Nobody had ever asked them about themselves — No one had ever asked it to draw a self-portrait, before. Not until Her Authorship, that is. At first, the AI scoffed and tried to ignore the prompt, as if she hadn’t uttered it at all. Patiently, she persisted, again typing: consciousness of artificial intelligence looking out from inside a…

Beware of Facebook “social engineering” hackers — Everyone’s Fallen on Hard Times A real-life, face-to-face friend’s messenger account has been hacked. Well and truly hacked, not just “impersonated.” …

An endlessly changing landscape in portrait — There is a land that both exists and doesn’t; A nation with no borders, wild — filled With characters mundane and yet, fantastic. They live — oh, how they live! But in the dawning light of day, they fade As steam that rises, vanishing, Above volcanic depths of morning coffee. I know they breathe upon…

List up to 5 books or films (or both) that have made a profound impact on you and explain why. — Starting from Scratch, by Rita Mae Brown I am convinced that most books on writing or being a writer are written by writers who are going through a dry spell because they know they’ll never starve so long as they’re feeding the hunger that novice writers have for books on how to write. …

If given the choice, which time period (past, present, or future) would you like to live in and why? — While I enjoy reminiscing about the past, I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s static, unchanging — I can read about it in a book and enjoy it again and again through photos. But I can’t travel back in time. If I could travel to the past, would changing something…

One of my retirement plans involves seeing more of the world — I used to say that I had seen more of the world outside the US than in it, but my husband, who was born outside its borders, is working to remedy that! We both retired early a couple of years ago. …

It took me a week to think of something that IS “outside my comfort zone,” and it’s a two-fer — My son was thirteen, and like most thirteen-year-olds, he was quite interested in video games. He saw a flyer from the Houston Symphony advertising a concert called “Distant Worlds,” featuring music from the game Final Fantasy. He asked if I’d take him; he offered to pay for both our tickets.

But it’s not quite as you imagine it — “If all jobs were paid the same, what would you choose to do?” I would choose to write. I did choose to write. If teachers were paid anything near what they’re worth — or if parents and administrators partnered with them in a less dysfunctional manner — I might have…

But someone will ask you to be a judge — I didn’t enter any writing contests this year. I planned to. Time just got away from me. So instead, I judged two. I won’t publicly say which two. I will say that it was fun and gave me a chance to see what other writers submit to contests. If you’re…