Launchpad - Astronomy Camp for Writers

I’m looking through a telescope at a bright dot the size of an aspirin. Spread out to either side of it in a perfect line are four tiny specks, like a glowing ellipsis. This is Jupiter and its four largest moons, and I’m seeing them the way Galileo first did in 1610, when he became the first person to prove definitively that there were things in the universe that didn’t revolve around the Earth or the Sun.

I didn’t build my own telescope, like Galileo did, and I’m not in Italy, like he was. I’m standing on the roof of the Astronomy Department at the University of Wyoming at Laramie on the first night of Launchpad 2015, a week-long astronomy camp for writers. Founded by University of Wyoming Astronomy professor Mike Brotherton in 2007, Launchpad’s goal is to teach writers with audiences young and old about the modern science of astronomy, with the hope that those writers will go on to educate the public and help inspire the next generation of scientists through their stories.

 The first day of Launchpad lifted off with lectures about our local “neighborhood”: Earth’s seasons, the Solar System, and the phases of the moon—with an eye toward helping writers get all those night scenes right. The next day we talked about the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity, Newton, Kepler, orbits, and Einstein before getting into the rock stars of astronomy—exoplanets, supernovas, neutron stars, and black holes—later in the week. Our last day was spent covering the cutting edge of astronomy: quasars, dark matter, dark energy, and cosmological theory. Along the way, we took time out for rooftop stargazing, attending planetarium presentations, analyzing the spectrometry of different gases, and searching for exoplanets. A highlight of the week was a trip to WIRO, the University of Wyoming Infrared Observatory, home to a 2.3 meter telescope on top of Jelm Mountain outside Laramie.

 Since the focus of Launchpad is on astronomy in fiction, our instructors also took plenty of time throughout the week to point out astronomical errors in books, TV, and films. Asteroid fields, we learned, look nothing like the treacherous one Han Solo pilots the Millennium Falcon through in The Empire Strikes Back—in real asteroid fields, the giant rocks are few and far between. You don’t listen to radio telescopes, as Jodie Foster does in Contact, you read graphs of light wavelengths on a computer screen. And it won’t be pleasant, but you don’t automatically freeze or explode when you’re exposed to the vacuum of space, as characters do again and again in fiction. All the air will blow out of your lungs, the saliva in your mouth will boil away, you’ll get the bends, and you’ll pass out in about 15 seconds…but you won’t explode.

When Launchpad came to an end six days later—far sooner than the heat death of the universe, but just as regrettable—my head and notebook were packed with astronomical facts. Even better, I had enough story ideas to last me as long as one of Pluto’s orbits around the sun (248 years). Launchpad was an incredible week of scientific discussion, inspiration, and camaraderie. And incredibly, through the help of grants and donations, everything at Launchpad is free—room, board, and instruction. They were even able to cover some attendees’ airfare.

If you’re a published author and interested in attending Launchpad, you can find out more at http://www.launchpadworkshop.org/. Like Galileo, you might get to see the moons of Jupiter up close and personal—without having to answer to the Inquisition for it afterward.

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What are the odds?

Before I get to the writing this morning, I wanted to post something interesting I ran across in a recent Time Magazine article. It's called "Summer Books" by Lev Grossman, and he talks about how some summers are defined by a particular book that becomes the summer "beach read" of the year. It doesn't happen every year, he argues, but when it does--like with 2012's Gone Girl or 2002's The Lovely Bones--those books define the summer. (He lists many more.) These books, he argues, deserve the title of "book of the summer" because they were unexpected hits--so he discounts books like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because that was going to be a hit whenever it was published. (Here's the full article.)

The most interesting thing about the article to me, and the thing I thought would be useful to kids book writers, is a sidebar in which he playfully "gives odds" on which new books might potentially become 2014's "book of the summer." (The article appeared in the July7/July 14 issue; I'm a little behind on my reading, as usual.) He gives odds on each book, then lists pros and cons for why it might or might not become a special, bestselling, widely-read and -discussed book. It's the pros and cons I think are highly interesting. Here are the books and their descriptions, as presented in the magazine:

2-1

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

Pros: Single mom plus nerdy millionaire equals unlikely romance. And there's a road trip!

Cons: Very few killer sharks.

