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Me Me Monday!

Me Me Monday

Welcome to M3: ME ME MONDAY at our FB discussion group – your chance to pop in and tell us about your latest success. Have a new book or short story coming out? Let us know. Just sell something? Let us know so we can cheer you on. HOW IT WORKS: I’ll pin this topic to the top of our FB discussion page for the day. –Please post your announcement as a separate post so we can comment on yours specifically –Check out the other posts and congratulate and share them too! And congratulations!!!

SPACE: Check Out This Bizarre, Blue Space Rock

3200 Phaethon

A bizarre, blue asteroid that acts like a comet and appears to be responsible for the annual Geminid meteor showermade a close flyby of Earth last year, giving astronomers an opportunity to study the object in unprecedented detail. They found that the asteroid is even weirder than they had imagined. Asteroid 3200 Phaethon is a special space rock with a rare blue color and an extremely eccentric orbit that has the object pass superclose to the sun and then out past the orbit of Mars. One orbit takes about 1.4 Earth years. This kind of orbit is more typical for … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT/GIVEAWAY: Dreams and Machines, by Berlynn Wohl

Dreams and Machines

QSFer Berlynn Wohl has a new queer sci fi anthology out: Dreams and Machines. Arriving on another world to negotiate a trade deal, Shane discovers that Earth has another commodity that his hosts desperately crave… Drake throws a party for time-travelers: the invitations will only go out after the event. But then someone knocks on the door… Jac has two lovers, one a cop, one a criminal. Getting off the wretched outpost he calls home in the midst of a galactic war means leaving one of them behind… It all happens in Dreams and Machines. Get it on Amazon Giveaway … Read more

FOR READERS & WRITERS: Losing Our Magic

magic - pixabay

FOR READERS & WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Lou Hoffman: This is for both r and w. I’ve been listening to a lot of fantasy lately and it struck me that in nearly all of them, a major theme is the loss of magic. Perhaps a world or culture used t have magic but nobody knows how to make it work anymore, or it was crushed out of them by an aggressor, or in some cases certain types of magic are “lost,” or even one culture or type of being actively “steals” or “absorbs” the magic of others. … Read more

SCIENCE: Space Shrinks Your Brain

astronaut brains - pixabay

Going to space does more than change the way you look at the world — it also changes your brain. In a new small study, published today (Oct. 24) as a Letter to the Editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany, Belgium and Russia detailed changes in the brains of 10 cosmonauts before and after long-term missions to space, finding “extensive” changes to the brain’s white and gray matter. What these changes mean for the cosmonauts is still an open question. “However, whether or not the extensive alterations shown in the gray and … Read more

FOR WRITERS/READERS: Their First Time

first time - 123rf purchased

FOR WRITERS & READERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Robin Harper: It’s finally arrived… …The First Time between two characters! That magical dance of arrrrouuusal coming to fruition! For readers: What do you look for in that first time? Do you want a fantasy, or a realistic retelling of anyone’s first time with a new partner? For writers: It’s a delicate balance, to write something that is bliss filled without defying too many laws of reality. How do you write first times? Editor’s note: let’s add an extra spec fic element – anyone write or ready any great first … Read more

Space Pirates, Check Out The Skull and Crossbones Nebula!

Skull and Crossbones nebula - ESO

Avast, mateys! Unsheathe your spyglasses and train them on the southern skies. There sails a star-forging nebula on the horizon, and it’s flying the Jolly Roger from its stellar sails! *Ahem* Enough of that. The point is, a cluster of stars out there called NGC 2467 looks like an awesome skeletal nightmare mask in the sky — hence its nickname, the “Skull and Crossbones Nebula.” Today, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a new photo of the nebula’s shrieking “mouth” spitting fresh stars across the cosmic sea. Keeping with the high-seas theme, the Skull and Crossbones nebula lives in the … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT: Death’s White Hands, by Steve Jones

Death's White Hands - SR Jones

QSFer S R Jones has a new queer fantasy book out: The iylmin people cower beneath eternally clouded skies, living in fear of shards of dark stone that hurtle down from on high. These are the Falls, and each one bears the seeds of madness and death. The nightmare creatures born from these poisoned rocks would devour anyone that crosses their path- but not every iylmin they chase is willing to be the prey. Under the endless grey, a traveller moves from city to city, wandering the lonely country paths between sparse pockets of civilisation, hunting the unclean things born … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT/GIVEAWAY: Green Death, by Madeline Ribbon

Green Death

Madeline Ribbon has a new MM dystopian sci fi book out: Green Death. As poisonmaster to the Oligarch, Tryg Sant knows a lot of things others shouldn’t. But when he discovers his family’s darkest secret, his brother tries to kill him. When Tryg’s lover pushes him out of a helicopter and into the poison-filled Exclusion Zone, Tryg finds himself trapped in a dangerous new world, entirely different from the one he expects. Now, Tryg has to learn to survive nearly-feral humans and his own disintegrating mind. Luckily, he’s found an ally in Riot, one of the victims of the Green … Read more

FOR READERS: Bookstores & Queer Books

bookstore - pixabay

FOR READERS Today’s reader topic comes from QSFer Tam Ames: Bookstores/Libraries: As avid readers/authors I think we all have an innate love of bookstores, but do the bookstores in your neighborhood (city/state/country) cater to your queer tastes? Do you have a fair selection of queer books you can flip through? And do they have a queer section, or are queer books now shelved by genre? Writers: This is a reader chat – you are welcome to join it, but please do not reference your own works directly. Thanks! Join the chat