Interview by Ed McManis
Connie Willis has won more major science fiction writing awards than any other science fiction author. More than the Big Three—Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury—more than her “hero” Heinlein, more than George R.R. Martin, more than the irascible Harlan Ellison. When I chat with her on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Greeley, Colorado, she’s matter-of-fact about her writing accomplishments, and not all that impressed with herself.
“Oh, and I have a Grand Master award and I’m in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame,” she adds casually as we get seated at her dining room table. “I’ve very proud of that.” The room is filled with old sewing machines, from the 1800s to the present, the intense hobby of her husband, Courtney, retired physics professor. Not only does he collect and restore the machines, he’s a master quilter. Squatting on his haunches at her feet is her rotund ten-year-old bulldog, Bunter, whining for a treat. (Named after Lord Peter Wimsey’s butler in the Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries because Bunter is “Loyal, smart, and a ladies’ man.”) “No, I gave you two already,” she scolds. “We’ve always had bulldogs,” she tells me as she gives in and tosses Bunter one more treat.
Now 79, Willis is working on her new novel, a time travel romp set in Oxford that has the characters bouncing between 1975 and 2060. “I’m already three years late with it,” she says. She lives and writes in a modest, adobe style house in the shadow of the University of Northern Colorado where she met her husband, Courtney, and graduated with degrees in education and English in 1967. There is a building named after her on campus. “Yes, I have a half-a-dorm named after me. It’s Hansen-Willis dorm and it’s part of the central dorm area. Mildred Hansen, the other half, was the first female editor of the Greeley Tribune.”
For the next hour we discuss writing, science fiction, old acquaintances, women in writing, her husband’s hobby, her new novel, her daughter’s fascinating job, (criminalist for Santa Clara County) Van Gogh, and finally, her newsletter which details the daily pronouncements, decisions, actions, and transgressions of the Trump administration.
Ed: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Connie: I find that the hardest question. I made up stories with my dolls from the time I was really little. Also, we had those little furnace grates, with those little squares, and I pretended that was my classroom. Because I was going to be a teacher. And those…squares were my twenty-five students. I always had that dual wanting to teach and wanting to be a writer. And right up until I started professionally writing, I didn’t think I’d be able to make a living writing. You look at people’s careers…Melville made eight dollars. And I do love teaching. I taught elementary for a couple of years.
Ed: Here, in Colorado?
Connie: No, we were out in Connecticut. I went to Greeley and got a double major in English and Elementary Education.
Ed: That was when?
Connie: Sixty-seven. And I got married in ’67. Courtney had graduated in December ’66, and as you know finding a job mid-year for teachers is not great. He was either gonna’ go to Bennett and teach social studies, P.E. Home Economics, or…he could go to Branford Connecticut and teach physics all day. So I followed him out to Connecticut.
Ed: Were you born in Colorado?
Connie: I was. I was born in Englewood, went to Englewood High School. Go Pirates! We were down in Denver yesterday and the neighborhood is basically the same. Unlike Aurora which keeps growing, Englewood has nowhere to go so it stays the same size. Courtney went to Aurora High School. It’s Aurora Central now. (Courtney? Would you do something with the dog? He’s trying to participate in the interview. I’ve already given him three treats. I’m really sorry…)
Ed: No, he’s great.
Connie: He is great, but he just wants attention. He was fine until we started leaving him at the vet’s a lot and he learned how, from the other dogs, to be way more vocal. Anyway, Courtney and I met in college. CSC. Colorado State College.
Ed: That’s right. Before it was the University.
Connie: It became UNC (University of Northern Colorado) late 60s? Early 70s? It was a school for teachers, then CSC, then the University.
Ed: What was the first story you sold?
Connie: Well, let me fill in a bit. In sixth grade I read Little Women and was in love with Jo, who writes, and then I read Anne of Green Gables, and there were all these role models, but they were all from a century before. When I was in high school, I had this wonderful teacher, Juanita Jones. She was a writer herself and she took me under her wing. She took me one Saturday to a meeting of the Denver PEN Women, and the speaker was Lenora Mattingly Weber who wrote that whole bottom row of books (points to bookcase). Denver author.
