New personal essay

My latest, After the Fourth, is available starting today at Curator magazine. An excerpt:

The days surrounding July 4^th normally trumpet the ease of summer, but this year’s music is different. It was Tuesday, the fifth of July, when the horns gave way to the unrelenting beat of the future.

A careful listener would have heard the cues sooner. On Friday, my oldest went away with a buddy and his family. We packed my boy’s things and wrote down all the phone numbers. His dad and I spoke out of both sides of our mouths, reminding him to call if anything made him uncomfortable and assuring him that everything would be fine.

Thump, thump.

Saturday the wind and rain washed the rhythm away, but it returned on Sunday, pulsing as I came up the stairs and saw Connor in combat boots and camouflage...

Read the whole story here.

Sci-Nonfi: RoboRoaches

On an otherwise unremarkable day in May, I spent time with high school students and neuroscientists and their remote-controlled cockroaches.

Two live RoboRoaches on a lab table

My essay appears in The Curator today. An excerpt:

The students finish the SpikerBoxes; the cockroach experience begins. A few Blaberus discoidalis cockroaches will have a limb surgically removed. The legs, the scientists explain, have neurons firing in them, even after they are amputated, and will remain alive for up to two days.

Volunteers take on the roles of anesthesiologist and surgeon. Marzullo guides them through the procedure. The cockroaches are removed from their habitat and submerged in ice water. Using small, curved scissors, the leg is quickly and carefully cut and pinned to a SpikerBox. Students huddle around it, waiting to hear the spikes. It sounds like static. Gage and Marzullo then connect the box to an iPad, and students can see a visual representation of the sounds.

They discuss possible responses of the leg to stimuli, and reveal what will be one of the student’s favorite experiments: How will a cockroach leg respond to the sound vibrations of hip-hop, specifically the song “Love the Way You Lie?”

Read the entire story here.

You can read The Oakland Press article, learn more about Backyard Brains, or prepare for the coming RoboRoach invasion.

Creative Nonfiction Dilemmas

I struggle when I write personal essays.

The writing isn't the struggle. I enjoy striving to tell it straight and true, discovering real life moments worthy of examination and wonder. It's a satisfying process, from the glimmer of an idea to the first words, from the crafting and shaping to that final bit of polish.

It's good work until that moment when I have to send it off to a publication or editor. If you saw me in that moment, you'd think that my decision to send a story was akin to triggering a nuclear war. It's not the fear of rejection making my palms sweat. It's not my financial situation, either, although if I could afford an accountant I'm sure he'd convince me to reconsider. The closing of my eyes as I face the screen, my finger pausing over my mouse, my stopping and restarting the submission process, all this hesitancy is borne from the fear that I might be misunderstood, that my appreciation of people in general might be clouded because of my words. Worse, I fear that the specific people who are a part of my story might be hurt by my rendering.

In the very best case scenario, someone who reads about themselves through my eyes feels special. That was the lovely reaction of my neighbor (featured here). My husband and parents have been great, amazing actually, understanding that a humorous poke or a family story told is just my point of view. It doesn't negate their memories, their experiences or how they might see the situation. Other people, I know, have a harder time. At least one person has told me that I may not mention him or her by name in anything I write. I can sympathize; I will honor that request.

Despite sweaty hands and 20 minutes of pacing, I pushed the button yesterday, on a story called "Ruined". We'll see where it goes. Until then, I'll keep writing. Maybe I'll search for opportunities to write profile essays. The advantage of that sort of piece is that the subjects know they're subjects. Even with that knowledge, it's still tough.

Loving my genre, yet secretly wishing I was better at fiction, LT