The last time there was a writer's strike, "Star Trek the Next Generation" came up with a script using a Deaf Actor, Howie Seago. Many people derided the episode as pitiful, stupid and other names I won't print here. It was said if the writers had not gone on strike, it would have never been made. They are most probably correct. Which brings me this point.

Will this strike bring about some more Deaf, Blind, Disabled actors to earn their pay in the sunny lights of the acting studio? It is no falsehood to say that Science Fiction Fans tends to attract those that society deems social freaks. While social PC would frown upon saying that those who are disabled are looked upon any differently, that PC is out of touch with reality. Disabled often feel as if they are aliens on their own home world. Writers who write Science Fiction have in large part due to various reason, have some reason to feel the same. Not all of course, but many.

At least, that is how I chose to see what happens when on the atomic level something is responding to something on whatever nerve center has detected as an irritant. In this case, it happens to be someone, somewhere, smoking a weed of some sort or other. Such things make my nose itch and if exposed long enough, a headache. So I figure on the atomic level, I must be having a mass rave going on in my sinus cavity and hence the itch to the headache. If that is the case, I assure you only the atoms are having any fun with the involuntary inhalation of substance of intoxication.

To this day I still sigh to hear "Oh I can't read that stuff, it is so complicated, and I just can't get my head wrapped around it!" or some other comment along these lines when asked:"Do you read Science Fiction?" Some would say that Fantasy is easier as is Horror because there nothing complicated in those stories, to which my eyebrows crawl up my head and down the back to blow out you guess what.

Oh, we are still around. Finding print publishers to print our stuff is a hard and rare thing to do. As a so far unpublished writer I have found this to my great frustrations simply because my writing is not a male dominated, weapon filled space opera. Ah but there is hope. Instead of staying with only the print publishers, many a forward looking writer has turned to e-publishing. I have to admit I was slow on the uptake. I still wanted to hold it in my hands and it just not the same holding it on my Treo. Still as I look for publishers for my stories, I find that there are many more publishers who specifically ask for Science Fiction and Fantasy not to be weapon driven or only male dominated story telling. I have long said along with many others that there are women who would love Science Fiction and that we are not a bunch of Geeky freaks. Nice to be proven right. In many ways, where else would we have gone? Being naturally forward thinking, new methods of communications would fit right in with our.. What If... style of looking at life.

If you were to spot me on the street, my clothing would just scream *Mom*. They are not up to date, might not even be up to the decade for all I know. My hair is in a consent state of bun, braided, or some other put-up and never gelled which means, fly away hair! Make up? Only if we are going out to a restaurant with table cloths! I drive your standard gas saving Saturn, not an SUV, I have only a Bachelor's degree, not a Ph.D.. I constantly make goo goo faces at other people's babies because mine are almost grown and would frown on such things from me. Teens, they need tender loving care you know. So in all cases, there is nothing to make me stand out. Until you talk to me.