Alexia Reed

How I Write-- Top 5 Ways to Get Writing Done

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

This week, we were asked what are our 5 top ways to be successful with our goals. Here are some of mine:

1. Oh a shiny!- Yeah, new story ideas are bad. The new characters like to chatter and complain. And oh the muse crack they dangle...I'm completely susceptible to those ideas for new stories. The crack, it's everywhere, I tell ya and just when I think I've evaded one, another comes along.

Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. -Margaret Chittenden

There's no cure-all. Only a focus of steel. Writing all these ideas down in a WIP ideas file sometimes helps. But for the stubborn ideas...there are times when the only way it'll leave me alone is to actually write out the scene in my head. Let me be clear on what sticks with me. Sometimes it's the character or the plot, but most of the time, it's a line. One measly sentence that stalks me and repeats over and over again. Usually, it's the first line of a book, but not always. In those cases, I need to write out the scene. If I don't, I can't evade.

2. I want kick-ass fighting and awesome psychic moves and...oh what if I add a... (aka the grass is always greener on the other side)- This is the worse, to always want to do more. Sometimes the simplest scenes are the best. I write paranormal where your imagination is the limit and that can frustrate me because the laws of reality doesn't always apply. I can waste time going back and re-writing because oh I can always add (insert awesomely cool thing). By doing this, I go in circles and it can take more time to complete. This can be one of the hardest procrastination devices for me. Sometimes, I can talk myself out of adding the new awesomely cool thing, other times, I can't and I just have to write it and hope it doesn't change the plot too badly.

3. I'll write 120k in two weeks- Um yeah, not happening. Not that I even write past 80k, but still. The term here is keep your goals SMART. Who knows what will happen in two weeks. There's so many variables you're not in control of. Burn out is real and it can kill your motivation to write for awhile if you're not careful. I won't even get into carpal tunnel or the need for sleep and food. Know your limitiations. It'll help you decide on a more reasonable goal.

4. I have to do the dishes and take (insert pet name) out for a walk and my show is on so I definitely want to watch that and...- Reality sucks. We have things to do. We get sick. When you have kids, it's especially hard to put time aside for you when you have so many roles to play. Not to mention there's those with a job outside of the home. Everyone's situation is different. I get home and I have the intelligence of a slug. I don't feel like writing. I just want to lie there. But then I wouldn't get anything done. So I force myself. Even if it's just for an hour. At least I'm making SOME kind of progress. Actually, first I nap. Yep...as soon as I get home and eat I zonk out for 30 mins- 1 hr. It re-energizes me enough to get through the rest of the evening. Otherwise, I'm a zombie. Writing is one of those things where you need to make time for it...scheduling it in if you need to. Harder to do if you have a life (I don't), but sometimes it's needed.

5. Twitter! Facebook!- The world will not stop if you don't go on for an hour...or even a day. I'm bad at this. I love Twitter (not so much FB). I'm always on Twitter, BUT, I am a lurker. Especially when I'm writing or something. I have my chatty moments, but for the most part, I'm fairly quiet on there. A friend is trying out this internet nanny to block Twitter after a certain amount of time used... but still. Social media is great and all, but balance is important as well.

Hic Sunt Dracones (aka Here be Dragons)

2012-01-24T06:00:00.006-05:00

We find dragons in various religions and cultures around the world, often revered as representatives of the primal forces of nature, religion and the universe. Usually, dragons are associated with wisdom and longevity, sometimes possessing some form of magic or other supernatural power. We all know movie and television's version of dragons--typically reptilian or serpentine in trait with large wings and sometimes horns. They may even breathe fire. With the discovery of how pterosaurs walked on ground, some dragons have been portrayed without front legs and using the wings instead as front legs.

The word dragon entered the english language in early 13th century. Derived from the Latin word draconem meaning "huge serpent, dragon," and from the Greek word δράκων, drakon meaning "serpent, giant seafish". The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpents, not necessarily mythological. This usage was also used in English up to the 18th century.

While those may have been ancient depictions, populated by Hollywood and the imagination, there are a few real live "dragons" alive today. They don't breathe fire or are larger than a house, but they are very cool nevertheless and look like little dragons.

image credit: redbubble.com

The first is what's called a glaucus atlanticus or the blue sea slug often found in the temperate and tropical waters. It is a member of a new species called nudibranch which is a marine snail that lost is shell back in early evolutionary history. There are more than 3,000 species and are known for their elaborate patterns and vibrant colours. It floats on the surface of the water with the aid of a gas filled sac in its stomach. Because of the location of the sac, this little slug floats upside down. They feed on the venomous Portuguese Man o' War Physalia physalis; the by-the-wind-sailor Velella velella; the blue button Porpita porpita; and the violet snail, Janthina janthina. They survive by collecting the animal's toxins and storing them in littel sacs on the ends of their feather-like "fingers", producing a much more powerful and deadly sting.

The second is the gliding lizard, belonging to the genus Draco. This little guy looks more like the mythological creature. There are more than 45 species, ranging in size from 7-15 cm in length and are native to Southeast Asia.

The wings of the lizards are actually a rearranged rib cage in which one of the primary functions is to allow them to glide. By elongating their extended movable ribs, spanning the large flap of skin between their limbs, these arboreal reptiles can glide distances of over 60 meters. They also have a small set of flaps on their neck that serve as a horizontal stabilizer and a rudder-like tail to steer.

Not exactly creatures of legend, but still. What about the mythology of dragons do you like? What intrigues you?

The Allure of Ancient Egypt

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002-05:00

I love ancient Egypt. I don't write it (yet!), but I've always had a fascination in it. In grade ten I wanted to become an Egyptologist. I even tried to learn hieroglyphics. For example, did you know that you can either read left to right or right to left depending on which way the symbols point? The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth, the earliest known examples dating back to 3,400 BC. What made their writing difficult (for me!) to read was that the glyphs take on both semantic and phonetic values.

But it's more than just the hieroglyphs that drew me. It was their whole culture. Their belief in the various gods and goddesses and all of their practices to prepare for the afterlife. This polytheistic system was complex because some of the deities were believed to exist in different manifestations. The Egyptians believed that the phenomena of nature were divine forces. They deified these forces--including elements, animal characteristics and abstract forces. These gods and goddesses were involved in all aspects of nature and human society. By doing this, they thought they could sustain and placate these phenomena and turn them to human advantage.

What ancient Egyptian-based stories do you love? What authors do you think about?

Vampire Burials vs the Science of Decomposition

2012-01-17T06:00:00.004-05:00

Vampires or zombies? What were our ancestors trying to keep from reviving? In my post about Zombie: Historical Accounts, I talked about how 8th century medieval skeletons were unearthed with large rocks wedged in their mouth (one where, to a point, the jaw was dislocated to fit the rock). Initially, archaeologists thought that it was a vampire-slaying ritual. During the Black Death, it was believed that vampires spread the plague. A rock in the mouth was thought to be a disease-blocking method to ensure the vampires didn't wake to continue spreading the plague. However, because the belief of vampires didn't emerge until the 1500s, the theory was disregarded and it was thought that maybe the stones was simply a barrier to stop the dead from coming back.

I'd wondered why people back then thought it was vampires. Well, in 2006, a 16th-century woman was unearthed in a mass grave near Venice among some graves of plague victims. The woman also had a stone in her mouth, a "vampire".

But why did the people during the Middles believe in vampires? Well, apparently the "first recorded use of the term vampire was to refer to a Russian prince that scientists now believe may have been suffering from rabies. At some point the Bohemians switched to driving a stake through the hearts of vampires, but in the early period burials with a stone in the mouth were the accepted 'cure' to prevent them coming back to life."

During early burials, vampires were "recognized" probably because of decomposition, a phenomenon not understood back then. When the body decays, the stomach releases a dark "purge of fluid". Bloodlike, this liquid can flow from the corpse's nose and mouth. Often the burial grounds were reopened during the plague to add new bodies, a way to recycle graves. Gravediggers would have seen the decomposing remains and may have been confused the purge of fluid for the blood of the vampire's "victim".

Not only was there this "purge" that they thought was evidence, but sometimes the shroud near the corpse's mouth was torn, giving the impression that the dead was chewing through the cloth. In reality, the fluid expelled from the body sometimes moistened the shroud, causing it to sag into the jaw.

Vampires were thought by some to be the causes of plagues, and the superstition took root that shroud-chewing was the "magical way" that vampires infected people, Borrini said.

Inserting objects, then, such as the stones, into the mouths of alleged vampires was thought to halt the spread of disease.

Unlocking the Human Genome for the Creation of Psychics

2012-01-16T06:00:00.006-05:00

Did you know that we have, on average, 3,000,000,000 DNA bases in our genome? How about if you unwrapped the DNA in all your cells it would reach to the moon 6000 times? Or that 99.9% of our DNA is the same as that of every other human?

I love genetics. In fact, I almost continued my biology and anthropology schooling to take Ancient DNA Studies. While I didn't keep up with my studies in it, simply leaving with a Bachelors of Honors in Biology and Anthropology, my writing often takes a scientific turn.

In 2000 a rough draft of of a map of the entire human genome was completed; and then in 2003 the final draft was complete. While there are things we still don't know about what genes do what, this map has made it possible to better understand the causes and functions of disease, as well as create better preventative medicines.

In Hunting the Shadows, my writing is heavily influenced by genetic manipulation. Using a virus as a vector, the scientists in my book create mutations (with the help of radiation) to reawaken locked up psychic abilities.

From Wikipedia: A viral vector is a tool commonly used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic material into cells. This process can be performed inside a living organism (in vivo) or in cell culture (in vitro). Viruses have evolved specialized molecular mechanisms to efficiently transport their genomes inside the cells they infect. Delivery of genes by a virus is termed transduction and the infected cells are described as transduced.

I love that anything can be possible. Yes, there are restraints, but writing paranormal means that I can stretch those limits a bit more. In the case of my characters, well, these abilities are a part of their daily lives and I try to explain as much as possible how that affects them. Their strengths as well as their problems. It's not something they can learn over night how to control. It takes years of hard training...and sometimes, that's not enough.

What do you think about psychic abilities? If you could have any ability, what would you want?

How I Write-- The best and worst advice I've received

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Last week, we discussed our 2011 in review. What we accomplished. What we would change. What our goals for 2012 are. Today, we're discussing writing advice we've received or heard over the years.

Best writing advice

1. Every artist was first an amateur.

I like this saying because it reminds me that mistakes will be made. Mistakes that even the professionals have done at one point in time. What matters is that they stuck with it. Everyone starts as a beginner at some point.

2. The minute you think of giving up, think of the reason you held on for so long.

Something made you start that story. Whether it's your characters or plot, the muse crack bit you hard enough to write that first word and then the next. If you give up, you're going to sit on plenty of manuscripts that won't go anywhere. Yes, they'll be learning experiences, but there's something about being stubborn enough to see it all through to the end.

3. Discipline is doing what you know needs to be done, even though you don't want to.

Let's face it, there are things we don't want to do. Like plotting. Or some days we just don't feel like writing. While it's fine once and awhile to say that "today I'm not writing" it's what writers do. We write. Yes, sometimes life gets away with us with kids and work and chores...etc, but you also have to find time to get your words.

4. There are no original ideas. What makes a story new is how you write it.

This is something I've always worried about. I've re-written my book so many times because another I've read had a similar idea. I had to get over this because otherwise I would have never finished. Your "voice" and how your characters interact, etc, makes your story different from the others.

5. Everyone has their own process of writing and plotting. There is no right or wrong way.

There are so many different methods of plotting out there. I don't need to list all the various ways some people write. I have my own method. Find what works for you. People will always say that their way is best, but in reality, there is no right or wrong way. What matters is that you figure out how to get from point A to point B and then C.

Worst writing advice

1. Leave out all the parts readers skip.

Every reader is different. How do you know what they'll skip? The only thing you can do is base it off what interests you. If you don't like what you're writing, most likely your readers are going to feel the same way.

2. Writer's block is a sign that you did something wrong.

I've heard people say that if you're stuck, it's because you're going in the wrong direction or something just isn't right and once you figure out what that is you'll be fine again. Yes, knowing your direction helps but blocks happen for a bunch of reasons. Even if something is wrong, will you necessarily know what that is? Or how to fix it?

3. Write to the market.

By the time you write to the market, it's already moved on. There are some overarching themes that are more popular but for the most part, you should focus on genres rather than specific ideas.

4. If you aren't traditionally published then you aren't an author.

I've heard this quite a bit. I've even heard a published author say something similar on Twitter. These days there are many options. You don't need to just have to go the traditional route. You can be epublished through a digital first. You can even self-publish. What matters is what works for you because everyone has different needs. What matters is that you know the pros and cons of each option.

5. You have to follow the rules in order to get published.

Yes, there are some general grammatical and spelling rules you should write by, but there are no rigid rules that you have to write by. There are usually exceptions to most anyway. It all depends on the execution of how you get it on paper.

What advice have you received? Check out my friends' sites: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

How to pull of an art heist...or how scientists have created a time-masking cloak

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

In a popular comparison: an art heist takes place in a crowded museum--before your eyes and surveillance cameras. you don't see the thief, not even the actual taking of the painting. The opportunities would be staggering...and scary, but this is exactly what scientists at Cornell U are claiming to have done. Not the actual heist, but creating a time cloak that hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second.

While other invisibility cloaks created move light beams away from an object (like making an armored tank disappear or nanotubes creating a mirage), the Cornell team (backed by the Pentagon) found a way to alter how fast the light moves, changing the dimension in time, not space. By doing this, it makes it appear to the human eye or surveillance cameras (or even laser security beams) that an event isn't happening.

