I’ve got a new story named “The Fire Wish” in the Japanese Mythology issue of Penumbra Emag http://penumbra.musapublishing.com/.  It takes place in the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant just after the 2011 tsunami struck and involves a worker struggling to bring a reactor under control.  It is the darkest story I’ve had published so far.

I have always felt a kind of mad glee when one of my stories goes out in the world, and though I do have some of that feeling right now, the subject matter of this story is so serious that it has tempered my usual effervescence.

The rest of the issue of Penumbra is absolutely great.  I strongly recommend getting a copy.

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On another note, I’ve just returned from San Diego where I visited my sister Alison, her husband Craig, and his extended family.  They don’t actually live in San Diego but in a small town named Ashby, Minnesota.  Their nearest big city is Fargo.

They were so nice I thought maybe I should leave northern California and move there.  My wife caught me thinking this, I suspect by that far away “I could be a Viking” look in my eyes, and pointed out that they have something in Minnesota called winter.  I knew she was right, but still, it sounded nice.  At least it did until everyone started talking about the storms.  Apparently at least twice a summer they have to rush into a storm cellar before some tornado rips a freight train off of its tracks and hurls it at them.  How do they know when it’s time to get underground?  They feel a change in pressure.  My brother-in-law does this in his sleep.  He’ll just sit up in the middle of the night open his eyes and tell my sister to grab the kids.

Okay.  I’m not moving to Minnesota any time soon.

I’ve got a six-year-old nephew named Aksel who has decided that when he grows up he wants to be a scuba diving scientist.  His dad explained to him that they call these people marine biologists.  Aksel understands this, but he prefers the title scuba diving scientist.

I think he has a point.  After thinking about this, I realize that I want to be a scuba diving scientist too.

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Photographs are difficult.  Most of the time, for whatever reason, in photographs I look like someone just ran over my puppy.  I don’t even have a puppy.

Lucky for me, I have a friend in Los Angeles named Christopher Popp that I knew from the bad old Hollywood days.  He is a brilliant cinematographer and although he hasn’t shot stills in some time, he took pity on me.

Not bad. Maybe a little puppy concern, but not much.