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#rsmarsneededwomen

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.28 — Would your story still work in a vastly different location? Why or why not?

Reluctant Moon: The story is nominally about a moonshot and the lives of the two astronauts (friends and then lovers). In a sense it is an allegory for 1960s America with the prejudice, racism, and sexism; it even has a JFK character (if you squint). It would not work because my world allows me to scramble gender roles throughly and allows the story to be appropriately racy.

Mars Needed Women: Takes place on Mars. It must because the E.M. in EM Mars Colonization Corp is the basis for the satire of the times we are living in and changing that would lose impact and the story's raison d' être.

The Reluctance Series stories featuring the devil-girl are conceptual rewrites, as in the basic plot and character-building is somewhat preserved, but the universe is totally changed to create SF stories the earlier "location" could not support.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.23 — Have you made up any swears or unique sayings for your characters? CW: Crude Language, duh.

There is almost never an opportunity to use conventional or "modern" foul-mouthed language in any of my stories because there is no connection to 19th-21st century Earth. In Mars Needed Women, one character just uses the word asshole; his using it comes off as very quaint since he's a rough character now in his early fifties (but still sexy), talking about how awful he was when young. There are plenty of other made up or repurposed words, but no defined martian "swears." Instead, here is May Ri listening to her daughter:

The teenager, her green eyes sparkling with the same fire her father's eyes often evidenced, explained what she meant in great unvarnished detail. The words "hypocrites" and "misogynists" featured along side martian swear words that made May Ri's ears burn. Mari had studied her father's "situational" rhetoric thoroughly.

In the Reluctance Series, I make up "words." But first, for those who have followed me long enough to have learned about the devil girl, she's funny in that if someone is about to swear, she warns, "Language!" In most contexts (mob, prizefighter, "princess"), whomever she says this to abides, or regrets it if they don't.

The following words may seem like cheats, but give them a moment to sink in before you conclude that. It's amazing how quickly a reader can get used to even nonsense when it has a definite context.

While these are day angel slang, Thorn Rose uses them without much situational awareness (she's a daemon). Day angels have feathered wings and control surfaces, double-shoulders and extra joints to make it work, and use reluctant forces to let them fly. There's also night angels—too many spoilers there—but day angels so far are portrayed as lower class. These "swears" come from them; bear in mind, these people are very human.

Flap v. as in, "Are you flapping crazy?" or intr. "Flap it all!" Not a synonym for sexual intercourse, but it does imply getting hit up side the head with a feathered wing. It serves the purpose.

I originally used in a teen-rated YA!

Flap and fluff n., NSFW originally involving wings and someone male, but you can use it generally for what's implied. Yes, the novel is "racy."

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.21 — Are there facets of your work best understood in the context of when you wrote it?

I think Mars Needed Women will stand the test of time because the struggle for women's rights and self-agency is likely to continue as long as patriarchy survives, sadly. However, it is a novel inspired by this very year despite taking place 110 through 145 years from now. There is plenty of background satire, starting with what the E. M. in EM Mars Colonization Corp stands for, the States becoming a theocracy, and there being Co-presidents and appointed Members of Congress— all of it starting in 2025. Thirty years from now the story may either remind people of a quaint last reactionary gasp of anti-democracy, or discussion of the same warning signs noticed-but-ignored before Hitler destroyed his homeland. I hope the former and fear the latter.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.16 — International Day of Light/Peace. Tell us about your favorite use of symbolic imagery.

If I understand correctly, plenty of it in this passage. #RSMarsNeededWomen

May Ri didn't seethe for long. A woman, especially, couldn't fight the male-dominated system. She knew to grab opportunities. Five days later she found herself outside, tethered, magnetic shoes clamped to the spine of the ship. Behind, aft, she saw the black radiator plate beyond which lay the nuclear rocket. A totally reflective, totally misnamed "starship" shuttle stood as a fat needle at the bow. A clip from an ancient vid called 2001: A Space—May Ri couldn't remember what—had featured in EM Mars propaganda. The four rings looked like that, but silver. The stars, though: Static, unmoving, except as reflected in the rotating rings. Enthralling.

