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  Raise your hand if you'd rather have a world run by artists, scientists, teachers, and doctors instead of industrialists, bankers, warmongers, and psychopaths.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 9/16 What's a topic you could really use an expert’s help with? Somebody please explain to me the exact soil composition of 6th century Ireland! What color was it? How thick? How many strata and at what depth? Was there too much poo? Not enough? If you were to lift a ten tonne boulder out of the ground, how much of the ground would come with it? I have similar inquiries about houses, horses, and toilets.

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  #WordWeavers 9/5 If your antagonist could justify their actions in one sentence, what would they say? Matholwch: “I don’t care if she’s upset that I enslaved her countrymen wholesale, the Queen stepped out of line and I had to show her who wears the breeches here!” ** The High King of Erinne is seldom asked to justify his own actions and he’s (apparently) not very good at it. **

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  When I'm not feeling rushed, I like to use my morning recess time to walk up to the small cafe on top of the hill near my school for a coffee and biscuit. It's about a five-minute walk through the Puerto Rican campo. Sometimes I see the look on some of the students and faculty's faces and I'm pretty sure most of them think I'm eccentric and insane for not driving there and back. Well, today I got to see this beautiful egret snap up a foot-long lizard fo...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 8/27 Tell a story, real or fictional, about an object on your desk. The damn 3D printer is not working again. Here I am working through lunch, my tuna sandwich off to the side of my desk, barely touched while I tinker with factory settings, filament sizes, pre-heating temperatures and every fine-hair piece of technical minutia the stupid machine can throw at me. I'm just trying to print out a dinky keychain. But it's no use. I run the calibration sequence o...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 8/28: Our next featured creator is a pun-slinger. Share a pun. True tales from the science classroom: “Hot dog, class! We’re having a Catch-up day!” Class groans “I knew you’d relish that!” More groans “Hey! It takes a lot to mustard up the courage to say these puns.” Groans with chuckles. Student 1: “That’s awful, Mr. Corby!” “Don’t be sauerkraut about it” OOOOOOhhhhh!! Student 2: “You on a roll, Mr. Corby!” “I’m not on a roll, I’m on a bun!” WHHHOOOAAAA!

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 8/29 Share some of the last things you looked up for what you’re working on now What's that spinning wheel game you see in casinos? But not roulette. The vertical wheel with the double stars? (Looks it up) Oh! It's just called Wheel of Fortune... (stares at computer screen for a few seconds) New search. How old is Vanna White anyway?

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  #ScribesAndMakers 8/29 Did you know what you wanted to be at 11? At that point, it was either a scientist (so I could blow myself up in wacky explosions) or it might have been the period I was looking to be a doctor. I was set to go into medicine for a bit until I realized how much squick I'd be looking at. In retrospect, I might have enjoyed getting a medical degree. I've met some pretty rad doctors who travel, are politically active, and have their own music careers on the s...

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  Dude! My drawing pad is, like, watching me… So I drew a big eye in graphite a few months back and kept shoving this drawing pad under heavy books and now, voila! It has grown a new eye and has therefore achieved consciousness and will hereby watch and judge every sketch I make from now on. What have I done? #art #pencil #eye #NotAtAllCreepy

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  #ScribesAndMakers 7/8 How many spaces do you leave after a period/full stop? At least 5 but no more than 20. It depends how I feel. I try to hit a pace that feels like a thoughtful old sage. Maybe one whose mind is old and wearied. And he has trouble forming his thoughts. Because he took too much acid back in the 90's. This is why my novel of 300 pages only has a 10K word count.

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  I sketched this as an anniversary gift to my wife. The photo is from our circus tour in 2008. #MastoArt #pencil #sketch #drawing #love

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/21 What medium would you choose to depict a visual image of a lake? Why not sidewalk chalk? (Note: I can’t actually do this, I just thought it was neat)

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  #WordWeavers 5/21 How do you make your MC likable or relatable to in the first chapter? Simple! Just remember these easy conversions and mix and match accordingly 1 Nazi punched in the mouth = 3 kittens rescued from a tree. 1 sandwich given to a hungry orphan = 4 times they stood up to the school bully. 2 cyber trucks hacked and lit on fire = 1 miracle cure for cancer. This came in handy while I was writing my historical fiction of Hypatia.