2-1 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Pros: Blind daughter of a locksmith meets reluctant Nazi engineering whiz! What more do you want?

Cons: Complex, historical fiction may not have the necessary mass appeal.

3-1

The Fever by Megan Abbott

Pros: Small-town girls hit by mystery syndrome. Tense, erotically fraught, has Gillian Flynn blurb.

Cons: Much adolescent angst. Are the stakes high enough?

4-1

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Pros: Rich people on an island; sharp, funny-sad writing; a head-snapping fourth-quarter reveal.

Cons: It's a YA novel, so some adults might pass.

4-1

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Pros: Keen psychological insight, irrepressible humor and a supernatural twist: a woman can call her husband in the past.

Cons: Relative lack of violence, perverse sex.

5-1

One Kick by Chelsea Cain

Pros: Child kidnapping victim grows up to become ass-kicking vigilante looking for other missing children.

Cons: A thriller but maybe not a rule breaker.

6-1

The Quick by Lauren Owen

Pros: Set in lovely, lush Victorian London. Plus: vampires, vampires, vampires.

Cons: Owen's pacing is slow and artful--maybe too slow for some.

8-1

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer

Pros: Genius techno-thriller ala Neal Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy ala Dave Eggers.

Cons: Low-key romance may not play to all quadrants.

Okay. Interesting stuff! But what's most interesting to me are the pros and cons. The pros work best when they have a great hook, don't they? "Single mom plus nerdy millionaire equals unlikely romance." "Blind daughter of a locksmith meets reluctant Nazi engineering whiz!" "Small-town girls hit by mystery syndrome." "a woman can call her husband in the past." "Child kidnapping victim grows up to become ass-kicking vigilante looking for other missing children." The ones that seem like they have a harder chance of striking it big are the ones with hard-to-describe plots. Although there's a lot to be said for the kind of mystery you can't explain without giving the whole book away, ala Gone Girl or We Were Liars, in which case a book can hit it big just from people saying, "You have to read this."

The cons are really instructive too. Here they are here, with my own comments:

1) Very few killer sharks. (He's being jokey, but he's does have a point: outrageous things do sell books.)

2) Complex, historical fiction may not have the necessary mass appeal. (These kinds of books win awards, but do they get the broader readership?)

3) Much adolescent angst. Are the stakes high enough? (We don't have to worry about the angst--it comes with our territory. But "Are the stakes high enough?" is a question we should be asking in every book we write.)

4) It's a YA novel, so some adults might pass. (Not a YA-writer's problem!)

5) Relative lack of violence, perverse sex. (Again, not a kids book-writer's problem, probably, unless they're writing high-YA or New Adult. But it does pay to give the readers what they want, no matter what the age.

6) A thriller but maybe not a rule breaker. (Love this. Are we writing the same old book that's been written before, or are we pushing, maybe even breaking, the rules of our genres a little bit?)

7) Owen's pacing is slow and artful--maybe too slow for some. (Pacing is more important the younger you go! Get to the main problem quickly, and then don't let up.)

8) Low-key romance may not play to all quadrants. (True for YA: do you have some love-interest stuff in there? That will help it play to different readers. For MG, do you have an all boy-book? An all-girl book? That will limit your readership too.)

Food for thought! I'd love to hear other opinions about all this.

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Apply now to become the next Thurber House Children's Book Writer-in-Residence!

Four years ago, I was honored to be the Thurber House Children's Writer-in-Residence for four weeks in Columbus, Ohio. I lived in the attic of James Thurber's boyhood home, led writing workshops with local students, and had lots of time to work on my then-current work-in-progress: The League of Seven, which comes out this August! I had a great time--and you will too!

The application period is now open for the 2015 Thurber House Children's Writer-in-Residence. Here are the details:

Qualifications: Candidates must have at least one middle grade (roughly 3-6 grade) book published by a traditional trade publishing house, but no more than five and one new middle grade book under contract. Must have experience teaching/working with children in an educational setting.

Program: This is a 4-week residency during June, July, or August 2015. The specific time period is negotiated with the selected author. During the stay, the resident will teach writing-based activities to middle grade children for eight to ten hours per week in a variety of community settings, including the Thurber House Summer Writing Camp.

