Moment of Silence: Sherri S. Tepper

I think The Fresco is my favorite. I was amused that her characters also sometimes give the warning, "Next time, the hole will be bigger."

>>You're right.
There isn't anyone out there bush-whacking any more--so far as we know.<<

If you haven't already found them, I highly recommend M.C.A. Hogarth and Bard Bloom. I have yet to find anyone going farther out than Bard. He's one of a tiny handful of people I know who sometimes writes in places where the scientific laws are different. World Tree is in fact set on a giant cosmic tree, for instance, and its laws of functionality are set by the 7+12 Creator Gods.

>> I have to wonder though--is it because no one's writing the stuff or if no one's buying it commercially? <<

Some of both. Fortunately, there is crowdfunding.

Well, I've always had an interest in prompts, and I've had people pool resources to buy my stuff before. Those are probably the oldest antecedents.

I got M.C.A. Hogarth into crowdfunding, partly from The Quest of the Godkin Griffin and also when a publishing deal fell through. She'd had fans drooling over the manuscript-in-progress and was heartbroken that the original deal didn't work out. I said, why not just tell your fans what happened, and then ask if they want to buy it? They did. And that spooled into a lot of other stuff.

For a while, I was writing to regular prompts for Sol Magazine, which posted 2-3 contests per month. After that dried up is when I had the idea to try the Poetry Fishbowl. I ran the first two sessions for free, to test the premise; then I added the sponsorship options. It has grown since, and many of the best ideas have come from my fans.