"You kind of create a hole in tim e where an event takes place," said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. "You just don't know that anything ever h appened."

This 'hole in time' is created using fiber optics as light moves inside a fiber thinner than a human hair. The scientists shoot the beam of light out. With other beams, they create a time lens that splits the light into two different speed beams that create the effect of invisibility by being too fast or too slow.

In the diagram a laser beam passes through a "split-time lens" - a specially designed waveguide that bumps up the wavelength for a while then suddenly bumps it down. The signal then passes through a filter that slows down the higher-wavelength part of the signal, creating a gap in which the cloaked event takes place. A second filter works in the opposite way from the first, letting the lower wavelength catch up, and a final split-time lens brings the beam back to the original wavelength, leaving no trace of what happened during the gap. (Image and Caption via Cornell University)

"It is significant because it opens up a whole new realm to ideas involving invisibility," McCall said

Click to watch a time cloaking simulation:

If you had such technology, what would you do with it?

Step into a new world

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Muse Crack Mondays! This feature is similar and will be taking over last year's Thursday Thirteen. While last year I posted links to articles in the news I thought was interesting this year, I'm going to focus on particular things that inspire my story ideas aka muse crack. These will also include links from time to time. It'll just be a bit more focused on what inspires my own stories and ideas.

I LOVE this picture. It has more than one purpose for me.

a: the writer in me sees stone portals that go off to other worlds. Or maybe they are time portals that enter into different time periods. I love time travel stories!

b: in general it's the epitome of 'ideas'. Of all the muse crack that is out there. A simple picture or a song...or a saying can spark ideas.

and c: for me it means taking a risk. For thinking outside the box. They say that most plots are overused, that there's nothing original out there anymore. What makes YOUR story different from the others and stand out is how you write it. How you develop your world and characters.

What's your muse crack?

How I Write-- 2011 in review

2012-01-06T00:30:00.000-05:00

2011 Accomplishments

2011 brought interesting developments in my life. It was the year I got a book contract, a dream I'd secretly wished for so many years. Granted, I wasn't prepared all those other years, I see that now. I learned a lot about editing--how to tighten, how to strengthen character goals, etc.

It was also the year I went to New York for the first time for the RWA Nationals. I saw many friends and met a bunch of people. We braved the taxis and street cart "dirty dogs"; and visited the very scenic Central Park. And brought way too many books back.

I also bought my first ereader in 2011, a Kobo Touch I fell in love with and then later on, also bought a Kobo Vox. Since then, I have bought over 60 books on them. I had held off for awhile for purchasing an ereader. Like many people, I still love the feel of a physical book in my hands and didn't really want to read on screen. That all changed and while I have some favourite authors I still purchase the physical books from, the majority of future purchases will be ebooks.

What would I do differently?

To be honest, I'm not sure there is much I would do differently. Everything I did was a learning experience. The only thing I would change would be to not let myself "hide". I'm a very introverted person and for a good part of the year I was off work. That meant staying at home for long periods of time and I got used to being by myself. I become a hermit, dreading leaving the apartment, even just to get groceries. I'm back at work now, but it's an effort to get out of these ways. Looking back, I should have gone out more. I should have taken myself out to coffee shops more than once a week to socialize. I should have made more of a conscious effort.

What about 2012? Or what goals do I want to achieve?

Every year, for the accountability group I'm in, we each have to create our long term goal plan. While I won't bore you with all of mine, I'll list off some of the top goals:

1. Finish at least two books (this does not count Seducing the Shadows which has a deadline of Jan 31st to get to critique partners)
2. Re-vamp the Alexia Reed site. This means updating.
3. In the works is going to be a site dedicated to the Shadow Ops. It will host character guest posts, as well as have features such as Muse Crack Mondays and something on psychic research in the military and on the various abilities.
4. Read 100 books. This year I'm doing a challenge where 50 of those books (if possible) will be of main characters who don't fall under the "perfect" category. Characters who deepen their story by being different in some way. I think this is important because I tend to trap myself in reading only a certain kind of book. This year, I want to push that envelope because perfect characters aren't real.

What are your 2012 goals? What would you change of 2011 if you could? Check out my friends' sites: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

How I Write-- What books would you put in a time capsule?

2011-12-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

If you could put the books you've read this year in a time capsule, what would you put? The accountabililty group decided to tackle this question this week. I've been pretty good at updating my Goodreads this year, which has helped me immensely. I read about a book a week so it helps to keep me in the loop of what I read. In no particular order, I'd put in the time capsule:

1. The Legend Hunters by Robyn DeHart (Seduce Me, Desire Me and Treasure Me). I love this trilogy and am sad it's over. What I loved the most about it was that it combined two of my loves: historical romances and paranormal mythology. If you are interested in Pandora's Box, Atlantis and whatnot, then check out this series. I heart it so bad. --Historical

2. When the Duke Returns, The Duchess of Mine and A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James. I really enjoyed all three and couldn't get enough of the stories. Simeon (the explorer who returns, a virgin hero!), Jemma and Villiers really captured my attention. --Historical

3. New to me was Courtney Milan. I read Unveiled and Unclaimed (another virgin hero!) and was sucked in to the stories of both of these. --Historical

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I loved the premise and the characters. I can't wait for the movie to come out. --YA, post-apocalyptic

5. Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison. One of the few paranormals I've read this year. I loved how the hero was portrayed. He was a dragon in every sense of the word. --Paranormal

6. The Care and Taming of a Rogue by Suzanne Enoch. Hero is an explorer who was thought dead and returns. I believe, but don't quote me, he's another virgin hero (notice a trend going on?) -- Historical

7. Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake by Sarah Maclean. Another new to me author. I'll definitely read others from her. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. --Historical

8. A Little Bit Wild by Victoria Dahl. It was the first time I read a book by her and since then, I've bought a few more.-- Historical

9. Seducing the Duchess by Ashley March. I really liked the heroine and how strong she was...and how the hero changed.-- Historical

10. What a Gentleman Wants by Caroline Linden. I think I've enjoyed pretty much every Caroline book so far. -- Historical

11. The Perfect Mistress by Victoria Alexander. I loved the main conflict between the heroine and hero.-- Historical

12. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley. I LOVED Ian so much. I agonized over getting this book. I tried to buy through Amazon and Barnes and Noble and both had no copies. I can't recall where I got this used copy but it was well worth it. Am definitely going to read the others.-- Historical

What would you put in a time capsule? What have you read that you'd recommend to anyone? Check out my friends' sites to see what books they'd put in a time capsule: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

How I Write-- What's in your toolbox?

2011-12-16T06:00:00.002-05:00

While last week was a bit of fun, this week's How I Write has to do with writing tools and resources. What do you use? What are your favourites?

Resources:
- Flip Dictionary- I could not live without this. It's, yes, technically just a thesaurus but it has so much in there that isn't in a normal thesaurus that I'm in love. It's designed to help you find a word if you have an idea what you want. Like a certain type a tree...you'd look up tree and it'll list all the different kinds. This is my one book that is so ratty because I use it constantly.
- Websites- I don't frequent a lot anymore, but some that I can't live without are Savvy Authors (great workshops hosted there) and Kiss of Death (again, awesome workshops that aren't found elsewhere really)
- Books- Let's face it, to be a writer you need to read as well. I try to read at least one romance (historical or paranormal lately) a week. I also have tons of research books on the paranormal and science that I consult with.

Tools (this one I had a bit of trouble because I don't use any programs to write):
- my computer- I need my computer. There's no doubt about that. While I can write pen and paper or a type writer (started out like this), I prefer not to. That and the fact I'm too OCD. I can't stand a marked up page (like if I'm doing edits). If the page has been ruined with a mark, I get twitchy wanting to print out a new one.
- I'm going to put sprints here. They may be considered more a resource, not sure, but for me, sprints are the tools I use to get my words done.
- This will sound odd but my tv. I need background noise. I can't concentrate when it's quiet. Usually I put on the food network or shows I've already watched before. Something that doesn't distract me too much so that I'm paying more attention to it. If I don't have the tv on, then I need music on. Sometimes both on at the same time.

Check out my friends' sites to see what tools and resources they use: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

2011-12-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

1. World's tiniest steam engine built
2. God particle: why Cern scientists have been using the Large Hadron Collider to find it
3. What's your sound perfume?
4. Brain-controlled computer tracks attention
5. Big Question for 2012: The Great Pyramid Secret Doors
6. 'Matrix-style' learning implants new skills in brains
7. Ultrathin, foldable sensors probe secrets of the brain
8. Crusader's Arabic Inscription No Longer Lost in Translation
9. Students Preserve Revolutionary War Shipwrecks
10. Light Me Up, Buttercup
11. Ancient Fish Takes a Walk
12. Student Innovators Hack Kinetic and Cancer to Win $100,000
13. They guppy: newest top predator?

What would you like to see in 2012?

2011-12-13T06:00:00.003-05:00

2012 is approaching so I thought I'd open up the floor to you guys. I'm going to be re-arranging a few things next year, but want to keep this spot open for paranormal and science things. I thought though that I would give you guys a say. What would you like to see in this paranormal/science spot in the coming new year? Anything in particular you'd like to see explained?

I'm going to leave you guys with a cool vampire hunting kit that was used in the approx 1890s. The kit includes: crucifix, stake, mallet, hatchet, German stamped letter to the mother of deceased victim, signed new testament bible by hunter Andrew Kauffman along with picture of victim, pliers, Remington derringer pistol, rosary, syringe, garlic extract, sulphur, hair from destroyed vampire, pulled fangs of destroyed vampire & holy oil.

How I Write-- An Open Letter to Santa

2011-12-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Dear Santa,

I've been a very good writer this year (at least I think I was). I know you're busy preparing all the toys for the good boys and girls but I thought I'd send in my requests:

a clone-- what better way to be more productive? The real me will stay at home and just concentrate on writing while my clone goes out and works or does the housework.

a vitural reality system or holodeck-- because it's expensive to travel to do my research and the internet only goes so far to help me. Some things you just need to experience for yourself in order to evoke the right feeling and emotion in the writing.

a time turner pocket watch like the one Hermione has in Harry Potter (note, this isn't the same one but it's a steampunk version and cool!)-- because those deadlines can creep up fast and I want to put out the best product possible. I promise I wouldn't abuse this ability too much.

a replicator from Star Trek-- so that I don't have to worry about cooking. All I'd have to do is punch in what I want and the food item is synthesized. No matter what I'm craving, it's there at the press of a button. Yes, I could pick up the phone and call for delivery, but this is cooler and faster and gives you more options.

an endless supply of Coca Cola and chocolate (although other candy may be substituted)-- I need my energy fix. How else am I going to tempt the muse out and bribe it for its secrets?

a cat wrangler-- seriously, how many times do I need to get up off the couch a day to get the cats off the counter or to stop knocking my books from the bookshelves, or jumping up and knocking boxes down? I can assure you, that's precious time spent away from my book.

As you can see, my list isn't all that demanding. Just a few little items that would make this writer immensely happy.

Sincerely,
Alexia Reed

Check out my friends' sites to see what they want for Christmas: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

2011-12-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

1. First mini-earth may have been spotted
2. New dinosaur species discovered in Natural History Museum after nearly a century
3. A 3D printer
4. Plasma could cure the common cold
5. Intelligence agency recruits spies with online code
6. Forget antibiotics, try nanoparticles instead
7. Morphing mirror could clear the skies for astronomers
8. Ultrathin, foldable sensors probe secrets of the brain
9. First superpredator had enormous eyes on stalks
10. Earliest animals looked like baseballs
11. Woolly mammoth to be cloned
12. Why aren't we smarter? Evolutionary limits on cognition
13. Acquired traits can be inherited via small RNAs

Star Trek's Holodeck May Indeed Be in our Future

2011-12-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you've watched Star Trek, you're probably aware of the holodeck. It's like one big simulated reality room where you can interact with "programmed world". It'd be like living in your tv and interacting with your favourite characters. You become part of that story. That world.

I'm not sure about you, but I've been waiting for the day when a holodeck-like virtual reality system was created. Just think what you could do...you could travel the world without ever having to leave your livingroom! Ok, I'd still want to go, but it'd still be pretty cool. It could be a very cool way for authors to learn about a new subject they're writing about.

Well a a holodeck may not be too far off. A couple of companies in Britain have started to work on something similar using a bunch of projectors, Sony Move controllers, and some creative visual tricks. What they do is project the images on the walls in a way to adjust to the geometry of the objects in the room (such as the couch in the video or the box), creating the illusion that the surface itself has changed. The controllers are attached to the camera and the position is fed back to the projectors in real time, allowing the projectors to adjust for the distortion of the image. This lets the camera move around, adding to the three-dimensional effect.

Sony Europe, Studio Output and Marshmallow Laser Feast shot three web videos to highlight the immersiveness of movies rented or purchased from the PlayStation Store. In the videos, all were made with just one take and no postproduction work. The effects look apparently nearly as good (and cheaper) and could even be used to replace the CGI technology used in the film industry that created Avatar.

How I Write-- the hybrid plantster

2011-12-02T07:00:00.003-05:00

Plotting...that dreaded "p" word. I decided to ask my AC group how they plot if they do and how they know whether a story is finished or not. I decided to ask this question because everyone writes differently. Some are pantsers who work to an outline, some plot with spreadsheets, etc.

Stage 1: First Draft

For me, I'm a mixture somewhere in the middle. My first drafts are always a crapshoot in the dark as I try to form some kind of a plot. I may not even write scenes in order. I tend to let myself do whatever I want with this first draft. I'll then sew the scenes together. It's really not pretty when I do the first draft. It's a mess and the plot is thin and weak. But, it gives me an idea of the direction I want the story to go in.