Past Thurber Residents: Deborah Wiles (2001), Kathryn Hewitt (02), Natasha Tarpley (03), Laurie Miller Hornik (04), Shelley Pearsall (05), Sam Swope (06), Lisa Yee (07), Alan Silberberg (08), Hope Anita Smith (09), and (10), Alan Gratz (11), Donna Gephart (12), Jane Kelley (13), Kristen Kittscher (14).

Stipend: $4,000

Housing: A furnished, two-bedroom apartment is provided on the third floor of Thurber House, the college home in Columbus, Ohio of James Thurber. All utilities except telephone are included. Internet access is available. Furnishings include all basic household items. No allowance is offered for travel or moving expenses; employment benefits are not provided.

Deadline for receipt of application materials is November 1, 2014.

Click here for the application materials.

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The Strangest Writing Retreat I Have Ever Heard Of

Last night, I got an e-mail through Facebook from a guy who says he met me at a SCBWI Carolinas conference three years ago. He's putting together a writers retreat near Charlotte next March, and he's having trouble getting guys to come, so he's inviting me. Okay, so that's not why I want to be invited to something, but I sympathize, because I also can't get guys to come to my kidlit writing retreats.

He doesn't tell me the date, or how long it is. Also, he says it will be a "combination writing retreat/Spartan Race." He says this like I am supposed to know what "Spartan Race" means. I have no idea what a Spartan Race is, so I write back: what is the date, how long is it, and what is a Spartan Race?

He writes back that the retreat will be over a particular weekend, that there will be a craft talk on Friday night, and then "the Spartan Race Saturday morning." And in case I don't know what that is, he says, here's a link.

I follow the link. A Spartan Race is a sort of traveling Iron Man Obstacle Race, a four mile run through the mud where you do things like crawl on your stomach under barbed wire, jump over burning fires, climb greased pyramids, and get beat on by very large men with padded sticks.

Then in the evening we will probably do a first pages critique.

I wrote back to the man and told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't attend because YOU COULD NOT PAY ME TO RUN A SPARTAN RACE.

But thank you very much for the invitation.

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Now on sale: my Star Trek novel!

Let's check the old Alan Gratz bucket list. Visit Machu Picchu: Not yet. Master the Force: Still working on that. Write a Star Trek novel: Done!

It really has been a longtime dream of mine to write a Star Trek novel. Don't tell anyone, but about 17 years ago, back before we were married, Wendi pretended to be my literary agent so we could submit a Star Trek novel I had written to Pocket Books. We made up a letterhead for her "agency" and everything. Pocket Books didn't go for it and soon after I focused on writing books for young readers, but that submission officially represented my first real attempt to sell a novel.

Cut to a year and a half ago, when I learned that Simon Spotlight was publishing a series of young adult Star Trek novels set in the universe of the recent movie reboot. Trek? YA? That long-lost dream of writing a Star Trek novel wasn't looking so hopeless after all! I got on the phone with my agent, Barry, he got on the phone with the editor of the series at Simon Spotlight, and a month later I had a gig as Star Trek's newest author.

Today I have come full circle. I'm happy to announce the publication of Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game!

The rules are simple: Draw a target. Track him down and “kill” him with a spork. Take your victim’s target for your own. Oh, and make sure the player with your name doesn’t get to you first. No safe zones. No time-outs. The game ends when only one player remains.

James T. Kirk is playing for fun. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is playing to get closer to a girl. But when a series of terrorist attacks rock the usually placid Starfleet Academy campus, it becomes clear that somebody is playing the game for real. Is it one of the visiting Varkolak, on Earth to attend an intergalactic medical conference? Or could it be a member of a super-secret society at the Academy dedicated to taking care of threats to the Federation, no matter what rules they have to break to do it?

Find out in Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game, on sale now at your favorite bookstore!

Live long and prosper,

Alan

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What I Really Do

Dad sent me this pic today, mostly because I kid him that he thinks I'm doing image number 2 or image number 6 all day. It's all pretty accurate, but to be honest it would be perfect if the last image had Gmail on it.

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Join me at the Highlights 2012 Whole Novel Workshop!