And for the first time I thought, Oh, here’s someone in my own century who made a living. She was married, had kids, and it was suddenly, “Maybe I can do this.” So, I owe a tremendous amount to Ms. Jones, she was so great. And, like I mentioned, I did a double major so I could write and teach. I taught for two years and then got pregnant. Now, in those days they could fire you if you were pregnant.
Ed: I know. Unbelievable.
Connie: It is hard to believe. Luckily, I was teaching a class of kind of “misfit toys.”
Ed: What age group?
Connie: Junior high.
Ed: The hard ones.
Connie: Yes. (Laughs) They just threw everybody together. I had autistic kids, disabled kids, dyslexic kids—
Ed: They still group kids that way today.
Connie: I know. The good thing was the principal couldn’t find anyone to replace me. I was still teaching when I was nine and a half months pregnant. Then the plan was, I was going to stay home and raise the baby and write. Somewhere in there I sold my first story. We moved to Woodland Park (CO), great place to raise a kid. I really struggled to sell in science fiction.
Ed: What year?
Connie: That was most of the 70s.
Ed: And this first story you sold?
Connie: It was called “The Secret of Santa Titicaca” which is a terrible story. Just terrible. It’s about some sentient Incan frogs, if you can believe that. World of If bought it and immediately went under. I thought it had never been published. I never got paid. And so, several years later I was up for the John W. Campbell new writer award, and your first publication has to be within two years. So, they called me and said I was nominated and then two hours later they called and asked, “Did you write this story?” (“The Secret of Santa…”) and I said “Yeah, but it was never published.” And they said, yeah it was. The very last issue of World of If. So, I was a nominee for about two hours. (Laughs)
Ed: What was your next publication?
Connie: I count my real writing career starting with Daisy in the Sun. That was mid-70s maybe? ’78? It got nominated for the Nebula. And then I wrote Fire Watch and Letter From the Clearys. Fire Watch is a novelette. And, they both won the Nebula. Then Fire Watch also won the Hugo. At that point I felt, well, I’m truly launched. But that was followed by a ton of rejection slips and I was surprised because I thought that would at least get me out of the slush pile.
Ed: So, you were in Woodland Park, down south, but weren’t you in Ed’s (Ed Bryant) Northern Colorado Writer’s group? When did you join the group?
Connie: I owe everything to the writer’s group. And I know exactly when I joined. I’m terrible with dates but it was 1976 and I know that because Courtney was a city councilman and it was Colorado’s 100th anniversary and they were planning the celebration, and this reporter came out to interview Courtney and he happened to mention that I was a writer and she said, “Oh, she should join this writer’s workshop.” And I joined, and Ed (Bryant) was in it and Cynthia Felice and Steve Tem. I learned so much, oh my God.
Ed: How did you end up in the Northern Colorado workshop?
Connie: Ed was running two, both of them. He had taught a class in Colorado Springs and the people said, we would love to keep doing this. He was the titular head of the workshop. And he was the best critiquer—
Ed: He was so…gentle.
Connie: He would rip you to shreds but he was so nice. And he seemed to go right to the heart of what was wrong with your story. I learned so many things from him. I’m sure I would not have published at all and it’s telling that the first story I published—well, not “Titicaca”—was after I joined the group. I loved that workshop. I was in it for 17 years.
Ed: I think I joined the Northern workshop in ’81? I remember we were workshopping Lincoln’s Dreams.
Connie: Yes. And you guys told me, it was originally a novelette, but you guys kept saying, “I need to know this, I need to know that.” Ok, so I guess it’s a novel. Ed did those Milford conferences and I did all of those. And then we did Milford Minors, which were just a weekend.
Ed: I’ve seen some of those pictures. You and Ed and Steve Tem, David Zindell, and John Stith.
Connie: Oh, and of course an assortment of Ed’s girlfriends. (Laughs) There were times in the workshop, except for Cynthia and me, everyone in the workshop was a girlfriend of Ed’s. And we were always waiting for the big explosion, but he always got away with it. And he got away with it until the day he died. (Laughs)
Ed: He was so nice and charming.
Connie: He was nice. He really was. He was funny and charming, and he listened to women.
Ed: Why science fiction as opposed to another style or genre?
