Story Revised, and then? Politics, History, AI, Broad Ripple Review; Ali Smith

 I went to Payless this morning for supplies. Back here, I finished revising “Blue Eyes Flashing Doom”. That had me working until just short of noon.

After noon and lunch, I did a blog post. Then there was a nap for an hour. I keep fighting off a sinus infection. What else have I done? A bit of reading of emails. 

That led me to some items I will note here:

What Isn’t Intelligence? (Los Angeles Review of Books). Okay, a little confused on whether there is a difference between human intelligence and AI.

Life Finds an Investor (Los Angeles Review of Books) points the main fault (okay, “main” is my word) in de-extinction.

This denialist narrative is already spreading widely: de-extinction advocate Ben Jacob Novak (no affiliation with B. J. Novak from the sitcom The Office) has proposed that species should not be considered extinct while there exists frozen genetic material through which they could be potentially revived. Advocating for so-called de-extinction is a convenient nonsolution for accelerating species loss. It conceals the real cause of climate change—capitalist exploitation of the environment—and creates the illusion that climate destruction is reversible so long as the species that have been destroyed can be restored by a private company. De-extinction turns species loss into an investment opportunity through a speculative narrative.

Our Man in Marseille (Los Angeles Review of Books) is a bit of history has been told elsewhere and should be repeated (especially since it seems to be very well written).

Marseille 1940 helps set the record straight of a man who saved thousands when the United States was turning away those huddled masses yearning for freedom. In these reactionary times, when millions of refugees are at risk all across the world, Wittstock’s book ought to shame us all into action.

WTF: 'Straight Grift': Trump Reportedly Wants $230 Million From Taxpayers for DOJ Probing Him (Common Dreams)

President Donald Trump is facing fresh allegations of attempting to corruptly profit from his office after The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Republican is demanding that the US Department of Justice pay him about $230 million in taxpayer dollars for previous federal investigations into him, and his allies at the DOJ are expected to make the final decision.

Trump filed the administrative claims—which are submitted to the department for potential settlements to prevent lawsuits in federal court—before he returned to the White House earlier this year, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper. However, the president nodded to the legal battle in public comments at the White House last week.

 The Golden Age of Sh*tposters (The Bulwark) - it is not just MAGA is riddled with Nazis, would-be Nazis, might-be Nazis, and those coddling the same mentalities, but that all of them have overdosed on stupidity and incompetence.

 Republicans blather on about family values, but their actions tell us how much they value families: Cuts to the state’s child care system have created the perfect storm. Indiana must fix it (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Let’s be clear: These enrollment declines are not about reduced demand. They reflect a lack of support for families who need child care to work as well as wage growth that continues to lag inflation. Families still need care, and in many parts of our state demand exceeds supply. But affordability remains a crisis point for Indiana’s working families at all income levels.

Rejections coming in today:

Thank you for letting us consider "Learning The Passion and Control Twist" for publication in the Missouri Review. We enjoyed reading your work, and though it doesn't quite fit our needs at this time, we wish you excellent luck with it and hope we will have the chance to read more of your writing in the future.

Sincerely,

The Editors

The Missouri Review 

***

Thank you for sending us "No Ordinary Word." I greatly appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, this one doesn't wholly feel like a match for me as a reader and I am going to pass.

Thanks again, and best of luck with this!

Sincerely,

Aaron Burch

Editor, Short Story, Long 

***

Thank you so much for your submission to the 20th issue of WayWords.  

The editors have decided not to include your piece, "No Ordinary Word", in this issue. While they enjoyed your work, they felt the theme of messy wasn't as strong in this piece.  

We appreciate the courage it takes to send your work into the world and invite you to explore other Writer's Workout opportunities: 

Writer's Games, an annual competition 

Write Track, a three-part competition with biannual rotation

Fiction Potluck, a quarterly competition (open now)

future quarterly issues of WayWords (open now)

and Tales, our annual anthology (opening in 2026).

Catch up on our free 2025 conference and prepare for 2026, March 23-29.

We wish you luck on your writing journey. 

-The WayWords Team 

Same story with revisions and different titles.

I retain a long time interest in Richard III and his nephews, so I have had What Really Became of the 'Princes in the Tower'? playing the background while working on this post. If nothing else, the presenter is a hoot.

A little late about Broad Ripple Review releasing its first number.

Another video listened to has been UNDERHYPED Authors we Should be talking about MORE!

Mostly genre writers, but so what? Good writing is good writing. And do check out the comments.

I wish I had the time to experiment like Ali Smith: A Novelist Who Looks Into the Dark. Or to learn the skills she has.

The stories she tells spill out of stories that spill out of other stories. She’s an inveterate flouter of chronology—a timeline for almost any of her books, including the quartet, would look like a manic Etch A Sketch scribble: Rather than plot or the forward sweep of the clock’s hands, it is Smith’s voice, her many voices, that propels the reader. As though on a whim, she’ll take an unexpected detour into art history or natural history or literary criticism. Finger-on-the-pulse backdrops are balanced by cultural or historical or scientific deep dives. Against the grim tidings of the day, news of pain inflicted by strangers on strangers, she pits, in Spring, the oddly charming tale of Katherine Mansfield and Rainer Maria Rilke spending several weeks in 1922 in the same small Swiss town—and never meeting. A hack screenwriter wants to rework that non-anecdote into an erotic TV costume drama, the two writers screwing in a swinging cable car high above a picturesque snowy valley. Appalled, the director he hopes to hire flees and ends up in the Scottish Highlands, where he crosses paths with the network of people dedicated to helping migrants.

Like every Smith novel, Spring is about human connection, how hard it is—how damned important it is—to acknowledge humanity in the other and embrace it. Yet Smith has talked about how she loves the spirit of alienation in Mansfield’s writing: “Distance, foreignness, knowing you’re out of place or in limbo … and however much you feel at home, you’re fooling yourself, and however strange you feel in the world … it’s natural, it’s the most natural thing.” Sometimes there simply is no connection. Force it, and you get schlock.

 Yes!

When I asked Smith about the legion of ghosts in her fiction, she shrugged and said, “I just don’t think death makes that much difference.” Sounding like Gertrude Stein, she elaborated: “We carry with us all the people who have made us and the people we make and the lives we make, and the world we make continues on from what we make of it.”

***

Some early reviewers of Gliff have complained that it feels too “on the nose.” The book’s horrors—climate catastrophe, internment camps, genocidal wars, high-tech surveillance—are too familiar to serve as prophecy. Is it fair to complain that the future is almost already upon us? Who needs prophecy when dystopia is now? The novel thrums with Smith’s urgent need to tell a story about where our divided present could lead us. “We cannot look away at the moment,” she said to me. “We must not look away from the darkness. And if I didn’t look at the dark, what kind of a writer would I be?”

 Yesterday, I finished Ross MacDonald's The Chill. I think he is being ignored, for all that Library of America has collected his works. He was a fine writer - he is still well worth reading, for readers and for writers.

 sch