Image acquired from the Internet Hive Mind
Blog
Editing Rant: No Pronouns
Image from the Interwebs
If you have been around my blog any length of time, you likely know my stance on this. (I am she/her by the way.) People are people. I’ve got a real name, a pen name, and a SCA name – be who you are, hide who you are (especially if safety requires it), explore who you are. It’s all good. I’ve dealt with too many teenagers who need the space to try on several boxes before finding the one that fits them. Heck, young children explore all the jobs include being bees.
That being said, when people post things like “I don’t believe in pronouns” and “pronouns shouldn’t exist.” I laugh and laugh and laugh in editor.
Have you seen a world without pronouns?
Some of my writer friends have joked about writing a story with no pronouns. It’s not possible.
Most people know about personal pronouns (I/she/he/they) and object pronouns (me, you, her, them) … some even get possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, theirs) – but we got a WHOLE bunch of other ones like indefinite pronouns (few, nobody, both, something) and interrogative pronouns (what, who, which). Taking them all out would be impossible and have anything resembling a reasonable story.
Okay, maybe not impossible, I’ve seen what some wordsmiths can do. But, structurally, the English language depends on all sorts of pronouns.
Including using (they/them) for singular, when the gender of the person is unknown or unknowable.
If you want to go back to the “old times” and “proper pronouns”, let’s (whoa, I forgot we actually make contractions (let us) of pronouns as the second part instead of just the first part like It’s for it is) talk about the difference between formal and informal second person which modern English has dropped. (See comic below)
A pronoun is simply something used as a substitute for a proper noun.
No pronouns? Not on my editorial watch.
Flash: Brother Trade 1: Radical Docking
Photo from Dreamtime (paid for – please do not reproduce without Dreamtime or artist’s permission)
Chapter 1: Radical Docking
Staring out the viewscreen at the slowly turning Marketplace, the trade center for the Sisters Trading Conglomerate with sixteen ships in dock and two large vessels nearby running shuttles to the space station, I filled with both intense pride to be part of such a powerful alliance reaching throughout the Greater Human Cooperative and intense trepidation. I didn’t want to be here. Normally, I would be all over a trading mission, especially at the home station, but this time the trade was me.
I had hit eighteen two years ago. Last time we made it to the Market, I was two weeks underage and we had a contract delivery to hit. Last year we missed all the Brother Trade days, being on the other end of our ship’s trade two-year circuit, which meant I had no reasonable arguments to beg an extension to stay onboard ship this time around.
“Bring us in pilot,” the captain ordered behind me.
My last act as a crewmember under her orders. I eased in without comment or question, well familiar with the pilot seat, having sat third on the rotation since I qualified as an apprentice at age fifteen (*Earther-years, the standard used by all ships of the Sisterhood).
I would be a valuable trade. Certified as full pilot with for a planetary landing sub-license, as a junior for navigator and as a corpsman, and ready to challenge for apprenticeships in environmental and sanitation fields. Two mechanics onboard our ship could use a husband with a new genetic mix for the good of the ship’s diversity, and I was the only currency available.
After locking in the rotation calculations, I touched and brushed the controls, not even scratching paint or pads coming into the docking arm, stopping the minor thrusters once the magnetic emission force fields captured us relative to the docking arm.
“Very good Peasbody.” Captain Blanche called her first officer over. “Freddie, you have the bridge. Only two people on liberty at a time, three hours each, until the Brother Trade is complete. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Check the boards with Supply and with Trade to see what is available for resupply and what might be good for trade on our next circuit. You have the bridge.”
“Aye Captain,” Freddie said in her high, sweet soprano voice. “I have the bridge. Trade well, Captain.”
“Peasbody, you are with me.”
I stood, and Ymette, the First Pilot who should have been in the seat for the prestigious and difficult connection to the spinning Marketplace, slid in behind me. I had watched her fingers twitch every maneuver on the way in, but they wanted me in the seat, recording my value with every millimeter of the docking. It wasn’t my first docking, so they had confidence despite my recent full ranking certified at Treehelm two months ago. I hoped this docking wouldn’t be my last.
Some crews just used males for reproduction, though the Sisterhood frowned on wasting fully developed brains. And if the brain wasn’t capable of full development, why was it chosen for reproduction with crewmembers? I don’t think the captain would trade me to a social outlier ship, but if no other trade was available…
I settled my mind going over the ships I caught sight of as we flew in. Ever Faithful was an agricultural specialist, a massive tanker growing crops to fill in missing nutrients for colonized planets still undergoing terraforming. Supply would be hitting them up for oranges and other tree fruits and my mouth watered at the thought of fresh foods in the mess tonight.
