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Those of you reading this on Tumblr have probably already seen my initial drabbles on this topic, but I wanted to flesh things out a little more here. This year for Camp Nanowrimo (at least, the one in April), I'm planning on taking some of the various writing prompts related to the "humans are weird" trope. The general idea is that, if alien cultures were to look on human beings, they would find us decidedly odd. Humans do weird things like try to pet nearly every animal that comes within reach, or collecting worthless objects, or laughing when we're scared or nervous. We talk to ourselves and make up songs and give inanimate objects names. The way we're built, we can do things like throw objects accurately and with force, or continue fighting or running even while injured, or break down and cry at the sight of that cursed Sarah McLachlan sad puppy commercial. From an outside perspective, we are just strange. It's a bit of fun, and it definitely gives me ...

As some of you may have noticed with my round-ups, I love to re-read books. I'll frequently re-read an entire series in order to prepare for a new book in that series, partially to remind myself of what happened before and partially to remember why I care about these characters and worlds. Some, I just re-read because it's comforting - sometimes, it's helpful to take a step back and go with what you know for a little bit. A co-worker once asked why I bothered to re-read books. "It's not like you don't know what happened!" Well, yes and no. I freely admit that my memory for details isn't fantastic - I can usually remember broad strokes, but not the nuances of the book. The nuance is what makes the whole experience of reading enjoyable. Re-reading also lets me focus on something different each time. My husband mentioned this with some of the mysteries he's currently re-reading. He remembers who did the crime, and now he's reading the book to ...

I'm not the best when it comes to protesting. I'm well aware that there are some things going seriously painfully badly in the US, and it's difficult to figure out what to do or how to do it. Things like marches and rallies are a great way to make grievances known, but they're not exactly what you'd call "anxiety friendly." Add to that a problem with large crowds of people, and I'm not marching anytime soon. It means that I feel like I can't always help out in the fight. There are certainly groups of protesters who believe that if you don't make the effort to show up in person, you're not really dedicated to the cause. While intellectually, I know this is not true, it still stings. There's always the question of "am I doing enough?" March 8 is International Women's Day, and in conjunction with that, the organizers of the Women's March are planning  A Day Without Women . I'm planning to take part in this, but I ...

So a few weeks ago, one of the people in my writers' group asked if she could do an email interview with me for her online magazine, Pif. I said sure, and so  here it is ! Her questions were great, and they got me thinking quite a bit. One of the things that annoys me about certain games is that there is a "right" way to win - if you follow these steps, then you'll win nine times out of ten. To me, that stops being a game and starts being a puzzle, and after I've solved a puzzle once, I'm less inclined to solve it over and over. Being able to play a game multiple times and getting a different result each time (or even having a similar result via a completely different path) makes it more interesting to play. For me, reading and writing are similar - if there's one "right" way for a character to reach their goal, then it stops being interesting to read or to write. And if it's not interesting to write, it's definitely not going to be i...