Bookwyrme's Lair

The Hour Before Morning--Kickstarter

2013-06-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

Remember back when I interviewed Arwen Spicer about her movie The Hour before Morning (You can click the nice link if you don't)? We had a nice chat about filming in quarries, various sources of inspiration, and the plot.

In a nutshell, The Hour Before Morning focuses on the struggles of three prisoners Elek, Jenchae, and Meravyn. "On board a spaceship taking them to their deaths, they have only the length of the flight to make sense of their lives, if they can. Their story takes place against a backdrop of struggle between the Ashtorian conquerors and the Sama people who resent being forcibly “civilized” and want their worlds back. There is a deep hatred between the two peoples and a long history of struggle in which the questions of right and wrong are not easy to answer."

The Hour Before Morning is on Kickstarter where, Arwen says, the movie

has raised $1278 on Kickstarter! Can you help us get all the way to $5000 by July 7th? We have a wide range of rewards for contributors, including a copy of the novel, the movie, and credit in the film, among others.

Contributing is easy. Just click "Back this project" and check out through Amazon.com We need to raise the full amount to get a penny of the funding, so please help us get there if you can.

Check out our Kickstart page here

Please spread the word! And thanks in advance for helping us out with this movie. It's been a labor of love for all of us!

Find out more about it and see images, trailers, and clips on the Hour Before Morning Facebook page.

The new trailer for The Hobbit plus a little ramble on the first movie

2013-06-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

Is up! And I'm happy!

I wasn't sure what I'd think of The Hobbit as an epic. I mean, I like my nice, quiet, rambly little book. I'm the one who swore she'd take her copy under the bed and hide with it until the first movie was over, lest the contaminates leaked out and spoiled a good memory.

But I finally gave in and watched it, on DVD, and I liked it.

The movie is really more the dwarves' view of it, you know? From Bilbo's perspective, it's a mingled nuisance--adventures are "nasty uncomfortable things, make you late for dinner!" after all. He is, of course, ultimately a hero himself in a quiet sort of way, but it's never an epic for him.

For the dwarves, though,it is a reclaiming of home, and I can enjoy PJ's movie on those terms.

At least (she says cautiously), I enjoyed the first one that way.

I'm still going to grumble about the barrel ride apparently including a sword fight, but I expect I'll like the dragon.

End of ramble!

*Watches trailer again.

Bolsa Chica Reptiles

2013-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

I think this is a side-blotched lizard

I don't know why this made me nervous; it's not as if I didn't know about the rattlesnakes already!

Egret Fishing

2013-06-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

An egret fishing

Roses! Roses! Roses!

2013-06-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Lots of lovely new roses!

A fully-open Double delight

Ebb Tide in bloom

George Burns opening

A fully-open Just Joey

Just Joey again

Ruffles and Flourishes makes its debut

Splish-Splash

2013-06-07T11:50:00.001-07:00

It's not just crows who like the birdbath.

Sort of a Round-up, including lots of Geek Girl Project Links

2013-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hi all! Dusting off the blog here--I still do love it!

Still busy at The Geek Girl Project. I keep forgetting to come over here and share what I'm doing. This is, oddly enough, partly because I've also been managing the social networking side of The Geek Girl Project (Sometimes all, sometimes some--this is a team effort!) for the last few months, so by the time I've shared it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and http://pinterest.com/geekgirlproject/, I figure whatever it is has been well and truly shared!

So, some highlights from the last few months are:

Discovering and reviewing Non-Humans 1&2, then pacing the floor waiting for Non-Humans #3, and finally getting to read and review the issue. So, you know, now I am pacing the floor waiting for the conclusion in Non-Humans #4--one of these days!

Interviewing James P. Blaylock, premiere steampunk author and, as it turns out, one-time octopus keeper.

Interviewing Max Collins, author of an impressive amount of noir, including the tremendously fun Seduction of the Innocent, which I reviewed (He said he might, maybe, perhaps, possibly write a fourth book in the series after all. Here's hoping!).

Finishing my reviews of Snapshot, a noir comic by Diggle & Jock--very intense & unexpected & interesting & if you think it's hard turning multi-paragraph reviews into one sentence, you're right.

A long-running love-hate relationship with Once Upon a Time's second season, which culminated in And Straight on Til Morning which kind of made me think I might watch Season 3, if I had an entire summer to remember Neverland while forgetting Snow solemnly claiming that she had some "better" choice than killing Cora.

An ongoing love-hate with Jirni, J. T. Krul's "love-letter to all things fantasy" which features a lively, independent, strong-willed woman--who makes Barbie look flat-chested and is invariably posed in the most provocative way possible--sometimes, you can judge a book by its covers.

Having a marvelous time with the completely angst-free Legend of the Shadow Clan.

And lots and lots and lots else, except I don't know how to tell the GGP search engine to stick to just the last few months, so this'll get you everything I ever wrote there, from the very beginning.

Ooh, and my good friend K. Zolnoski joined the GGP recently to deal with Godzilla movies and comic books--she's going back to the very beginning--and to add her own column, "K's Guilty Pleasures," wherein she discusses movies people really love even though they shouldn't.

Outside the GGP, I've been gardening (there will be pictures), crow-watching, dealing with an increasingly crabby velicibird who thinks it's time to build a nest and if she can't, she'll growl and bite defensively anyway, and reading--plenty of GGP books, assorted non-fiction books, and lately Nancy Drew.

Oh, and getting my very own Twitter account. I'm not sure quite what I think of that yet. It's early days.

First Fruits

2013-06-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

There are now 8 kinds of tomato growing in the garden. They're just now starting to ripen. These are the black cherry, sun sugar, and redgold cherry tomatoes.

Only a bowlful so far, but I think there will be mountains ultimately!

Also harvested and ate some of the Painted Lady Runner beans. I forgot to take a picture of the pods , but they're over a foot long! I haven't, I confess, ever grown green beans before and I picked these because of their name and the little blurb on the back of the package--apparently they've been grown since the nineteenth century. It's probably not the best-approved way to choose your crops, but they are both beautiful and tasty and the hummingbirds like them, so I'll call it a success.

Crows & Birdbaths part 2

2013-06-01T12:48:00.001-07:00

I'm still watching the crows at the birdbath, and I've come to the conclusion that most of what they're bringing is not, after all, roadkill (There was one stretchy thing I'm glad I didn't get a good look at). Mostly, it seems to be stuff from one of the nearby restaurants--chicken bones that they strip the meat from and sometimes crack, or bread--twice it was big hunks of it that the crow in question left floating in the bath and then returned to intermittently throughout the day. In between crow visits, the other birds came down to munch.

Once it was a large, live grasshopper that the crow very efficiently dismembered at the edge of the bath. I don't know if that was a case of "handy edge" or "chitin is easier to swallow wet."

They (or it--I'm not sure how many crows are involved. We have a group of 2-3 that hangs out regularly, but whether they are the same 2 or 3, I don't know. Anyone know who can legally tag crows for the benefit of casual, front-yard observers?) haven't used the bath for food softening as much lately. I thought maybe the restaurant had made their bins crow-inaccessible, but now I think there may be another explanation. The crow in the picture there would very much like to settle down for a drink or a bath but is instead cawing in frustration (an attempt to call other crows? Anger?) because he's being persistently dive-bombed by mockingbirds. We have lots of those around, it's nesting season, and they do not like crows at all. So, possibly the bath will again be filled with debris in the winter and this is only a momentary reprieve, granted by the busy mockingbirds (who might as well do something other than sing at midnight).

The Nature of Crows

2013-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Things they will tell you on nature programs.

Crows are clever.

Crows are clever scavengers.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill.

Things they leave out

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath, and then they fly away.

Crows are clever scavengers who eat roadkill which they first soften in the nearest birdbath, and then they fly away leaving the bones of whatever it was in the water.

Link List: Glowing Millipedes and Efficiently Dunked Oreos

2013-04-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

1) Glowing Millipedes Found on Alcatraz". Apparently, California is the only place to possess millipedes that "are bioluminescent, meaning they produce their own light. . . These species, in the same family as the Bay Area millipede, make a beautiful white light that is actually quite bright." It's good to be famous for something, I suppose.

I'm also impressed by the scientist who collected some and "On a recent trip, Rowland collected several of these glowing millipedes and brought them back to his hotel room, putting them on his bed. "I cut out the light, and once you do, the animals emit a bright, neon, white light," he said. "They go around tapping their antennae until they get to an obstacle, like when I pushed my covers up into a hump, until they find a way around. It's spectacular. It sure beats any TV program you could have on at night." That is devotion!

2) Jumbo Squid on camera. I'm particularly taken by this bit of information: "Attaching a quart-sized device with a camera and sensors to a squid presents some technical problems. The trick is to find a big enough squid and fix the Crittercam onto a child's bathing suit so that it can be slipped over the creature's fins like a spandex sleeve." Simple, elegant, and matter-of-fact.

3)Bees may use electricity to communicate". They build up a charge while they fly, and they may use it to exchange information. Not only do they dance and see infrared, they sense electricity.

4) The best way to dunk an Oreo? Design the perfect Oreo-dunking cup, of course!

Writing Elsewhere (The Geek Girl Project)

2013-03-11T19:38:00.002-07:00

I know I've been quiet here lately! Things at The Geek Girl Project have gotten busy and exciting. We're covering a lot more territory now in comic books and (this has me super-excited)have added science books to our list of "things we cover." What do we cover? Currently, science, some technology (we plan to do more), science fiction, fantasy, horror (Rebecca, Jeremy, and Regina can get scary when they get to swapping favorite monster stories), plus interviews with artists and authors. We've also added new writers, and we're talking social stuff (Get-togethers have been on our to-do list since we got started but they haven't yet. It's getting more likely, though). So, it's been busy--and happy--there, but that means my poor little Lair has been awfully quiet. I don't plan on walking away forever--I like it here, too--but I thought I'd do an "in the meantime" post about some of what I've been doing over on GGP in the last couple of weeks. Sort of a sampler, one which will hopefully whet your appetite so you'll go read more--by me & by everyone else there!

1) I've written a lot of book reviews. Most recently, I reviewed Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts, which turned out to be one of those books that I want to hand out on street corners, both because of its subject and because of it's incredibly good writing.

2) I'm doing more comic book reviewing! I'm especially taken with Snapshot and Nimona--which is a webcomic that is awesome (see the interview with Gingerhaze here; the comic is here).

3) And, of course, I'm continuing to review Once Upon a Time. I've had my gripes about Season Two, but I loved The Miller's Daughter

So, I'll be back here, never fear; I enjoy link lists, photography, random non-GGP books too much to say "good-bye," but I thought I'd let you know what I've been up to.

Wildlife at the Dominguez Gap Wetlands

2013-02-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

Spring has sprung! Not that the wetlands were ever anything like vacant, but they're all enjoying the sunshine & the warmth now.

Link List: Robot Actors, Bees, and Printed Body Parts

2013-02-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

1) Robotic Actors share the stage with humans in plays by the Japanese Robot Theater Project. Figures it would be a Japanese idea--and I wish I could go see one!

2) Using 3-D printers to grow ears. This is amazing! And one of those things that might happen soon, not "in the next twenty years or so."

3) Amputee to Get an Artificial Hand with Feeling. I've kept some tabs on the controlling-limbs-with-the-mind tests, but not close enough, evidently, because this is miles past where I thought we were!

4)Bumblebees Sense Electrical Fields in Flowers. Bees build up a positive charge as they fly; when they visit flowers, the flowers become more positively charged. Other bees, it turns out, can sense this and use it as a way to tell which flowers have already been visited and won't have nectar.

Link List: Killer Asteroids & Runnaway Goats

2013-02-12T09:30:00.000-08:00

1) "How to Deflect Killer Asteroids with Spray Paint". i) Very slowly and ii) With really special paint, but it still should work, given enough time.

2) A goat escapes from a slaughterhouse in Brooklyn and runs down the street, evading NYPD officers send to recapture it and banging frantically on doors in an attempt to get away. Finally, it meets a former goatherd from West Africa (query: Where? Africa's a big continent!) who helps everyone calm down. Goat captured--but not returned to the slaughterhouse.

3) Butterfly Wings from Another Planet, plus more bug pictures by Alex Wild on his Google+ page.

4) The Periodic Table of Elements as Cartoon Characters. Yes, it's a blog. Yes, it's as cool as it sounds--beautiful and scientifically accurate. Who could ask for more? Found via The Mary Sue.

5) Two leopards seeing a mirror for the first time.

Book Review: Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird by Tim Birkhead

2013-02-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

Bird Sense: What It's Like to be a Bird is my kind of book. The central question is there in the title: What is it like to be a bird? What do birds sense? How do their senses operate?

Birkhead makes it clear early on that there is no one answer to this question: Different birds have different sensory arrays and approach the world accordingly. Kiwis use their sense of smell a lot; owls use their eyes; oilbirds navigate like bats, using echolocation, and so it goes. The book chapters are divided by sense, with on chapter covering sight, one hearing, one smell, and so on; there is even a chapter on emotions, detailing the physiological and observational accounts of bird emotion.

