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  #PennedPossibilities 1168: Does your world have any mythology creatures? Can you describe their lore to us? Credit: @aperfectsong My book is completely inside a brain, which could make this answer sound strange. There are Runts that are by no standard mythological, they nest in the dust bunnies, and they steal pages from the Library occasionally. We all have our Runts, and sometimes we need to defenestrate them to get on with our lives.

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  #ScribesAndMakers Oct 29: How do you feel about alliteration? Like any literary tool, alliteration can be overused. But used at the right moment, it can feel like a stroke of genius.

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  #WordWeavers Oct 29: Which character can take care of your pet for a week? Which would be banned from coming anywhere near it? Prefrontal Cortex would have feeding schedules, medication records, emergency contacts and a spreadsheet documenting just how many minutes each cat prefers to be scratched behind the ears. Ventral Striatum would have purchased seventeen new toys and introduced a fourth meal. She'd indulge them shamelessly and spoil them rotten. As if I don't already do...

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 29/10: Pass along a book which came with a personal recommendation. A friend of mine recommended "The Witches of Woodville" by Mark Stay because it had magic in it, and I read fantasy. That was all the convincing I needed. Turns out it's a whole series, and I've found every book just as charming as the first.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1169: Your MC is dead and haunting you. Where and how do they show up? Awkward, because that's not far off from how I sometimes feel already. Slightly removed from the world, ideas showing up in the most inconvenient places, and nights being excessively active. All of this should probably be cause for concern, considering the book takes place inside the brain and my MC is Prefrontal Cortex. But Amygdala is already hiding in the hamper.

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  I am at loss for words. Sir Patrick Stewart will always have a place in my heart, even if his voice has gone quiet. Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 5, Episode 25, 'The Inner Light', and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2, Episode 9, 'The Measure of a man', and think of him. Look at the brilliance he brought to the series. The dignity. One of my absolute favourite actors of all time has left us, and the world is poorer for it. Rest in peace.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1156: If your MC had (more) money in their possession, what would they do with it? I am not certain what Prefrontal Cortex would do with money to begin with. What a curious thought.

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  #WordWeavers Oct. 15: What piece of backstory did you invent just for yourself that readers may never learn? My WIP is based, as far as possible, on psychology and science so that's more a selection process than an invention so all I did was read about the brain and the development. I am not sure if that qualifies as backstory, though?

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 15 Oct What's the last thing you read to really impress you, prose-wise? I reread 'Neuromancer' recently, and I just adore Gibsons style. The way he just marches on, not explaining because why would anyone explain anything in the world they live in? You either figure it out, or it doesn't matter to the story. Either way, you're not bogged down in endless explanations of things that don't truly matter to the story. I need to lea...

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  And now I've learned that Meta (Facebook) sucks even more than usual. It's testing a limit of just two posts a month containing external links on certain Facebook Pages, with paid options for those who want to post more. Just when I thought greed couldn't get worse, Meta said, "Hold my Vitamin K-juice," and proved me wrong. Makes me even more grateful for Mastodon.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 10/23: Our next featured creator enjoys hiking. Do you enjoy being outdoors, and if so, does it have an impact on your creativity? Everything I do have an impact, in one way or the other. For good or bad remains to be seen, but I enjoy hiking. I just have too little time to actually do it.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1164: Bookish Delights: Have you ever read a book where you knew that one of the MCs or SCs would make a good friend of yours IRL? I haven't thought about that actually, I lose myself when I read. My mind circles around the book, the plot, and the issues at hand, not my boring everyday life.

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  #WordWeavers 23 Oct: What rule – legal, cultural, magical, social, or otherwise – does your MC regularly break? Prefrontal Cortex doesn't break rules. They make them, enforce them, and occasionally amend them when reality has the audacity not to comply. Any apparent rule-breaking is, naturally, an authorised procedural exception.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub Oct 23: How do you make sure you deliver on your writerly promises? I don't make promises lightly. When I do, whether to myself or someone else, I take them seriously. What matters isn't necessarily the exact wording, but the intention behind the promise. I can be flexible about how I fulfil it, but not about whether I intend to keep it. Barring a meteor strike, naturally.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 10/27. Do you collect (unaltered) natural materials for projects? Yes, I have the good fortune to live on a farm so I can freely go outside and pick cones, rocks, fern, tiny roots, and twigs if I need them, and I don't have to ask permission first. I'm still learning how to use it all, how a cone can be dismantled into dragon scales, roots can look like vines, and some branches really look like mini-trees.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1167: If you have one, post a snippet involving spirits, such as a character talking to or about them. I would, if I had such a snippet but the closest thing I get to incorporeal beings are ghosts - not the same thing.

