It was only yesterday that I discovered a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope, and I had to put that in a poem. So I started thinking about all the beautiful, strange, and poetic names we give to gatherings of animals—murders, parliaments, flamboyances—and how each one carries a kind of quiet unity. This poem is what came out of that wondering, and maybe a little loneliness too.  The Ones Who Gather A kaleidoscope of butterflies, turning air into stained glass, wings brushing wings in a hush of color— they move as one, a prayer held aloft by sunlight. A murder of crows circles the edge of dusk, black-threaded thoughts sewn into the hem of sky. Even in omen, they arrive together. A parliament of owls sits in the cathedral of trees, silent but listening, wisdom not as one voice but many held in counsel. A pod of dolphins— spindrift and shimmer, laughing through salt and wave, mapping the world with echoes answered. A mischief of rats in the alley’s forgotten script, bol...

Social Media FAQ: The Hermit in the Town Square Yes, I’m online. No, I’m not built for this. Social media is one of the most challenging parts of being a writer today. I don’t come by the label “hermit” by chance. I prefer quiet, depth, solitude—and yet, here I am, in the digital town square, trying to be heard over the fire jugglers and brand mascots. This FAQ exists to answer the questions I get most often, and maybe a few I haven’t been asked but wish I had. It’s honest, occasionally cranky, and (hopefully) helpful. Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/facebook-application-icon-147413/ What social media platforms are you on? The list shifts like tectonic plates. As of now, I’m on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Skylight. I also have a TikTok account, along with a few others quietly gathering dust. I’m still searching for my homestead in the social media sprawl—somewhere functional, semi-peaceful, and not owned by a billionaire with a god complex. ...

Lately, as I write and research, I find myself caught in quiet arguments with myself—turning over questions about creativity, machines, and what makes something meaningful. These thoughts aren’t just abstract; they shape how I build worlds, characters, and systems in my fiction. One recurring question keeps surfacing: if something not human can create, what does that mean for those of us who’ve long defined ourselves by the act of creation? This essay isn’t a set of conclusions—it’s a snapshot of the questions I keep coming back to, sparked by real-world debates and fueled by the strange, shifting edge where imagination and emerging technology meet. Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-holding-a-prosthetic-arm-6153345/ The Shifting Boundaries of Creativity: Human Exceptionalism Meets AI Throughout history, humans have consistently created special categories to maintain separation between themselves and other entities — whether animals, people of different ...

  Announcing Stone and Signal – A Podcast That Listens Back We are not starving for information. It is cast on us like a stream of projectile vomit that we attempt to avoid, only to slip and fall in the still-warm pile of dog crap already left in our path. No, it is not information we are starving for, but meaning. We live in a time where almost everything can be heard—yet almost nothing is truly listened to. The world hums with data, voices, opinions, instructions, algorithms. But beneath it all, something quieter waits. Something more real. That’s where Stone and Signal was born. This is a pre-release announcement. The podcast is still in production, but the signal is forming. And it feels right to speak to the why before the world hears the what. Why This Podcast, and Why Now? For years I’ve wrestled with the tension between expression and silence. As a writer, I’ve always lived in the written word—fiction, poetry, and storytelling that lingers in the slower currents of ...