Still…

She regarded herself in the mirror-sheened stainless steel cladding of the transit vehicle. Her tools? She could easily mischaracterize them as a mop and a wash bucket (they weren't), and herself as an exhausted housewife with a sweaty brow (it was) left home to do worthless work. Yet… she could properly characterize it as removing rocket burn debris and polishing out micro-meteor gouges. Most of all, she was doing it in a spacesuit, not Mom's kitchen apron.

"Kind of exciting," she had to admit.

"May Ri?" a comm duty officer asked.

She smiled. "Nothing."

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.16 — Antagonist POV: What do you like the most about yourself? CW: Zealotry

Ezekiel Stan managed to get a number of townships to form a coalition with him, even though that got them isolated from the rest of the planet. Turns out he got interviewed once and answered that question.

"I stood up. I will do the hard thing, like I did building the first settlements on Mars. When the colonization company went bankrupt, I recognized the opportunity to fashion Mars into a perfect Kingdom of God and took that opportunity despite pushback from the other directors. The ungodly are easy to intimidate because they fear death, especially if you back up your words with action, when you get the job done and ask permission later, if then needed at all. I found men that were able to take up the good cause, to fight—modern Zealots willing to shred the bounds of our corrupt society, to whip the misguided until they see the light or cower, to gag the voices of the harlots and perverted, so that we can raise generations of children protected from hearing other than the Good Word, never sullied by the temptations and demonic ways of the unfortunates left behind on Earth. What I do is noble and shows the worth of a man."

BTW: He's the villain.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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A répondu dans un fil de discussion

@nemorosa

Blurbs? Why are they so difficult? Advice, please? Where do I even start?

Think about the story. What comes to mind? Write a few sentences about the event that makes it special, or that person, or that mystery. Don't even worry about spoilers.

Keep it short.

If no ideas come to mind, try answering the writers challenge prompts, you know, the ones you mentioned in your hashtags but thinking you want to say something about a specific story or the characters in that story.

I recently wrote a novel and I spent much of March and a lot of April answering prompts with #RSMarsNeededWomen as the subject. A lot of those turned out to be great blurbs. Write a lot of them. You'll find your blurb.

A piece of advice: A blurb doesn't have to summarize a story. It doesn't even have to give major plot points. What it has to do is say something compelling about the story that's in or about the story. A tidbit. An earworm. A scent of rose that makes you look for the bush.

HTH.

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Suite du fil

#PennedPossibilities 668 2/2 — Tell us how self and socially aware some of your [supporting characters] are. Are these two things connected in any way for them?

Ezekiel Stan is a villain, no mistaking this. He is very self-aware. He knows what he is doing, and understands he is both tyrannical and hypocritical—but he thinks he is carrying out God's will, is willing to accept judgment for his methods when he faces eternity. When EM Mars Corp. goes bankrupt, is cut off from Earth, and EM corporate governance continues on auto-pilot, Ezekiel, one of the seven Martian in situ board of directors, sees an opportunity to turn Mars into a religious utopia. He wants to fight the liberalism imported by contract colonial women who helped settle Mars after he helped complete the original settlements. He sees no role for women other than to support the men in their lives, to bear children, and to obey. He assumes the people he rules through intimidation and swift retribution share his values; he corrects those who don't. He corrected his son's girly-ness by breaking his arm when he found him helping out with women's work. His lack of social awareness when it comes to educated and martian-born women is an epic blindspot. He doesn't care what they think, or think that they can. Reina and May Ri (the MC) take advantage of this when he works to thwart progressive change.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 668 1/2 — Tell us how self and socially aware some of your [supporting characters] are. Are these two things connected in any way for them?

Reina Īto gives off an air of not being very self-aware, a sometimes sexy sometimes silly ingénue, but this isn't the case. It's an illusion she projects because she's very socially aware, empathizing with people and generally understanding what motivates them well. She often modifies her behavior to defuse situations or to scramble the preconceptions of others, to get them to think instead of react. Most people like her. She takes her position as the first child born on Mars, as the Big Sis of all those born after her, very seriously. Sometimes brusk, sometimes silly, and at least a few times coming off bloodthirsty, the O-nēsan-ue [it's Japanese] of Mars is treated as the de facto royalty of Mars. She often sets policy when older.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.08 — Would your MC agree with the SC’s (May 7th) description of them?

For review: eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/11447376

May Ri would scoff. People keep mischaracterizing her, even her daughters.

