Disability and Progress-July 11, 2024- Paul Martz

[00:00:00] Speaker A: KPI.org. [00:01:00] Speaker B: And greetings. Thank you for joining disability and progress, where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. Thanks for tuning in on Thursday, July 11, 2024. Charlene Dahl is my research pr woman. Hello, Charlene. Hello, everybody. Erin is my podcaster and tonight we have a great guest. Tonight we have Paul Martz. Paul is an author and an editor who happens to be blind. Paul Martz is an award winning science fiction author, technology blogger, and a former punk rock drummer. His stories have appeared in Uncharted magazine, Amazing Stories, magnets and Ladders, and RMFW's 2020 anthology, Wild Uncivilized Tales. Hello Paul. I want you first a little bit to talk about what or when that you decided to become a writer. What? [00:02:21] Speaker A: That's a great place to start the discussion. Sure. And I'll just, I'll just talk until you guys told me to be quiet. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Ok. [00:02:30] Speaker A: I always had a love for science fiction as a young child. Just going all the way back to when I was three years old and I used to sit on my dad's lap and watch the original Star Trek series on television. I tried to write as a child in school and in college. I enjoyed reading a lot better. I don't really think I had the right instruction to be a creative writer at the time. I did have many other interests. I was involved in AP math and technology. I was also involved in the visual arts and music. And so if I couldn't do creative writing, it was no big loss in my opinion at the time. Going on at the same time, when I was growing up as a child is, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. So I started to lose my eyesight with very mild symptoms, night blindness and some tunnel vision at an early age. And that progressed throughout my life. But when did I get to be a writer? Well, I'm trying to fast forward. I am. I worked as a computer programmer for 30 years after I graduated from college. And then by the end of those three decades, my eyesight was quite impaired and I decided that it would be a good time to retire and start thinking about what I was going to do for the next 30 or 35 years of my life. And that's when I started thinking about writing again. And I'll tell you, it started out I was just doing some technology blogs for the Appleviz website. It's a website for vision impaired Apple users, just writing about how to use a Mac and how to use an iPhone and the apps that are available on those platforms. As a blind person with voiceover. And very quickly I found out I wanted to add kind of a creative edge to those blogs, and then that morphed right back into science fiction and mediataindeen. So here's what I did. You know, you don't want to tackle something like this on your own. I researched creative writing communities here in Colorado, where I live. I live in the small town of Erie, just north of the Denver metro area, and I found Rocky Mountain fiction writers. I got plugged into a great critique group, speculative fiction writers, and it's just kind of snowballed from there. I love writing. It's my second career and probably my true calling. [00:04:58] Speaker B: So, as you said, you did do some writing in school and college. And I'm wondering if you felt like losing your vision, if it affected your writing or editing, like how you did things. And obviously you used voiceover, but did it affect how you wrote and how you thought? [00:05:23] Speaker A: Do you think I, maybe to some extent, not in kind of the obvious ways that you might think. You might think, well, he's blind. How can he describe things visually? Well, I lived five decades of my life as primarily a sighted person, so I don't really find that to be challenging at all. Voiceover, when I'm using that on a Mac and I use scrivener as my word processor of choice, that I'm slowly kicking and screaming coming around to using Microsoft. But when I'm in that environment, I have to find the tools available that voiceover provides to help me out with things like finding errors in capitalization or punctuation. Actually, I found that spelling mistakes are the easiest thing to find. I very rarely have to run a spelling and grammar check because I will hear voiceover mispronounce it before I ever get to the point where I have to run a spelling check. Right. And so one of the things that a lot of writers learning how to do creative writing, they're, they're told when they get started that they should read their own writing out loud. [00:06:42] Speaker B: And that will give, it's almost, it's like listening to yourself out loud. That's horrible. [00:06:48] Speaker A: Well, yeah, voiceover reads it out loud for me. And voiceover is, you know, not really the most empathic voice in the world, but I do hear kind of the rhythm of the voice and where the clauses are and where the sentences are and what the lengths of the paragraphs are. And I think that that actually gives me some insights without actually reading a piece out loud. So I found that it actually works well. I think I can do everything a sighted writer can do. I just have slightly different tools. I might be a little slower in some areas. I might be a little bit better in others. [00:07:26] Speaker B: What was your first piece that you had published, and