This coming March, I'm going to be part of the faculty at the 2012 Whole Novel Workshop run by the Highlights Foundation at their Honesdale, PA compound. It's a week of one-on-one critiques and small-group discussions about writing novels for kids with me, Newbery Honor-winner Kathi Appelt, Christopher Award-winner Jeanette Ingold, and the extraordinarily-awesome Greenwillow editor Martha Mihalik. We'll be reading the attendees' complete manuscripts in advance, writing extensive critique letters, and then spending the week in Honesdale helping you find a revision plan that will make your novel ready for prime time!

The deadline for applying to the workshop is fast approaching though. You only have until the end of the calendar year to apply! For more information on the workshop and how to apply, visit www.highlightsfoundation.org. You can also secure your spot by contacting Jo Lloyd at 570-253-1192, e-mailing her at jo.lloyd@highlightsfoundation.org, or requesting an application at the above link.

Here's more information from the Highlights press release:

Many times when a manuscript is rejected, it isn’t because the writing is weak. It’s because the manuscript isn’t ready. We all want to push our work to the next phase, but sometimes we submit work to agents or publishers before it's ready. Maybe we’ve shown the manuscript to our writing group. Maybe we’ve revised a few times. Maybe we think we’ve done all we can do. But what we really need is a writing coach, a revision plan, and a clear strategy to make the best book we can. In today’s demanding world of publishing, you get only one chance to grab the attention of an agent or editor, so make that chance count. Make sure you are ready.

The Highlights Foundation’s Whole Novel Workshop has been helping writers polish their manuscripts since 2006. Participants receive a reading of and editorial response to their complete manuscript prior to a week dedicated to revision and readying your manuscript for submission. We offer an award-winning faculty of writers, editors, and agents to help make your book the best it can be. Through one-on-one critiques and small-group discussions, we focus on revision plans, query letters, and pitch strategies to get you ready to submit. We also nourish your creativity with a private cabin in which to think and write, farm-style meals, and an environment that will refresh your publishing dreams.

Our first whole novel workshop in 2012 takes place March 11–17. Submission deadline is December 30. The faculty includes award-winning authors and talented teachers Kathi Appelt, Alan Gratz, and Jeannette Ingold, as well as smart and sassy editor Martha Mahalick from Greenwillow Books. Authors Janet Fox and Karen Henley round out the support team as teaching assistants.

Come spend a week in the woods and finally get your manuscript ready for publication!

Hope to see you there!

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Baseball Through the Looking Glass

This week I'm interviewed by Tina LoTufo over at Chapter 16, the Humanities Tennessee blog. (I'm originally from Knoxville, for the two or three of you out there who don't know that already.) Tina and I discuss life, death, and Tom Sawyer in Fantasy Baseball. Here's the link.

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I'm interviewed at From the Mixed-Up Files...of Middle Grade Authors

Head over to the "From the Mixed-Up Files..." blog to read an interview with me about Fantasy Baseball, writing middle-grade fiction, and my former life as a play-by-play basketball announcer...

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Announcing the latest Star Trek writer: me!

I'm very happy to announce that I have been contracted to write a Star Trek novel! Those of you who know me well will probably know I've been a fan of Trek for a long, long time.

What few people realize is that one of my first attempts to become a published author, way back in the day, was by sending in a proposal for a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel. I was in grad school at Tennessee at the time, and I had an idea to do a Heart of Darkness/Star Trek mash-up with Worf playing the role of Marlow, going after a rogue Kurtz-like Vulcan on a pre-warp planet. (If that explanation makes sense to you, kudos on multiple levels.)

The funny thing about the whole process was that Pocket Books, the publishers of Star Trek novels, only allowed agented submissions--and no agent was interested in someone who was offering to just write licensed fiction. So Wendi submitted my work under her maiden name as my literary agent--with phony letterhead and all.

Alas, while Pocket Books liked my work (particularly the humor) I had mixed the Next Generation show with the Deep Space Nine show in the book (Worf made a pit stop at DS9 on the way to the assignment--this was before his character migrated to that show!) and that was apparently a no-no. I would have been happy to take that part out, but it was a no from Pocket, and I had already moved on to other writing projects and dreams anyway. My writing career went a very different direction, as you know, but I continued to read Star Trek novels as a fan, and often still daydreamed about writing a Star Trek novel.

