll more than I’ve seen evidence of her doing in the past–perhaps spending the summer with Marker helped develop her confidence about getting down.

Marker boy is still learning. But he’s been making progress in his ground handling, and is much more mannerly. Both horses are at the point where most of the time I can throw the lead rope over their necks and they follow along. Marker wanders when distracted–Mr. ADHD boy, clearly–but he’s being cooperative. I’ve discovered that he is more sure-footed than Mocha was on ice and snow. Some of that is due to him being barefooted where she had to be shod for soundness reasons on her fores, but the other factor is his gaiting ability. He adjusts his speed depending on the footing much more reliably than Mocha does.

Another interesting difference between the two is that I would end up schooling Mocha more intensely because regular repetition within a session usually led to her improving whatever task I was asking her to do. Not so with Marker. If he doesn’t get it within three repetitions, it’s time to move on because otherwise he gets tense, worried, upset, and won’t show improvement. But…if I go back to that task or movement within the same session, or save it for an ask in a later session, he nearly always does it correctly the first or second time. Different minds, and he apparently seems to need that time to let something settle in his processing where Mocha needed the muscle memory practice and correction. I’d say that he’s in his head more than she was–for her it was about getting it set in her body, more than her thinking through it. He has to process it.

Using my words works better with him. He responds positively to soft vocal praise while we’re doing something, or if he’s worried and needs reassurance. His physical reactions to “good boy” or “bad boy” are obvious–if I scold him, he gets the same expression that many dogs do when scolded–hangs his head slightly, ears slump, and he looks dejected. “Good boy” elicits ears up, head up, soft eye. Mocha–well, “quit” served a lot of purposes, but she never particularly reacted to verbal praise. Not like Marker does. I could never quite talk her through a reactive moment like I can him.

It’s all fascinating stuff, and definitely an example of how personalities differ within horses.

Like what you’re reading? I can always use a donation to my Ko-fi. Not only does that help with the horses’ cookie fund, but it encourages me as well.
Donate here.

I’m taking a deep breath in 2025 and starting to do things with my writing work and planning that I probably should have been doing long before now.

First of all, I’m in the process of establishing a domain where it will be easier for me to manage all those fiddly little tweaks in email that need to happen for optimal newsletter processes. I’m going to be diving into fixing newsletter stuff I should have been doing a while ago, as well as looking for new subscriptions to my monthly publishing newsletter. Given the chaotic nature of current social media, I’m getting back to the concept of the mailing list.

(p.s., if you want to sign up for the list, here’s the link: https://joycespublishingnewsfromwideopenspaces.kit.com/a65eaa89cd )

Second, I’m going through my backlist and updating not just the back matter but performing a copy editing review. Most of the books that have gone through the Vellum formatting program have already undergone this process. However, especially for my science fiction, I’m in the process of reformatting some books because Vellum now has a text tool. The reformat has the greatest impact on my Netwalk Sequence series because I’m able to get around some clumsy formatting issues with regard to electronic communications. That’s a huge chunk of the Netwalk books and, for me at least, the result seems to provide better readability and faster pacing.

Third, as I go through this updating process, I’m going to be featuring selected books and series in blog/newsletter posts. I’ve outlined what I want to do with each set and this is an opportunity for readers to see the story-behind-the-story–where I found inspiration, discussions of what I was trying to do with each book, and even what I really liked about the particular work under scrutiny.

Hey, I wouldn’t be writing these stories if I didn’t like them.

I will be providing links connecting the related series/books on Substack…possibly here as well, though it can get complicated.

Don’t worry! I’ll still be writing about horses and other musings here as well as these organized book blogs. I promise not to drown you in book stuff. In fact, some of my loosely planned ideas include a musing on stretching and exercising in my life, some reflections as I reread Ursula K. Le Guin’s essays, and who-knows-what-else as the year goes by.

It’s just…well, I have these books I’ve made. I like these stories, or else I wouldn’t have written them. They deserve greater visibility than they’ve received over the years, so this is my attempt to maybe attract a bigger readership.

I also have plans for original writing–not just the threatened fantasy trilogy that I’ve been evading by writing a lot of other stuff, but a horse memoir focused on an equestrian era that I see fading these days. Might even scribble a short story or two.

Meanwhile, here’s the link for the first book in the series I’m featuring this month, The Netwalk Sequence. Life in the Shadows is a collection of short stories I wrote when trying to work through some character dynamics in the later books of the Sequence. It takes you through the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship of Sarah Stephens and Diana Landreth as they wrestle with the implications of the early emergence of a wireless communication implant technology originally intended to control bioremediation bots. Sarah is sucked more and more into a political world while Diana is a corporate tech leader–and while their goals sometimes align, when they don’t…the results can be problematic.

Life in the Shadows is on sale for $2.99 at all major ebook outlets throughout the month of January. Link includes Kindle.
https://books2read.com/lifeintheshadows