how did that affect how you felt? [00:07:37] Speaker A: Ah, yeah. Yeah. That was amazing because, you know, as a writer, you submit so many stories out there, and it's rejection after rejection after rejection. Right. And pretty early on, Rocky Mountain fiction writers published started accepting stories for their 2020 anthology, which ended up being called wild, uncivilized tales. The submission theme for that was simply wild. And who doesn't have a story already written that could be classified as wild? I think most people do, and I certainly did. And so I took an idea that I had been playing around with and kind of brushed the dust off it and polished it up, and I'd only been writing for a couple years. I knew it was rusty, but I thought it was a good idea. It was a science fiction retelling of the classic Robert W. Service poem the cremation of Sam McGee. And I titled the story the recreation of Sam McGee and put it in a science fiction future world. And I submitted it with, you know, talking with my critique partners about, have you ever tried to get published in the RMFW anthology anymore? And they wave their hand, nah, you can't get in there. Too much competition. Lo and behold, they accepted my story, and it was an amazing validation that I might be on to something in the second career that I've been pursuing for a couple of years. Right. And it was a great experience working with the editors because they had insights to polish up this story, and I learned a lot through that process. And that's probably the thing I like about creative writing the most. This is a whole new field for me to explore and poke and prod and investigate. And as long as I continue with this, I think that I'll be learning for the rest of my life. [00:09:37] Speaker B: I'm sorry to be so ignorant, but what does RMFW stand for? [00:09:43] Speaker A: Thank you. You know, I've done so many podcasts, I forget what I've told people about and what I haven't. But Rocky Mountain Fiction writers is a Colorado based nonprofit with about 600 members, and they promote the writing of genre fiction to their membership community. So they run workshops, and they have blog platforms for writers to post blogs about writing on. And they host an annual workshop, an annual conference, rather. So it's coming up this September, September 27 through 29th. It's a three day conference in Aurora, Colorado, where we'll be attending writing discussions, panel discussions, workshops, meeting with literary agents, learning how to write better, learning how to promote ourselves. It's an incredibly supportive organization, I must say. I've been attending that conference for three or four years now and they have always been very accommodating of my disability. I'm a cane user and I attend the conference with the help of a cited guide and they comp my cited guides registration. So it's a wonderful organization. I've felt nothing but encouraged and uplifted ever since I've joined. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Well, I have learned, I was going to ask you what your favorite piece was that you've ever written, but I was told by an author that they're all your babies and it's hard to pick favorites. But I'm wondering how many pieces you have written and what's the one that's gotten the most attention? [00:11:34] Speaker A: Well, I'm closing in on about a day, dozen short stories that have been published in one form or another or received recognition or attention. The one that I, there's, there's a couple that have done well in contests and I'm proudest of the first. It took second place in the 2022 Roswell Awards, which is an award that's passed out. Bye. Litfest, Pasadena in California. And that was an international contest with 500 submissions. I'm very proud to say that it took second place during the awards ceremony that I participated via livestream. They had an actor, Tim Russ, who had played a Vulcan on one of the Star Trek series Star Trek Voyager. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Excellent. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Narrate it. Narrate the story live, which was quite an honor. And after that, I started submitting it out to magazines for publication after I won that second place in that contest. And it was rejection after rejection after rejection. And then finally, finally just this past March, it has been accepted by amazing stories and it should be published in just, I'm expecting it anytime this month, sometime in July. [00:13:04] Speaker B: They said, oh, congratulations. [00:13:07] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:13:07] Speaker B: What's the name of it? [00:13:08] Speaker A: Actually, you said that I would be able to read an excerpt of a story and that's the one that I'm prepared to actually read at some point within this. [00:13:18] Speaker B: And the name of it is, the. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Name of it is Doctor Harriet Hartfeld's home for aging AI's. [00:13:26] Speaker B: And this is the one that was accepted by the most, your magazine that you just discussed? [00:13:36] Speaker A: Yes. Amazing stories recently accepted for that. Yep. [00:13:40] Speaker B: All right. Well, I'll tell you what, why don't, why don't you go ahead and read that. That piece. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Of course. I had the other story queued up. Hang on. [00:13:55] Speaker B: It's okay. We will have time for both, I'm sure. It's quarter after. Yep. [00:14:01] Speaker A: Talk amongst yourselves. [00:14:05] Speaker B: Well, we always like interview. We love to interview authors. So each one has their own stories and each one has, you know, their own interesting path to how they got where they got. [00:14:18] Speaker A: And here we go. All right, so I'm gonna read the first couple hundred words of Doctor Harriet Hartfeld's home for aging AI's. [00:14:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:14:34] Speaker A: Motion detection. Interrupt my tripod mounted stereopticon pans and zooms. Though image clarity suffers from the faulty focus motor, I make out two humans pushing an AI on a cart. One is Doctor Hartfelden, confirmed by her white lab coat, an occasional muscle spasm below her left eye, and a reduction of hair pigment inconsistent with age. I attribute these physical characteristics to her emotional attachment to us. When we inevitably fail, the subsequent psychological trauma adversely impacts her biology. Good morning, Jack. The variability in Doctor Hartfeld's vocal wavelengths excites my pattern matching processors. Greeting and welcome. I vocalize through my audio output. This is doctor west from the Turing consortiation. My search cache is loaded with his facial topography, receding hairline and professional attire. But her introduction negates a need for a cash search. He is Michael West, PhD, presently the lead researcher for the Turing consortium for ethical treatment of AI's. His online curriculum vitae states that he played a key role in establishing facilities like Harriet Hartfell's home. My stereopticon observes him, but I offer no greeting. We brought a new rackmate for you, Doctor Hartfeld indicates a cuboid AI drawing power from a hot plug cart during transport. Per touring consortium requirements, the AI's visual appearance matches the sleek front panel controls, louvered vents and matte black polycarbonate shell of a series 800. And I am mounted on a high tensile steel multi system bay rack. The adjacent system bay is empty. It was formerly occupied by a series 400 financial analysis system and AI with a host name Sawbuck. Together, we passed our days at Doctor Hartfeld's home by discovering new prime numbers, some with billions of digits. He exists now only in my memory. My prediction engine reveals Doctor Hartfeld intends to install this new AI in the system bay where Sawbuck formerly operated. So that's all I'll give you on that story. And if I might tell you a little about the history of that. [00:17:32] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:17:35] Speaker A: AI's living in an assisted living facility. Doesn't really sound very plausible, but for me it was a great way to process and work through some of the emotions surrounding my father's end of life issues. He passed away four years ago. So for me, writing that story was a bit of a catharsis. The AI's, the computers that are characters in the story, get connected on the network and start talking to each other, and they find they have very different feelings about end of life issues, whether there should be a right to die with dignity or whether you should be able to live out your golden years to your fullest extent. And that's kind of all I'll tell you about that story, and hopefully it will be up and online for free at amazing stories in the very near future. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, let us know and we will pass it on when it is. I'm wondering, Paul, sorry. I guess I'm wondering if you would talk about how you co edited this latest anthology without breaks, Finger crossed. How did you decide that you wanted to co edit it? Or did someone ask you, or how did you get in that position to do that? [00:18:57] Speaker A: Rocky Mountain Fiction writers RMFW puts out an anthology once every two years. And so I had a story previously published in the 2020 anthology. One of my writing friends from my critique group, Linda Ditchkiss, had a story published in the previous anthology, 2022, which was called Bizarre Bazaar. That was the name of the anthology. And so about the time bizarre bizarre was coming out, I started thinking maybe I'd like to get involved in the next anthology project in some way, shape or form. It was. Once I started thinking about it, I immediately started thinking about what would I put out there for a theme that people would submit their stories kind of along the same theme, right? And I immediately came up with the idea of Colorado's changing climate. And once it entered my head, I could not let it go. So the theme got me first. And as Linda and I write in the introduction to this anthology, the anthology project began when someone lit fires under our behinds, literally because we both had close calls with Colorado wildfires. Linda lives in the town of Salida, Colorado, had to be evacuated during the decker fire. The Marshall fire swept through suburban boulder, Colorado, and destroyed a thousand homes. And it was Colorado's most costly fire. Perhaps the only reason it might not sound familiar. This was December 2021. Fortunately, only one person died as a result of that fire. But friends of mine lost their home, and my wife and I decided to help them out. So we moved into my father in law's guest room so that our friends