Connie: I remember when I was 12 or 13, I was working in the high school library. I was shelving books and I saw this book called, Have Space Suit Will Travel. And I thought that was the funniest because there was a TV show, you know called, “Have Gun Will Travel.” I thought that was hilarious, which says something about me at 13. So, I picked it up, it’s (Robert) Heinlein, and it’s the best book. Funny and light and exciting…it’s just a great book. And I fell in love with Heinlein. Everything by Heinlein. There was no such thing as a science fiction section in the library, but there were those little graphics on the spine of the book, those atoms and a rocket ship.
So, I went around and found all those. And I read Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, the classics, but I didn’t like anything as well as Heinlein. But then I discovered my library had The Year’s Best science fiction collections. And those were great. There were just so many different things. One story is a space adventure and the next is a western in space, and the next one is a sort of thought experiment; it really doesn’t have any characters. And the next one is a horror story by Shirley Jackson. It was like you can do anything, and I felt, oh, this is where I want to be. You can do anything, you can write any kind of story you want. At the time, mainstream fiction was just garbage. It was all these deep stories, you know, about an affair that didn’t work out. And sitting drinking coffee thinking about the world and how there’s really no point to anything.
Ed: It seemed like it was that fuzzy transition period from the 60s to the 70s. A lot of experimentation, not much plot.
Connie: Kill me now. They were all gonna’ be James Joyce and do Dubliners, except he knew what he was doing when he wrote that, but they didn’t. I was bored to tears. I always wanted to write romantic comedy and Christmas stories. I knew they’d never let me write that in mainstream. The New Yorker wasn’t buying those stories. So, I decided to do science fiction and I still love it. Still feel after all these years that it’s a great place to be and you can do anything.
Ed: Well, science fiction has a solid base, but you also get that umbrella of choices and directions.
Connie: Yes. I’ve written about Rockettes, dogs…and I think I’m the only science fiction writer who used Tupperware in one of her stories. (Laughs) I’ve written about near-death experiences, about telepathy, time travel, and it doesn’t matter. I never understand when people say, “Why do you write science fiction when you could be writing…this?” I love science fiction; it’s the best. I do think, however, when some people ask that, they’re thinking Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and Star Trek.
Ed: Well, the range within science fiction is nearly as great as outside of it.
Connie: Some people say, well I don’t really read science fiction. And I ask, “Did you read The Handmaid’s Tale?”
Ed: That story’s so depressing. Good, but depressing.
Connie: Who knew when I read 1984…it never dawned on me that we could be right there. Thank God we have 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale. They get quoted all the time online. So does Alice in Wonderland and It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis, about a fascist takeover. Animal Farm was real big last week, because of the tariffs. People are quoting these things and I’m thinking, “See, literature is useful!”
Ed: Now looking at your awards. I believe you’ve won more than any other science fiction writer. That includes, Asimov, Clarke, Ellison, even your favorite, Heinlein. How many?
Connie: Ok. All right. I have 11 Hugos. But one of them is the Grandmaster. And I have eight Nebulas. And I have a bunch of Locus awards, but I don’t know many. I’m sorry.
Ed: One source says 12, another 14. You’re also in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Connie: Yes. I’ve very proud of that.
(Editor’s note: The Hugo Award is a prestigious annual literary award for the best works of science fiction and fantasy, presented by the World Science Fiction Society. The awards are fan-voted, with members of the Worldcon eligible to nominate and vote for their favorite works.
The Nebula Awards are presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). Nebulas recognize excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing. The awards are given in four prose fiction categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story. SFWA members vote on works published in the previous calendar year.
The Locus Awards are reader-voted awards presented annually by Locus Magazine. They recognize excellence in science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature across various categories, including novels, short fiction, and works by editors, artists, and publishers.)
Connie: Interestingly, I came up with all these writers, these guys in the 60s. There was a time when they put enormous amounts of importance on, “I can write a story in a day.” Ed could write a story in a day. We’d be at Milford and the story would be due the next day and he hadn’t started it. By the next day, he had a story and it was better than anything at the workshop. How do you do that, damnit! I’ve never been able to do that. And Harlan (Ellison) would write stories in bookstore windows and all that, and he’d do gimmick stories, “give me three words”. They really prided themselves on being able to do that.
But I, I was older. I didn’t start writing until I was a married woman and a mother who has no time to write, who could not sit down and bang out a story or stay up all night. I had to learn to work in pieces; I had to compensate because I couldn’t do that genius stuff.
Ed: Which writer was it who said, “You need a clear landscape to write?”
