Bubble & Squeek for 24 Aug 2020

I’m not a natural redhead. I had a lot of red in my hair (part of my Scottish heritage) when I was younger. I used to put a gold-blond dye on my hair and came up a deep strawberry blond. Then I dyed my hair purple-red. Then I settled into a nice burgundy-brown; redder than my natural color but not too red. Now my hair is starting to gray. I can’t tell how much of my hair is gray but I’d say 10-20%.  It makes keeping up with the hair dye a bit more noticeable. At least to me. I really don’t like the skunk look next to the vibrant red-brown of the hair dye. Recently, I visited with my family. Both my sister and mom have their natural hair color and it’s a beautiful brown. All their red has mostly vanished. I’ve decided I want to see my natural...

I met Adam Gaffen while participating in the DragonCon mentoring sessions. He’s got a process to learning all about his novel’s characters and how that informed his decisions on the novel’s universe.   Today, I’d like to tell you about how I came to meet Cass and Ken, and how the process of getting to know them led me to creating an entire universe for them. It all started with a name – Aiyana Cassidy. I knew, immediately, that nobody called her Aiyana, that her friends, her family, they all called her Cass. Once I knew that, I started to get a picture in my mind: red hair, glasses, very serious. A woman who could have traded on her looks, but instead relied on her brains. Proved herself over and over, and is now professionally respected. She does something that requires lots of both practical and theoretical knowledge, how about...