would have a place to live while they figured out whether they wanted to rebuild or move or what they would do. So at the time that I started thinking about this anthology, I was still living in my father in law's guest room, actually. And when I started talking to people about working on the anthology, the advice I got was start putting a team together. And so I talked to Linda immediately, and we realized we had this common wildfire experience, and we decided that we would co edit the anthology together. And I could not have picked a better person to help me out. Linda has written an award winning series of speculative fiction called the Sasquatch Series. The first story is Crimes of the Sasquatch, and you can find that on Amazon. She won a Colorado Book award for that series. She's also been involved in judging writing contests, both at the grade school level as well as professional, self published writers. And between her self publishing experience and her contest judging experience, I knew that I had someone who could help me ensure that this anthology, I could get it into the end zone right without breaks. [00:22:17] Speaker B: Fingers crossed. An interesting title. Tell me about that title. How did you, how and why did you name it that? [00:22:26] Speaker A: Well, you know, we. Some of the, some of the things you think are going to be hard work on an anthology turn out to be easy, and some of the things you think will be easy turn out to be hard work. So, picking the title, we created a shared Google Doc where we started adding our ideas for a title and our rationale for why that should be, the title or the subtitle and our thoughts to make our argument one way or another. And we would copy and paste our favorites and put it up at the top. And then Linda would come along later and she'd move mine down and she put a different one up at the top. And when it, when it came right down to it, we had 35 stories submitted. We chose twelve and added a 13th, which I'd like to an opportunity to talk about the 13th story, too. So we picked twelve out of that pile of 35, and we looked at what they had in common. And in every story, it's more than just changing climate and the climate. I'll tell you this, it's not always weather, too. When an author is submitting a story to a theme, they will look for ways to twist that theme to their own devices. It's not all about the weather, but a lot of it's about the weather. We started looking at the twelve stories we picked, and in every story, a character is going along pretty well with their life, and then something happens and their life is upside down and turned around, and it's something they've never confronted before and they don't know what to do and they have to make really tough decisions. Sometimes it's on their own, sometimes it's with the help of their friends and their family. But they make that decision with the best information they've got on hand at the time, not knowing whether it's going to work or not. And they just cross their fingers and move forward because, you know, there are no breaks. The future's coming right for everyone, whether you're a character in one of these stories or whether you're listening on the radio right now. So that turned out to be the title that we went with without breaks. Fingers crossed. And we think that works better than Colorado's changing climate because as co editors, one of the things we learned pretty quick is we needed to start thinking about marketing early on. And are we going to sell more copies because it has the word Colorado in the title? Probably not. We might actually sell more copies if it doesn't. And do we really want to say that this is a changing climate book and possibly alienate some people that are turned off? Bye. That idea. Hmm. Maybe that's not such a great idea either. Let's call it something else. So without breaks, fingers crossed. That's the way it went. And I like it. I think it's got a great name. It's an exciting name. I hope people will hear the title and I hope they'll buy the book. And I'm not just saying that because I make a dollar off of it, because I actually don't. All the proceeds go to Rocky Mountain fiction writers, which is a nonprofit organization. So when you buy a copy of it's available in paperback and Kindle ebook, then you're helping out a great local Colorado organization. [00:25:53] Speaker B: Why did you stop at 13? [00:25:58] Speaker A: We actually stopped at twelve. And I'll tell you, there are stories that you like the first time you read them, and there are stories you don't like. And then there's the, there's the gray area of stories. And we had to kind of look at those closely and say we had the help of some volunteer judges who read those along with us. And when you get mixed reviews, when you have four or five people reading it, you have to look at them closely and you have to say, which one of these stories do we like enough to spend the time working with the author to make it even better. Right? So we stopped at twelve and then we said, and Linda, this is why it was so genius for me to pick Lynda because Linda is so smart. She came up with the idea of let's get a 13th story and let's reach out to a Colorado bestselling author and see if they will contribute one of their stories. And she sends the suggestion to me by email. And so she didn't hear me snickering because I didn't