What I’m Reading
* Finished The Cardinal Rule and posted a review: http://margaretfisk.mmfcf.com/blog/?p=934.
* Almost finished with How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.
* Started The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.
I also read an interesting story on Strange Horizons. It doesn’t meet any traditional story standards, but it has a compelling voice and when you get to the end, it’s said something. Go read it yourself and see what you think: Cory’s Father http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100201/cory-f.shtml.
Life
The Mars rover Spirit has been around for so long that it’s become part of my life. This is poignant:
Publishing
There’s a lot of discussion about Amazon’s decision to strong-arm MacMillan over eBook prices, but I picked out this one by Tobias Bucknell because it provides a clear statement of the costs for an eBook and the economics as well. Considering my programming background, I should have thought about QA as an added cost for eBook versions, but it never crossed my mind:
http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-available-on-amazon-com/
Science
Unexplained artifacts that have shaken known beliefs at the time they were discovered:
http://www.zmescience.com/other/most-amazing-unexplained-artifacts/
Your weekly dinosaur update. There’s been a lot happening on the dinosaur front, so it’s hard to pick and choose. That said, this is about the king:
http://www.livescience.com//animals/tyrannosaur-new-species-100128.html
Reading
A look at the socio-political aspects of steampunk using an erotic romance, Anima, as a jumping off point. Yes, it makes a lot of sense and has a solid evaluation of steampunk as a “punk” genre:
http://drupagliassotti.com/2009/02/11/does-steampunk-have-politics/
Web Programming
A useful reference for colors that resolve the same on most browsers:
http://www.mywebsite.force9.co.uk/web-colors/color-guide.htm
Writing
Explanation of the character arc versus an epiphany:
Thanks for the steampunk link – my next novel is teasing me and asking to maybe be steampunk but I’m not sure… I need to do some more reading on the field.
Yr welcome. You might want to follow Gail Carriger on Twitter as well. Though not all the steampunk links I find come from her, a good portion of them do
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Margaret, you’re reading such interesting books — “How to teach physics to your dog” sounds really interesting —
Right now I’m reading Fern Michaels “The Scoop” — read a chapter, will see if it starts to get more interesting —
“The Land of Milk and Honey” – poems by Sarah Getty —
Peggy
Hi Peggy.
I try to do broad spectrum reading because…well…I enjoy almost anything and I like to keep the swamp in the back of my brain full of stuff. That way, when I decide to write a new story, I have a lot of interesting things to add in.