Stage 2: Second Draft

This is when I plot. I get out my cue cards (I love neon ones so that you can code the different plots, character growth, or relationship threads and keep track of the balance) and jot down every scene from the first draft. I'll then get on the floor and re-arrange them. This helps me see where plot holes may be that need to be filled. I'll then create the new scenes on new cue cards and insert where needed. Once I have a map, I'll jot down the points on my white board as a list to check off as I go along.

I now start a new document and write from scratch. Oh I'll use the scenes previously written but I'll edit it to make it work in what I plotted. This is where the meat is added to those bones of the story. Now, it starts to feel fleshed out and not quite so sickly.

Stage 3: Crit partners

I've jumped the gun in the past and have had readers go through various drafts before it was ready. To me, I thought, the story had been ready however, but I've learned this year that anytime before the second stage and it isn't. I can do as many "drafts" as I want in the first stage but it won't feel ready. Not until the second stage.

But it's at this point my story will go out to my fabulous crit partners whose insights have helped me so much.

Stage 4: Third Draft

This final stage is the last edits based on the feedback I've received.

How do you know the story is ready?

If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's how to judge my WIP by this feel. I thought, Hunting the Shadows was ready to be published, but it wasn't until I got the awesome feedback of my editor and actually got into the first round of developmental edits that I learned (for me) when my writing was ready.

Check out my friends' sites to see how they create their stories: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

1. What did Australopithecines sound like?
2. 'Twine' lets everyday objects speak to us
3. Stonehenge reveals new clues of ancient worship
4. 'Language gene' may influence learning too
5. To self-diagnose, spit on iPhone
6. Squidbot could limbo into dangerous places
7. Electronic contact lens displays pixels on eyes
8. Alzheimer's damage reversed by deep brain stimulation
9. Neutrinos and multiverses: a new cosmology beckons
10. One of the universe's fiercest black holes is hiding inside this galaxy
11. The world's oldest known heliocentric model is completely backwards
12. Why does going somewhere take longer than coming back
13. Why sleeping on a problem is best

Are you a chimera?

2011-11-29T06:00:00.003-05:00

Thousands of years ago, the Greek poet Homer wrote about a specific monster with the chest of a lion, the tail of a snake, the midsection of a goat and heads of all three animals. While this is only mythology, and an exaggerated version at that, there are many natural-borne chimeras around today that we may not even know about.

What is a chimera?

From wiki: a chimera is a single organism (usually an animal) that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated from different zygotes. Chimeras are formed from four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fused together). Each population of cells keeps its own character, resulting in an organism of mixed tissues. Usually, the condition is inherited, but may also be acquired through the infusion of allogeneic hematopoeitic cells (this happens through transplantation or transfusion). The likelihood of offspring being a chimera is increased if it is created via in vitro fertilization.

There is also a form of congenital chimerism (tetragmetic chimerism). In this way, chimerism occurs through the fertilization of two separate ova by two sperm. The two usually then fuse together at the blastocyst or zygote stage. What results is an organism with intermingled DNA. As the organism develops, it can come to possess organs that have different sets of DNA (i.e. it may have the liver composed of one DNA and a kidney of another. It may even have two different blood types). In CSI (the original), this was a particular key plot in "Bloodlines".

The difference in phenotypes may be subtle (e.g., having one eye a different colour from the other, etc.) or completely undetectable. Chimeras may also show, under a certain spectrum of UV light, distinctive marks on the back resembling that of arrow points pointing downwards from the shoulders down to the lower back in what is called Blaschko's lines.

Blaschko lines form from the fact that chimeras start out with two different cells, each with different DNA (and therefore different instructions). The skin of the person is therefore made up of two different sets of instructions on how to colour the skin. The Blaschko's lines result from the fact that some of a chimera's skin cells say to make darker skin and some say to make lighter.

When there is a big difference between the two DNA's instructions on how dark to make the skin, then you get obvious Blaschko's lines. If the differences are subtle, then you may not be able to see the pattern without the aid of an UV light.

While not as rare as once believed, chimeras may be identified by finding two different populations of red cells, or if the zygotes were of opposite sex, either ambiguous genitalia or hermaphroditism (alone or in combination).

In 2003, scientists had begun to blur the lines of chimerism-producing animal-human hybrids-when Chinese scientists at Shanghai Second Medical University successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. While the embryos were successful, after several days of being allowed to develop in a laboratory dish, they were destroyed so that the stem cells could be harvested. And in 2004, pigs were created with human blood.

Why?

Because scientists believe that the more human-like the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

What do you think about chimeras?

How I Write-- A day with a character

2011-11-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

If you could spend the day with any of your chars, who would you choose? What would you do?

For me, this is tough. There are so many characters of mine that I'd want to hang out with that I find interesting. However, I think the char I'd choose would be one that hasn't had his story written yet (complicated, eh?). While I love all my chars, Athan and I have a particular bond through the love of science and ancient mythology. Yes, I know, J.C. (Hunting the Shadows) is big into science as well and he'd be my second choice, tied with Stefan (tentatively Tempting the Shadows), but I love Athan's interests.

Athan (and I'm being very careful not to give spoilers) is an inventor. With use of science, he creates these devices that helps him deal with life easier (we won't talk about the weapons). He has his oddities. He likes writing on glass walls with marker...and he has a huge DNA artwork that he hangs on the wall in his bedroom (because it's cool). But even more cool, he's a Chimera. His DNA has been muddled so much that he isn't of any real descent. Oh he's human, but with so much other DNA thrown into the mix that he's a hybrid (for instance, he has more than one blood type).

One eye blue, one eye green...a mop of touseled black hair, Athan has gone through some particularly character strengthening events. It's made him a bit bitter (at himself because he feels like he can't control his own body), but he adapts through the best means he knows how: science.

When he's not inventing something, he's a treasure seeker/adventurer--taking trips to Greece and Egypt or wherever else he wants. If I could spend a day with him, I'd go on a dig with him (I'd love to go visit the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx!). To me, this would be the ultimate day. Not only would I get to talk about science, I'd get to play in the dirt. ;) I'd have to brush up on my hieroglyphics, however.

Who would you spend a day with?

Check out my friends' sites to see what character they would spend the day with: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

2011-11-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

1. Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes'
2. Faster-than-light neutrino results queried
3. 15 infant dinosaurs discovered in crowded nest
4. First teeth grew outside the body
5. Climate may have doomed Neandertals
6. Walking through doorways make you forget
7. Insect cyborgs may be the first responders: search and monitor hazardous place
8. Smart swarms of bacteria inspire robotics: Adaptable decision-making found in bacteria communities
9. Ancient skull found in China may be oldest evidence of violence between humans
10. Discovery of a new muscle repair gene
11. Key to aging? Key molecular switch for telomere extension by telomerase identified
12. Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function
13. Key gene function against cell death discovered

Why invisibility cloaks may be in our future

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

At one point, even just the idea of having the ability of invisibility was a fictional concept. But what if you really could? Would you use the ability for good or evil? This is something Cian, one of my characters, has to deal with. After an experiment goes wrong and he finds himself invisible to the world, at first, he finds it fun...until time passes and loneliness kicks in.

But what if you didn't have to be 'changed' to be invisible? What if you just had to put on a cloak to be hidden from the world? If you've watched Harry Potter, Harry receives one as a gift that he uses to sneak around Hogwarts.

While the first invisibility cloaks worked at microwave frequencies, physicists have found a way to create a cloak that works by hiding events in time. It's made possible because of a duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory (or rather-- the diffraction of a beam of light in space in mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium). Like a lens focusing light in space using diffraction, it's also possible to use dispersion to make a lens that focuses in time.

Such a time-lens can be made using an electro-optic modulator, for example, and has a variety of familiar properties. "This time-lens can, for example, magnify or compress in time," say Fridman and co.

The trick, the physicists realized to creating a temporal cloak, was to place two time-lenses in series and then send a beam of light through them, compressing the light in time while the second decompresses it again. For a short period of time, they found that there's a hole in time where to the observer, because of the light coming out of the second time-lens, it appears undistorted as if nothing occurred. However, this method has some limitations, such as lasting only for 110 nanoseconds.

A second method was found more recently in which, researchers From the University of Texas created a cloak, using the technique of a mirage effect to hide objects from view, even creating an on and off switch to make it work.

A mirage effect is naturally occurring in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects. It can happen, for instance, when there's a big change in temperature over a small distance, bending the rays so that they are sent toward the eye rather than bouncing off the surface.

So if you see a pool of blue water in the middle of the desert it’s just the blue sky being redirected from the warm ground and sent directly into your eye. Your brain swaps this mad image out for something more sensible: a pool of water.

The scientists decided to find a material that would have an ability to conduct heat and quickly transfer it to surrounding areas to mimic the light-distorting temperature gradients of the desert. What they found was that sheets of carbon nanotubes that are one molecule thick, wrapped into cylindrical tubes, have a density of air but the strength of steel. Because they are also excellent conductors, the scientists believed that they would make the ideal material to create this mirage effect. Through electrical stimulation, the transparent sheet of nanotubes were quickly heated to high temperatures, transferring the heat to its surrounding areas. This caused the light rays to bend away from the object that was concealed behind the device, making it appear invisible.

"We really can hide objects. ... We can switch for a short moment and make it disappear," said Ali Aliev, a physicist at UTD.

While the technology is limited to the lab at the moment, researchers hope that in time the material could be used to hide large objects, such as military tanks. This still doesn't mean, however, that a human could wear such a device. At this time. But if something was created for a human to actually wear, what would you do with it?

How I Write-- Handling the Holidays

2011-11-18T07:00:00.002-05:00

With the holidays' coming up, we're focusing this week on our holiday plans such as-- what are you cooking? Or planning to/looking forward to eating the most if you're not cooking? And how are you planning on balancing your writing with your real life obligations? Or are you not writing?

While my accountability group is probably going to focus on Thanksgiving, since US turkey day is coming up, I'm going to look into the future to Christmas since I've already celebrated Thanksgiving.

Christmas time is a blur of activity. On the 23rd I hope to be on the train, headed for home. It's a 8- 10 hour ride I'll most likely spend reading , listening to music and snacking on my own version of trail mix (sour patch kids, chocolate and caramel popcorn). I may do some writing. It all depends on how much room I have. By the time I get home, it'll be late at night. As what happens every year, we'll finish off our shopping on the 24th. It's not like I can bring a lot back with me. I'm hoping this year to order things online and have them shipped to my parents (and pray they don't decide to peek).

I probably won't be doing much in the ways of baking. My mom will have done most of it before I got there. The tree will probably already be up as well. It usually is when I get there. I may write, if I have the time, but I'll also be focusing on the gifts and finishing them off for the family.

Christmas day, it depends. We wake and then open the gifts around 9-10. Sometimes breakfast is before. Sometimes not. We'll all sit on the floor or on chairs around the tree, take a few pics of the family then someone hands out a gift per person and work the way through. After clean up, calls are made to the rest of the family and that can take some time. Christmas is a writing day wash for me. Especially if we're doing dinner at my aunt and uncle's place. I'm not going to lug my computer with there.

Sometimes we don't go out for Boxing Day. I really hope we do this year though, because I'm looking to get a new camera and the sale would be nice. Again, no writing is done this day. By the 27th things start to slow down enough that I could consider getting out the laptop, however, by the 1st, I'll be back on a train.

I'll try to write what I can, but it's a very difficult week. Considering I have a writing pact with a friend, I really do need to. The pact is to finish the story we're currently working on by Jan 1st or we have to pay the other person $100 for books.

For more on what everyone else is doing on the holidays, check out their sites: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

1. Mimicking the brain -- in silicon: new computer chip models how neurons communicate
2. Fossilized skin reveals ancient predator's sharklike move
3. Toyota introduces robots that helps patients walk again
4. Hubble discovers tiny galaxies bursting with starbirth in early universe
5. A rare survivor from the birth of Earth
6. A realistic look at the promises and perils of nanomedicine
7. New "smart" material could help tap medical potential of tissue-penetrating light
8. Archeologists discover huge ancient Greek commercial area on island of Sicily
9. Why your hips don't lie
10. Reading the brain: Mind-boggling
11. Real-Life Inception: Army looks to 'counteract nightmares' with digital dreams
12. Antarctica's "Ghost" Mountains Explained
13. "Great Lakes" discovered on Jupiter Moon?

Beam me up Scotty!... or why everyone on Star Trek is a clone

2011-11-15T07:00:00.002-05:00

While I'm still holding out for a car that drives itself (I don't just mean to park by itself but to also navigate the roads) to come on the market, I daydream constantly about having the ability of teleportation. Just imagine--you blink and you're at your destination a second later. Awesome right? No waiting in traffic. No having to pay for gas or insurance. But best of all, you'd be able to sleep and still be at work in time.

I was watching Jumper on Saturday night and if you haven't watched it before, the main character can teleport himself anywhere. Cool right? That is, when he's not being hunted. The idea of teleportation isn't a new one. While in Jumper it was an innate psychic ability that has existed for centuries, in Star Trek, the characters use a machine, a transporter that gets them to one place to another by dispersing the molecules in their bodies to another location.

But is it possible? Can a person successfully disappear and then reappear intact and alive?

Historically, the earliest mention of teleportation can be found in religious texts. Teleportation then found mention in a 1877 in a science fiction story by Edward Page Mitchell and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel on it called The Disintegration Machine. The word teleportation, however, wasn't coined until 1931 by author Charles Fort in his book, Lo! Since then, it has not only been used in Star Trek, but Stargate Atlantis and even Heroes and movies like the Fly and Jumper. While the ability varies depending on what you're watching (psychic ability vs some kind of technology that allows it), the same physics would apply.