Then I remembered I wouldn’t be at the officer table ever again. I dragged fingers over the wall as I walked behind the captain, higher than the well-worn streaks made by children running messages up to the bridge from other departments on the ship.
Being even bigger than the space station, Faithful had parked on the sunlit side. The Prestigious Sisterhood of Athena Mercenaries warship hovered on the cold side of the Marketplace, the quicker to exit, the quicker to face any incursions coming from outside the dual-star, gas-giants-only system the Sisterhood had chosen for their home system. Collections and Emissions was even smaller than my birthship, Really Radical Stock, and unlike most Sisterhood ships, kept equal amount of men and women onboard as they did financial and high-end trading and many planets preferred males for financial trades. They always had plenty of males to trade; they didn’t even practice the standard gender suppression methods among their children for the standard three-to-one ratio.
The two smallest ships, We Land and Derby, worked mostly as mail runners and only kept one male on board to fill out the minimum required crew of six to needed to fly under the conglomerate flag. They might be interested in me to beef up their pilot ranks, but I’m not sure I would want to be on a ship which had to trade out all their children at age five because of lack of room and education facilities. Besides, mail-runners traded out their males for newer models every five years since they didn’t keep any of their children, and I am a bunk-body. I really hope to only be traded once.
Truth to tell, I had hoped never to be traded offship since I wasn’t closely related to about half the crew, but the captain was a stickler for tradition in most things.
The captain entered the code to open the airlock into the docking tube.
I hadn’t received the updated code since all my hardware had been reverted to stores other than the very expensively installed pilot implant package. Everything I carried on my person and in my head would be all that I could take with me to my next posting. I had left behind my tools, as my hands had outgrown them ages ago but no one could justify spending printing-mass on someone who would be traded soon. The tablet with all my music, books, videos, and lessons had been wiped and returned supplies. Whatever ship I ended up would not risk a mechanical virus transfer; the biological danger was enough.
“Don’t forget to slouch,” she said as the airlock repressurized to match the station’s docking arm.
“Yes, Captain.” I relaxed my shoulders and hunched my back. Trading me two years ago would have been better, before I added three more inches of height.
Mass takes food, oxygen, and space. The Sisterhood had chosen to go the matriarchy route to save money. Twenty original ships, 100% crewed by women and replenished with fertilized embryos flew the stars traderoutes, saving money, joined together under one company contract, now the largest merchant family-company in the GHC.
Over time, the Brother Trade tradition developed for genetic security. Females stayed with the ships, males traded between them upon maturity. Every transaction recorded to protect the company from inbreeding. Ninety-seven years after the initial contract, it would be my turn to be traded.
My trade came with a lot of special features. My mother had been distracted by a gravity-man and ended up with me nine months and dozens of systems later. I didn’t have the perfectly proven and traced genes to the original founders, but my DNA would add diversity to any ship, guaranteed. I was healthy, but I was also as large and strong as a gravity-man in charge of moving cargo in a non-variable gravity environment needs to be. Even with drugs to suppress my growth prescribed by Medical once they realized I was only starting to grow at fourteen, unlike most females who were winding down, I towered over all the adults onboard my home-ship at 1.8 meters. My mass is expensive. One of the reasons I got pushed, and pushed myself, in so many specialties was to make that mass worthwhile even though I would be traded offship.
Fortunately, I was born in a lull between generations so Education and Training had berths available to waste on training male brains. As Tamar put it, the berths used the same energy and maintenance sitting there empty, may as well put knowledge into the Testosterones.
Tamar was not allowed to have a husband to herself.
After we both yawned to adjust the inner ear, Captain Blanche ordered me to slouch more before moving forward down the docking tube,
I rolled my eyes and attempted to do so, as I whispered, “Yes, mom.” and slid down the tube after her. Like the micro gravity between Radical’s gravity plates and the Market’s spin could provide me something to stand straight or slouch against.
Once inside the airlock on the station’s side, we landed in the half gravity the station provided in the cargo unloading areas and faced each other. The captain lifted her hand to my cheek; I slouched so my face rested in it, closing my eyes to memorize this last touch of my family-crew.
“I will get a good trade,” Blanche promised firmly. I could feel her hand shake in the shipsuit glove, but it wouldn’t be visible on the security cameras. “But if they break contract, you know how to contact us.”
I trembled and let the tears flow just enough to let the emotions escape.