For each sense, Birkhead gives a short history of the study of the sense, generally focusing primarily on one bird. He describes the way the sense has been studied, what discoveries have been made when and by whom. Anecdote and information are mixed perfectly, keeping the book highly informative and enjoyable. Birkhead clearly respects both birds and readers. He explains matters clearly, never giving any sense of talking down to or about anyone. Bird Sense is both information-dense and comprehensible.

Highly recommended.

Further reading:
Tim Birkhead's site

Did you review the book? Drop me a line and I'll link to the review.

Link List: Creepy Robots, Science by Gaming, Quantum Shorts, and Etc.

2013-02-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

1) Meet Roboy, a humanoid robot with tendons. He is 1) an incredible accomplishment (to be) and 2) incredibly creepy. That unmoving, smiling face? *shudders.* On the other hand--artificial tendons? Awesome!

2) Citizen Science, EyeWire. EyeWire A Citizen Science project/game designed to map the J cell, "a particular type of retinal neuron." I love the idea of citizen science, and the idea of using games to help develop scientific concepts (this isn't the first), is fascinating. I do wish the blurb had said more about what sort of game it is or what game play is like.

3) Quantum Shorts. Four short videos dramatizing quantum physics. I'm with Jennifer Ouellett; The Cat, featuring Schroedinger's cat and the Quantum Killer is the best.

4) Off-Duty Natural History Exhibits courtesy of Io9. The photographer, Klaus Pichler, has more here, in Skeletons in the Closet It's in slideshow format, so the whole can take a while to view. I'm rather fond of The Cobras myself!

Photograph: View of the El Dorado Nature Center in the Summer

2013-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Just what the title says: The El Dorado Nature Center as seen from the bridge last summer (last year)!

Book Review: The Dead Man's Brother by Roger Zelazny

2013-01-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

The Dead Man’s Brother by Roger Zelazny is another non-cozy mystery found during the great cozy hunt. Mind, I already knew it wasn't a cozy. That cover says "non-cozy" as clearly as ever a cover did, and, besides, I really can't see Zelazny writing a tidy little tale about murder in the local bakery(1).

Dead Man's Brother is firmly noir, which presents me with a bit of a problem: I do read noir, but only very occasionally, so I can say "This is noir," but I cannot comment knowledgeably about the precise flavor thereof. It's got manly men, it's got shady dealings, it's got violence, and a beautiful woman to complicate life. . Oh, and there's revenge, and recompense, and a very low-key sort of "doing the right thing." And, it's by Zelazny. That last counts for a lot. It may come up again.

What's it about? Ovid Wiley, now the respectable owner of an art gallery, was once an art thief. There is limited evidence linking his present life to his past--until his former partner turns up dead in the gallery, and the CIA seems intent on framing him for the killing, unless he helps them with a small favor in Italy. It seems a priest has embezzled some funds. A lot of funds. The Vatican doesn't want any official involvement or fuss because it is embarrassing. So all Ovid has to do is quietly and unofficially poke around and see if he can't find out. If he does, the murder charge will go away, and he'll never have to worry about the body in his gallery. So Ovid, who is not at all happy, goes to Italy. There is a beautiful woman. Things get violent. Ovid gets even less happy, makes a trip to Brazil, and solves matters his own, highly unofficial, violent way.

This is unmistakable Zelazny, with his trademark mix of the pulp and the poetic (Is there such a thing as literary pulp? If there isn't, there should be). Ovid reminded me quite a bit of Corwin from the Chronicles of Amber, minus the bit about being pretty nearly a divinity. He does, however, have uncommon luck; reading The Dead Man's Brother, I could not decide whether it was good or bad, but it was certainly uncommon, and he ran through quite a lot of it in the course of the novel. Like Corwin, too, he cares little for the law, though unlike Corwin, he has no family ties to complicate matters.

All in all, a satisfactory sort of read. Dead Man's Brother is not my favorite Zelazny(2), and this is probably the only time I will read it, but I am glad I did. After all, it is by Zelazny. Have I mentioned that yet?

---
(1) Not that I knew Zelazny wrote mysteries at all, but then, from the afterward, neither did his publishers, not until after he died.
(2) So far, my favorite Zelazny is A Night in the Lonesome October. See
my reviewhere, at The Geek Girl Project, if you're interested in hearing about why. It made a lovely Halloween book, but I'm likely to pick it up at other times as well.

Link List: Tigers in the Snow, Creatures in the Sea, Dung Beetles by Starlight, and Other Unexpected Wonders

2013-01-29T05:00:00.000-08:00

1) Tigers playing with Snowmen. I don't think I need to say anything else, do I?