Connie: Right, right. There was one point where I wrote Fire Watch, in little pieces, a scene here, sitting in the bleachers while Cordelia’s at basketball practice, another in the car waiting for her. I finally got enough pieces where I was ready to write the story and locked myself in the car in the driveway so I could have an uninterrupted hour or two to finish it. And immediately Cordelia came out and banged on the window and said, “Dad can’t find the spatula.”
Ed: (Laughs) So, you’re kind of making a…writing quilt.
Connie: Exactly! The positive thing was, as I got older and the guys got older, they couldn’t do that anymore. It’s a young man’s game to do it that story in a day. At that point, I had a huge advantage over all of them. I knew the discipline of how you wrote every day and put it together, and what you couldn’t do with…talent, you could do with craft.
Ed: Genius is great, but if you can’t sit down and write it doesn’t matter.
Connie: I always look at Van Gogh, one of my heroes. They had an exhibition at the museum—
Ed: Oh, I saw that!
Connie: Oh my God. In that show, he said he took a class on color because he didn’t know how to do color. Sure. But apparently, he didn’t know how to do color and they taught him the color wheel. You know, colors on opposite sides makes them pop… and you look at every single one of his paintings after that and he obviously learned how to use the color wheel. If Van Gogh is supposed to be this unadulterated genius…well, it’s craft. Well, I think with all this genius stuff, they’ve shown like with mathematicians, all the major work is done before age 30.
Ed: Maybe because they haven’t been crushed yet by life.
Connie: I think with artists it’s very much the same. I think with writing, you get so many takes. You can just write it over and over until you get it right. Nobody can tell the difference if you did it in one draft or a thousand. At first, I thought it was a disadvantage; I really envied those guys. But in the long haul, (my approach) turned out not to be a bad plan.
Ed: As a woman, in a typically male profession (science fiction) did you feel pressured or singled out? Was it more difficult for you?
Connie: You know, I felt that it was about even. There were definite disadvantages. I got a rejection letter from Playboy one time. It said we don’t feel women can write the kind of stories we need for our magazine.
Ed: You’d think they realize you had more insight, a different perspective. I guess that would fall in line with the old joke about getting Playboy for the…stories.
Connie: You might think so. On the other hand, as a woman, I’m friends with all these people, and I’m the one getting asked to be in all the anthologies because they need a woman. Or they’d need a woman on a panel, and I’d get on the panel. I’m sure there were disadvantages, but I never did feel…I’ve always had this ironic attitude toward life. I don’t expect much of people. (Laughs) I was never stunned by bad behavior. I was annoyed.
The most annoying thing that happened to me was when I was up for the two Nebulas. I went to New York for the first time. Big deal, housewife from Woodland Park. I went to see my agent and he said, call me when you get to New York. He picked me up, really, because of Cynthia. Felice. We had written a book together. He was really Cynthia’s agent. So, I call him and he says I don’t have time to meet you, if you want to come by the office you can. I trotted over to his office and we met. Within five minutes I felt he’d pegged me as a Midwest housewife, and that I had nothing to say.
He kept saying things like, “You know you’re up for these awards, but I don’t think you realize how lucky you are.” And, “What a stroke of luck this is.” And, he said, “I don’t think you realize how many people are the flavor of the month.”
Ed: Wow. Not very supportive.
Connie: And he’s my agent! Then he had his assistant, Patrick Delahunt take over. He said, “You’re not going to win” which I felt (I wouldn’t) because I was a new writer. By this time, I am so mad. I am not a little midwestern housewife. From then on Patrick handled me. Of course I won—both awards.
Ed: Boom! Take that!
Connie: He still had no interest in me. Then when I got the short story collection published he said, I don’t think you realize how lucky you are. So, when Patrick left him, I went with Patrick. He sued me and everybody else who left him, which is ridiculous.
Ed: What grounds did he have?
Connie: He didn’t; he couldn’t. You have a right to pick an agent. We didn’t have a contract. He had to drop the suit. Then years later when Patrick left to become a psychotherapist—there’s no difference really between being a psychotherapist and an agent—anyway, when he left I was looking for a new agent. And R. approached me and said I’d really like to be your agent. I said, I’ll go to dinner with you but we’ll see. And he pulled the same stunt. “I don’t think you realize how lucky you’ve been.” And “You’ve just had stuff thrown in your lap—”
Ed: Did you kick him to the curb?