Then, at the end of last year, Simon & Schuster began a new young adult Star Trek series called Starfleet Academy. The series is based on the academy days of Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Spock, as re-imagined in the fabulous Star Trek reboot that came out in theaters in 2009. Star Trek? YA? I shot off an e-mail to agent Barry right away and asked him to look into it for me. He made first contact, I submitted a proposal, CBS/Paramount gave me their seal of approval--and I was contracted to boldly go where I've never gone before! My proposal is called Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game, and given the quick turnarounds on the deadlines, it may even come out this year! (Part of the reason I've been so quiet around here lately is that I've had my nose to the keyboard on this and the other book I'm working on.)

I'll continue to write original books of course--in fact, now that I've turned in my outline for the Starfleet Academy book, it's back to the current work-in-progress, The League of Seven, which is almost finished. But writing for Trek is a long-time dream come true, and I'm thrilled to now be an official part of the Star Trek galaxy.

Live long and prosper!

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Neil Gaiman on book piracy

Neil Gaiman's thoughts on book piracy. Thoughtful, honest, and insightful!

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RIP Brian Jacques

It was with great sadness that I read the news today that Brian Jacques has passed away from a heart attack at the age of 71. Jacques is the author of twenty-one novels set in the world of Redwall, a fantasy world where woodland animals live and fight like they're in The Adventures of Robin Hood. The books are unpretentious yet poetic, and highly literary yet action-packed.

I was thrilled and honored to have Mr. Jacques be the first person to agree to let me use his characters and his world in Fantasy Baseball, the book I've got coming out in March that has characters from classic children's books all living in the same fantasy world. He didn't ask for a dime; his only request was that I send him a signed copy when the book came out. I'll still send the book along to his family, of course, but it breaks my heart that I wasn't able to send it to him personally with my thanks before he was gone.

Watching him from afar, Brian Jacques seemed to have a real passion for life. Deaths like his are the hardest to take, I think, because he seemed to be someone who was really living, someone for whom life was a gift, both to be enjoyed and to be "regifted."

Farewell, Brian Jacques. I raise a strawberry cordial in your memory!

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Map-making, Part II

Here's my map! The book is called "The League of Seven," and it takes place (pretty obviously, I guess) in an alternate American history...

Click on the image to see it larger.

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Map-making

Today I am making a map of the world from my new alternate reality fantasy novel. All good fantasy novels need maps in the front, don't they? I'll post it when it's finished.

Above: a map of The Land of Oz

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Join me for A Book and a Chat tonight at 6:30 p.m. EST!

Just a quick post to let you know I'll be appearing on A Book and a Chat tonight at 6:30 p.m. with Barry Eva as a part of his "Male YA Author Month." I think you can even dial in to ask questions! If you miss the chat and want to give a listen, the interview will also be available to listen to afterward online and as an MP3 download at Blog Talk Radio.

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Teaching writers the business of writing

Heard about this James Frey business, where he offers writers next-to-nothing amounts of money to authors to write YA books anonymously for him (or worse, let him claim, legally, that he wrote the books himself) and not earn a dime of royalties? All for the opportunity of being published and reaching a larger audience?

Maureen Johnson has a great piece on her blog about all this. She talks about what a horrible, horrible thing this is for one writer to do to another, but also about what a horrible thing it is that people actually say yes to bad deals like this. A reader says, "What's the big deal? Nobody has to say yes to deals like this." True. And yet most of the students Frey spoke to in the Colmubia MFA program admitted they submitted something to him!

Why? Maureen Johnson takes MFA programs to task for teaching people how to write, but not teaching them how to make a living at writing. I agree. This is something I've been saying during Q&As for years, usually right after a student asks me how much money I make. I always tell them--I'm happy to talk about how much I make and the realities of the writing life, mostly because nobody told me the same thing when I was in school, and it would have been really useful!

I'll be up front here too and say that I don't have an MFA, so I can't honestly scold MFA programs the way Marueen (who has a Columbia MFA herself) can. But I did take lots of graduate-level writing courses in school, both as an undergraduate (with special permission) and as a graduate student studying English education. Every one of those classes focused on the craft of writing, but not one ever discussed the realities of making a living as a writer.

Why? Well, I will make what is certain to be an unpopular argument among college writing professors: most of them have never made a living at writing themselves, so they can't tell their students how to do it. When I was in graduate school, I took a novel-writing class with a professor who had a number of books out, but they were all literary tomes with small university presses, which I'm sure paid very small advances and had very limited print runs. These are not the kind of book deals that earn you a living wage. They are the kind of book deals that fulfill the publishing requirements that come with being an MFA professor. They are books that keep you teaching.