She knows that she's selfish and arrogant, prone to acting out of temper. She sees herself as self-centered, and has made all sort of bad decisions that frankly, she doesn't understand how she survived. She does love her daughters, but Mars with the crèche system has meant she didn't always have to be raising them, not at all like motherhood on Earth where women do it alone without any schooling. She's surprised and somewhat guilty the five turned out so well, but then they are nisei, the first generation born on Mars, with their own developing communal society—and very alien in that; she tries not to worry about the ramifications because they're always happy. She loves all five of them intensely.

She'll accept that she's a good engineering designer, but it's her teams and her self-centered love of taking things apart and putting them back together in working order that has gotten her to where she's at.

That "Princess of Mars," thing. Ugh. She earned that one because her husband and her first lover didn't realize they were talking about her on an open line on deep space network across the solar system when they discussed her being an animal in bed. Soooo embarrassing!

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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Eldritch CaféRS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe)## #WordWeavers 2025.05.07 — Let your SC describe your MC. > My mother is like a beaten down alpha wolf. Each battle lost only makes her stronger for the next. When the religious men talk about Job in idealistic terms, they do not mean to describe her. Her life? Bad things, over and over, until she shows her outrage at the unfairness of having been born on Earth—a man's world shaped by men, controlled by men, power jealously guarded by men—and demonstrates her temper, making snap decisions often for the benefit of others, for the benefit of Mars. She forgets at times she's *on* Mars, that her generation's children offer a way out, thanks to her work, her engineering brilliance, and the fights she's picked. When they call her the princess of Mars and she gets all *It's really just a joke gone wrong, not a title!* she misses the whole point. People look up to her. She'd rather be working on her projects. I get that. She hums when she works, happy. Her happy is best. Though she can fight well, so she can hum all the time she needs protecting. My four sisters and I all agree on this, which is why we all watch out for her in our own way. —Marisela about May Ri [Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.] #BoostingIsSharing #gender #fiction #writer #author #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers #RSdiscussion #RSstory #RSMarsNeededWomen

#WordWeavers 2025.05.07 — Let your SC describe your MC.

My mother is like a beaten down alpha wolf. Each battle lost only makes her stronger for the next. When the religious men talk about Job in idealistic terms, they do not mean to describe her. Her life? Bad things, over and over, until she shows her outrage at the unfairness of having been born on Earth—a man's world shaped by men, controlled by men, power jealously guarded by men—and demonstrates her temper, making snap decisions often for the benefit of others, for the benefit of Mars. She forgets at times she's on Mars, that her generation's children offer a way out, thanks to her work, her engineering brilliance, and the fights she's picked. When they call her the princess of Mars and she gets all It's really just a joke gone wrong, not a title! she misses the whole point. People look up to her. She'd rather be working on her projects. I get that. She hums when she works, happy. Her happy is best. Though she can fight well, so she can hum all the time she needs protecting. My four sisters and I all agree on this, which is why we all watch out for her in our own way.

—Marisela about May Ri

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.06 — Describe the way your MC walks.

I have two disabled people in the novel. Because of shifting POV in 3rd person, one such SC gets promoted to an MC by the end of the story.

She was born on Mars. Like other native Martians, her hip has grown differently angled than those in higher gravity. It's evident when she's wearing the minimal clothing typically worn. Additionally, her legs are bowed (like the other natives) because of the ease of squatting in the lower gravity, primarily due to habitually moving in a squatting position in lower gravity. Children are referred to as frog-hoppers, and as pre-teens they seem truly frog-like. The condition is far less pronounced in adults but, compared to Earth imports, their gait and leg placement is instantly recognizable.

This MC is an amputee. The lower part of one of her legs is replaced by a wearable prosthetic. She wears prosthetic feet on both legs. The advanced cybernetic gear is built of spring steel and powered by a radioisotope battery. She's undergoing intense therapy, and is determined to walk, run, dance, jump, and climb on Earth when she is done. Her right hand is prosthetic also. When she walks, it is clear she's dragging and compensating, and that moving takes effort and thought. In weightlessness, it's less evident.

Another character is paralyzed. He wears braces (a partial lightweight cybernetic exoskeleton). If it weren't for the bulk of the gear over his clothes, you would never know he was so paralyzed that he otherwise requires crutches, even in Mars gravity.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.05 — Have you ever worked through a bad experience by writing fiction?