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  #WordWeavers 27. What location in your story would you most like to visit? What location would you absolutely avoid? The Library! I would love to see it for myself. I wouldn't go down in the basement even if you paid me all the money in the world.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub Oct. 27: As a writer, what do you need right now? Quiet. No pressure. No requirements. No adulting. Just me, my notebook, and silence.

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  #ScribesAndMakers – 28th Oct. I never expected... ...I'd be back here, in my childhood home. For many reasons, I left home at 15 and didn't expect to come back. I did.

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  #WordWeavers 28. Your antagonist and MC are forced to work together toward the same goal. What could drive them together? That is assuming the antagonist is a someone. My story doesn't have a 'villain' as such, it's set inside the brain and the characters don't really need someone to throw a spanner into the works for things to go sideways frequently.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub Oct 28: Do you hide 'secrets' in your works? I don't know. Please let me know if you find any.

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  #WordWeavers 29 Sep: Is your character more likely to enjoy a sunrise or sunset, and why? Which one of them? Because this question could start a fight in The Mansion: Hippocampus stands by the sunrise and Ventral Striatum by the sunset, and Herr Cingulate, Anterior Division, has enough conflict monitoring to do for today.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1142: Does your MC care about vanity and their image? Nope, they're all about procedure and regulation, and image and vanity aren't measurable metrics on their clipboard. My side character Ventral Striatum, the Goddess of Desire, on the other hand, cares a great deal. She enjoys luxurious fabrics against her skin and feeling pretty.

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  #ScribesAndMakers Day 28: How satisfied are you with the creative work you've done this month? I've finally made time for painting again, tiny miniatures and cats in acrylic. To someone with skill, it probably looks terrible but it's mine, and I'm proud. I've failed utterly at the piano, but I am not giving up. Failing is a part of the process. I'm typesetting my book now. Just when I thought I had reached the most painful stage of publishing, I discover a new way the...

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  #writersCoffeeClub 9/28: Could you work without the internet? What would change? Do you mean like I did before the Internet? I'd be a regular at the library again. And yes, younglings, I realise I just made myself sound ancient.

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  What is your cure for getting out of a creative slump? That's usually my brain's way of asking for a pause. I look around me: what's going on in my life? Stress? Worries? Grief? Anger? Unresolved problems soaking up the energy? Show the ol' noggin some compassion and let it have the break it's asking for. Just don't overdo it. #writersofmastodon #author #writers

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 27/9: How much time passes between sitting down to write and actually writing? I am one of those unholy ones who writes in my head, not entire chapters but dialogue and short paragraphs. I try them out, see if it fits. Which means that I can sit down and start writing before my behind has fully settled on the chair. Other times, it turns into an editing process. Sometimes, I get distracted and begin a new project. And some days I just stare blankly out the window.

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  #PennedPossibilities 1139: Do you have a ritual before you sit down to write? You mean like dancing backwards around the chair chanting ‘bestseller, bestseller’ before sitting down to write? No. I've got a schedule, though.

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  #WordWeavers Sep 26: Authors talk about how smart their MCs or villains are, but have you ever written a slow-witted character? This sits a little ill with me, because someone can be ‘slow-witted’ in one area and bloody brilliant in another. I'm probably rather dimly lit compared with plenty of people in plenty of ways; everyone I meet is, in some aspect, my better. So no, I don't really write characters as smart or stupid. So no, I write people, with strengths and weaknesses.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub - 26 Sept.: How does your faith feature in your works? I'm not religious, so faith doesn't feature in my writing in that sense. But if faith includes hope, trust, or the belief that understanding ourselves can make even the darker parts of being human a little less frightening, then apparently it features quite heavily. I write about neuroscience and psychology disguised as satire, I turned anxiety into unsightly Runts so maybe I shouldn't be trusted with metaphys...