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  Self portrait drawn in pencil and charcoal #Art #PencilCharcoal #Sketch #Selfie #Pencil #Drawing

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 5/22 How well would your current WIP work as a play? As a good play? No. Not at all. My first book might have been more suited and had more personal tension and character to work with. My current WIP has that as well, but there's way too much spectacle. Battles, and giants, and sea voyages would just be big distraction numbers on stage. It could make a decent movie if done well, but unless Broadway/Disney is doing another full spectacle, no substance cash grab, theat...

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 5/23 Share a creative frustration you have. Everyone: Prescribe a 'creative antidote' not as a solution, but as disruptive exercise. I'm frustrated that I'm slogging so long through editing this one portion of my story. If it's so tedious to edit, it must be slow and boring to read, right? That's my concern. Antidote: Clearly this story needs more action, so let's insert an invasion of an underground mole society. Yeah,...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/24 Warp? Now y'see, there are good kinds of warped such as: "My mind is a conduit to another dimension and it is my purpose in life to channel it through my writing and art for the sake of humanity!" And then there are bat-shit crazy kinds of warped, like this gem taken from the journal of none other than US Health Sectretary RFK (JFC): “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking abo...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/25 Stella has been dreading this moment... That moment when she finally worked up the courage to grab that last slimy hair poking out of the shower drain. She twisted it around her fingers, choking back the rising tide of revulsion in her throat, and gave the cord of hair a solid pull. The scummy clog dislodged with a wet pop. Stella cringed as the mass of hair squirmed, twisted around, and opened it's gunk-rimmed mouth "Aw crap! It's hella bright...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/26 Favorite vampire? He's a complicated character, but ya gotta love Cassidy from Garth Ennis' The Preacher series. Who wouldn't want to party with an Irish punk vampire?

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  #writerscoffeeclub 5/7: Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand the story? I'd say not at first. It can be very intriguing to see a character make choices that we don't initially understand. It would probably be the most satisfying to see those motivations revealed as the story unfolds, but sometimes I like it when there's one or two unanswered questions about the characters. Not everything has to be explained down to a tee.

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  #WordWeavers 5/7 Does your antagonist have any redeeming qualities? I'm trying to write Matholwch with as much humanity as possible. I want us to get the sense that he may, in fact, be a decent guy, a just king, and a caring husband. However, like humans, he's prone to buck under pressure and it doesn't take much for his darker side to come out.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 5/9 Share the first line of your current WIP. Everyone: Are you engaged? "The fires never died in the halls of the king of Cantre’r Gwaelod. From midwinter to the summer harvests, Gwyddno Garanhir ensured that every feast was celebrated to the fullest, demanding that his braziers were kept full and roaring to match his toasty generosity. Every night of the year, except one." (This counts as a single line if your monitor is wide enough.)

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  #ScribesAndMakers 10 May: If your project will be part of a series, do you know that before you start? I always had an idea that Taliesin would turn into a series. But I didn’t really think it through completely before starting book 1 so I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull off long term set-ups and plot twists really. We’ll see. Plenty of other stand-alone short stories I wrote turned into series by popular demand.

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  Good morning! Lovely day for running 15K #PuertoRico #Running

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  Getting some sketch practice in today. Turns out its really fun to draw my wife's butt.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/8 What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today? Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time by myself growing up, sometime in my backyard by my basketball hoop and sometimes on secluded beach shores. I used to make up whole epic tales using the geography of wherever I was and just think about their history and timeline. That probably gave me some world-building experience from a young age.

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  @GreetingsOut@universeodon.com Good! And he can keep his grubby little (and I do mean little) hands off from now on!

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  #WordWeavers 5/6 What writerly challenge have you encountered recently? In a sense, my ego. "I've got some free time now. Sure I can start two more projects while finishing up the last three!" 5 hours and 4 shots later... Total word count: 622 "This is crap. I'm crap. My writing is crap. Crap, crap, crap!!"

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 5/5 Have you taken inspiration from something that could have happened but didn't? That seems like a pretty broad swath of fiction. I write historical fiction and I think that's the only thing I write about. There are somethings that are flat out impossible but, given enough a large enough time frame, that list shrinks down pretty low. Yeah, chances are there wasn't a 300 foot giant walking around Wales in 545 AD, but it's not against the laws of physics. So...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 5/3 When you see the word 'read', is your first instinct to read it as present tense or past tense? I always read “read” except that time I read “read”.