really give it much of a chance of working, to tell you the truth. So I wrote her back and I said, yeah, that's a great idea, Linda. And I have a suggestion for you. Let's reach out to Paulo Bacciogaluppe, who is the Hugo and Nebula award winner, winning author of the book the Wind Up Girl, as well as shipbreakers and the Water knife. He's written a lot of climate based fiction, and if we could get Apollo Baccioglupi's story in this anthology, people would recognize that name and buy it. And as they read it, they might read something else by another author in there. And it's going to raise the visibility of the anthology and all of the authors who have contributed stories. So we went with 13, a nice round number, and it includes this wonderful story, the tamarisk hunter by Paolo Bacciogaluppe, who has just released his new novel, Navola. And I met him at a book signing event here in Boulder, Colorado, with the Boulder bookstore Tuesday night. He's a great guy. And go buy the anthology and buy Paolo Baccio Galupi's books. They're wonderful. [00:28:29] Speaker B: So are there other. I didn't get the idea that this book in any way tilted towards authors with people with disabilities. Are there any other authors, any authors in here who have disabilities, who have written this or just, you know, just great stories? Because I've read this and this is, some of them send chills down me. [00:28:54] Speaker A: No one else has a. None of the other contributing authors have a disability. None of the volunteers who helped out have a disability. As far as I know, out of the entire 600 person RMFW organization, I'm the only one there with a severe vision impairment. [00:29:13] Speaker B: And do you have a favorite story? [00:29:18] Speaker A: I do. There's so many I like. I don't want to insult the others by picking out just one. But we open with a story called where the river ends. It's by J. Warren Weaver. He lives up in the western slopes of Colorado, up in the mountains near a town called Ruda, and he writes mysteries, thrillers and suspense. And I would like to read a couple hundred words of where the river ends, too, if we've got time before the commercial break let's do it. Ooh, this is. This one's got a little bit of an edge to it. Are you ready? We're ready where the river ends by J. Warren Weaver Henry sat on the edge of the rusting old railroad bridge, his legs hanging off. The side of the bridge was a relic of another time, another place. It had never been meant for pedestrians, as evidenced by the lack of safety rails along its soaring sides. The powers that be, the railway's original owners, had let it go into a state of decay after the local coal mining operation closed their doors and left town. It had been tough times for the small Colorado mountain town, but none of that concerned Henry much as he stretched his legs out over the dying river that snaked by below. His feet swung back and forth in empty space as hot gusts of wind rasped off the mountaintops and down into the river below like the breath of some avenging dragon. He watched as the surrounding trees buckled against the sudden onslaught and wondered if any would topple over and roll into to the muddy riverbed below. The beetles had moved through the once luscious pines years prior, killing everything in their wake and leaving nothing. Nothing, really, but the bony fingers of skeletons trapped just beneath the surface, forever left trying to claw their way free of their rocky tombs. He could still remember a time when only the beauty of nature surrounded him, an oasis of exploration and freedom, a forest so lush he wondered if it would swallow him whole. At times the area had been filled with so much life, nearly untouched by the machinations of man. It would eventually be labeled a hidden gem in the Rockies as the town tried to drum up tourism to fill the void the coal mine operation had left. And it worked. All the better for Henry, it turned out. But back before any of that, before all the changes, when Henry was still young, the sound of birdsong rang out from every direction, and statuesque deer paid witness to his methodical movements along the unkempt, overgrown dirt hiking trails. Back then, he'd been as familiar with the forest as he was his own face in the mirror. It was his safe place, his refuge. It had been where he ran to when things needed sorting out, escaping from when he needed to hide. And why was Henry sitting up there on that bridge? Why did he need to hide? I think you're going to need to buy this anthology and read it to find out. [00:33:05] Speaker B: Indeed, we're speaking with Paul Martz. Paul is an editor and author and recently co edited the anthology without Breaks. Fingers crossed he just read an excerpt of a story with that was the very first story in there, I have to admit. Some of my favorites were the sprinkler system and right sizing I found very creepiest with the. Anyway, would you just talk a little bit about those two stories? [00:33:46] Speaker A: Certainly. And thank you for reading the whole thing. I knew I sent it to you, and I thought, well, Sam will probably just glance through it, but thank you for reading those. Those are both excellent stories. I loved our sprinkler system by Leslie L. Smith from the moment that I read it, because this was a great story. So the plot here is a woman, I'm gonna assume, elderly, living in a home by herself, and maybe with a touch of dementia, and she's not really sure where her husband is, and she's not really sure what that is, that she smells, but she figures out pretty quick that it's smoke and there's a wildfire outside her house, and she has to figure out how to turn it off herself. And, oh, I want to tell you what happens. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Don't do it. Don't do it. And talk about right sizing, because I found that. So I'm not even sure I have the language to express. I was just like, whoa. I could so see that happening. [00:34:59] Speaker A: Right? Sizing was written by Jeff Yaskit, and it is kind of a science fiction, dystopian future, where certainly water and probably other resources have become very scarce and everything needs to be chipped and tracked. What they don't want, more than anything, is to have some family decide they want to have eleven kids, for example, because communities just don't have the resources to support that anymore, and so they have this system of chips. But, you know, people. People are kind of inventive about working around rules like that, aren't they? And that's all I'm going to say about that story. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Excellent. I'm just wondering, I wonder if you ever had somebody doubt your abilities with editing. Like, how do. Did anybody ever ask you, I don't know if any of the authors knew that you were blind or anything, but what are some of the hurdles that you have come across being an editor? [00:36:10] Speaker A: Well, you know, I think going into this, the hurdle that I expected to have was I would step forward to volunteer to co edit the next anthology. Maybe someone, one of the officers in the organization, would say, are you. You're blind. Are you sure you can do this? And to RMFW's credit, no, no one ever brought that up with me. If they talked about it amongst themselves, I never knew about it, you know? And as far as I know, Linda and I put in our proposal to lead the project and no questions were asked. And we were handed the project over. And no one ever has even discussed my blog, blindness, with me unless I brought it up myself first. The contributing authors, for the most part, unless I knew them personally already, and I did, a couple were unaware that I was blind as they were working with me. Once we were done with production and we got into marketing, one of the things we had to do, we could have the RMFW conference coming up in September, and Linda and I are going to run a panel discussion with four other four of the contributing authors. And so I interviewed the four that Linda and I picked via Zoom. And in that call, I told them that I was blind. And for all four of them, that was a surprise. [00:37:42] Speaker B: So that's interesting. Good to educate in the kind of way you did. I feel like you can actually take something and say, see, this is what we can do. And they don't really have time to think about it, except they might. They'll have time to look at the finished product. And I think that's a. I think that's one of the better ways to prove yourself to somebody. [00:38:09] Speaker A: I think so. And, you know, I'm not doing it so I can prove myself, except that I like to prove myself, whether I'm sighted or blind, I guess. [00:38:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:22] Speaker A: But I feel like, as a blind person, I think the thing that scares me that I used to worry about as a writer is there are a lot of blind people who write blind memoirs, and they write very good blind memoirs, and I have enjoyed reading them, and I am not trying to put them down in any way. But that is not my thing, writing blind memoirs. My thing is science fiction. I love science fiction and live for science fiction. And I was afraid initially maybe if my blindness got out there that people would have lower expectations of me, might feel that I couldn't write science fiction or, you know, editing the anthology, as you just mentioned, and might instead say, well, Paul, why don't you just, you know, go back to your desk and write a nice little blind memoir, and maybe I will write a blind memoir one day. But that's not what I'm about today. Have I ever ran my mouth too much? [00:39:30] Speaker B: No. I think that. I guess I just feel like, you know, that there, I agree with you, that, you know, people with and without disabilities, I feel like, want to prove themselves, but I feel like that you're wanting to prove yourself is different with a disability than without because you're basing it on different things and different people's opinions of you. [00:39:58] Speaker A: I think you're so right, Sam. I am. And I only have myself to look at when I'm trying to judge my own motivations. I don't have any control to compare myself against. Right. And all I know is I'm trying to play the writing game, just like all my sighted writing associates are doing. [00:40:25] Speaker B: What type of advice would you give anyone with a disability who was talking to you. [00:40:36] Speaker A: About writing or about dealing. [00:40:39] Speaker B: Writing, editing or about dealing with your disability? Any of those? [00:40:49] Speaker A: You're making me think, Sam, now that. That's a really good question. Get plug into a support community of people dealing with the same issues as yourself