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Chris Knight will recount and interpret the intensely dramatic story of The Wawilak Sisters and the Rainbow Snake, told by the Yolngu people of North-East Arnhem Land, explaining why it is the most widely discussed myth in all of social anthropology.

Chris will compare different recorded versions of the story, connecting them with the male initiation rituals during which the events described in the myth were traditionally re-enacted. He will argue that this and related stories about an immense rainbow which was also a snake hark back to a time when women across Australia engaged in rituals designed to synchronise their menstrual cycles with one another and with the moon.

908 — What was the last reason why your SC saw a “doctor” or someone in the medical field?

I am poised to write this scene, so I'm using it. 😛

Molt (SC) is a university student that Bolt (woman, day angel, MC) has taken a shine to for reasons I won't state here, other than he is cute. Pigeon the Pilferer, Bolt's unwelcome colleague in the mob and the minor antagonist in the story, extorts the young guy for money threatening Bolt. When Molt refuses, he assaults the student inadvertently fracturing a bone. Bolt finds Molt packing his things (they live on the same apartment floor of the aerie) to leave the city and go home, abandoning his studies in fear for himself and Bolt. She notices the swelling and drags the guy to Health Services. It's an opportunity to show how daemons can heal …

2026.01.20 — Do you make use of weather in your story? If so, how?

Their world, Home, is a terrifyingly hot place where temperatures are measured in degrees from blood temperature. I mention the heat whenever the 1st person narrator would notice it. It affects what little people wear and how much they sweat, that they always carry flasks of water, and lots of sometimes smelly sensory detail. When it isn't hot, it's humid and hot, and it can become deadly—though that's not an issue because it's so routine to these people that having a civil safety breakdown is as rare as a dam breaking. Continual heat does make an interesting atmosphere for the story, considering the convolutions people go through to live a life that feels very urban and modern.

Why wasn't asked, but there is a why and it is important. It lets me …

907 — Does your MC have any phobias or irrational fears? What is the origin of this?

Had.

Bolt is a day angel. This means she was born looking like any other girl, except she started with a third pair of limbs: wings. Her kind are meant to fly, sometimes learning how before 2, almost certainly by 3. When she developed a fear of heights that even prevented her mother from carrying her through the sky, it looked hopeless that she'd even live amongst her kind. She was strong though. She climbed the massive tall home tree that comprised her neighborhood, something her peers could fly into, as well as the cliffs where much of the town was built, too. It helped that there were ladders because the angelic also live with a minority population of humans without wings. At school she got taunted for never …

2026.01.18 — Week 34 (January 18-24) Characters: Are you especially fond of how any of your characters met? Share their meeting! CW: Wordplay.

I'm fond of how most of my characters met, but were those meetings meet-cutes or arguably erotic? No, except maybe in Mars Needed Women, which may be both. 22-year-old May Ri—a brainy engineer who is sexually experienced despite having lived in an oppressive religious society—has arrived on colonial Mars, having signed a contract promising that she will marry within a year. She's attending a meeting someone jokes is a "meat market" to choose a husband who is by contract also on the "market." Redacted for length.

The door monitor said, "Show confidence, girl, or he'll say 'No.'"

May Ri jumped, her heart bouncing off her sternum. [] She rushed in, another worry blooming: Men got to say no?

Auditorium was too grandiose a …

2026.01.19 — Talk about something (even if very small!) from your own life which made it onto the page.

My mother was a bailbondswoman in the midwest in the 1960s, when I was growing up. Contrary to popular media and conceptions of good guys and bad guys, people still ended up being people. I was brought up in the company of bank robbers, thieves, mafioso, ex-convicts, as well law enforcement. People out on bond that Mom knew. Some I referred to as uncle or aunt (a polite honorific that children were taught to use). It would be hypocritical of me not to paint such people in shades of grey when they appear in my stories; I knew them, and their families, visited their homes. Not saying they weren't criminal or dangerous, or that they were victims of the system or privilege. Each person has …

2026.01.19 — Who is the most moral character in your story?

...morals usually connotes an element of subjective preference, while ethics tends to suggest aspects of universal fairness and the question of whether or not an action is responsible...

—Merriam Webster

Because in most cultures, the subjective preference of what is or isn't moral is predicated on scripture or other religious doctrine, all the characters in my current WIP are by definition either immoral and amoral.