There's nothing wrong with writing books for small university presses, books that are going to have very limited, literary audiences. Aspiring writers just have to remember that's not the only kind of publishing there is. But to take a graduate writing course, you'd think that's all there is. Rarely, if ever, do you find a graduate writing course that discusses or--heaven forfend--actually encourages the writing of genre fiction. Or fiction for young readers. Graduate programs are designed, on the whole, to turn out National Book Award winners. And that's great for the one percent of writers in those classes with the chops to do that.

But what about the rest of us? And what about all those other books on the shelves--the ones in the mystery and detective fiction section, or the science fiction and fantasy section, or the romance section? You know, the books that actually sell? You've got to take specialized courses for "lesser" stuff like that. Go to Vermont College to learn to write children's fiction, or Clarion to learn how to write science fiction. But don't look for topics like those in most graduate writing programs. Genre fiction is too proletarian.

This disdain for genre fiction is like the ancient Japanese samurai who were taught to live well but at the same time to disdain money and business affairs. We're teaching people how to write, but then we're telling them it's barbaric to make money off of it. Pfui.

I was lucky as an undergraduate to have a professor who had published genre fiction. Who had actually made a living off his writing, not just the teaching of writing. Looking back at it now, I realize one of the reasons why: he was older. He didn't have this modern prejudice against genre fiction, this prejudice against talking about proletarian things like selling our fiction for money. His attitude toward earning a living as a working writer has been a model for me all of my professional life. Graduate programs would do their students a great service to provide similar models--if for no other reason than to keep them from jumping at bad deals like the one James Frey offers because they don't know any better.

(And here's another great post on this by SF writer John Scalzi.)

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The latest Amazon flap

The book world is abuzz this morning with word that Amazon is (or was) selling a book for the Kindle called "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," which purported, according to its author, to be "an attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles ... by establishing certain rules for these adults to follow."

Cue Internet firestorm.

Amazon has already taken down the listing for the book, but some are arguing that it's a case of freedom of speech versus censorship. But is it? The thing we must remember--and that Amazon must remember--is that they are not obligated in any way to carry every book ever produced. Brick and mortar stores have been making decisions like this for ages--you'd never find such a book in any respectable independent bookstore, or any chain for that matter. Because brick and mortar stores *can't* carry every book every produced, and they are already used to deciding which books they will carry and which are inappropriate or unsellable in their stores.

Amazon, in theory, can sell every book ever written. And they've prided themselves on that, trumpeting the fact that any and every book, no matter how niche, has a place there. It's the long tail business model, and the Internet has allowed them to be successful at it.

But there is such a thing as being a responsible retail outlet, and Amazon is learning that. Many people think Apple goes the completely WRONG way on this. They have a very aggressive screening process for books available on their apps, going so far as to prevent a graphic novel adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses from being sold, for example, because it contains a scene of a naked man jumping into the water.

To be fair, Amazon is on the proverbial "slippery slope" here. Once they decide to remove this book (as I think they should), why shouldn't they remove other books people believe to be pornographic or dangerous? How will they decide?

Part of the firestorm arose when television media began taking the standard "we don't remove books just because you don't like them" automatic a-mail response people were getting when they complained and crowed that Amazon was an insensitive media giant. Of course, the higher ups don't review every challenge--can you *image* the number of challenges Amazon must get every day?--but very quickly the protests made it up the chain, and now it's being dealt with by someone other than the customer service phone rep earning ten dollars an hour.

And what about the first amendment here? The fact is, the author of this work has a right to produce it under the First Amendment, but Amazon is NOT obligated to carry it. Businesses may make their own decisions, and the decision here, once they become away of what the book is, should be not to sell it.

I have this argument with our local paper all the time. They print the most hateful, unfounded letters to the editor, and when I complain to the publisher (whom I know personally; it's a small town) he argues that it's the letter authors' first amendment right to free speech. I agree with him that these lunatics are entitled to their opinion, and it's their right to go down on the street corner and scream their polemics to whoever will listen, but I disagree that he is obligated to print it. He's *choosing* to print those letters, which is why I no longer subscribe.

