Welcome to Tales to Tide You Over!

This blog will be a consolidation of my Stray Thoughts blog on Blogger and my LiveJournal writing process blog, along with anything else that comes to mind. You will be able to click the tags to focus on a specific topic area, but I hope you enjoy seeing the broader spectrum.

As I mentioned a couple posts back, I volunteer at the Nevada Humane Society. It’s a no-kill shelter that is overloaded with cats and dogs of practically every shape and size. We even have various rodents and bunnies.

My Humane Society is running a free adoption deal this weekend (starting Thursday) and it got me thinking about how much people might not know about shelters. So, here are some of my thoughts on the subject (prompted by replies to my notice about the adoption deal).

First of all, while I only know the specifics of my shelter, it’s easy enough to find no-kill shelters no matter where you are. And these shelters, because they keep their doors and hearts open to animals in need, are desperate for help, whether volunteering, donating, or even adopting one of the residents. (more…)

What I’m Reading

This has been a crazy week on the home front, and I didn’t make any notes of short fiction I’ve read, but I have been reading. I am just over a third of the way through George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. I’ve been intending to read this novel for a long time, and luckily I got assigned the read in Holly Lisle’s How to Revise a Novel class. My to-be-read pile has reached gargantuan proportions, so it takes outside influence to bump something to the top of the list. Have to say that I’m enjoying the story so far, and amazingly for me, I do not have trouble keeping track of the immense cast of characters. He does a wonderful job of triggering my memory so I don’t get lost.

Publishing

A clear accounting (all puns intended) of the economics of word count:
http://magicalwords.net/lucienne-diver/the-economics-of-word-count/
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I come before you today bruised and battered, scabbed and turning colors. The most important decoration on my body? It’s the smile on my face. I’ve posted canary posts before about odd incidents where things went out of control, but this isn’t a canary post. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of a canary post.

When I was a kid, I was fearless. I didn’t let broad waters, high cliffs, or even revolutionaries stand in the way of getting out and doing things. I fell down not one but at least two of those cliffs. I once bicycled from the outskirts into downtown Athens, Greece because I didn’t understand how hand brakes worked on a borrowed bike. What did I do then? I got my bearings and pedaled back home as soon as I’d slowed down. Hey, you can get going really fast when you go down Devil’s Hill (our name for it) without knowing how to brake). I back-pedaled my heart out, but nothing ever happened.) Still, I didn’t panic. I treated it like an adventure.
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Tip for bloggers and those passing on articles: I find a lot of my links through referrals on my listservs, other blogs, and Twitter. This past week I’ve been going through some links I set aside to review later because I didn’t have time and discovered a lot of them were worthless. The link I’d been given was to the front page of a blog or magazine. If I don’t always have time to read the article immediately, I rarely have time to read the whole history in order to figure out what article sparked my interest. Just because the item you wanted to share was on the front page when you found it, doesn’t mean it’ll still be there. Specific links to articles mean people can find them again later, and so are more likely to come back and/or to share. It’s easy enough to click to the front page when reading an article. It’s impossible to click to a specific article from the front page unless you already know where you’re going.

What I Am Reading

I just finished Windup Girl for the io9 book club discussion and adored the book. I haven’t written up a review yet, but I’m planning to.

On the short fiction side, I enjoyed the following stories:

The Wishing Stone by Edward Greaves on Abyss & Apex. A powerful story about discovering what’s important – http://www.abyssandapex.com/201001-stone.html

And a delightfully surreal (no surprise there) story from Strange Horizons: Baby in the Basket by Cecil Castellucci – http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090518/baby-f.shtml

Writing

While this could go under science, I think it has more potential as a story element where eye witness accounts are wrong:
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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll find the statement that I enjoy Steampunk a little obvious, but I learned as I read Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi that I have a very clear sense of what Steampunk is to me.

I have devoured the current Steampunk trend, delighting in the innovative designs and the literary analysis of the phenomenon. I can’t tell you how many attempts to define Steampunk I’ve read over the past couple of years. A recent one stuck with me, though, because it was a tirade against Steampunk design, a rather articulate analysis of how changing your laptop, etc. to look Victorian with a mechanical brass edge actually goes against everything Steampunk stands for. I didn’t blog it because I prefer positive over negative, and have now lost the link, but it clearly had more of an impact with me than I’d expected (had I known, I would have blogged it, negative or not).

So why, you might ask, do I feel the need–nay, the urge–to offer up my own definition of Steampunk? Well, because I’m curious about whether others feel as I do, and because, having thought it out, I want to share.
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What I’m Reading

I’m still enjoying The Windup Girl. It’s not a candy book and so I’m taking some time in the read, but I’d say it’s definitely worth the effort.

I haven’t had the chance to read any online short fiction this week. Have you read anything wonderful lately? Link it in the comments to share.

Writing

A good explanation of how to use setting description well:
http://gailcarsonlevine.blogspot.com/2010/02/setting-set-up.html
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During my vacation, I enjoyed an eBook called Price of Passion by Susan Napier on my Sony Reader. Why I started this one when I was already in the middle of a paperback and an audiobook is simple: I am not able to focus on the audio unless I’m doing something mechanical, and I didn’t have the paperback with me. My Sony fits nicely into my purse and so when I had a moment where I had nothing else to do, I pulled it out.

Usually, I read writing books when I have those spare moments, but I put books on my Sony for a reason, right? And if I wait until I’m not reading anything else, I’ll never read them. Interestingly, of the three books, the first I finished was the electronic one, both because it was shorter and because it suited my mood at the time, so I kept reading that one even when I wasn’t left at a loose end.