While Newton's theory states that teleportation is impossible (objects don't move until they are pushed and cannot suddenly disappear and then reappear somewhere else), in 1925 Erwin Schrodinger and colleagues developed the quantum theory, overthrowing Newton's laws after 250 years. After analyzing the properties of atoms, they discovered that electrons acted like waves and could make quantum leaps in their seemingly chaotic motion within the atom.

In order for this to make sense, I need to explain what is called an EPR (Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) experiment. In 1935 they proposed that if two electrons are vibrating in unison they remain in wavelike synchronization even if separated by distance because of an invisible Schrodinger wave connecting both of them. If something happens to one electron, some of the information is immediately transmitted to the other in what is called quantum entanglement that was thought to happen faster than the speed of light. Because Einstein didn't think anything could move faster than the speed of light, he thought he'd proven that quantum theory was wrong. But in 1980 Alan Aspect and colleagues performed an experiment that measured the spin of photons and agreed with the quantum theory.

Everything changed in 1993, when scientists had their first success, proving that it was physically possible to teleport objects, at least on an atomic level using the EPR experiment. A research team at IBM, led by Charles Bennett, confirmed that quantum teleportation (the transmission of characteristics--that is, the quantum state of a particular photon, or particle of light--from one place to another) was possible, but only if the original object was destroyed. While the original was destroyed, every distinguishing feature is re-created at the new location. Even now physicists have only been able to teleport particles of light and atoms over a distance.

In 2002, researchers in Australia successfully teleported a laser beam, but the most recent successful teleportation experiment happened in 2006 at the Niels Bohr Institute where Dr. Eugene Polzik and his team teleported information stored in a laser beam into a cloud of atoms.

While we have had some successes, we are far away from creating anything that could transport a human from one spot to another. From HowStuffWorks, "For a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that could analyze all the atoms that make up the human body. The machine would then have to send this information to another location, where the person's body would be reconstructed with exact precision. Molecules couldn't be even a millimeter out of place, lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect." If we go with what happened above where information was copied in the attached, electron, we would have to assume that the machine would act like a fax machine and duplicate the person on the receiving end, possibly destroying the original, thereby "killing" the person.

While teleportation isn't possible today, it would make an interesting sci-fi novel. If the original person was destroyed and a clone made, would that clone be EXACTLY like the original. Sure, it would have the same memories and emotions and whatnot, but what if things go wrong? Is the the person really dead since he/she has been cloned? What do you think?

Writing journey through the POV of my book

2011-11-11T06:00:00.002-05:00

You'll have to ignore my silliness in this next How I Write addition. The question asked was all about our writing journey (where we were ten years ago, five years ago, a year ago, six months ago). While my goals stayed pretty constant (the learning curve for me was a long one), the process for me, was the biggest thing. I always knew I wanted to be published, even when I was tracing the goo from Goosebump books on a made up cover and pretending I was going to write one just like that. If I could have done anything differently, I wouldn't have wasted a bunch of years. Yes, there was school and yes, I learned a lot from writing RP, BUT, I could have used those years better.

**************

In the POV... of my book:

My journey of conception was not an easy one. While some books were created simply by a spark of an idea and then went on to maybe one or two…sometimes a few more drafts before being finished, I was not so lucky. While my creator started to jot down ideas and scenes twelve years ago, my journey was a slow one at first with her school work. Luckily (or maybe un-luckily), she had no life. She would go home, sit at the computer and write (in between homework of course). And when she wasn’t doing either, she became addicted to Playstation war and fantasy games. Oh and we won’t mention the horrendous music she played on repeat. So many boybands…*sigh*…we also won’t talk about how she named the hero after one particular lead member.

Ten years ago, I had already been through the ringer three times. Three draft that she tore viciously into, abusing me as she deleted scenes and re-wrote, all in the name of ‘working on characterization’ or ‘learning how to pace the plot’. It didn’t end there. A story can only claim amnesia so many times, you see. Scenes were amputated from me and tortured so viciously that when they were re-inputted, they were completely different. I became Frankenstein incarnate. In order to keep some kind of sanity, I had to regress into myself, because I could barely recognize myself over the new following years.

I got some rest while she was away at university studying. Well no, that's not true…she abandoned me. I was suddenly not good enough anymore, and that does a number on a book’s ego as well, let me tell you. (Although, now that I think of it, it was probably more Stockholm’s Syndrome.) I may sound bitter, but she was the one who cheated on me a bunch with a bunch of role playing stories she co-wrote with a friend. Cheated on ME.

About five years ago, she did a re-vamp of her life. She’d ditched the RP stories and had crawled her way back to me. I thought NOW I could be finished. NOW I would go out and make my query rounds, but oh no. She was not done with me. She’d decided I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t enough that she’d already taken so much away from me before. It wasn’t just the characters who suddenly became strangers or the plot that mutated until it got out of control.

Now was when the fun would start, she told me. Lies. Her definition of fun and mine are completely different. She cut me down to the first few pages and started over. Again. For the hundredth time. Re-write after total re-write. Edit after edit. She even handed me over to her friends. I won’t even speak about what they did with their red ink as they inserted “comments”. Fun? I don’t know if I’d ever qualify it as “fun”.

Between that point and a year ago, I lived in a fog. All I remember were the rejections and how ego crushing it had been for them to turn away from me. Until I was entered into a pitch contest and the very awesome Mallory Braus took me in. Oh I won’t lie, the edits these last six months have been life changing. I thought I knew all the secrets that went on within me but somehow, she was able to work with the creator to get more out of me. More than I knew was possible…but now, I have a home or will have one, at Carina Press.

Check out the rest of the writing journeys of my friends: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-11-10T07:00:00.001-05:00

1. Water shifting to a new kind of liquid
2. What the brain sees when the eye looks away
3. Which way you lean (physically) affects your decision making
4. We all experience fantasy differently
5. Brain parasite directly alters brain chemistry
6. Re-programmable cells could be key to creating new life forms
7. Cyborgs may be sci-fi but brain-computer interfacing is real
8. New procedure to turn brown eyes blue
9. Skin sees sunlight to trigger tanning
10. Periodic table adds three new elements
11. 66 leg predator roamed ancient BC sea floor
12. First brain image of a dream created
13. Humans' entry into Europe pushed earlier

Why Sliders may be possible--the science of multi-universes

2011-11-08T06:00:00.001-05:00

When I was younger, I was hooked on a television show called Sliders--a concept based on a group of travelers who end up by accident going through a "gateway" to an alternate universe. Throughout the series, they have to go through world after world as they try to find their way back home to their reality. Not sure about you but as a teen, I had a crush on Jerry O'Connell. Anyway, through their travels, the each new world is completely different than the last. Sometimes, they barely make it out into another (they have a device that helps them "slide" to the next location and that device runs on a timer. If it runs out, they're stuck in that world forever).

But what if multi-universes are real? The potential for a multiverse comes from a theory called eternal inflation--postulating that shortly after the Big Bang that formed the universe, space-time expanded at different rates in different places, giving rise to bubble universes that may function with their own separate laws of physics.

In a recent study, a team of researchers have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in what they call the cosmic microwave background (or CMB-- essentially, it is the thermal radiation filling the observable universe). Bubble universes are thought to be not only irregular-shaped, but that they can move about. The researchers believe that these marks could be "bruises" that our universe received when it bumped into other universes.

On researcher said:

If you imagine two ordinary soap bubbles colliding, then the surface where they intersect is going to be a circle, so that's the key signature we're looking for in the CMB. It's not any old perturbation, it's circular and it's got a particular type of profile. There's no obvious sort of other thing that could cause this.

Based on this thought, the researchers developed a computer algorithm to analyze CMB observations for patterns that would fit.

But this wasn't the only strange discovery. Before the bubbles were discovered, quantum physicists in 2010 at the University of California found that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe (causing some scientists to believe that time travel may be plausible-- if you're interested in reading more on time travel, I wrote two posts on it: Pt 1 and Pt 2). What the physicists found, was a way to move a tiny metal paddle, and yet keep it still at the same time.

This paddle, about a width of a human hair was cooled in the fridge. After dimming the lights and being placed under a special bell jar with all the air sucked out to eliminate vibrations, the paddle was plucked-- and was noted to move and stand still at same time (kind of hard to picture that, I'll admit). As it's explained, electrons, which circle the nucleus of an atom, are swirling around in multiple states at the same time.

What does it mean? One physicist says:

"When you observe something in one state, one theory is it that it splits the universe into two parts."

So because of this, only one universe would be seen and therefore would "freeze" while all the
others remain in motion, out of sight.

While both of the findings (the bubbles and the paddle being in two states at once) could just be coincidental, it could also be a step in the direction of learning more and perhaps proving that our world may not be the only one. What do you think? Do you believe we live in a multiverse?

For fun, there's a site out there that allows you to input your picture and to find your doppelganger. Who do you look like?

How I Write-- Getting into the writing zone

2011-11-04T00:00:00.001-04:00

For How I Write, the next installment is all about shutting the world out to write. I posed the question to my accountability group because I felt like it was timely with NaNoWriMo starting. How do you get your words in?

First I want to talk a bit about myself because it's relevant to the topic. Unlike many writers, I don't have a family around me. I'm single and I live by myself. I don't have many priorities that aren't my own. I have two cats and while they are like toddlers at times with their mischief, I can pretty much do whatever I want. I control my own schedule. It's not dictated by kids' activities or family. I live 8 hours from my family. There is no chance of them dropping by unannounced. Therefore, I don't really have many excuses for not getting my wordcount or edits in.

That said, the net is my biggest distraction that keeps me from my wordcount. Twitter and Pinterest being one of the biggest offenders. I can get lost in Pinterest for hours, just scrolling through recipes and geek pages and whatever else. TV is the other offender, but usually it's not that big of one. I always have the tv on. I'm one of those people that need background noise at all times.

But what helps me concentrate is exactly that: background noise. Especially shows or movies that I've seen before that I won't pay attention to. On certain days, I need music that I listen to. Unlike some, I need music with words. I find if there's no words, I get distracted. I start to pay attention because I'm annoyed and WAITING for the words. It's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of the jazz music the coffee shop I frequent plays.

Sometimes when this doesn't work and I'm distracted by every. little. thing. I have to either go for a walk to clear my head or do dishes or shower. I'm not sure what it is about water, but it helps me to focus, especially to plot scenes.

If these don't work...well then, there's nothing I can do and I might as well take a day off. ;)

Check out how my other friends shut out the world: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-11-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

1. E-readers get heavier with each book
2. One step closer to the borg
3. Stretchy solar cells make self-powering 'skin'
4. Mind-reading devices help the speechless speak
5. Brain scans reveal lucid dreaming's sleep cinema
6. Smart chimp gets speech like a human
7. First known Europeans identified
8. Cancer found in 2,000 year old mummy
9. Blood from a stone? No. Blood from a rice? Sure.
10. Eyes are the window to the soul; skin is a window to the brain
11. Vampire-like predatory bacteria could become a living antibiotic
12. Your brain knows a lot more than you realize
13. NASA to develop dust grabbing tractor beams for future missions

Deconstructing Gremlins

2011-11-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

With Halloween approaching, I've been watching a lot of movies. On Saturday, I had a movieathon and one of the movies I watched was Gremlins, a movie I had always been curious about, but had never watched before. I would have been about 1 when it came out and we grew up in quite the isolated bubble.

In the movie, the furry creature found in an old antique store in Chinatown is called a Mogwai. Given as a Christmas present, the boy was told 3 very specific rules:

1. keep out of sunlight (will kill it)
2. stay away from water
3. do not feed after midnight

Of course, the three rules are broken. The creature, named Gizmo is a cute little brown and white puff ball with large ears and eyes. Almost immediately you learn that light hurts the Mogwai. It burns them. By accident rule number 2 is broken when water spills on top of Gizmo. In what looks like agony, Gizmo screeches and writhes as little balls of fur pop off. These balls grow and within minutes, there are at least 5 more Mogwai. It's clear that these new ones are different. They have gathered and named a leader, a creature with a white mohawk. They are devious and seek out ways to break the third rule and when they eat after midnight, go into a cocoon stage where they transform--coming out hairless and evil. Although, I suppose they were always evil, but the transformation was the peak of it. They go around terrorizing the town and killing the people.

While the movie was fairly entertaining, I had a hard time ignoring how implausible the movie was. Now, I've argued this movie before but I thought maybe there'd be something in the movie that would put aside my sense of disbelief. No.

Rule number 1: Stay out of the light

I was fine with this rule. There are reasons to stay out of direct sun. Albinism being one of them. Not that Gizmo had any signs of it. If he would, he would have been all white and his eyes would have been redish due to lack of pigmentation. Direct sun would have burned and made life difficult. That doesn't mean that he couldn't have been affected by the UV radiation. Maybe Mogwais are highly sensitive to it. Who knows.

Like most things paranormal, the fight between evil vs good is often portrayed with the evil creature being unable to go out into light. The only thing is that Gizmo is not evil and he can't go out in sunlight.

Rule number 2: Do not get wet

This is where things started to get murky. The moment water was poured on Gizmo he began to reproduce. (He's like a tribble from Star Trek.) Yes he. The move refers to Gizmo by the male pronoun. It's not completely unbelievable. There are some creatures where males reproduce-- i.e. Syngnathid fishes such as sea horses. However, the difference here is that there was no female Mogwai to place the eggs in pouches on him. Not that we know of at least. You assume he was the only one in that antique store but reality is that there could have been more. How many people have come back from the pet store only to find out that their guinea pig or hamster was pregnant?

Anyway, little balls of fur popped off and grew. What this tells me, without there being a female (let's assume for the time being since we don't know), we have to assume reproduction is done asexually (in gremlin form, they look almost reptilian and some are known to reproduce asexually so it's not a far leap) in a form of parthenogenesis. If Gizmo had been a female, things could have been explained easier, but he isn't. Unless he's a hermaphrodite and we just don't know about it, then...maybe...

But in the rule, it said very clearly not to get the mogwai wet because it'll cause this reproduction. I fought this rule and argued until my face turned red. I question how the mogwai supposed to stay hydrated? Obviously they wouldn't have a long life expectancy if they can't drink anything).

But, aside from staying alive there's the whole issue with the 'Add Water, Will Reproduce'. However, there have been studies that have shown that chemical or electrical stimuli have been used to cause parthenogenesis in scientific studies. If the mogwai have a natural allergy to water, maybe it created a negative external stimuli, causing this asexual reproduction to occur.

I found a site that suggested that if a mogwai was subjected to water to reproduce, the resulting trauma would affect the offspring. The offspring would be evil. However if a mogwai was prepared and underwent normal reproductive means, then the offspring (Gizmo) would be good. This assumes that they have other means of reproduction. Maybe it's explained in more detail later on in the sequels, but in the first movie, there was no implication whatsoever that they could reproduce any other way other than asexually. I'm also not entirely convinced that the trauma of the 'birth' would affect the resulting offspring that dramatically.

I still think it's crazy, but I'm willing to bend a bit.

Rule number 3: Do not feed after midnight

We know what happens. Feed after midnight and the mogwai goes into a cocoon state where it goes through a metamorphosis into the evil little gremlins. Now there's some debate here on the time. Why? Because technically the day starts at midnight, so when is the proper time to feed it (and what do they eat?)? Are mogwai supposed to never eat? All creatures need to eat and drink to survive. And what about time zones? How does this affect the no eating situation?

But that's not the point. We're not debating whether they eat or not. If you go by the 'trauma caused the evil in the offspring' theory, they would have been evil no matter what, even after they went through the change. I'm not so sure. In the first movie, it implied that eating= evil gremlins. Yes they were devious as furballs, but they weren't trying to kill anyone.

Eating (after midnight), is the catalyst to their transformation into the gremlins. While you don't usually see it in reptiles or mammals, butterflies start off as caterpillars and after a period of eating and whatnot, spins a cocoon and then changes. It could be the same type of transformation.

My only question is what does the transformation offer them that they can't do without fur and looking like Yoda? What do you think?

How I Write-- Research

2011-10-28T08:25:00.001-04:00

While last week we talked about how we develop our characters, this week the question asked was how we do our research.

I don’t know if you know, but I write weird stuff. I don’t write normal, humans living ordinary lives. My book is all about spies and assassins and psychic powers. And through the vein of it all, I love science and adding a scientific spin on the paranormal.

My research involves science textbooks and Googling about psychic abilities and various uses of equipment. But mostly, I make it up. That’s the thing when you write paranormal, you can use your imagination to create things. Like copying memories from one person and transferring them into another.

What I write, there isn’t tons of research out there for (sometimes, none). I have been known to look up fighting techniques, however, and watch youtube videos of it, studying the way the fighter moves. I don’t tend to mention real places either. Why? Because I fear those details that need to go into the story to make it real for readers. If it’s a real place, especially one I’ve never gone to, which less face it, is everywhere, then I know I’ll mess something up. So what did I do? My characters live on the mountains. Granted, in book2 they do go to town, but it’s not a real place. I can make up whatever I want and no one can say ‘hey, you wrote that wrong’.

I’m always in awe at those who write historicals. I think that it’s the hardest genre to write just because there’s so much you need to know. All those accuracies, you need to keep in the back of your mind or else you know someone is going to find it and point it out.

All in all, there are layers to researching. I Google (my main source to the wacky information you can’t ask someone out loud), but I also watch movies (fight scenes) and read other books. In the end, it all helps those puzzle pieces fall in place.

Check out how my other friends do research: Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-10-27T07:45:00.000-04:00

1. Couple held hands for 1500 years
2. Why spiders will always find you
3. The language fossils buried in every cell of your body
4. A fold in the brain is linked to keeping reality and imagination separate
5. Human brains are made of the same stuff, despite DNA differences
6. Birthplace for primitive life on Earth?
7. Computer scientist cracks mysterious "Copiale Cipher"
8. The modern human coordination miracle
9. Astronomers capture image of planet being born
10. Facebook may be changing our brains
11. Teeth shows big dinosaurs trekked for food
12. Dark matter gets darker
13. Telescope solve 2,000 year old stellar mystery

Zombies Pt 3: the zombie brain

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

In this part of the zombie series, I decided I wanted to have some fun with the zombie brain (the brain eating kind). Check out Pt 1 about Zombies in Nature and Pt 2 on Zombies in History.

Beyond the "living dead" theory, zombies are characterized primarily by their abnormal but sterotyped behaviours. We can see this particularly in many popular Hollywood movies, where zombies aren't portrayed as reanimated dead, but as living humans infected by a biological pathogen such as a virus. They are alive, but different. However the method of transmission, the person is usually transformed into a single-minded hunting machine with all changes to bodily function serving to locate the prey, capture them and then to feed.

Neuroscience has shown that all thoughts and behaviors are associated with neural activity within the brain. Therefore, the zombie brain would also be similar. It makes no sense for it to be different. Because of the behavioural symptoms shown in movies, we're given clues and can piece some of the them together.

Let's break it down by symptoms:

1. Rage: When you look at zombies, they are always trying to eat people (generally angry I guess if they are to feel something). It's an anger that is directed toward everyone simply because they're human or, the next meal course. According to Oscillatory Thoughts, this behaviour has roots in the primitive parts of the brain that center around flight or fight. In humans not infected, these impulses are suppressed by signals in the lower part of the frontal lobe: the orbitofrontal cortex. It sends inhibitory signals to the amygdala.

Like crocodiles (who is driven by the amygdala--studies show that by damaging it, the flight or fight responses is significantly reduced) zombies would be driven by this. Working with the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex dampens the excitability, giving the frontal lobe time to process and think what to do. A zombie would potentially have a damaged anterior cingulate cortex. With it affected, the zombie would be unable to regulate the anger, creating hyper-aggression.

2. Appetite: In the brain, there is an important part that controls feeding. This is the ventromedial hypothalamus. Zombies have an insatiable appetite it seems. They're always hunting for prey to chew on. If zombies were to have damage in this area, they wouldn't know when to stop eating. There have been studies in primates that have shown that damage to this area of the brain causes monkeys to eat anything and uncontrollably.

3. Stumbling/staggering gait:

A zombie isn't the best athlete. They stumble and stagger as they move. The area in the brain responsible for balance and fluid motion is the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. Zombies would probably suffer from some sort of dysfunction, much like cerebellar degeneration such as ataxia.

It's possible that all combined, this could explain the behaviour of zombies. Or at least the ones we know from popular fiction. What other symptoms can you think of?

How I Write-- Character development

2011-10-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

This week, my accountability group ask : how do you flesh out/develop your characters? What process do use to make your characters three-dimensional?

I'm not a person who fills out character sheets. I know that some people swear by them, but for me, I can't do it. Those sheets are an instant muse block. It's plotting and for me, I just can't do it. So what do I do? I layer it in as I go. I'm not sure where some ideas for characters come along. Sometimes, it'll have a good idea beforehand but for the most part, I don't know much. My characters grow sentence by sentence.

Even if I wrote personality and whatnot down in one of those charts, I'd never follow through. I know that. As someone who spent five years writing rp, I was used to filling out character forms. Did my characters ever stick to it? Nope. Oh the physical aspects did, but everything else that was important to make up a char?, no.

Pinterest is good. I do sometimes find items that would suit a char and will pin it to remember. One thing I always do, however, is find a picture that suites the char in my head. I know it doesn't sound like I do a lot to create the chars in my head. I can't really explain how they 'come' to me, only that play a lot of the scenes over and over again in my head.

Check out the others:
Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-10-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

1. Nanotube yarn twists like muscles
2. Ancient "paint factory" unearthed
3. Military seeks sensor to gauge brain's reaction to stories
4. Cyclops shark appears legit
5. Hidden Antarctic lake may host mystery life
6. Psychopaths revealed by computer analysis
7. Computing building blocks created from bacteria and DNA
8. Forgetting is part of remembering
9. Dark matter mystery deepens
10. Robotic bug gets wings, sheds light on evolution of flight
11. Archaeologists find "blade production lines" existed as much as 400,000 years ago
12. Protecting the brain when energy runs low
13. Scientists reveal surprising picture of how powerful antibody neutralizes HIV

Zombies Pt 2: Historical Accounts

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last w eek, I posted about zombies in nature and how it's not all sci-fi and brain eating corpses brought back to life. Such is the tale of Clairvius Narcisse, a man who was allegedly poisoned with the poisons used by a Bokor. In 1962, he "died" and was given a burial. When the Bokor later dug him up, Clairvius was given a paste that at certain doses has hallucinogenic effects that can cause memory loss. He was then forced to work, alongside others, on a sugar plantation until the master's death. Because the doses of the narcotic paste stopped, Clairvius eventually regained his sanity (unlike many others who suffered brain damage). One day in 1980, in a supermarket, Angelina Narcisse was shocked when Clairvius, her brother, walked in.

Accounts of zombies go back even farther. Recently, archaeologists found an 8th century graveyard in Roscommon, Ireland with more than 120 of human skeletons with large stones stuck in their mouths--a ritual researches believe the locals did to stop the dead from returning to walk the Earth as zombies. The bodies in the cemetery dated between the 7th and 14th centuries.

At first, the team of archaeologists thought that they had stumbled across a burial ground for the remains of the victims of the Black Death. Initially, they believed that it possibly could have been related to vampire slayings, where a stake is driven into the heart. During the Middle Ages, the people at the time thought that vampires were believed to spread plague. A stone placed inside the mouth was thought to prevent this, causing the corpse to starve. The only thing against the theory about vampires, was that the vampire culture didn't evolve until the 16th century. Therefore, researchers thought that the act of placing stones in the mouths might have simply acted as a barrier to stop the dead from coming back from the graves, possibly feeding into the theory that the vampires would starve with such methods later on.

One scientist said that the mouth 'was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death. Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life'.

In fact, many cultures placed something in the mouth of the deceased. Ancient Greeks and Romans, for instances, placed a coin in the the person's mouth before burial, believing that it would be payment for the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.

There are many practices of putting stone and other objects into the mouth of the deceased. What do you think was going on? Was it to stop the dead from rising? Or some other reason?

(Also, check out this awesome hardware store, taking zombie preparedness to a whole new level!)

Six Sentence Sundays

2011-10-15T23:25:00.004-04:00

If there's something I have the most trouble writing, it's action scenes. My books are full of them. They take me so long to write because I have a hard time picturing the scene in my head at times, or I just don't know how to get it on paper. There's too much moving around and details you need to know to write a good fight scene. Add psychic abilities and I get frustrated. lol.

And this time, she wasn’t alone. Stefan stared past the dead woman at the figures that approached, recognizing each one as his brother’s victims. As they shuffled toward him, he broke out in a sweat and without a plan of action, threw the energy that had balled into his hands at them. He had no other choice. He had to get away. Now.

For more Six Sentence Sunday, check out the official website.

How I Write-- What do your bookshelves look like?

2011-10-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Books... love them, but seriously, where to put them all? It was asked in my accountability group what our bookshelves look like. At one point, my bookshelves were organized. Then my cats got to them and knocked them all down. I seriously don't know what it is with these cats, but they are obsessed about the book shelf and knocking them all out on the floor.

I own way too many books and only one bookshelf. While my parents have boxes and boxes of those I'd packed up during various moves, I have over 500 here in this apartment. During my purge at the beginning of the year, I boxed up a lot of them and set them aside. The ones I kept for the shelves are those that are keepers...those I read more than once. Still, there isn't enough room.

While I did the purge, I sorted my books out in piles: historicals, contemporaries, paranormals/urban fantasies, and then those I had yet to read. As I set them back on the shelves, I started out with the historicals, working my way then to paranormals and then contemporaries. But, I didn't stop there. Not only are they separated by genre, they are separated by alphabetical order of author last names and then by series or standalone. All those books I had yet to read went on top of the shelf in their own little piles.

I still dream to have my own room that is wall to wall filled with books. And a cozy little reading chair. However, I have been buying a lot of ebooks lately. I think my parents would be happy about that, considering they are the ones who help me move. lol. Not only would I want a secret little hide-away that leads to the "library", I love the cubbyhole little reading area in the picture on the right. My only concern would be if an earthquake hit. LOL. Not that we get a lot of those, but I would be a bit paranoid it might all fall on top of me. Death by books?

My bedroom would not be without some as well. Can you imagine having a bed like this? I think I would store all the books I had yet to read under that bed. And for the office (when I get an office), I love the look of this "desk". All my research books would look awesome in there. Everything from anthropology to biology to psychology and history and whatnot. And of course, you can't forget about the livingroom. I really like what they did here, using bookshelves and setting them around the couch. It gives it an interesting look. Of course, you would need an open concept room, to set the couch in the middle like that, but still. It would totally work in my apartment. Well, if I got rid of the kitchen table. Who needs one? lol. These are just a few ideas of what would make my dream home. I love featuring books and showcasing them for others to check out. Maybe one day...

For more on personal libraries, check out the bookcases of my friends!
Danie Ford Emma G. Delaney Kimberly Farris Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

1. Prehistoric dog found with mammoth bone in its mouth
2. Meet LUCA (last universal common ancestor)
3. Time capsule housed 114 year old human bacteria
4. Smell-o-vision
5. Another reason to eat more chocolate
6. Alzheimer's: can you catch it?
7. Please welcome Megavirus, the world's ginormous virus
8. Dawn of the biohackers
9. British scientists hope to discover Earth's secrets in ancient Antarctic lake
10. The way you hold your drink reveals key personality traits
11. Lair of ancient 'kraken' sea monster possibly discovered
12. The nanotechnology of Sundew and English Ivy
13. Dead sea scrolls get new life online

Zombies Pt 1: Zombies in nature

2011-10-11T00:00:00.004-04:00

Zombies. They're quite popular these days. Movies like Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland, or Residence Evil are everywhere, depicting flesh eating creatures going on a killing spree--either because of a virus, chemical, radiation or some other paranormal explanation. Even the CDC got in on the action and specialized their web-page to prepare you for the zombie apocalypse.

But in reality, zombies have a whole different meaning. The creole word ''zombi' is derived from Nzambi, a West African deity, coming into use in 1929 after the publication of The Magic Island by William B. Seabrook's. The book describes the first 'zombie' Seabrook came across:

"The eyes were the worst. It was not my imagination. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man, not blind, but staring, unfocused, unseeing. The whole face, for that matter, was bad enough. It was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it. It seemed not only expressionless, but incapable of expression."

Haitian voodoo priests, known as Bokors, study and use black magic to resurrect the deceased. According to local lore, a bokor captures a victim's ti bon ange, or the part of the soul directly connected to an individual, to create a zombie. What the Bokor uses, however, is a powder issued to the victim orally that is often called coup padre. After analyzing the powder, scientists found tetrodoxin (a poison from the puffer fish), a marine toad that also produces a toxic substance, a hyla tree frog, and sometimes, human remains as main ingredients. In addition, some contain other plant and animal ingredients, like lizards and spiders, which would be likely to irritate the skin. Some even included ground glass.

Once the powder gets into the bloodstream, the victim's heart rate begins to slow to a near stop and he/she is perceived as 'dead', despite them only being paralyzed. Thinking the person dead, the public would bury him/her. The victim would then be exhumed by the Bokor. Although alive, the victim's memory would be messed up badly and they are said to be transformed into a mindless drone, often said to be put to work in the fields as slaves.

There are also natural sources of zombie-nism that can be found. Recently, a stalk of fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani was found growing out of a "zombie" ant's head in Brazil. The fungus was found to infect an ant and take over its brain. Once the ant gets to an ideal location for the fungi to grow and spread their spores, the ant is killed.

Another natural "zombie" is created in South America by a female phorid fly. With the use of a needle-like appendage, the female fly will inject their egg into a fire ant. The egg grows and the larva migrates to the ant's head, living there for weeks as it eats at the brain. Sometimes, the ant is compelled to move away from its colony to avoid attack by the other ants. Once it's grown, the fly decapitates its host, exiting through the ant's head.

There's also the case of a parasitic jewel wasp that uses a venom injected into a cockroach's brain to inhibit it of free will. The venom was found to block a chemical substance called octopamine (a brain substance that places insects in an alert state, inspires them to move, and allows them to perform demanding physical tasks) in the cockroach's brain. Unable to fight back, the "zombie" cockroach can be pulled into the wasp's underground lair where an egg is laid in its abdomen. Much like with the fire ant, the larva eats the still living cockroach from the inside out in about seven to eight days.

These are just a few instances of natural zombie-nism and how it could occur. How do you feel about pop culture's obsession with the brain-eating zombies?

How I Write-- Hobbies

2011-10-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

My accountability group this week asked about hobbies. What do we do when we're not writing?

I'd like to say that I've had time lately to do much in the way of hobbies, but I haven't. I used to paint. I love doing it, but haven't done much in the way of it lately. There's something about putting the colours on canvas and having it turn into a piece of art work. I love acrylic. Water paints can frustrate me. Oil takes too long to dry. So for me, acrylic is my Goldilock medium. It's justttttttt right.

I can also be quite the baker. Not a cook. A baker. I love the sweets. I'm always in search of finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I still haven't found it yet. It needs to be chewy and buttery and chocolatey goodness. My mom came close once. They were flat and chewy and yum. But my dad likes fluffy so...that was the end of the flat cookies. I haven't quite got the same result yet.

I play a lot of games online. Random games. Why? Because if I join a game that goes on forever, I'll never leave. So I stick to the free short games. I have too much of an addictive personality (I think that's right?). Games, I can get lost in. I've done it before. TV shows I love? I'm obsessed about.

I wish I had the time to do a hobby of some kind, but really, between writing and my soon to be two daytime jobs), I don't have a lot of time to do much else because when I'm not working, I NEED to be focusing on writing. I'd love to go horseback riding again, and in a few years go on an archaeology dig, but right now, those aren't in the cards.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not writing?

Read about the hobbies of my friends:

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-10-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

1. How the brain makes memories
2. Alarm clock gene explained
3. Humans are still evolving
4. Miracle fruit secret revealed
5. Humans reach Asia in two waves
6. Finger drawing from a Prehistoric preschool
7. Breakthrough brain study reveals stress code
8. How viruses find their way into the cell nucleus
9. How brain reacts to mistakes depends on mindset
10. Humans and sharks share immune system feature
11. Tool using fish caught on camera
12. Sea-dragon discoveries Q&A
13. Dead sea not quite dead yet

The Rise of the Phoenix, a case of spontaneous combustion?

2011-10-04T00:00:00.000-04:00

On Sept 23, 2011, a man burned to death in his home, his death ruled as spontaneous combustion.

We've all heard the tales, the most famous, a fictional story by Charles Dickens when he killed off an alcoholic character in such a manner in his book "Bleak House." The character, named Krook, was an alcoholic, following the belief at the time that spontaneous human combustion was caused by excessive amounts of alcohol in the body. However, one of the first known accounts of spontaneous combustion dates back farther back to 1663 by a Thomas Bartholin who described a woman in Paris as she "went up in ashes and smoke" while she was sleeping, the straw mattress unmarred by the fire. And then in 1763, a collection of spontaneous combustion cases--"De Incendiis Coporis Humani Spontaneis"--was published.

There are several popular theories:

1. a fire is sparked when methane builds up in the intestines and is ignited by enzymes

If this was true, victims would suffer greater damage to their internal organs. However, from the cases where the body wasn't completely charred, the evidence suggests the opposite.

2. a fire results as a buildup of static electricity inside the body
3. from an external geomagnetic force exerted on the body
4. one individual has claimed that it is the work of a particle called a pyroton, which he says interacts with cells to create a mini-explosion.

No evidence has been found to prove the existence of these.

Although many attribute such ideas of spontaneous human combustion to the paranormal, in 1998, forensic scientists believed they found a possible explanation as they tested the "wick" effect.

Using a dead pig, wrapped in cloth, they tested the idea that a body can be devoured by flames from its own body fat. Scientists found that the clothes soaked up the melted fat, acting like the wick of a candle, leaving all surrounding materials unharmed, such as the case in 1951 of Mary Reeser who is suspected to have burned to death after taking sleeping pills while smoking, causing her body to burn from within. Another example, in 1966, a body of a 92-year-old was discovered. while only his leg and slippered foot was found, the rest of his body had been burned to ashes. A hole in his bathroom floor was the only evidence of the fire that had killed him, everything else untouched.

In this case of the man's death on Sept 23rd, forensics found that the fire in the fireplace of the sitting room where the badly burned body was discovered was not the cause of death. Neither was there any trace of an accelerant found, which could have suggested foul play. The only damage was to the body and the ceiling above him and floor underneath.

In mythology, we hear about a creature that burns up, much like in these cases of spontaneous human combustion. That creature is the phoenix, a mythical bird that, at the end of a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, goes up in flame and a new phoenix (often as an egg) is reincarnated as an egg, born from the ashes.

Could spontaneous combustion be an explanation for such tales of a phoenix? What do you think?

Six Sentence Sundays

2011-10-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

I finally got over the block I've been facing these last few weeks with book2. If all goes as planned, the book will be finished by Nov or Dec. I re-plotted it all and am feeling confident about the scenes again. My cat decided to use my white board as a ramp and as a result she had rubbed most of the writing off, forcing me to try and remember it all again. lol This time, when I wrote down the points, I jotted it down in a pad of paper.

What woke her was something else that had nothing to do with Stefan. This was just another part of who she—Doctor Mackenzie Black—was. She was a freak. Once upon a very long time, she’d been human, born to a normal human mother and father. The fact that Broderick and the Council had injected her brain with a virus to mutate her DNA made her into something else that she couldn’t quite explain. Or want to.

For more Six Sentence Sunday, check out the official website.

How I Write-- Writer's Block (or how I fight the monster in the shadows)

2011-09-30T09:00:00.002-04:00

This week, my Accountability group are going to answer the following questions: This week's topic is writer's block? Fact or myth? How do you deal with it?

I think writer's block can definitely happen. It's the monster in the shadows, feeding on muse crack. I'm always envious of those who can claim they don't believe in it, those who force themselves to keep moving, despite the block. That is the most disciplined writer, those who can stand up to the monster and look it in the face and then reach into its throat and pull out that half-devoured muse crack back out.

Me? I'm still working on it.

There are ways to hold off that monster, by having a file of ideas, but sometimes, that's not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes the words is what's blocked... a writer block's mutation version of mental constipation. For me, this is the worse. It's when the ideas are all there and I KNOW what I want to write but it just won't come out.

Or what about writer's block's bad boy cousin, procrastination? Now that one... he's one slick beast, luring me with the sparkly pictures and ideas on Pinterest or my TBR pile. I'd like to say that procrastination helps with the writer's block (my excuse), but no, it doesn't. I've fallen victim to this dirty scheme way too many times to know better. And the thing with procrastination, is that it's addicting. It's a drug. I can't just read one chapter. One chapter becomes three and then I find myself having wasted all day and the book done. But oh, there's always more books, procrastination whispers, 'not like you wasted the time. You were studying writing'.

Yeah, that excuse doesn't fly when you have deadlines and books to write.

So what DOES work? What will beat back the dreaded writer's block and stop it in its track before it inhales your musecrack and causes word-constipation? BICHOK--butt in chair, hands on keyboard-- is something a lot of people say works. By showing up, you should be able to write. Not really. Not when that monster is on your shoulder and devouring the words before they even form in your mind. How can showing up help if you are just staring at a screen, fighting tooth and nail for every word? It doesn't.

For me, keeping busy helps the most. I'll clean the apartment and do the dishes. Go shower. I'm not sure what it is about water but somehow, this helps. I read somewhere once that it had to do with re-energizing ions in the body or something, but whatever the reason, things come easier when I'm being busy. I don't mean busy in the -I-Need-To-Concentrate-Or-I-May-Hurt-Myself, like chopping up veggies or something, but, mindless chores. I said once that I'm a daydreamer. I daydream the scenes I'm having trouble with. I put myself in the shoes of the characters and play the scene out. I note the dialogue and what happens.

When that doesn't help, I listen to music. Loud. And yes, I give in to procrastination and play games... and while I play these games, daydream those scenes that are giving me fits. As much as I'd like to blame procrastination for everything, it does help at times. Pinterest is good at giving me ideas because you can create collages of ideas for characters and scenes and whatnot and that can help to fight off writer's block.

I don't know if there will ever be a surefire way of fighting it off, but for me, these things help. In small doses, that is.

For more on what my friends have learned while writing, click on their links!

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-09-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

1. Mind-reading research: the major breakthroughs
2. Spontaneous Human Combustion: how might it occur?
3. Florescing bacteria used to encode secret messages
4. New species of genuflecting plant buries its own seeds
5. 'Antimagnet' joins list of invisibility approaches
6. Resurrected ancient protein is a potent antibiotic
7. Your brain's family album, from hydra to human
8. Brain needs serotonin to restrain aggression
9. Habits form when brains slow down
10. Double whammy gene therapy clears HIV from body
11. How smells rules your life
12. Small lizard solves a problem its never seen before
13. Young bonobo show signs of autism

Time Travel-- A breakthrough in the Speed of Neutrinos

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Do you remember the post I did a few weeks ago about time travel and it not being possible, because scientists had demonstrated that a photon couldn't be sped up beyond the speed of light?

Well, physicians at CERN have had a breakthrough. According to Reuters and BBC, scientists have claimed to have recorded neutrino particles going faster than the speed of light. What does this mean? It means that Albert Einstein's theory of relativity- that nothing can exceed the speed of light- could be wrong.

After thousands of experiments, no result of a particle breaking the limit had ever been documented. The last three years, however, Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have found that neutrinos may just do that.

The team had been preparing a beam of one type of muon neutrinos (neutrinos can come in a variety of different types and can change), sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory. The experiment had been to see how many show up as a different type (tau neutrinos). Instead, what they found was that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than the speed of light would over the same distance. After repeating the experiment 15,000 times, they reached the same statistical results.

If what was found is true, this could change a lot of what we know about the rules of physics. What do you think of these findings?

Six Sentence Sundays

2011-09-25T00:00:00.006-04:00

In the WIP I'm currently working on, the hero and heroine have a small little gesture they do throughout the book. It's nothing big, but even before they became more, they did it. It's a way for them to keep a connection. All they have to do is link their finger together to re-affirm their bond.

His palm curved around her arm as he slid a wide, leather bracelet over her wrist, securing it. She felt something cool against her wrist and realized the leather band concealed a small weapon. “Be safe. I’ll be listening. If you need help, I’ll be there.”

She nodded and slid her fingers along his, hooking their index fingers together a moment before she slipped away, back onto the dance floor.

How I Write-- What have you learned?

2011-09-23T09:00:00.001-04:00

This week's question: What have you learned by writing?

Writing for me has always been a way to get out my thoughts onto page, to tell the story of all the voices in my head. I've always been a daydreamer. What else is there to really do on an hour long bus ride to and from school growing up? Oh sure I read, but I also loved to just stare out the window and let my imagination get the better of me. I'd dream up 'stories', of characters and conflicts.

I never thought about writing seriously, not until grade 8 when I decided to try my hand at it. By grade 9 I was writing the WIP I sold to Carina. Yes, it took me a long time. BUT, it taught me persistence. I've put stories aside before. I gave up on them when I lost interest. With this particular story, the characters were just THERE. Yes, the story has evolved a lot. The first rounds I was extra critical on characterization. They seemed flat. And if I saw that, then my readers surely would, so I spent the time when I would read books of published authors studying them. Studying how the characters were developed and what made them tic and come to life. Once I felt I somewhat had a grasp on this, I decided I couldn't plot. At. All.

So... I worked to change that.

The thing with being stubborn (just ask my family, I'm told that all the time), is that I don't let go of things I'm passionate about. For me, this book was IT. It was important to me in a way no other story had. So I persisted and I re-wrote it at least 6 times. The thing about re-writing, I learned what worked and what didn't. Yes, I could have simply shoved it under the bed with the dust and the books I didn't want anyone to know I was reading, but I couldn't do that. I spent years reading articles on how to write. I don't doubt that it's needed to an extent, but I learn better by actually doing it. You can read about how to create characters or plotting all you want, but if you spend all your time doing that, then you aren't writing and you aren't growing as a writer in your own right.

For more on what my friends have learned while writing, click on their links!

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

1. Revealed, Irelands real life zombie scare: Eighth century skeletons buried with stones in mouths
2. Video gamers solve microbiology puzzle
3. The end of "archaic" H. sapiens
4. New gene sequencing technique opens doors for studying elusive bacteria
5. Genetic defect that leaves some without fingerprints
6. Continents influenced ancient human migration, spread of technology
7. New techniques fill in gaps of fossil record
8. What will the next influenza pandemic look like?
9. Shark molecules kill human viruses, too
10. Tiniest baby dinosaur discovered
11. Deep sea can put global warming on temporary hiatus
12. Our universe may be a multiverse
13. Dino-killing impact wiped out many ancient birds too

Mermaids: Pt 2- Reproduction

2011-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I talked about mermaids and how they could potentially see under the water—eyes like fish, not like ours. Today’s discussion is how mermaids could possibly reproduce if they were real. This isn’t going to be a sex-ed. I imagine it’d be something similar to dolphins. However, that wasn’t the question a friend asked me. She asked whether mermaids would lay eggs or have live birth.

Would they take after the fishes, considering they’re fish-like from the waist down or would they take on the live birth like mammals? If we go by the fact, for the moment, that they are fish-like completely from the waist down, then we should assume that their reproductive organs are as well. That would mean that they’d lay eggs. But let’s step back a moment. If mermaids did lay eggs and then were fertilized by the males after, there wouldn’t be much diversity of the species as a whole. Also, fish can lay hundreds of eggs. Even if only half of them hatch, that’s a lot of mermaids. You’d expect a lot more sightings.

Therefore, this leads to the explanation that mermaids would have to take after whales and porpoises= live birth. Not just that, but mermaids have been depicted with mammalian traits (i.e. breasts and a navel). If you account for probably only one baby per pregnancy, maybe two, the odds seem more reasonable. Also, if you look at the depictions of their tails, it closely resembles that of a dolphin rather than a fish.

What about their scales? Dolphins and whales don’t have colourful scales like fish do. I would assume that it is just artistic license. If you look at drawings of dolphins, some are drawn with scales as well and we know they don’t.

So what do you think? If mermaids were real, how do you think they would reproduce? On a fiction note, do you like stories of mermaids?

Six Sentence Sundays

2011-09-18T00:00:00.001-04:00

This bit of muse crack inspired a particular scene of mine in BOOK1 (title to change) where the heroine and hero are having a conversation about the hero's favourite memory. For me, it's a touching scene, one that reminds the reader that J.C. can feel and be vulnerable.

J.C. was silent a moment. “It was beautiful. I don’t recall the reason we went, just that we ended up on this wooden platform, high up into the trees. It was so black you had to watch your step. The mountains aren’t exactly all that safe to walk through in the dark. We had our flashlights and that was all.”

How I Write-- Ideas

2011-09-16T09:00:00.001-04:00

This week on How I Write, the question that was posed was about ideas and how we got the inspiration to write the WIP we are currently writing. Or ideas in general.

In a past post, I mentioned that in Fatal Visions (title to change), the idea came from two Playstation games. I was hooked when I was in highschool playing Medal of Honor and Final Fantasy. I was in love with Squall so my J.C. was modeled after his looks. Medal of Honor... secret missions, war... guns... enough said.

I've always loved psychic abilities and the paranormal. I'm not quite sure when my interest in the supernatural began, but once it started, it took a firm root in my imagination. But I also come from an anthropological and science schooling. It's not enough for me to just 'assume' something paranormal. I like trying to examine the workings of it and give it a scientific explanation. So when my characters developed psychic abilities, I had to think of a scientific method to explain it. A virus that mutated the DNA? What if they are latent abilities from our previous evolutionary lines? What if early hominids communicated through telepathy? These were questions that I asked myself and helped develop the main idea around Fatal Visions.

Currently I'm in edits for (working title) Tempting the Shadows. This book is in the same world as Fatal Visions, but in the story, I asked myself, what happens when a person is a familiar to another? What does that do to their relationship?

It's amazing how songs can also influence ideas. For TS, Nickelback is particularly good. One song fits the main characters and how they feel about each other. They have always been there for each other, and will continue to. No matter what. They have gone through some rough moments, not just life threatening situations and no matter what, they stick together through it all, even when everyone is against them. While I write, I'll often listen to it on repeat.

For more stories of inspiration and what drives their ideas, visit my fellow writers and friends:

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kristen Koster

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

2011-09-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going to do something a bit different. I've always liked Thursday 13, but I thought I would use it as an opportunity to cross-link the round up of science/humanities articles that I've found particularly interesting around the net this week.

1. Man's Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer
2. Fossils Revise Human Evolution Theories
3. Hair Chemistry Could Help Solve Cold Cases
4. New Emotion Detector can See When We're Lying
5. Egypt's Ancient Fleet: Lost for Thousands of Years, Found in Desolate Cave
6. Enzyme Might be Target for Treating Smoking and Alcoholism
7. Sea Urchins See with their Whole Body
8. Powered by Seaweed, Polymer from Algae may Improve Battery Performance
9. Blood Vessels from Your Printer?
10. New Species of Ancient Predatory Fish Discovered
11. Can Scientists Look at Next Year's Climate?
12. The Lost Plague: London's Graveyards Suggest that Black Death Strain May be Extinct
13. Bacteria Use Electric Wires to Uranium out of Groundwater

Mermaids: Pt.1- Eye Physiology

2011-09-13T00:12:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine gave me the suggestion to do this week’s post when her daughter asked how mermaids can keep their eyes open under the water, and whether or not they lay eggs or have live offspring.

Mermaids, they’re mythological creatures of the sea, half human and half fish. They’re known to sing to sailors and entrance them, distracting them from their word and causing people to walk off the deck or run their ship aground. The first mermaid stories appeared in Assyria ca 1000BC. It’s said that the goddess Atargatis, mother of an Assyrian queen, loved a mortal and when she unintentionally killed him, she jumped into a lake. Ashamed, she tried to take the form of a fish, but the waters couldn’t conceal her beauty so she took the form of a mermaid, human above the waist, fish below.

This isn’t the only story. There are some from all around the world, at all periods of time. A sighting was even proposed in 2009 off the town of Kiryat Yam in Israel, offering a prize of one million dollars for proof after dozens of people had reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of the water like a dolphin.

This brings me to mermaid physiology. Can mermaids see under the water? If so, how? Human eyes aren’t designed to see clearly underwater as we can out of it. Yes, there are those who can get used to it, but for the most part, eyesight will be blurry, not to mention chlorine and salt water will make them sting. If mermaids are human from the waist up, wouldn’t their eyes be like ours? As something that has adapted to life underwater, there are certain things that would need to be different. Just like needing gills to breathe, mermaids would need eyes like a fish to see. If you think about it, it’s believed that a long time ago, humans evolved from fish, so why not have a branch of that evolution that stayed in the water? Just think about Neandertals and Homo Sapiens. They lived side by side. Mermaids could be a line that just hung around. If mermaids were a new evolution, I’d say there’d be more sightings and we wouldn’t necessarily see stories about them going back to 1000BC. Yes, there could be a mermaid mutation gene that is rare, but still, you’d hear about some babies being born with tails and whatnot.

(Before rotten food gets thrown my way, I know this is a bit far-fetched, but, the point is that this is all the use of imagination and evolution does weird things. Some lines branch off and continue, some stay in limbo, some haven’t been discovered yet. Fossil records are spotty. There’s so much we’re still discovering.)

Ok back to fish eyes. Fish don’t have true eyelids, not like humans who have them to prevent their eyes from drying out or protecting against dirt. A fish’s eyes, however, are always covered by water. Whereas human irises can contract or expand depending on light conditions, fish irises don’t because light never changes in intensity underwater. They don’t have need for such an adaptation. The biggest difference between the human and fish eye, occurs in the lens. With humans, ours are fairly flat or ‘dishlike’. In fish, however, it is spherical or ‘globular’. Human eyes are capable of changing the curvature of the lens in order to change the focus at varying distances (flatter for long-range and more curved for shorter). Although fish eyes have a rigid lens and the curvature can’t change, it can move toward or away from the retina like when you’re focusing a camera.

Fish that live in dimly lit regions usually are found to have larger eyes. Because mermaids would probably live deep in the sea where it’s not as light, they would also have larger eyes than humans. Next week, I’ll get into the second part, do mermaids lay eggs or have live birth? What do you think?

Check out this interesting article if you want to read more about mer-physics.

How I Write-- What inspires you to start/keep writing?

2011-09-09T12:44:00.002-04:00

Books can be hard to start at times. All those blank pages can be overwhelming at times. ESPECIALLY, if you're starting with action. I don't know about you, but fighting scenes are the hardest for me to write.

So how do I get started?

I listen to music. A lot of it. I play it loud so that it blocks out the world and focus on my chars. Sometimes the first sentence will pop up, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a line for the lyrics will snag something from my brain.

However, before this whole process starts, I usually will surf the net (a lot) or go on Pinterest and look at the images, hoping they'll spark ideas. I look for ideas of clothing, of objects the characters may have or use, of what their room may look like, etc. I pool it all together to get a better impression of the main characters and their life.

Sometimes random scenes will jump out at me. Usually these are highly charged and exciting. Scenes I can't WAIT to write. So I jot them down and usually some lines, if I remember them so that I don't forget. I'm bad, especially at night, if I get an idea, not jotting it down. I can guarantee by morning I'll forget. But during the day while the computer is open, I can easily go into the World Bible and jot those notes down. Because I write a series, I don't have tons of World Bibles. The whole world exists in one file so it's easy to find.

Getting to the end of a project is harder than starting. Yes, some ideas will flow as I write but there are times I'll get stuck. This is where I bug someone and pester them with questions or brainstorm with them. Sometimes, you just need that other person's thoughts. I'm lucky to be surrounded by a lot of great writers and friends. I'm not a first draft plotter. I'm more of a second draft plotter, so writing that first draft is a writing as I go process. However, music will always revive my inspiration.

For more on what inspires writers to get into their stories, check out these blogs:

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kristen Koster

How I Write- Writing Routine

2011-09-02T12:47:00.006-04:00

This week in How I Write, Danie posed a great question. She asked us what our writing routines were like.

Writing Routines

I'd like to say that I have a routine but really, I don't. During the last month of revisions, I have been writing until 4-5am and then crashing until noon, waking up and starting at 3pm. That seemed to work for me. I think I tend to be more of a night-time writer. I know I'm definitely not a morning one. lol.

Usually, I wake up, take a few hours to fully become conscious (I don't drink coffee so it can be a slow process). I'll watch some tv, browse the net, whatever. If I have to crit, what I was finding was that I can crit first up to 3pm, and then at this point, force myself to move on to my own stuff. That said, I'm currently not working so this doesn't always work. When I was working, I'd write from 8:30-9am and then 7-11pm.

The point of writing is to do it. If I get a chance or am up to it before 3pm, I do it. I try to take advantage of my time however I can.

Want to read more about schedules? Check out these folks!

Danie Ford
Emma G. Delaney
Kimberly Farris
Kaige

How I Write-- Writing Caves

2011-08-25T21:32:00.005-04:00

I'm part of a goals group and last week I challenged them to a series of writing related blog posts, once a week in a version of our own, 'How I Write'. This week, we're going to be discussing our writing caves.

I don't really have a cave per se. Maybe one day I will, but for the moment, there's no point. I live alone (well, except for the trouble twosome), so the most distraction I get is either the cats being bad. Once a week, if everyone's able, I do go out to a coffee shop on Sundays to meet some writerly-friends I'd met during NaNoWriMo, but for the most part, my writing cave consists of a couch. lol.