And all this is yet another good reason (if you didn't have enough already) to shop your local indie bookstore instead!

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Found on Wikipedia: The South-Pointing Chariot

Okay. I do a lot of poking around on Wikipedia, and like many people, I easily (and often) fall down the rabbit hole of hyperlinks, clicking from one fascinating subject to another. A few weeks back I thought it would be fun to start an entire blog of wildly-interesting facts found on Wikipedia, and today's find finally spurred me to action. But rather than start a new blog, I realized, why not post my discoveries on the perfectly good blog I already have?

So today begins "Found on Wikipedia," a feature that will probably be more regular than I would like, as the time I spend surfing Wikipedia always--always--takes away from time I should be writing. Still, stuff this good has to be shared.

The South-Pointing Chariot

The South Pointing Chariot is widely regarded as one of the most complex geared mechanisms of the ancient Chinese civilization, and was continually used throughout the medieval period as well. According to legends it was supposedly invented sometime around 2600 BC in China by the mythical Yellow Emperor, yet the first valid historical version was created by Ma Jun (c. 200–265 AD) of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms. The chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle upon which is a pointing figure connected to the wheels by means of differential gearing. Through careful selection of wheel size, track and gear ratios, the figure atop the chariot will always point in the same direction, hence acting as a non-magnetic compass vehicle. Throughout history, many Chinese historical texts have mentioned the South Pointing Chariot, while some described in full detail the inner components and workings of the device.

Read more about The South-Pointing Chariot here...and good luck getting anything done today.

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Maybe the apple wants a part too?

Hand model Kimbra Hickey would like a little face time.

That's what she told the New York Post this past weekend. See, those are her hands on the iconic Twilight cover, and she's really tired of people not realizing what a huge, huge part she has played in the publishing phenomenon:

"I see people reading it on the subway, and I say, 'Those are my hands! I'm a hand model!' " she explained. "I'm sure they think I'm crazy -- a crazy lady on the subway."

The good-natured Hickey sometimes hangs out near the cash register at the Barnes & Noble near her Greenwich Village apartment to spread the word. Surprised customers sometimes ask her for her autograph or to trace the outline of her hand on the book jacket.

She even carries around a Gala apple in her purse at times so she can recreate the pose for people.

"It was too big of a deal just to let it be," she said, although she admitted that she has become "a little goofy" about the whole thing.

 "A little goofy" might be understating things a bit. I get being excited that those are your hands on the cover of the millions of Twilight books out there, but I'm not sure I see a realistic way to parlay that into fame and fortune. She already works the Twilight fan convention circuit (selling apple-scented hand lotion!) but she's also hoping to land a part in the next Twilight movie:

"If I could get a little background part, it would be fantastic," she said -- "even if they only wanted my hands in it."

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Accio Harry Potter Sequel

J.K. Rowling appeared on Oprah last week to talk about her life and times. On the topic of fame, which Oprah knows a bit about too, Rowling said that during the height of Pottermania she felt a bit like the Beatles. "But there were four Beatles, so they could turn to each other and say ;'My god, This is crazy!'" she told Oprah. "I couldn't turn to anyone."

The pressure on her after Azkaban (book three) became a midnight party event must have been otherworldly. I can only imagine the stress of having to meet a GIANT deadline where it's not just editors and a handful of readers waiting for your next book--it's MILLIONS of people. Not only that, but they're expecting something FABULOUS. Something to top the last Harry Potter book they read. Performing creatively at that high a level is enough to break anybody.

So why on earth would Rowling ever write another Harry book? She's richer than the queen of England, and she's won just about every children's book award and achieved just about every sales record she could get. I certainly wouldn't blame her if she never wrote another word again. Ever. But she was coy when asked The Big Question:

"They're all in my head still. I could definitely write an eighth, a ninth book....I'm not going to say I won't. I feel I am done, but you never know."

I have a feeling we'll never see another book set in that world again. Certainly not one starring Harry Potter. But one thing's for sure: if she DOES decide to write one, it's a fair bet she won't tell a SOUL until it's finished...

In the meantime, here's a blast from the past: Hank Green's "Accio Deathly Hallows" song!

 

And one more for good measure: The Potter Pals!

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