The Wordsmith's Forge

This cast list is a bonus perk to make up for recent delays and vagaries in handling the Poetry Fishbowl material.  It will also be useful for the mid-month fishbowl coming on Tuesday, which will feature Hart's Farm as the theme.

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 Pink spidery things.

 Okay, this is cool.

my_partner_doug tipped me to this article about cougars in the midwest.  Actually, the sightings span parts of the midwest, great plains, and southwest.  Cougars are re-entering their historic territory.  Folks have mentioned hearing them in Illinois a few times during my life.  I'm thrilled to see apex predators expanding their range again.  We need them.

What does this mean for humans?  Well, cougars are really shy; they don't like people and prefer to avoid contact.  If you see one, it will usually run.  They don't like really big prey, so spreading your arms or coat to make yourself bigger is a good tactic.  They rarely bother big livestock like adult cows or horses.  But if there's little food around, they may go after smaller animals such as calves, foals, sheep, or goats.  So good containment is important, and preferably away from woods and rivers where cougars like to live.  The rare cases of cougars attacking humans are usually very small children, and you shouldn't let toddlers out of immediate reach anyhow. 

On the upside, deer are a favorite cougar food.  When cougars eat deer, the deer become fewer and shyer, which greatly reduces their tendency to eat your garden, or jump in front of your car and maybe kill you in a collision.  Cougars will also eat rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, and various other critters that can annoy humans.  Then too, cougars are great fun for hobby-naturalists because they are so ellusive.  Local nature centers may track them through tufts of fur, pawprints, feeding sites, reports of sightings or soundings, etc. 

Cougars are among the easiest big predators for humans to live with precisely because they are so shy.  Give them a decent amount of their own space and they make pretty good neighbors.  They don't like to be crowded and young adults will leave in search of better territory rather than overfill the local area.

Maybe we'll get some in central Illinois.  There are some fine patches of upland forest and riverbottom land around here.  Plenty of deer and other prey, and more coyotes than are probably good for the ecosystem.  Those we hear yipping fairly often, and they're not supposed to be the top of the food chain.  I'd be happy to see a few cougars come put the cap back on the pyramid.  I think they'd be a better fit for what's here now than wolves or bears.

I saw a reference, which sadly doesn't have a link I can share, about Chinese soldiers dressing up as Tibetan monks to cause trouble.  Some of them are even entering monasteries!

And I just cracked up laughing.  Do they hang lamb chops around their necks before attempting to exterminate wolves?  I wonder how many spooks they have lost to enlightenment.  Okay, they are doing significant damage, but I suspect it's going to be a very Pyrrhic victory at best, if they don't wind up losing more than they gain.  Boy is China going to repress the hell out of those statistics.  I mean I thought it was kooky when they just tried to outlaw unauthorized reincarnation, but now they're throwing some of their best dudes to the other side.  I just ... WTF?  Is somebody over there trying to sabotage their sabotage?

The degree to which this is starting to resemble one of my science fiction story arcs, the settling of the planet Shambhala, is just getting freaky.

Catching up on recent activity, I have two new poems on Torn World: "How Skycat Got Her Name" and "Something Big Is Coming."

A long time ago, Circlet Press published my story "Did You Get Your Answers Questioned?" in the paperback anthology Genderflex.  It's long out of print and ridiculously expensive on resale.  Well, Cecilia Tan decided to reprint it in ebook format.  Yay, yay!  You'll be able to read the first published Waterjewel story soon; I'll let you know when. 

It turns out the old contract didn't mention electronic anthology rights because, of course, it was before that branch of publishing was really doing anything.  Instead of being a giant jerk like so many publishers in similar situations ... Circlet Press resolved this issue by offering us writers the payment rate for new ebook publication, for our old reprint rights.  Publisher gets reprints, writers get money, readers get access to old fiction again.  100% gold-plated WIN for everyone.

So if you like speculative erotica, and you want to say "MOAR PLZ" to good business sense, you can buy stuff here.  See also the free reads page.  NSFW.

My poem "After Dark" appears in the May/June 2012 issue of AVENues, which you can find on this page.

rix_scaedu wrote "The First of Her Kind" which follows after the angel stories I prompted; this one was inspired by aldersprig though.  Discrimination in heaven, but with a happy ending.