


Notes from The Buffer Zone: Trusting The Storyteller
Last year, I got mad. After a fraught few months in which I nearly died, and then we moved, and our entire lives were in upheaval, and some of my good friends died (or were dying) and everything was just plain hard or sad or confusing or new, my husband and I went to...
Notes from The Buffer Zone:Neighborhood
Years ago, I read an essay by Nora Ephron called “Moving On.” In addition to being one of the best writer-directors of rom-coms ever, Nora Ephron was a hell of a nonfiction writer. Her essays are droll and observant and a bit too spot on. “Moving On” is in her...
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Visions of the Future
One of the main features of living in Las Vegas is the influx of tourists—different tourists—on a weekly basis. For one weekend last fall, motorcyclists had a big gathering, and the city grew loud with revving engines and blaring rock music. In December, a big rodeo...
Notes from The Buffer Zone: The Importance of Weather
I grew up in the American Midwest. In northern Wisconsin, to be precise, where the tip of Lake Superior touches both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Most of my weather memories of those years are of severe cold and deep snow. The time our house got buried after a blizzard,...
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Old-Timers
I’ve become one of the old-timers. I had an inkling of that these past few years, after I was the guest of honor at MileHiCon and watched the younger writers mill around. I had another inkling when so many of my writer and editor friends passed away recently, and I...
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Fandom Changes
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Fandom Changes By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Because I live in downtown Las Vegas, I see the strangest things. Almost every window in my place overlooks different wedding chapels. On the afternoon of May 4, I looked out one window and...
Notes from The Buffer Zone: Conventions in the Sky
I write this a week after I discovered that Gardner Dozois passed away. For those of you who never met Gardner or even heard of him, he was the sf editor for most of his tenure at Asimov’s SF Magazine. He won the Hugo for his editing 15 times. He edited a year’s best...