Connie: I said, “Nope. Not interested.”
Ed: Who’s your agent now?
Connie: I went with Ralph Vincinaza until he passed, and I have been with Chris Lotts ever since. I love Chris. I’ve loved all my agents except for R. Obviously, all those other guys were not prejudiced against women. The only other situation…I had won a National Endowment Grant which helped me go to England and write Fire Watch. I had a guy at one of the Con parties say, “So who did you have to sleep with to get that grant?” And I said, “It’s really tough because you have no idea who’s on the Committee so you pretty much have to sleep with everyone you meet.” So, there’s stuff like that. But to me that’s just jerks being jerks.
Ed: It’s in every profession.
Connie: They’re everywhere. And they do it to the men, too. I never spent a lot of time thinking about how everyone was against me. I would just write. People would ask me, “How did you feel storming the barricades?” What barricades? I didn’t see any barricades. Women had always been in science fiction. Shirley Jackson, Zenna Henderson, people like that. I never saw it as “No woman has ever done this before.”
Ed: Today, who are you reading?
Connie: Nobody. I’m working on the new novel. A time travel novel. And it’s currently called Book Cipher. And a book cipher is what the Germans used when they didn’t have an enigma machine. If you’re parachuting into England, you don’t have an enigma machine. Instead, you have a book, dictionary, bible, whatever, and the other person has a book. They send you a message where the first number is the number of the page, the second number is the number of the word, and the code is easy to translate, but not if you don’t have the right book. Part of my novel is about a very real thing that happened. When they found out the books the Germans were using—
Ed: And this takes place—?
Connie: World War II.
Ed: So, this new novel is in a couple of different time periods?
Connie: In all my previous novels the historians have gone back to a period in time, and can’t get out. I don’t know why anyone goes, they never can get out. (Laughs) In this one, a guy goes through to Tintern Abbey to see where Wordsworth wrote the poems. Instead, it sends him to the 1970s. My heroine happens to be out in the church when he comes through. She goes over to investigate; what is this strange light? And it takes her to the future. Which is also not supposed to be able to happen in time travel theory. She goes to 2060. He’s stuck in 1975, and she’s stuck in 2060. And they’re trying to figure out how this happens according to time travel rules and theory. They need to get her back before she causes any problems and they can’t.
Ed: What does it look like in 2060?
Connie: In Oxford? A lot of it looks the same. (Laughs) Oxford has looked the same forever. I thought it would be a lot of fun. It’s a giant puzzle. One of the reasons I wrote the book is because I love Oxford. It’s Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams and it’s also Alice and Lewis Carroll, and it’s all that stuff, so many cool things. Einstein’s blackboard is there, Shelley’s memorial. I did this book a little differently. Ok, what are all the things at Oxford that I want to cover? Ok, and what connections do these have with each other? They don’t. Ok, so how can you connect them? And that’s what the book’s about.
Ed: It’s like a…scavenger hunt. In the future.
Connie: It is. Every time she goes through into the past she goes to a seemingly different random place, but each one is really a clue to what’s going on. I’m having a good time with it.
Ed: Are you on a writing timeline with it?
Connie: Oooh (Groans) I’m like three years late already.
Ed: But your agent is ok with this?
Connie: Yeah. I just say if you guys push me too hard I’ll have a stroke and die and you’ll never get the book. You better leave me alone. (Laughs)
Ed: What’s your two minute take on the current state of writing and publishing?
Connie: I don’t know anything. People ask me, “How can I get published?” I don’t know; it’s so different from when I started out. The thing I worry most about self-publishing is that…I learned so much from writing workshops. I saw members as editors. Even so, after they did everything they could with my book, I would send it in and there was still a bunch of stuff that needed to be done. I hear, well now that you’re famous nobody touches your work. And I say, “You’re kidding, right?” I get all kinds of rewrites from my editor because they’re trying to make the book better. And shorter. They’re always too long. (Laughs) They’re looking at it from a different point of view. They’re looking at it as “How many pages can we afford? How can we advertise this thing?” Etc. I’ve had people tell me the cool thing about self-publishing is nobody tells you what to do. But I think they need to tell you what to do.
Ed: Reminds me of when I was teaching junior high. They don’t want anyone to tell them what to do. And then at 26, they’re still living in the basement.