What all this is leading up to is the possibility that I’ve made a transition so that eBooks have become part of my natural cycle of reading rather than something strange I have to think about before I pick one up. However, this led me to think of another aspect to this question of eBook vs. paper that I haven’t seen talked about much. (more…)

Note: Extracted from older Friday’s Interesting Links Post

Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin is a modern fairytale adventure written by an author I met at World Fantasy. I picked up the book out of curiosity and in support. There are no regrets. If I had to classify this book, I’d say it’s a little like Nightmare Before Christmas crossed with Narnia, and a good dose of unique elements.

A young girl is drawn into a world of vampires, werewolves, and monsters from other dimensions when she ignores the warning of her uncle and a mysterious character named Mothkin. Rather than condemning her for following Mothkin when he goes to prevent the break-in between the two worlds, Mothkin’s attitude is more that if she was there, she was supposed to be. (more…)

What I’m Reading

I finished How to Teach Physics to Your Dog this week and reviewed it here: http://margaretfisk.mmfcf.com/blog/?p=951

I read a short story on Strange Horizons that is a mellow mood piece with a real kicker ending. You know it’s coming, and you start to guess just what the big secret is. You probably won’t get it. I didn’t, and I’m quite good at that process. But it’s still a gut-punch. After We Got Back the Lights by Eric Del Carlo: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100208/lights-f.shtml

And a fun tale about a scallywag by a writer I’ve enjoyed for years up at Subterranean Press. Harboring Pearls: A Lucifer Jones Story by Mike Resnick – http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/winter-2010/fiction-harboring-pearls-a-lucifer-jones-story-by-mike-resnick/

Writing

Why writing advice should not be taken as gospel, no matter what the source:
http://chrisfholm.blogspot.com/2010/02/kill-your-idols.html
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I will admit to being a strange person considering I do magic squares (math problems) for fun, but Chad Orzel has come up with an interesting frame story method of explaining quantum physics in How to Teach Physics to Your Dog that even offered laugh-aloud and quote-to-family passages.

This book is a basic primer for quantum physics.

Classical physics is somewhat approachable. You see the impact of the physical laws every day. When your car dies, push starting it is a pain, right? That’s inertia and requires the introduction of force to overcome. You slam on the brakes (see my snowmageddon tale of horror for how ice reduces friction and affects this) and the car keeps moving forward for a bit or jerks to a halt, shaking up everyone inside (the momentum has to go somewhere). A semi hits a compact sedan, and no one is shocked that the sedan is toast.

Hmm, all these car examples don’t have anything to do with the fact that my kids are entering driving age, do they?

Regardless, seeing physics in action is as easy as opening your eyes.

Quantum physics, on the other hand, is all about the probability of actions of microscopic (or smaller) particles. It’s about thought problems where a cat is either dead, not dead, or in a deadly rage because some nutty scientist has put (or hasn’t put) a radioactive particle into the box as well. (Schrodinger’s Cat in case the reference isn’t clear.) Is there any question why Albert Einstein, of E=mc2, thought this was all a bit ridiculous?

Humans like tangible. We like to see and touch.

Quantum physics messes with all that by introducing objects that can only be detected by the results of their presence, by microscopic baseballs that simultaneously thwack you on the head while scattering like sand in the wind, by particles that move through solid walls, and many other illogical–but detectable–events.

Into this mess and confusion comes Emmy, a dog rescued from the pound who has a healthy dose of curiosity, and a squirrel and bunny fixation that allows her to comprehend complex science. Though she doesn’t find steak under the desk, she’s comforted by the knowledge that somewhere there exists another probability world where another version of her does. (Yes, I fall on the side of the many worlds theory. It has much more inherent possibility than a mystical collapsing wave.)

Orzel does a wonderful job of finding physical parallels to explain quantum concepts in ways that make a reasonable amount of sense, whether in the behavior of dogs on a walk or the “magically” refilled food bowl. Though scientifically inclined, through a series of events I ended up with little formal training, and this book is written for people in just that situation–curious but untrained. Orzel only lost me once, on the concept of quantum teleportation (which is nothing like Star Trek and Orzel explains why), but a couple days, and a few more pages, later I have a pretty solid picture in my head.

Though I’m a cat person, I’ve been around enough dogs to recognize the behaviors and dog-generated events (unlike the car engine and sports analogies employed by my classical physics prof so many years ago :p). I enjoyed learning with Emmy. She makes a good sidekick…or maybe a bad one. In novels, the author often introduces a new character onto the scene to open the opportunity of discovering the world (a local wouldn’t bother noticing anything). Emmy offers that chance, while at the same time delighting with her fun personality and obsession with the bunnies, especially virtual ones made of cheese. She makes a good stab at stealing the show, sometimes literally by bringing the discussion of a difficult concept to an end (or at least a break) so she can chase a squirrel or two.

As a closer, Orzel debunks a bunch of misuses of quantum physics to scam people with health and business ventures. Heck, I’d love to be able to choose the most interesting among the many worlds, but to do so, I’d have to eliminate myself from the equation, and floating outside of probability doesn’t sound all that appealing.

If you have any interest in quantum physics…or amusing dog theories…this is a worthwhile read. You can learn more about the book and Orzel at his website: http://dogphysics.com/.

P.S. If my review sounds a bit like psychotic babble, it’s just because I learned something. Go ahead. Read the book and then see if my side comments don’t make perfect sense .