Thoughtful commentary for the writing community:

This is one of our favorites!

Merry Christmas!

It all started in 1955 with a misprint in a Colorado newspaper and a call to Col. Harry Shoup's secret military hotline. Shoup played along with the tiny voice who called, and a tradition was born. From the NPR archives.

Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled--no wait--send us your best near future space adventure. www.baen.com/contest-jbmssa

Check in out:

Feverishly working on this

Cat looking out window becomes mythical Christmas creature.

Even in the cold of deep space, light finds a way. May your season be bright in all the ways that matter.

Harvest Mice Photo Credit: Dean Mason Is this not seriously adorable???

So true--except here in Texas, it's raccoons on the roof. Possums stick to the fence tops.

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

If the universe is expanding, so can we. Here’s to a holiday season filled with growth, wonder, and starlight.

This holiday, remember: every heartbeat is a transmission, every kindness a ripple through spacetime. Keep yours hopeful and welcoming.

Twitter (X) tries to "reprogram" its users. The average user gets limited engagement for what they WANT to talk about, and more engagement for drama bait. If you don't chase the algorithm, you get de-boosted—Your actual interests getting almost no attention at all. I prefer quality over quantity.

Again...if they REALLY wanted to address illegal immigration, they'd be jailing those who employee illegals, not wasting billions on brutality.

Every great novel starts with a few words, a phrase, a vision, an idea. And a shitload of work.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but you’re right on time. Today, make something that tomorrow will thank you for.

Every story starts with one brave line, every day with a choice. Keep moving, keep imagining, keep building the future you want.

For the first time in (at least my adult) life, I'm out amongst the Black Friday shoppers -- only because I had to drive my child to work. OMG folks. I'm mean, it's festive, in a terrifying, you may die in traffic today, kind of way.

Before the advent of pasteurization, milk caused 38% of food born illnesses. Today, it's 1%.

8,000 words of optimistic, realistic, near-future space exploration sci-fi. Contest open until February 1. 2026.

Happy thanksgiving. I hope yours offers respite and familial warmth.

In the novel I'm writing, a U-boat floods as you may never have seen it--at depth, of a sudden, when an alien kicks in the door.

Man, the IQ over on Twitter by the Twit is stunningly low.

Because someone asked, and I'm too busy with my novel to put out the complete collection, some of my short stories are available on Amazon & Audible:

Trump does not understand (or hopes his cult doesn't) the most basic tenet of American government, that the people make the laws, not a king.

disburse: to pay out money disperse: to scatter or thin out until it all disappears. People and fog can both disperse. dispurse: not a word, but if it were, it would mean when your handbag isn't functioning correctly

I used a leading AI detector on a story I sold to Analog years before the advent of LLMs, and it thought 28% was AI generated. So...does this mean we're all in a sim or...

In less than a year, with only minor, agreeable diet changes and no medication, I've completely reversed a 20 decline in cholesterol health. Never give up. Never surrender.

In 2022, I paid $101 for a Leaf Razor and 100 good razor blades. 50 weeks later, shaving daily, 25 blades remain and I've saved $120. By the end of the next box of blades I'll have saved $500. The Leaf works great and is going strong. cstuarthardwick.com/2022/12/06/t...

To those who say illegals should be rounded up as lawbreakers, do you also support locking up those who break the law by hiring illegals? Because that would actually work--curb illegal immigration without the brutality or absurd waste.

To be clear, comparatively clean fusion power may be in our future, but it won't be "cold" and won't be radiation free. Even aneutronic fusion--if ever realized--must necessarily emit huge amounts of x-rays, with much, much higher losses. There are no way around physics.

Ms. Brown speaking the truth 🔥

Such claims are always BS. This is a Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor, a lab demo that can fuse hydrogen--releasing gamma rays but not net power, and is really just a fancy plasma globe. There is no such thing as fusion without radiation--period, but if you don't know science, you'll fall for anything.

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard. Planning a novel is harder. Crafting a novel with narrative and emotional depth...priceless.

This, I say as a long-time student of history and economics who holds an MBA, is correct:

In grade school, we saw an old film in which Walt Disney prophesied that one day, cars would have TVs to entertain the kids on road trips. I thought the idea horrible, a world with no peace to read and think. I was so, so very right.

Tax the rich, pay the people, & spread the power. That's the mission of @patrioticmillionaires.org. Founder Erica Payne joins me to talk about eliminating the US wealth disparity & making sure that politicians know who really holds the power in this country: the PEOPLE youtu.be/1xOxtVvNTOA?...

I'd like to underline this: The harder you fight accepting that you may be wrong, the more wrong ideas you fail to correct. The more you hide being wrong from others, the more obvious it becomes to us all.

A glimmer of hope on a dark horizon. I grew up bigoted against gays and same sex marriage, AND I WAS WRONG. If a man can grow up, so can a nation.