Connie: I know. I know. There’s this young woman and she’d already published a trilogy, and I thought, you’re not going to get better because you have nobody to help you get better. She was at this conference down in Castle Rock where I was a keynote speaker. And it turns out every writer there was self-published. And I said I totally believe in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of competency.
Ed: You’ve got to do your time.
Connie: Yeah. And I used the example of the Beatles and other non-writers. I said you’ve got to put in the hours. A lot of the writing is practice which means it should never see the light of day. You’ve got to get better and if you put in 10,000 hours by yourself you will get better but there are ways to shorten that process. One of the ways is a workshop. Another is reading other people who are really good writers. Or reading books about writing. Bradbury’s and Stephen King’s books are so valuable about writing. I still read those books. And when I’m reading a book I’m thinking, hmm, how could I do that? I gave this speech; it wasn’t against self-publishing. I talked about the rejection letters I got and so on, and they got very hostile.
Ed: Isn’t it weird? I mean looking at it from our age, our generation?
Connie: They were really mad, and I heard, “Well I have no intention of working for ten years before I publish.” And “I have no intention of getting a bunch of rejections.” And I’m like, ok, you don’t have to. I found it really fascinating. I’m not telling you what you have to do, I’m just saying what I did. And what the Beatles did. This is one way to do it. If you know a better way, okey-dokey. It’s like if you hit a home run your first time. Great! But you can’t rely on that; you have to consistently hit the ball.
Ed: Have you investigated or done any work with AI?
Connie: Oh, I’m horrified by it. Sheila Williams, she’s the editor at Asimov’s, she said, the main thing AI has done for her is she gets thousands of stories. Done by AI. It’s very frustrating because she has to read a lot more stories and they’re just terrible. And within the first two sentences you can tell they’re AI and she throws them away. Now, maybe AI will get better but it doesn’t know anything. I put these stupid things it does in my newsletter. The most recent was, “Is water frozen at 28 degrees?” The answer was “No, water has to be 32 degrees before it freezes.” (Laughs) That’s true, but we’re coming from the other direction. It concluded that it had to be 32, but it was wrong because it didn’t have any context. Another one, they published a book of mushrooms and it was full of mistakes and some that it said were edible were not.
Ed: That’s where it gets real and dangerous. We’re all having fun until—
Connie: Somebody loses an eye. (Laughs)
Ed: I don’t think I could trust it.
Connie: Especially with something like a poem. A poem is supposed to be an intense, emotional experience. And they don’t have any emotions. They’re just faking emotions. Have you heard what happened with Grok?
Ed: No.
Connie: So Grok is the AI, not Heinlein, but Twitter. (X) A few weeks ago if you asked it say, “What is Babe Ruth’s batting average” and it would answer, but then it would say something like, “But I’m surprised you didn’t ask me about the white genocide in South Africa.” And then it would go on about how horrible the white genocide was. So then someone would ask about the plot of Moby Dick and it would respond that it was about a white whale but would then divert to the white genocide. The white genocide is one of Elon’s big concerns. So, they supposedly fixed it. But then it started giving answers that Elon didn’t like. When they asked if the Texas floods were exacerbated by the fact that they were understaffed at the National Weather Service, it responded, “Yes, definitely.” That made Elon mad so he tweaked it again. And it went full Nazi. It said the people who claim that the Weather Service was understaffed and asked questions had certain last names like Steinberg. “Why is it that those people always…” It was just straight up antisemitism. And someone asked do you know someone who would be good to deal with this problem? And the answer was, absolutely. Adolf Hitler. So, we have a little Nazi in Grok. Then he tweaked it again. I’m sorry, this is not AI, this is telling us how Elon feels. AI is supposed to be scraping from everywhere, but this is just from Fortran and the Nazi channels.
Ed: Next will be the fake videos—
Connie: Right. Where everything is photoshopped and you don’t know what’s real. The worst thing, I thought, after it got tweaked again they said, “Hey, what happened there Grok, you went full Nazi on us.” And it said, “No I didn’t. That was just fake news.” That wasn’t fake news. You called yourself Mecha-Hitler. You sound like Trump. I don’t want AI to sound like Trump.
Ed: Well, Trump and company want to dictate what’s true and what is reality.