2) I wasn't sure the whale sharks really needed models next to them to make these photos worthwhile, but the article does explain it: Kristian Schmidt and Shawn Heinrichs were trying to get people who don't normally admire seaside creatures to stop and look. This...sort of helps, though I remain dubious. The whales, though, are gorgeous and they've done some amazing things with the lighting.

3) These pictures, by Arctic biologist Alexander Semenov are spectacular, with no caveats. They're definitely for those of us who already stop to look at sea creatures--or at least, photos thereof. I do wish it were possible to look at them at a slightly smaller size--a couple went clear off my screen--but that's a small price to pay for such unexpected beauty.

4) Speaking of photos here are some National Geographic photos.. Stunning. I'm trying to choose between lightning in Dubai and a Moss-Covered Trunk in Michigan, but they're all gorgeous. Wallpapers -- Visions of Earth -- National Geographic

5) Dung beetles navigate by starlight? Really? And I want to frame that photo.

6)What's a microbe to do when it storms?. Go up into the clouds, evidently.

7) I read Mary Mycio's Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl some time ago--probably about the time it came out--and was just remembering it the other day & wondering how the unexpected wildlife sanctuary is doing. Today, I found her followup article here, on Slate, complete with a gallery of photographs by Sergey Gaschak. The answer is: Surprisingly well, actually. Individual animals may be dying or mutating, but the populations as a whole are strong.

Photograph: Dragonfly at the El Dorado Nature Center

2013-01-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Another dragonfly from this summer. Some red to hold onto while waiting for summer's return!

I think this is a flame wing, but I am still learning, so any correction or comment is welcome!

Book Review: Clara's Grand Tour by Glynis Ridley

2013-01-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

In 1741 a Dutch sea captain, Douwemout Van der Meer, bought a live rhinoceros named Clara. He spent the next seventeen years touring Europe with Clara, the first and only rhinoceros most eighteenth century people ever saw. Clara's Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe by Glynis Ridley is the story of this grand tour, of Clara's fame and of Van der Meer's careful handling of that fame.

It's almost as much fun as the title implies. I mean, how can you possibly go wrong with the story of a rhinoceros touring Europe in a coach-and-eight? It'd be pretty hard to mess up. Ridley has a clear, engaging writing style and an attention to detail that keeps the tale focused. And by "attention to detail" I mean I have no idea how she tracked down all the letters, accounts, and drawings she did. The resulting picture is fascinating. To give a few details: I was quite enchanted to think that Boswell's description of Johnson's laugh "Tom Davies described it drolly enough, 'He laughs like a rhinoceros'" likely came from a visit to see Clara. Similarly, the image of eighteenth-century Florentine women doing their hair "a la rhinoceros," (a fact gleaned from letters) or of the fashionable Parisian world going rhinoceros-crazy are beautifully human and wonderfully absurd. It's a look back at another world, one full of the usual array of foolish, wise, studious, frivolous folk, and I loved it.

One of the more interesting little nuggets to me was the suggestion that Durer's famous, and somewhat maligned, picture of an earlier rhinoceros to reach Europe was not a case of poor, silly Durer thinking that the rhinoceros's "armor-like" skin was literally like armor plating but the result of said rhinoceros actually having been in armor at the time it was described to Durer. The rhinoceros in the picture probably looks like there are flowers on its skin because there were, in fact, flowers around the rhino. I'm not quite sure why this caught my attention so thoroughly; I think it's because I dislike the kind of condescension that sometimes creeps into discussions of earlier people's understanding of the world, and I like the idea (and evidence) that Durer was, in fact, being quite sensible after all.

Two things I wish there had been more of: Mostly, I wish Ridley had let loose with her enthusiasm a bit more. I mean, Clara's Grand Tour is the story of a rhinoceros! Touring Europe! In the Eighteenth century! In a coach! It's pretty amazing. I think a little jig or two is called for. Sometimes Ridley drops her guard and allows the sheer wonder and absurdity to shine through. Often, however, she pulls back a bit in favor of more scholarly commentary on the management of fame and the probability that Clara took this or that route on her journey. The results are impressive, and they're worth reading, but I don't think the addition of some more marveling would have hurt anything.

Also, I wish there were more first-hand accounts by people visiting Clara. In this, I'm just greedy. I loved what Ridley dug up, and I wish there had been more for her too dig. Likely Ridley wishes the same thing. There probably aren't that many eighteenth-century file cabinets full of breathless letters from people who'd just been to see Europe's one-and-only rhino.

