A. Sherman Karlsson

Thoughts on Hope and the Environment

Thoughts on Managing a Timeline, part 1

🔖This essay accompanies Chapter 03: Cameron Green. Time keeps going forward, day by day, at least in the real world. In The Butterfly Koi you may have noticed it works a little differently. Specifically, the timeline for each character runs sequentially but jumping between points-of-view means you may also be

Thoughts on the Main Character

🔖This essay accompanies Chapter 02: Cameron Green. I’ve spent an embarrassingly large percentage of my life enrolled in higher education. Graduate school, in particular, turns out to be a habit that is surprisingly hard to quit. Two significant takeaways from all my time in school about good presentation skills

Thoughts On the Environment

🔖This essay accompanies Chapter 01: Fujiwara Eika. The climate is changing, and human activities are the cause. I can’t believe that’s a controversial statement in 2023, but here we are—at least, in the United States, where I’m writing this essay. Despite devastating fires, droughts, floods and

On Framing a Story

🔖This essay accompanies Chapter 00: Preface. Writing a story is a tricky thing, stringing events together into a sequence that becomes a narrative. There’s a magic to the process, the transformation of words and events into a conglomerate that conveys meaning beyond the ingredients. Writing a novel is like