Fiction in a Flash ⚡

What I’m Writing

I’ve been making great progress on Temple in the Sky. I was stuck trying to figure out how to introduce some critical backstory for a while. But I had a breakthrough late one night when I couldn’t sleep. Now the story is starting to flow.

I’ll keep on it, but I’m also taking a slight detour. LTUE, a writers conference that I attend every year, is running a flash fiction contest for stories under 1000 words. I’ve got some ideas for an entry. So I’m working on that this week as well. I think I might have to embrace some shorter stories if I’m going to hit my story goal for the year. But I think I can write some interesting ones. So, expect a few shorter stories after I knock out the few I’m currently working on.

What I’m Learning

I’ve been diving into space habitats. In many ways, they make much more sense for expanding the human race into space than trying to terraform a planet. In a space habitat, we would have complete control over the environment with much less effort and danger than trying to live on Mars or the moon. Most importantly, we could simulate Earth’s gravity.

From everything I’ve researched, gravity is the biggest unknown in our space exploration. We’ve observed some of the effects of zero gravity on astronauts on the ISS. For example, check out this article on the flattening of eyeballs that occurs with extended time in weightlessness. But figuring out what zero or even low gravity would do during pregnancy or childhood development is just something we don’t know and don’t have a really good way of finding out.

What I’m Reading

I finished The Perfect and Elysium Fire this week. Both were good. I’ve been a fan of the Revelation Space universe for years, and I’ve read the main series twice. But this is the first time I’ve read the other books in the universe. Both of these books are centered around a couple of detectives in a space police force. They are classic police whodunit stories with the context of space and far-future technology. I highly recommend these two books. Must-reads for sure.