When her hand dropped, I bit my lip and opened my eyes. I used the back of my shipsuit’s glove to absorb the moisture. “I love you,” I whispered. This time she was close enough to hear my whisper.
She gave me one last look, brown eyes to matching brown eyes. Before turning to face the opening airlock.
(words 1,607; first published 5/24/2026)
Brother Trade series
Chapter 1: Radical Docking (3/9/2025)
Chapter 2: A Catalog Entry (3/16/2025)
Chapter 3: Ship Choice (3/23/2025)
Chapter 4: Trading Floor (3/30/2025)
Writing Exercise: Dear Diary, today was an adventure
Photo 67785157 | © Konstantin Iuganov | Dreamstime.com (picture paid for)
“Dear Diary, Today was an adventure.”
I’ve never personally been much of filling journals or diaries. This blog and the vlog over on TikTok is the closest I get, and I think I miss out on something important with that. Filling a journal keeps track of the amazing things that happen in your life that all blend together over time. An adventure of going to a store you have never visited. Laughter a child shared with you. A near miss on the street. All these peculiar, wonderous, remarkable things. Or you can take the ordinary and mundane and make it extraordinary. The fight to get out of bed. Doing battle with the garden. Drinking the mystical elixir of wakefulness. Life is magic and journals and diaries give a writer a chance to capture it.
Today’s writing exercise is particular helpful if your well is dry or a writer’s block has appeared in your wording road.
WRITING EXERCISE: Create a diary entry taking an ordinary event and making it fantastical. How did you fight gravity today? Any of your drinks containing liquids from other continents? Did you use a tech today that when you really think about it, it becomes amazing (such as running water in the house)? Aim of 100-500 words for your entry. If you are in a writing slump, aim for the higher end.
Book Review: A Fall in Autumn
Amazon Cover
A Fall in Autumn by Michael G. Williams
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
**WINNER OF THE 2020 MANLY WADE WELLMAN AWARD**
WELCOME TO THE LAST OF THE GREAT FLYING CITIES
It’s 9172, YE (Year of the Empire), and the future has forgotten its past.
Soaring miles over the Earth, Autumn, the sole surviving flying city, is filled to the brim with the manifold forms of humankind: from Human Plus “floor models” to the oppressed and disfranchised underclasses doing their dirty work and every imaginable variation between.
Valerius Bakhoum is a washed-up private eye and street hustler scraping by in Autumn. Late on his rent, fetishized and reviled for his imperfect genetics, stuck in the quicksand of his own heritage, Valerius is trying desperately to wrap up his too-short life when a mythical relic of humanity’s fog-shrouded past walks in and hires him to do one last job. What starts out as Valerius just taking a stranger’s money quickly turns into the biggest and most dangerous mystery he’s ever tried to crack – and Valerius is running out of time to solve it.
Now Autumn’s abandoned history – and the monsters and heroes that adorn it – are emerging from the shadows to threaten the few remaining things Valerius holds dear. Can the burned-out detective navigate the labyrinth of lies and maze of blind faith around him to save the City of Autumn from its greatest myth and deadliest threat?
MY REVIEW
Full disclosure: I edited this book.
In a future of flying cities, created beings, and limitless potential, Valerius only gets to enjoy one of the three. He is what 2019 would call “heritage stock”; seeds and animals saved from previous times without genetic modifications of any sort, as a bank against potential disaster. So fixing little things like a cut with the wave of a medical wand is unavailable to him as it could damage the historic conservation; people worship his genes for their unmodified purity, and cross to the other side of the road to avoid his person.
Without the boost to brain power enjoyed by so many, jobs are few and far between. Valerius worked his way through everything the street has to offer, finally reaching the pinnacle of his potential careers as a gumshoe. Private eye is a little too upstanding for what he does – Valerius puts foot to pavement investigating the worst for the worst, and hopes to get paid when he shows his employers the results.
This is the best life he could ever grasp for in the flying city of Autumn. Or anywhere on or off Earth.
Then a being walks through his door offering the chance of a lifetime. Unfortunately Valerius is at the end of his.
Initially he was just going to take the money and wait it out, but curiosity gets the better of him. Because there are two things that always made him feel alive, and they are solving a mystery and risking death.
REREAD 2020 August
I reread this book after 18 months. Still is awesome.
What this means is AFTER developmentally editing it, and reading it three times in the process, I read it again after publication. I don’t normally create, let alone publish, book reviews of books I edited, but, dang, I fan-girl over this one.