Recommended: Yes. Be aware that Clara's Grand Tour, while clearly written, is not precisely light reading; you'll want a few brain-cells available (ie: Read it when you feel like focusing, not when you want the nearest fluffy brain-candy).

Guest Post: My Creative Process

2013-01-23T10:55:00.003-08:00

When my friend Bookwyrme asked me if I'd like to contribute to her blog and talk about the creative process, I jumped at the chance. Bookwyrme and I both have a passion for and sincere love of books. I'm a lifelong reader, and I recently published several books, something that's been an aspiration of mine ever since I was little. Given this, it's probably not surprising that I loved the idea of talking about my creative process and what it means to me.

When I think of the term "creative process", I love how it sounds. It seems so organized, so orderly, a sort of checklist process where I follow the steps and the end result is a written work. If only this were actually the case! The truth is, my creative process is messy, disorganized, and confusing--which tends to make me crazy because I am, by nature, a very organized person. I make checklists all the time, I track everything on my calendar, I alphabetize all of my books--you get the picture. But when it comes to the process whereby I create my books, well, that's much more like the way a room looks after a young child has played in it. I'm constantly tripping over things, trying to wade through the mess, and finding myself distracted by something when I'd meant to be doing something entirely different. The truth is, though, that I wouldn't give this chaos up for anything.

I've been scribbling since I was a child, so living in my head, creating imaginary worlds and filling them with people, is something I've just always done. I loved it when my teachers gave us creative projects to work on, because I was happy to have an excuse to let my imagination run wild. Even the most mundane tasks are a source of inspiration to me at times. When I'm out walking, I'll find myself looking at a tree and thinking up a little fiction about it. When I take a trip, I love to look around the airport and imagine where all the people are going, what they'll find when they get to their destinations. I live and breathe the words "what if", and this often serves as a springboard for my ideas. What if the world looked a little different than it does now? What if I chose to leave the house five minutes later than I actually did? Endless speculation is like my bread and butter.

And that's precisely why my process is so messy. I often start out with good intentions, creating outlines and setting up character sketches--or at least trying to do these things, anyway. But as I'm staring at my character template trying to think of what color hair my character will have, a story will come to me and I'll have to switch to writing, to getting the flow of words and images from my brain onto my computer screen. At some point I may go back and flesh out that character template I was working on, but I may not. I'm what's known as a "pantser", which means I fly by the seat of my pants, just watching where the story takes me.

This isn't always entirely productive. Sometimes, when I'm finished with something, I'll go back and gut it and totally rewrite it. I'll decide I don't like a minor plot thread that I introduced, or think that I need to flesh out a secondary character. I don't feel like my stories are done until I have the sense that I've ironed out all the nagging details. I don't think, "This character needs to do x, y, and z" because that feels too much like I'm guiding them. As strange as this may sound, my sense of rightness comes about when I feel like the characters are guiding me. The story is done when I think, "Yes, that's just what this character would do."

Like many authors, I have lots of different ideas percolating. One of the things I love about being in control of my own books is being able to write anything I want. So far, I've done a Beauty and the Beast retelling (The Eye of the Beholder), a young adult dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel and novella (Contributor and Creators), and a novel of contemporary women's fiction (Phoning It In). But while my genres may vary, the common thread that ties them together is this: What If? After all, isn't life ultimately a game of What If?

Link List: Song and Sound

2013-01-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

1) Oooh, a Huge Animal Sound Archive Goes Online". "An archive of tens of thousands of animal sounds has just gone online." The Machaulay Library sound collection is free, searchable, and just plain fun; the comments with the recoding are also interesting. There are also plans for a guide to North American Bird sounds sometime this spring, so it's definitely worth watching. I drove my lovebird nuts listening to blackbird calls.

The library also has a side link for Sound Analysis software (quite free), but I haven't gotten to try it out yet because the internet had a bad case of the slows. All I can say is, it looks like a neat idea.

2) And here, on Wired's GeekDad, is Music and Science Combine for the Win With Songs for Unusual Creatures" by Michael Hears and the Kronos Quartet. There's an embedded video there of the second song, featuring the Aye-Aye.

3) Or you can "Listen: the Music of a Human Brain", work done by Jing Lu and Dezhong Yao of China’s University of Electronic Science and Technology. Their work "translates a brain’s electrical fluctuations to pitch and blood flows to intensity." I just wish the samples weren't so short.

Photograph: Duskywing on Coastal Sunflower

2013-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

A duskywing butterfly rests on a coastal sunflower at the El Dorado Nature Center in the late summer.