A few weeks ago, however, I gave in to the urge and purchased a computer chair. I write at the table when it's not being occupied. Mackenzie has taken a like to it and if I'm there so that she can't, she is constantly at me to play with her. I guess she can't get settled elsewhere so she figures since she's up, she might as well bother me. lol.

For the most part though, the couch is where I plot and write. It may not be professional looking, but it's comfy. The tv doesn't bother me too much. I need background noise to write, so it's just a bonus.

Don't forget to check out these blogs:

Angeleque
Danie
Kaige
Kim
Patti

Time travel-- Impossible or impossible for now?

2011-07-26T15:39:00.005-04:00

We've all watched sci-fi shows and movies with time travel where something is either sent backwards in time or forward into the future. In various shows, a person is usually the one going back and forth (usually with the aid of some kind of device). The idea is based on Einstein's general theory of relativity, suggesting that time slows down for objects moving at high speeds. it also suggests that space and time get pulled out of shape near an accelerated or rotating object.

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists that an infinitely long cylinder spinning at speeds close to the speed of light could be used to warp space-time. Many experiments have been done, including one by Carrol Alley who synchronized two atomic clocks and put one on an airplane. The one on the plane became microseconds behind the one on ground, suggesting that perhaps time had slowed with the speed of the plane.

And in 2001, Ronald Mallet theorized that the gravitational field produced by a laser beam could be manipulated to allow time travel. Wormholes have also been theorized to perhaps allow instant travel from one point to another (whether it's to one point in time to another or one dimension to another).

However, physicists at Hong Kong have recently demonstrated that a photon cannot be accelerated beyond the speed of light, implying that time travel is impossible at least in one area. The research team, working to Einstein's special theory of relativity (that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light) showed that this is true.

What do you think? Do you think time travel is possible through other means? If you could go back in time, where would you go? Or would you go into the future?

Read the article here.

Research- When Paranormal Meets Science

2011-07-19T15:27:00.001-04:00

I do a lot of research while I write. Yes, with paranormal, the lines blur and I do take that tactic when I can't explain some things, but, a lot of the times, I'm trying to combine the supernatural with science. Maybe it's because of my biology degree, but I can't just not try to explain why something may occur.

Sometimes, you just can't explain something.

But, just because something can't be explained now doesn't mean it won't ever be explained. Some things, we just don't have the knowledge or technology to use. Every day science and technology is growing. For example in January, scientists came closer to creating a cloak of invisibility. We're constantly hearing about medical discoveries like creating blood from stem cells.

So to close our minds off from things that don't make sense at the moment doesn't make sense. We may not understand it now, but we may in the future. I love thinking outside the figurative box. I like exploring the unknown and seeing what can be done. And it's this that influences my books, Fatal Visions in particular.

Exciting news!

2011-07-12T15:40:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in a few weeks. I've was away at the RWA conference a few weeks ago. But more than that, have you heard? I'm going to be a Carina author! Carina has offered a contract for Fatal Visions!

Vampires Pt.4- Why Vampires Can't Exist (second part)

2011-06-21T22:21:00.003-04:00

I've been hearing a lot about Vitamin D deficiency recently and how it works to cause osteoporosis and then it came to me... a reason why vampires can't exist. Vampires technically still have the skeletal system of a human. Or they should. There is no real reason why they wouldn't. So wouldn't they still be affected by osteoporosis as well? You get your vitamin D mostly by the sunlight. Vampires don't go out in the sun. So why is there not more vampires with osteoporosis. If you think about it, it's not like they are drinking milk. The only other explanation would be for them to take supplements the rest of their life, otherwise, they'd fall apart.

Just a random thought...

Guest Blog- Kendal Corbitt

2011-06-07T10:02:00.007-04:00

Today I'm joined by Rachel and Cole from Kendal Corbitt’s upcoming release FIRE ONE THE WATER, a story loosely based on the three little pigs and the big bad wolf.

Blurb: One by one, Rachel Milo has been forced to watch her neighbors sell their homes to Wolfe Developments. When three become two, only her and Cole Karson remain on the Lake. As pressure from Wolfe Developments mounts to sell and she is pushed closer to Cole, it gets harder to deny her growing attraction for a man whose past could destroy her future.

Disaster strikes and Rachel is almost killed in a fire one night while she is deep asleep. She must seek help from the one man who she vowed not to let near her. Even if she can’t trust Cole with her heart, she is forced to trust him with her life. Together they must work to figure out the real reason Vivian Wolfe is so determined to own the lake.

It sounds like you two have known each other for awhile. How long has it been and tell me, what was your first meeting like? How come you waited so long to date?

Rachel: Well, I’ll go first. I guess we met when my propane tanks were emptied and I almost froze to death in Grandpa’s cottage. Cole wasn’t too pleased to have me bunking on his stinky, lumpy couch, but it was a snow storm and I couldn’t get into town. Believe me, his place wasn’t the first home I tired but he was the only other person who was crazy enough to stay up at the lake during winter.

Cole: I remember that. I offered to share my bed, so don’t complain about the couch. That was your choice.

Rachel: Right, because I was just going to hop into bed with you. Anyways, I guess you can see why it took us awhile start dating. He’s kind of standoffish.

Cole: Oh you love it. I’m charming, you just need to get to know me. The real reason we didn’t start dating was because you had ga-ga eyes for Ryan and didn’t acknowledge I existed.

Rachel: Ryan? Uhm, no. Great guy, great friend, but I’ve never wanted more. The reason I kept my distance from you was because you scared the crap out of me. I knew there was something dangerous about you, something I couldn’t put my finger on and after the whole Vivian Wolfe thing, I was right. You’re a dangerous man, and I love it.

Tell me a bit about Vivian Wolfe and Wolfe Developments. What has she been up to?

Cole: Serving ten to fifteen in a padded cell. Next question, please.

What’s one secret you’ve never told the other about when you were a teenager? What’s something that most people wouldn’t know?

Rachel: You go first.

Cole: Wimp. Fine. Well when I was younger I was the king of Nicky Nicky Nine Door.

Rachel: What the heck is that?

Cole: You really have led a sheltered life haven’t you? Forget it, your turn.

Rachel: I told my prom date, Jordon Murphy, I was gay so I didn’t have to kiss him and feel bad about it.

So Rachel, that opens up a must ask question. Have you ever kissed a girl or gone to that side of the fence before?

Rachel: No.

Cole: Just no? Not even some summer camp mischief? I’ve got cable and an active imagination, so don’t deny me babe.

I’ve recently seen your cover and it’s pretty great. What do you think about it?

Rachel: Love it! It mixes all the elements of our story together and includes a dose of heat.

Cole: It’s a cover. I don’t read. Especially romance.

Rachel: Our book is erotic romance, Cole. You’d like it. There is sex in it - very hot, makes me tingle sex.

Cole: Really? Oh. Well then, I love the cover. Where do I buy it? Is it coming to cable?

Rachel: You really are a pig, do you know that?

Cole: If there is hot sex, why would I not be into it? Remember when I caught you spying outside Ryan’s cabin? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

For more information on Kendal and her books, you can find her here:

Website

Twitter

Blog

You can buy her book here through Phaze.

Vampires Pt 3-- Why Vampires Can't Exist

2011-05-31T11:15:00.004-04:00

Recently, iO9 came out with this very interesting article on why vampires can't exist. If you haven't read it, check it out. The article talks about a new discovery found about mosquitoes. Also check out the original research article, 'Wolbachia Infections are Virulent and Inhibit the human Malaria Parasite Pkasmodium Falciparum in Anopheles Gambiae'. Very interesting read.

In the iO9 article, the writer spins what is found by the researchers who found a type of bacteria that kills of the mosquito that carries malaria by saying that because of this bacteria, it means that there will never be a "plague of vampires".

This bacteria, Wolbachia, although not found to be carried by the type of mosquito that carries malaria, the researchers thought that it could be fatal to them. Mosquitoes were infected with two of the different strains of the bacteria to see if it would kill off the carriers, therefore stopping the spread of the disease. What they found was that the bacteria not only spread quickly and took control of the immune systems of the mosquitoes, but it also inhibited the growth of malaria. The mosquitoes, however, didn't die. What happened was that while the mosquitoes lived on the sugar fed to them, given blood, they died.

Now, just imagine what a writer could do with information like this?

Movies have shown that vampires need a stake to the heart or sunlight... or whatever. But what the researchers have shown is that there are other ways to go about stopping vampires. With a bacteria. (Unless they mutate first, but let's not go there.)

iO9's spin on the research article is brilliant and brings new readers in to the scientific community.

Vampries Pt.2 (re-posted)

2011-05-24T20:36:00.003-04:00

All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate, so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own.

from Mina Harker's journal

Jumping off of last week's post, legend tells us that vampires come out at night. They are night creatures because the sun can hurt and even kill them. They come out at night to seek fresh blood because without it they will suffer agonizing pain and will die. Their bodies dry up due to lack of blood, and new blood refreshes their bodies and gives them energy and certain powers.

Rabies:

Another disease, often attributed to vampire legends is rabies which is caused by a virus transmitted through an infected animal's saliva, most commonly by bats, foxes and other medium sized animals. Since bats are often commonly associated with vampires, it has been inferred that people who contracted rabies from bats were thought to be bitten by vampires.

Excessive saliva and foaming of the mouth and uncontrollable painful throat spasms, the individual suffers from overwhelming thirst but cannot drink. Restlessness. Agitation. Paranoia. Insomnia. Hallucinations. Even seizures. A person with rabies, left untreated, enter a coma and eventually, die. Sufferers of rabies are also prone to experiencing a hypersensitivity to light, strong smells (like garlic) and noise.

After a person was bitten by a bat, they would show symptoms not unlike vampires-- unable to quench their thirst, hypersensitive to strong stimuli, as well, often repelled by light, by bright things -- such as mirrors, and by strong odors -- including the smell of garlic. Because the virus affects the limbic system, the part of the brain that influences aggressive and sexual behaviour, people with rabies tend to be aggressive and may attempt to bite others. The virus also affects the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls sleep. Because of this, many patients suffer from insomnia.

Not only do people with rabies have symptoms strikingly similar to the traits ascribed to vampires, but the vampire legend also originated in eastern Europe in the 18th century -- the site of a major rabies outbreak in the 1720s.

Nowadays, vampires are generally seen as fictional characters. However, almost three centuries ago, the concept and word "vampire" were seen as a real threat.

. . .you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men's eyes because they know -- or think they know -- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young -- like the fine ladies at the opera.

Professor Van Helsing to Dr. Seward

Vampires Pt 1 (re-posted from an old blog)

2011-05-17T17:17:00.003-04:00

. . .I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.
from Jonathan Harker's Journal

Vampires. Love them. Hate them. They're everywhere in one form or another. We all know them--mythological undead that feed on the blood of the living. Often described as gaunt and pale, vampires have dated back from the early Nineteenth Century. Although they have been recorded in most cultures, the term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe.

But what makes a vampire?

ORIGINS

Porphyria:

In the mid-1980s, police in Virginia arrested twenty-year-old Jeffery Wainwright for murder. The vic? Charles Brownell, a forty-three-year-old brick mason and self-proclaimed vampire and although he called himself a vampire all his adult life, no one took him seriously. After Brownell disappeared for two weeks, neighbours became suspicious when they found a trail of blood outside his apartment. What the police found inside, was a gruesome sight of human organs, tissue and blood. The police suspected Brownell of murdering an innocent then fleeing.

Scientific evidence proved otherwise, finding that the bloody evidence was of Brownell himself. What was most intriguing of all, were that tests of the victim's liver showed that Brownell had suffered from porphyria, a rare genetic disease in which heme (the red pigment of the blood) is not properly biosnthesized, occurring in 1 of every 30,000 people.

To a sufferer, even mild exposure to sunlight can be devastating, creating lesions of the skin that can be so severe that the nose and fingers are destroyed. Although teeth don't become longer, the lips and gums were said to recede dramatically. Not only that, but some sufferers were said to become hairy. Could what some people call vampirism simply be a case of porphyria sufferers trying to alleviate the symptoms of their disease? It is thought, that perhaps if a large amount of blood were drunk, the heme in it would supply the missing heme in the sufferer, although this method is not very efficient. Today, porphyriacts are treated with heme injections, however, in the Middle Ages, when injections were impossible, drinking large amounts of blood would have been the only way of getting the necessary supply of heme. Since death can result from heme insufficiency, it is expected then, that personality changes and dementia are psychiatric symptoms would occur.

And because porphyria is genetic, it is noted that many siblings share the same defective gene, with only one showing disease symptoms, creating local pockets of porphyriacs (such as mountainous, isolated Transylvania). It has also been noted that a strain on th system, such as the sudden and major loss of blood, can trigger the disease in a person already genetically pre-disposed.

What about garlic? In vampire folklore, garlic was used to ward off vampires. In many drugs and chemicals that destroy heme, there is a feature in common with the principal constituent of garlic (dialkyl disulfide). Which could result in both a deterrent and an increase of severity.

Of course, although we now know that porphyria patients are NOT vampires, porphyria might have contributed to the origin of the vampire legends.

LUV YA auction, hosted by Bria Quinlan

2011-05-03T12:56:00.008-04:00

A friend of mine finaled in the Golden Heart with a manuscript I loved called Secret Life. Bria writes YA but what makes her characters so appealing and different are the struggles they face that a lot of writers shy away from. Anyway, Bria is trying to get to New York for the RWA National Conference. In order to do so, she's holding an auction. What can you find there? You can find crits for fulls and partials, crits for synopsis and queries, steampunk jewelry, book baskets, and much more.

It's for a great cause, so check it out! You can find Bria at her site: briaquinlan.com