However, most are ethical and principled. Bolt, my MC, has a sense of what is right or wrong. She treats people fairly and kindly, and works to prevent them being hurt as best as her restricted freedom allows her to; she's even risked her safety to help those she dislikes. Regardless, she's serially immoral by the traditional standards ascribed to by the majority of Earth's population. Doubly so …

906 — What is your SC’s response to stress?

There's a reason why The Director of Home decided to send her new praetorian to leadership classes: He acts better under pressure than he does when he is allowed to plan ahead. He worries when he has time to think, an attribute which might run in his family. He's helped raise his sister, who's incredibly smart but lacks all common sense and often requires saving. He's held down many jobs where he's dealt with children or guided adults through difficult times by consoling, entertaining, protecting, or making decisions for them. He's Bolt's casual boyfriend (she's the MC). She enjoys him a lot, but he's often her bulwark when her (secret) life working for the mob becomes too difficult to deal with. We meet Blue when he shows up to help handle a "disaster" in town, which Bolt is …

2026.01.18 — Vinyl, compact disc, digital, or radio?

The civilization depicted in the reluctance series is an interstellar one, however they don't have much use or need for electricity—and they certainly don't have electronics. They do have telegraphs, also light semaphores. No way they could have compact discs, digital anything, or radio. This doesn't mean they lack computers; it simply isn't what you think it is.

They do have vinyl records (and metal ones), as well as photography and motion pictures with sound.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]


photographer chef cooking



2026.01.18 — Your antagonist gets a call or message from their mother. How do they respond?

Three antagonists, briefly:

  1. Pigeon is a punk gangster who nobody likes. He'd likely crush the envelope in his fist, unread, and throw it in the messenger's face (likely Bolt, the MC) before trying to break that face, screaming that nobody makes a fool of him. Why? Not saying until defining his family becomes relevant to the story.
  2. Boss Mead has plenty of legitimate businesses—that also function as laundries—so he's outwardly well-to-do and would not be embarrassed to communicate with his family. His society places the burden of child-rearing on brothers and uncles, so any message would probably be congenial but likely asking for coin to support his sister's or female cousin's children (though defining that hasn't become relevant). He is a super pleasant man (so long as you aren't on …

2026.01.18 — Are you comfortable making a reader uncomfortable? How far will you go?

While I don't work to make a reader uncomfortable, I do work to minimize the discomfort that might build from reading my stories the way I might methodically strengthen a loved one who is under stress and feels fragile. Psychologically. I suspect a certain type of reader might be attracted to what I write: worlds not predicated on shame. Those with traditional views on relationships might feel uncomfortable. I really don't want the latter to press the eject button. To compensate, I work to never contrast the created society with our own, but to maintain the sense of normalcy the characters perceive simply by ignoring what they themselves wouldn't notice that we certainly would, whilst occasionally letting character notice and react strongly to what we wouldn't react to. I write …

905 — Is your MC responsible for anyone other than themselves? How do they feel about this?

Okay, this sounds like a jacket blurb for Reluctant Courier (for the Mob)…

Bolt, a day angel with wings, is responsible for nobody except herself, and considering her dangerous life—she flies messages for a mob boss—she would say that's a good thing. However, after the appearance of a rogue interstellar gateway changes her boss' objectives and negates her attempts at living invisibly, she makes friends. Her dozen years of isolation make her crave the novelty beyond her scant good sense such that she finds herself (or rather makes herself) responsible for keeping safe new friends that she's failed to push away, mostly men who value her joyful athleticism as well as her innate integrity. Though she considers it a real bother, she continues putting herself out and accumulating bruises—until …

2026.01.17 — If cost wasn’t an issue, what would your ideal setting be for you to write in?

Besides being an SF and fantasy genre fan, I was also a Phyllis A. Whitney fan. I loved that the locales in her gothic romance books were as much a character in her stories as the characters themselves. I theorized she lived in each place for a time before writing each novel.

The concept was one of the things that validated my choosing fiction writing as an avocation. It's a dream: I'd love to live in various places for weeks or months, writing. As a writer, no fixed place is necessary. I was wanting remote work before the people who'd dream up the term were conceived of let alone born!

I hope to do some of that now that I'm retired. The photo below is my writing …

My writing setup. An iPad on a balcony with a cup of coffee on a table and a gazebo in the distance looking out over a rocky coastline and the ocean beyond.

2026.01.17 — What’s frustrating you, writing-wise?

Not. Getting. It. Done!

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]