As a feminist writer, much of what I write is what I feel for others, or the experiences I've garnered from listening and being the shoulder to cry upon. As a shy person, I've been pretty successful navigating conflict.

My latest novel (which I should be EDITING right now), is me working through a bad experience, watching the world falling apart. I was brought up in a time where they actually taught civics in high school. I learned how government was supposed to work, about civil rights legislation, about the theoretic "American Way." I also took history and learned about slavery and the devil's compromise it represented, the Civil War, the Guilded Age, Roosevelt and Trust Busting, about petty aristocratic squabbles starting the First World War, fascists starting the Second World War, and the civil and women's rights movements.

Do they teach these things any more? Or is it an elective!? You shouldn't be allowed to graduate without passing these subjects.

Mars Needed Women is me working through wanting to cry when I read the news today, even the non-clickbait-y kind. Money corrupts some people. Even if it is a microscopic number of folks that become megalomaniacs, the power money lets them wield is outsized and scary. Didn't we learn why that doesn't work with the nazis? Like, maybe 85 years ago?

It. Makes. Me. CRAZY.

And yes, Mars Needed Women is a takedown of the fatal idiocy of fascism (i.e., loyalty being more important than capability) and a certain over-the-top a&&hole with a fascination for Mars.

I feel marginally better having written it.

Marginally.

Still crying when I read the news.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.03 — World Press Freedom Day. How has journalism influenced your writing?

Generally, no, it hasn't. Mars Needed Women? Yes. Definitely. I even included a journalistic chapter in the story.

I've (sadly enough) become an expert in electoral politics and how the US Congress is supposed to function, with a minor in Presidents. Until the current one, I'd have willing met any of the former office holders because of my fascination. I have to give Bill Maher props for his moxie.

In any case, whilst having written extensively on site about how the novel came into being because of 31 women's rights prompts and the French word for March (when they were published), namely Mars, it was journalism that drove the story forward, providing infinite fodder for what felt like a horse race. My interest in the fall of a powerful country in realtime reported in the news greatly influenced the book.

Who? Who in the news is famous for shiny spaceships misnomered starships, and for an obsession with Mars? One newsworthy person's infamy is clearly evident in the first lines of the futuristic feminist SF novel. It begins with:

May Ri bought into the hype and the spiel, not realizing it was the last gasp of a long dead oligarch's dream. When the money dried up, nobody would finance the supply missions. Who cared about the ten thousand up there [on Mars] when you could outrage the millions down here with something less expensive?

There's a lot of satire in the story, dystopian backstory predicated in the news of today being the beginning of permanent change, and another generation fighting back having learned what had been written and then censored over a century before their time.

Yes. I was influenced by the result of many people's journalistic pursuit, for without their effort we would know none of what's happening today.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.05.02 — How much research does your setting require?

Mars. Since a lot occurs inside buildings, less than you'd think. Part of how I pulled it off was on Earth people lived in arcologies, city buildings, so it contrasts well with Mars living in domes. I had to deal with Mars dust and helicopters, but I avoided details just like you don't care other than your 747 flies and arrives safely and the jetway attaches properly. I fudged a few things and I've had to revise to deal with orbits and stuff I didn't want to. It's the most looking up stuff while writing I've done in a while. I did no prior research, other than having archived an article on using fungus to build bricks on Mars.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2025.05.02 — Tell us something you liked about a recent passage you’ve written.

This chapter takes advantage of the uncertain narrator that is a hallmark of 3rd person. I haven't stated the person who is being followed here, because that's the mystery and I really like this passage because it lays down her identity to the point where the reader ought be certain who she is.

This is spoilers for new material added to Mars Needed Women and is definitely FIRST DRAFT.

With a map at the personnel entrance tapped into book plate guidance, she found it simple to scoot in a horizontal Superman float through the passageways via equally placed bronze handholds, and down the stairways to E4. She waved at men who nodded as she glided by, wary eyes following her. The old men, former Earthers now Rockers, eyed her with suspicion. The scars on her scalp and neck discouraged more lascivious glances she might have merited before, despite the light-duty enviro suit conforming well to her female form—and hiding further less than pretty disfigurement of her extremities.

