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And now for something completely different: climbing Mount Whitney

Mount Whitney is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States at 14,508 feet — and in the height of summer (or, tbh, a lot of the year during this latest great California drought) it is a walk up climb! But that doesn’t mean it’s easy, exactly. I researched extensively before embarking on this climb, and there were still several things that came as a surprise. Here, I’ll summarize the details that you can find Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

on writing tools: Scrivener, VIM, Google Docs, hell?

There’s something beautiful about a well-loved keyboard. You know the kind: certain keys’ labels have worn off but the user knows exactly which ones must be pressed harder to work properly now, after so many years. Alas, most of the signs of our work, as authors or software engineers, are not nearly so physical. I recently started using Scrivener for my next longform fiction project. Scrivener is a famous (infamous?) application used by novelists and Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

how Platformed came to be

There are as many publication stories as there are books. For many years, I thought only one kind of publication counted as success. I imagined I’d someday emerge from the querying trenches with an agent, big publishers would bicker over my amazing story, and then it would become a bestseller. I’d sit back and relax once I an agent fell in love with my work. I don’t think it works that way for anyone. Major Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

In which I critique myself & my writing

Platformed comes out on May 18, 2021 and is available for preorder now! I encourage you to support your local independent bookstore by buying from Bookshop.org, but it’s also on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. In the mid 2030s, Sara is a young female software engineer at a startup that promises to deliver just one french fry when you need it. Then the apartment she shares with her boyfriend/boss burns down, the startup runs Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

Gimmicky ads for software engineers: or, what I hate about the internet

This post is just a rant, so if you’re looking for something insightful, I suggest you look elsewhere. You know that phenomenon in which you look at a chair on some website and then it haunts you for weeks? Worse yet, when you buy some random item you clearly need only one of, like a vacuum cleaner, and then are served ads for similar vacuums on every website you visit. This is a universal experience. Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

The Gender Equality Non-Paradox

In 2018, a conflict erupted at Google when a male software engineer proclaimed that women were less suited to working in technology. Many people came to his defense by citing a study from earlier that year that purported to find that, in countries with higher gender equality, fewer women worked in Science/Technology/Engineering/Math (STEM) fields (it says nothing about non-binary people). On its face, the study supported those who argue against diversity initiatives: when given a Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

The message we send

I’ve written before about how I strive to hit emotional highs and lows, and I do. But ideas, not feelings, are what keep me writing (and reading). I sit down to write a new story because I have some itching thought that I can’t work out any other way. I unspool the plot until my ideas become clear, writing to explore, to argue, to see the nuance in something I thought I understood. There are Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

Do you forget your favorite books?

I start probably half of my conversations by saying, “I heard on a podcast…” Recently, I listened to an episode of No Stupid Questions called Why do we forget so much of what we’ve read? It featured the regular hosts, psychologist Angela Duckworth and economist Stephen Dubner, discussing the extent to which they have forgotten details — and even major plot points — from some of their very favorite books. When the titular question was Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago

Engineering as a creative pursuit

Growing up, I was almost unconsciously tracked into the same advanced classes as all of the other little girls — English, social studies, art. I loved it. I thrived. And clearly, because I’m blogging about my life and thoughts in advance of a book release, I am an artist, in whatever sense of the word you like. But as a child, the world taught me that’s all I was. I could not be an artist Read more…

By Kelsey.josund, ago