because you need that. But don't let that be your only source of advice or model for how to behave and develop as a human being. Also, get involved with people that don't share your same disability or impairment or whatever label you're comfortable applying that to. So I do have, Sam, I get about a hundred emails a day, which I'm sure you can relate to because I bet you're probably the same way. And a lot of it is blindness related from the various organizations, local and national, that I'm involved in, and a lot of it is writing related, and I believe both of those compute. Those communities are equally important to my development as an individual. I need to know what's going on in the blindness community, and I need to set that aside and live my life sometimes, too. And I advise anyone with a disability to do the same thing. [00:42:17] Speaker B: I would totally agree, although sometimes it's hard to do that. But I think, I totally think that's excellent advice. I'm wondering, I found it interesting when I read some with part of your bio that you or things that you sent me, because one of your things that you do on the off time, apparently, is play with a Rubik's cube. You had one growing up. Okay, so I'm wondering, what the heck were you like, you're writing a how to figure out the solution manual? [00:43:01] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And if I can, let me just say this is kind of for your listeners benefit and also for me. I met you when you spoke at a behind our eyes event last November or December. I believe I missed the initial part of it. So if you told us, when did you lose your eyesight? Have you always been without eyesight? [00:43:25] Speaker B: I was very young. [00:43:26] Speaker A: Yep. Okay. Yeah. So I lost mine gradually over time. So when I first picked up a Rubik's cube was when it came out in 1980. And I was 17 and still. I actually had a driver's license at the time. I drove for a few years before I gave it up. So I learned how to solve a Rubik's cube as a sighted person. But, okay, so if you're not familiar with the words, then you might not be right. It's an inherently tactile toy. You hold this cube in your hand and it's got these little sub cubes called cubies, and you can feel them with your fingers. And if they had just put tactile markings on it instead of colors, it would be the perfect toy for a blind person. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Mine had the initial of what color in braille it was, so blue, red, white, yellow, green. I'm missing one, aren't I? [00:44:22] Speaker A: Blue, red, white, yellow, green, white, yellow, red, orange. Blue, orange. Yeah. And you could braille those colors onto each side, or you could just do little tactile markings, little bump dots or a braille dot here. I know someone who takes a piece of sandpaper and cuts it into little squares and puts it on the side. I know three other blind people who do the Rubik's cube. We're a small but growing and mighty and determined community. But, yeah, once you've made it tactile, now you're confronted with a new problem. You go onto the Internet and you try to learn how to solve it. And it's all images and videos and diagrams, and there might be some text there that describes it in general terms. And if you try to listen to a video, it's, well, do you see this here? You just turned this, this, and this, and now it's there. See? [00:45:18] Speaker B: Or the best thing is when they play music. Overdoing it. Yes. [00:45:25] Speaker A: So what I decided to do is this. I have some technical writing background. Some of the first writing I did were programming books while I worked as a computer programmer. And so I did the blogging for Appleviz, of course, which is a lot of tech writing. So I decided this is a problem I can fix, Sam. I can fix this problem. I am going to write a text only solution for the Rubik's cube, for solving the tactile Rubik's cube. And I'm going to publish this thing in braille. And I've got it about half done. It's really hard to work on while I'm doing the anthology. And I have another writing project, too, actually a page freelance gig that I need to pay attention to. So I just. This is why I get 100 emails, Sam. But yes, I'm going to come back to the Rubik's Cube book. Just in May, I participated in my first Rubik's Cube solving competition, where you go to a site and you solve the cube. And I was the only blind one there, but out of 136 people, I placed 133. So I'm pretty proud of that. [00:46:35] Speaker B: Yes, you should be. You should be. The question, the anthology, let's go back to that without breaks. Fingers crossed, is it's out now, right? [00:46:49] Speaker A: It is out now. We had an official publication date of September 7, but thanks in large part to my amazing co editor, Linda, it was finished early, and she said, should we just publish it now and call it soft release? And I said, yes. So you can get it now as a paperback and as a Kindle ebook. I'm sorry, it is not available as an audiobook. If you are vision impaired like me and like Sam, you'll have to get the Kindle version and read it with a screen reader. [00:47:18] Speaker B: Okay. How can people get the book? [00:47:22] Speaker A: So you can go to Amazon.com and you can search for without breaks. Fingers crossed. That is the easiest way to do it. The official webpage is at the rmfw.org