#ScribesAndMakers ∆ 2026.04.09 — Our next featured creator is a professor. Does any of your work involve professors and/or universities?

Directly, no. I am an author.

The main series antagonist in the reluctance series, amongst all her hats, considers herself a teacher first. In multiple stories, she is seen running a university or seen personally teaching select students. Her coursework is grueling, but her students end up astronauts or commanding armies… Academic situations appear constantly in my stories, including the MSA's story as teenager, where she teaches herself to read to help teach her autistic brother.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.04.09 —One of your characters is seeing something unbelievable. What is it & why are they seeing it?

Well, it isn't until later in the story that Bolt learns "what it is," so I won't tell you, though realistically someone more worldly than her might have known, but she doesn't. She hears a loud boom downtown; tracking it down, she finds that a five story tall circle of absolute darkness—blackness that absorbs all light framed in blue continuous lightning—has appeared across Chestnut Blvd, wedged between two tall buildings, cracking brick and cutting into the pavement, snarling traffic as it crackles and pops and stinks of ozone. It has no thickness, like gossamer fabric. She attributes it to some egghead daemon messing up a miracle.

She doesn't notice people are annoyed more than frightened.

Why is she seeing it? (Other than the obvious of her having sought out the cause of the boom?) You'd have to ask the three people she sees running from inside it.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.04.09 —What is your favorite way to introduce a character's appearance?

If I am more concerned about introducing the appearance of a character versus introducing a character's appearance on stage, that indicates I am focusing on the wrong things. My opinion, of course.

Sure, we've all met people IRL whose appearance matters. For us. For them. In fiction, it's essential for "love on first sight" tropes. Not so essential for real people in normal situations. Appearance, what catches my attention at least, is often incidental information: a crisply pressed uniform, hair in cowlicks, colorblind fashion sense… As a result, I try to make such details a focus for the reader upon the character, but only if it drives the story. For example, given the proper opportunity in the story, I can mention her "freckles like embers blown by a wildfire" and add little more. What my readers see of my characters depends entirely on what interests or catches the attention the 1st POV narrator—okay, what obsesses, distracts, or interferes with the narrator. Anything else would break point-of-view and become authorial intrusion.

Intriguingly, this leaves the reader able to make the characters more relevant and more like themselves.

In any case, what I want to describe and what I can describe become two totally different things. The words circumscribed and constrained come to mind. The world in my stories is not only not our society, it's not our civilization. As a result, it is not until the 90k mark in my current story that an incident finally causes Bolt to clarify her hair color (she's the MC), though it might only be her body hair color! Mind you, there are hints. I use the word "clarify" advisedly here.

Which doesn't answer the question.

Favorite? Opportunity.

Finding those natural spots in the the story when such information is necessary, and advances the story eloquently and vividly. Otherwise, I'm likely to revise it out.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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