CHERCHEZ LE WEIRD, MON AMOUR

I’m not up to my waist in sand being eaten by insects. Another weird Spring. Lots to distract me, still, my career keeps demanding my attention.

I suppose I’m lucky to have a career, maybe it keeps me sane. Is that laughter I hear?

I did a signing/reading event at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore in Phoenix with Scott Russell Duncan, editor of Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow, and author of Old California Strikes Back, calling ourselves Dos Space Vatos. I had copies of Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song: 15 Gonzo Science Fiction Stories to sell and sign. People bought some, and there are now copies for sale at the store. I hope we stirred up  some excitement about the forthcoming Xicanxfuturism.

 

In June, the weekends of 7, 8 and 14, 15, I’ll be doing my “Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style” class via Zoom as part of the Palabras del Pueblo Writing Workshop. I’m tweaking it to deal with the problems with writing as an imaginative Chicano (Xican, Latin, or even those who live at the fringes of the Global Barrio) in a time of mass deportations.

And, oh yeah, I’m still working on that mass deportation story. I’ve been watching what’s happening–not just the news–taking notes, coming up with something that will be crazy enough to cause laughter and make a few ridiculous truths self-evident.

I’ll also have stories in a couple of anthologies. “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs” will be in Seven to the Stars, and “Doula” will be in Sound Systems, a production of ASU’s Center of Science and the Imagination. No release dates, because that’s the way these things go, but I’ll pass news on as it comes to me.

I’m building up a stockpile of unpublished stories that I’m working on finding homes for. The process will probably result in some amusing adventures in a wacko new world.

Then there’s that novel, Zyx; Or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin. I’m hoping for a break in the socioeconomic turmoil to start bothering small presses about it. If not, I’ll commit some desperate acts like the professional that I am.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing what's necessary to get by, trying to have some fun amid the chaos, and being the same berserk, if aging, scifiista vato in the face of those who would disappear us all.

It turns out that down the street from the library where I work, next to the Hooters, there’s a Sri Hunamaan Vedic Temple with a sign featuring the Monkey God. I would have gotten a picture, but some unhoused people were camped out at the bus stop putting on deodorant and stuff. How’s that for a writing prompt?

CHICANONAUTICA CELEBRATES ANOTHER APOCALYPTIC SPRING

Don't worry, it just another apocalyptic Spring for Chicanonautica, at La Bloga.

Kinda poetic:

In a weird way:

Funny, too:

With cultural revelations:

 

A WRITING PROMPT

 

 

I’ll be teaching another “Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style” class at Summer 2025 Palabras Del Pueblo Writing Workshop (check it out, sign up, it’s be on Zoom). One of the things I am adding more of is writing prompts.

Since I've been busy the last few decades being a writer rather than paying attention to what was going on in creative writing classes, I didn’t know what a writing prompt was. After a while, I figured it out, and am trying to incorporate it into my presentations.

I thought the idea was a bit silly at first. I see the whole world as made up of writing prompts, I go about my business, and run into all kinds of things I take note of. Sometimes they end up as part of a story, but mostly these days I put them on social media across several platforms. 

I’ll be collecting them and using them in my class.

Also, I’ll make part of it about how to create your own writing prompts. You know, that old saying about if you give a man (it’s an old saying, all genders feel included, please) a fish he eats for one day, but if you teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime . . .

It happens to me all the time, like the other day, it had stopped raining, while making my way to my troque to go to work, I had just taken a picture of the glittering drops on a cactus when I noticed, a few door down, a young brown woman in a white bathing suit. This wouldn’t be unusual in the killing heat of the summer, but it was cold. And she was soaking herself down with a garden hose.

As I drove by, it became clear that what I had thought was a bathing suit was underwear, quite utilitarian, with exposed buckles.

Also, I had never seen her or the car at the house before.

Did she get splashed by something, ruining her dress and messing up her car, and she stopped at a random house to clean up?

Was she being pursued by assassins, stopped to change clothes, and triggered the moisture-activated paint to change colors?

Did she drive through a radioactive cloud, and needed to wash away the fallout?

This sort of thing occurs to me when I see something like this.

I can’t turn off my imagination.

The world is my raw material, and I pillage–er,I mean gather constantly.

I am never at loss for ideas, not just for stories (it usually takes about three of these things to make a story), but the little details that make a story come alive. Or maybe I just use them for my social media, or everyday conversation.

My life never gets dull.

CHICANONAUTICA AND XICANXFUTURISM GO LIVE IN PHOENIX

It's more than just weird new words and space vatos with gringo names on Chicanonautica, at La Bloga. 

On the location of an ancient, advanced civilization:

Chicano sci-fi is alive and wild:

Going mano a mano with the new reality:

In a struggle for a future: