Title: Homewind.

Release: Fall.

I had a different title in my head when scribing. However, because the thing seems to have something to do with the impulse toward building a union in the great vasty dark, I am happy with this choice by the Baen marketroids.

These unimportant issues having been resolved, let us now move to the more cogent issue of whether a man's play is best supported by his appearance in or out of pants.

I contend that the appearance within pants is the more suasive. It is my guess that a woman more often imagines the man of her fancy in his clothes, with her secret knowledge of the underlying architecture somehow informing her appreciation of the draperies of the cloth.

Just a guess. What the hell can a man know of such thing?

Depends on the man, the cloth, and the pants.

Echoes of The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything...

the appearance within pants is the more suasive. It is my guess that a woman more often imagines the man of her fancy in his clothes, with her secret knowledge of the underlying architecture somehow informing her appreciation of the draperies of the cloth.

That's me. I can't speak for the rest of my gender, though.

Depends on the man, the cloth, and the pants.

One out of three. This may make my case.

I can't speak for the rest of my gender, though.

Exactly. Men and women are not separate and unique monolithic blocks of perception, each alike in their proclivities.

Individuals. Printed word is the last medium available for transferring thought from one individual to another.

I want to write something that speaks from the genderless core of me to the core of you.

I want to write something that speaks from the genderless core of me to the core of you.

Huh. See, I believe that, at core, I'm about as female as it gets. On a damned near molecular level.

So anything written to the core of me needs to make some sense to me through that pair of emotional eyeballs.

So, how does a man speak to you? Is the communication barrier molecular?

After filtering through gender eyeballs, is there any communication, at all?

I have questions. These are some of them.

Dang. I keep pounding the refresh key, hoping for an answer to these questions.

It's a special book written by a man that can do that, but they are out there. Just don't tell me what Women *really* want.

So, how does a man speak to you? Is the communication barrier molecular?

How does he speak to me? That's the wrong question, bro. I'm not responsible for how he speaks to me, and I don't get to dictate that. Hell, I don't even try to define it.

What I handle is my interpretation. And that's molecular, in the sense that, for me, it's pure instinct.

Look! It's a new drabble topic! And it's on time!!! (Try not to faint from the shock.)

Challenge #102 (summer jobs) is now closed. It yielded some GREAT drabbles, folks. I love reading them.

Challenge #103 is this: In the back of your closet is a box. What's in the box? Now. As always, you may interpret this however you wish, whether extremely literally, or extremely metaphorically. However, I'd love it if the drabbles leaned more toward the literal side -- like, "Far in the back of my coat closet is a shoebox with every one of the corsages my dates gave me before high-school dances. I don't know why I save them; more to the point, I don't know why I feel the need to keep them a secret from my husband." Like that.

Also as always, these don't have to be autobiographical/based in reality/true. They can be fictional (my little snippet above certainly was; I have no 15-year-old dried corsages lurking in a closet, and I also don't have a husband to hide them from). Just a little reminder. I know that all y'all know that the drabbles can be fiction, but I just thought I'd mention it before someone posts a comment saying "All the boxes in my closets have in them are blankets -- what am I supposed to write about that?!?" Make it up. Tell us about the human skull in your guest-bedroom closet.

Um, unless you really DO have a human skull in your guest-bedroom closet. Then make up something about blankets, okay?