website, but they have a lot of stuff on their website, and you got to wade pretty deep to find the anthology in there. I just realized that I'm behind the curve on promotion. I didn't even have anything about the anthology on my personal website, which is palmartz.com. but I have just addressed that issue as of this morning. So please go to palmartz.com and you'll find information about the anthology there as well. [00:48:01] Speaker B: And when do you think your Rubik's cube instructions will be done? You knew? I asked. You had to know I'd ask, you. [00:48:08] Speaker A: Know, with a hope and a prayer. And maybe if I had the feather of an angel's wing as a good luck charm, maybe sometime in 2025. You know, National Federation of the Blind has worked with spin master, who owns the Rubik's Cube brand name, and they have now came out with an official Rubik's sensory cube that was designed with the help of NFB. I think this is a pastime for blind people that is growing in momentum, and there's only going to be more blind cubers going forward. [00:48:43] Speaker B: So if you could write with anyone in the future, who would it be? Or if you could write with anyone. [00:48:48] Speaker A: Anyone? [00:48:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:48:50] Speaker A: And can I pick a name from the past? [00:48:54] Speaker B: They should be alive at least. You know, possibilities could happen in the future if you could write with anyone who's alive. Now, who would you write with? [00:49:05] Speaker A: There are a lot of science fiction writers that are big names that I respect. Margaret Atwood, Neal Stephenson, Paula Baccioluppe. Of course, there are some rising stars in the writing and science fiction writing field. Katherine M. Valenti. Find her short short stories online. Carrie Vaughan, a local Boulder science fiction writer, just writes incredible stuff. And if I would promote one more, a friend of mine, Niecy Schall, is used with the gender pronouns they they wrote a Nebula award nominated science fiction book called Everfaireende, and Niecy is just going to keep going further and further with their writing career. [00:49:55] Speaker B: You cheated. You're only supposed to pick one. [00:49:59] Speaker A: Mark it outwit. [00:50:00] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. So what's in the stars for you? Coming up? Do you have any things coming up that you want to promote besides the. [00:50:12] Speaker A: National Braille press, which is a publishing company, Boston, that I'm sure your visually impaired listeners are familiar with? They have contracted with me to update their iPhone books for the upcoming iOS 18 release. So if you're an iPhone user and you want to find out what the latest and greatest is, wait for the updated revisions to come out. You'll see that my name will be credited with revising those, and that'll have all the tips and tricks for the latest features in iOS 18. Once that project is out of the way. I'm right in the middle of it right now. It's back to the Rubik's Cube book and then more science fiction short stories. And, you know, maybe at some point in the future I might try a novel. But I love short stories. [00:51:01] Speaker B: They are nice, aren't they? Something that you can feel like, oh, I made it through it. And you don't have to take days and days and weeks. I know. [00:51:10] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Nice, tight, little impactful. Lots of room to experiment. It's just such a fun format. And I grew up reading a lot of short stories as an adult. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm. Thank you so much for reaching out to ask to be on the show. I really appreciate it. I want to invite people, if you know somebody who should be on the show, please have them email me at disability and [email protected]. we love having authors and people with disabilities talk about all sorts of things. As long as it's disability related, you're all good. Charlene, is there anything you wanted to ask Paul? No, I just wish you well, Paul, in your endeavors. You sound like you're a really good. [00:51:57] Speaker A: Guy and doing a lot of good stuff. Well, thanks, Charlene. And Sam did a lot of the questions there. I almost forgot you were in on the call. [00:52:08] Speaker B: She chimes in once in a while when she thinks I'm losing. [00:52:12] Speaker A: I want to thank both of you for putting on an excellent show with excellent content. [00:52:16] Speaker B: You're so welcome. And we love educating, so it's a great thing for us. Well, thank you so much and good luck in the future, and keep in touch, and I'll look forward to seeing that Rubik's cube manual come out. [00:52:34] Speaker A: Thanks. And good luck to both of you going forward, too. [00:52:37] Speaker B: All right, good night. And this has been disability in progress. The views expressed on the show are not necessarily those of KFAI or its board of directors. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. And Charlene Dahl is my research pr person. Erin is my podcaster. My name is Sam. I'm the host. I think I said that tonight. We were speaking with Paul. Paul is an editor and engineer or editor and author and has recently done the anthology of without breaks. Crossed fingers. Fingers crossed. Sorry. Without breaks. Fingers crossed. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.