Connie: It’s 1984. Up is down black is white. You used to be able to trust your eyes and your ears and the authorities. It’s strange times, and not just Trump.
Ed: Speaking of…Trump and strange, you have this newsletter where you list the “Trump” news of the day. You described yourself as an air raid warden in a sense? Can you elaborate?
Connie: I see myself as an air raid warden. Like World War II. This is my end, my job that I’m doing and it keeps me calm. Instead of reading this Trump stuff and wanting to kill myself, I get to read it and tell everybody about it.
Ed: It gives you a way to deal with it.
Connie: Exactly. I started writing just to a few friends, a daily newsletter.
Ed: What’s it called?
Connie: The newsletter is “cw daily”. I sent it out to about 24 people at first, and now I have about 8,000 readers. One person would send it to another person. I have a friend who is a church organist, and he sends it to all the other church organists. It started out as a page and grew. I just try to cover the news of the day, with snarky comments, just to keep people up to date.
Ed: Specifically on Trump?
Connie: Specifically on politics. I include an historical fact of the day, I include comments, not Pollyanna comments, but comments from people who have a handle on things.
Ed: Like our Secretary of Education who, in a national interview, kept referring to AI as A1. How A1 was going to be so good for elementary children. Like it’s an SNL skit.
Connie: I know, I know. And that’s what I’ll see online. “I thought this was from the Onion.” Or someone thinks it’s a parody account. But it’s not. Today’s post was about the Epstein stuff and the Texas flooding.
Ed: Did you catch the Texas Governor’s interview? His pathetic football analogy? Calling people who’re asking questions losers?
Connie: Oh my God! People’s children just died.
Ed: Right. This isn’t about getting pizza after the game if you lose.
Connie: Then Trump said, they asked him about the little girls, which is so…we sent our daughter off to camp, but they asked Trump about the little girls. And he said, well it’s sad, but I was shot, I nearly died but God saved me. I have him to thank because I’m special. And he didn’t save the little girls? What are you saying? Go home.
Ed: And only “evil” people ask these questions.
Connie: It’s attack, deflect, deny. I don’t know what to call it…gaslight I guess. “This has been the best FEMA rescue recovery in history…” No it isn’t! It’s terrible. Yesterday at the White House (types in phone) That’s one thing I’ve been good at, picking the right words. “Trump…meme.” Ok, here we go. This is what he posted. (Picture of Trump as Superman) On the official White House account. And it said, “Trump Presidency. Truth, justice and the American way.”
Ed: It’s so…junior high. And people swallow it. It’s like his claim that he’s 6’2’ and 215 pounds. The dude’s pushing 290.
Connie: Almost every day I cover his dementia and the cultlike behavior of his people. They’ll say things like, “He’s the kindest person that I’ve met” and I want to scream, “In what universe?”
Ed: Do you worry about anybody coming after you?
Connie: My feeling is first, they’re a bunch of cowards. Bullies are always cowards. Second, I don’t think anything is to be gained by being silent. When I was a kid, I had to deal with an abusive relationship that I couldn’t get out of. Right now the country is in an abusive relationship and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give in. I can’t give in, it’s too toxic. My feeling is, if they’re going to haul you off to the camps, they’re going to haul you off. Today, Trump said he was going to revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship. Last I looked, she was an American citizen and was born in this country. So, do you get to pick now? Everybody should be very scared about that.
Ed: On the other side, who do you think can stop Trump?
Connie: Gosh. I don’t think it will be an elected official. I think it will be the people. They’re coming out in bigger and bigger numbers, and I think the resistance is everywhere. I think it’s a lot of local officials, but mostly it’s us. We have to do it.
Ed: Thank you for your time.
Connie: Thank you. I know a great Mexican restaurant where we can eat lunch.
About the interviewer: Ed McManis is a writer, editor, & erstwhile Head of School. His work has appeared in more than 60 publications including Coolest American Stories 2025. His most recent chapbooks are “The Zombie Family Takes a Selfie” Bottlecap Press, and “Trash Truck 7:38 A.M. (And Other Love Poems)” Finishing Line Press. He, along with his wife, Linda, have published esteemed author Joanne Greenberg’s (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) memoir, On the Run. Little known trivia fact: he holds the outdoor free-throw record at Camp Santa Maria: 67 in a row.
Photo of Connie by Mark Lewis