Hwæt! This is Eric Bourland’s home site, online since 1998. Speak friend and enter.
Black lives matter. Women are people. Science is real. Read books to children. Teach real history. Fight for voting rights. Dismantle patriarchy. Dismantle rape culture. Dismantle white supremacy. Constrain capitalism. Keep religion out of government. Separate church and state. Pay reparations for centuries of slavery. Restore stolen lands. Stand up to bullies. Respect veterans. This is not radical. This is the least a civilized society can do. – EB
Advice on writing fiction
Think of an interesting story you will enjoy telling. Make a plan for your story and mend the plan as you go. Have at least one likeable character. Villains can be likeable. Each character needs a distinct voice. Characters should learn. Build characters, not worlds....
Mrs. Breeding
TV, movies, audiobooks: I'm being poured into. Reading: I'm an active investigator. Both are good, neither bad. Mrs. Breeding, in my fifth grade class, read to us. The formidable woman softened as the story, told by herself, progressed.
grandmother
Happy birthday to Latha Berneice Dollar, my grandmother (mother's side), who would today have been age one hundred and nine. She wrote long, lonely letters to me in her spidery handscript mostly while drunk. An articulate, observant writer who had a difficult life not...
Foreverness
I've been trying to get better about this. Before I speak or write anything I try to stop and think: is this something that a corporation wants me to say, for the corporation's profit? Have I been programmed? Or have I done my own thinking? Not just a corporation; any...
I wear a mask because
1. there are people in my life too young to be vaccinated 2. and people who are old and more vulnerable 3. and immunocompromised (eg. fighting cancer) 4. because that crap is airborne 5. and has already killed a bunch of people 6. and keeps mutating because people...
A good-bye note I posted to FB
Friends, just a little warning. I'm going to phase out my Facebook account, for a few reasons, perhaps chief among them being privacy. I would like to be slightly less easy to locate. Not that I have illusions about privacy anymore. I am also concerned that FB...
Know your vulnerabilities
Know your vulnerabilities. It's ok to have them; just know what they are. Marketers, bullies, and other manipulators see your vulnerabilities more clearly than you do (usually), and use them against you. It's also ok to be afraid -- act responsibly anyway. You got this.
Planned Parenthood
Yet again, a group of cowards has massed in front of the Planned Parenthood in my neighborhood to harass women seeking healthcare. A smug demagogue stands in the road & smirks through a bullhorn. One reason I contribute to PP every month. Down with bullies....
A very kind and unexpected review
Holy moly. I'm humbled by a kind and thoughtful review from Mr. Swanwick, a writer I have always respected and admired. https://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2021/12/short-fiction-review-to-honorable-and.html?m=0
Occasional reminder
Occasional reminder: the media do not care about democracy or you; the internet is a psychological tool designed to overwhelm you; marketers want to prescribe your language, identity, and desires. One answer is to read books to children, often.
mental health PSA
PSA, for whomever needs to hear this: For your own mental health, it is OK to block authoritative people. In case you don't need any more authority. It is healthful to conclude a correspondence that diminishes you. Even if that means kicking over a few tables. Trust...
Re-reading The Lord of the Rings
I've been slowly re-reading The Lord of the Rings; I'm into the Return of the King now. It's as spellbinding as it was when I first read it forty years ago. It's worth returning to every few years. A few things of which I'm reminded, as I read: 1) Tolkien had a story...
Lazy words
amazing, astonishing, astounding, awesome, and so on let me decide for myself if something is amazing amazing means you stand and stare at something, not necessarily because it’s neato breathtaking brilliant chilling effervescent egregious . . . this word means “out...