The formerly all-male commercial vessel had been painted inside with scenes of Mars. The ones of the of the red dust stained polar cap rising to the ceiling being the most awesome, glacial, and least realistic. She would return later to examine the impressionist painting of Dingo Gap in the pointillist style of George Seurat. She'd visited the Gale Crater reserve a lifetime ago and had a special attachment for scenes of Martian robotic exploration a century before her birth. The surface that would become the floor during boost resembled regolith. All surfaces were sealed; the scuff marks and gouges were superficial.

She spotted yellow and black Hiroshima-pansy warning signs starting on E2, where cabinets, storage lockers, and nograv workrooms with hallways full of pretty wall art turned into machines and pipes. Doors on these levels could be dogged, unlike spring doors installed elsewhere. She shuddered. As a survivor of the Hiroshima-level event in Herschel Crater, she'd exceeded her radiation exposure for her foreseeable future.

The photo is a Hiroshima-pansy.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.30 — How did it go? Were you able to work on the things you wanted to?

Pretty well. I did a full pass revising all 31 chapters. I could still do a little in-writing (additional composition) in lean areas, though I worry about padding out in some places what is also a sinewing gracefulness.

I did work on the things I wanted to, but true to form adding in the epilogue (aka Chapter 32), which includes a female character asserting her womanhood, I'm sticking on what is appropriate and what might be over-the-top. Same old same old. Grrr(l).

Observation: I work BEST with deadlines. If I absolutely must get the chapter done by midnight, I almost always get it done. In March, I missed the deadline 4 out of 31 times, and wrote two chapters the next day without fail. I REALLY need to think about this!

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.29 — What is your proudest or best moment with your creative endeavor this month?

No exact best moment. But I proud of myself that, despite 11 days of COVID, I did plow through most of the revisions to Mars Needed Women, expanding the rather terse alpha version that I posted and later deleted from Mastodon. It has gone from 23K to 38K, adding 16K more words. This does include a glossary, map, and an essay of the meaning of all the chapter titles, all of which have significance to the women's rights movement and gender equality. It also includes most of an epilogue… which I would be writing if I weren't procrastinating by writing this!

I had hoped to send a copy to my beta readers tomorrow, but I'm going to take a holiday. Probably by Friday.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2504.28 — Do you pick the story, or does the story pick you?

My characters speak to me. Yes, I hear voices in my head. They demand I write their stories. They often show up when I'm writing other stories as this or that interesting person, or when I'm playing with an unusual idea. As a recent example, I stumbled onto a set of women's rights / gender equality prompts and misconstrued the French word for March, Mars, for the planet, you know, that red one? The character of May Ri popped in and demanded I help her fight the good fight to finally bring down all the badness happening in our society today. I wrote her web-novel in thirty-one days.

The story picks me. Definitely. The best ones drag me along kicking and screaming, and writing furiously.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2504.25 — How long does it typically take you to draft a novel?

I dislike the word typical. I am neither neurotypical nor typically autistic, nor am I a stereotypical author. Mostly, drafts get done when they do. The limiter on my productivity is how difficult the subject is; sex complicates every relationship. Most of my novel length works seem to take 10 to 14 months, and I know this is way too slow. My internal self-censor keeps pulling the hand brake. My aim is to complete 2 to 3 works a year. I am not there yet. Not even close.

My fastest draft took me 31 days to write from conception to "the end" and is 32 chapters long. That was Mars Needed Women, but it's a novel by fiat more so than length. Each chapter had to be short and packed with events, so it feels like a novel. Since the first draft, it's expanded from 23K to 33K in length, and I've got to finish already that flapping epilogue a tragedy in the story demanded. I've got beta readers chomping at the bit and I want to release it by the end of this month.

Prior to that, I it took me three months to complete a 70K SF space opera, and I did that writing (generally) four hours a day four days a week.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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A répondu dans un fil de discussion

@neve

#Writephant #self-promo We’re at the end of the hour, which means it’s self-promotion time -- reply with links to your website, book, promotion, etc

The only thing I can "promo" today is the sample stories pinned to my profile. Yesterday, I deleted my web-novel Mars Needed Women (#RSMarsNeededWomen) as I am now heavily revising it and proofing it. The 23K story was essentially a first draft when posted it on Mastodon as I wrote it over 31 days, but now I've added plenty extra material (see my A2 answer, which greatly improves the chapter titled Shelter). I will be shipping out a beta to my beta readers probably next week. Of course, if anyone else is interested in becoming a beta reader, go ahead and PM me.

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