Apparently so. Today is my regular monthly blog slot at Rose City Romance Writers. The topic of the month is research, which could be boring, but has turned out not to be at all. What’s most interesting to me is how differently each person approaches both the topic and the research itself. Pop on over and check it out. I promise we won’t bite.
So many bloggers are doing posts about preparing for the RWA National Conference that it’d be stupid and redundant for me to try to add anything. So here’s a roundup of the best.
Wet Noodle Posse—(shown, right, at the 2005 Rita/GH Awards Ceremony, courtesy Ila Campbell) They’ve been doing a terrific series of conference prep posts all through July, but unfortunately, they haven’t been very consistent with their tagging, so I can’t give you a single link that will get you to just those posts. Just scroll back through their July 2008 posts to find info on various aspects of getting ready, from shoes to conference etiquette to business cards. (Btw, you still have time to get cards via your local Office Depot. Even nice, thick, full gloss cards, printed both sides, are under $100 for 1000, but if you’re really on a budget, they have 100 basic cards for just $19.99.)
Plot Monkeys on Getting Ready
The Writing Playground offers a roundup of tips and advice from experienced authors.
And of course, I’d be remiss to leave out the ultimate conference prep resource, RWA’s own Conference FAQ.
If you can’t attend, never fear. You’re covered, too.
Left Behind — A group of bloggers doing workshops during conference week. Links and Info will be on Karen Duvall’s site.
Plot Monkeys (again!) want some non-attending readers and writers to fill in for them while they’re gone.
Romance Divas are having their Not Going to Conference Conference on their forums.
Do you know any great links to help someone prepare for conference? How about turning your stay-at-home experience into a learning experience? Share them in Comments!
Andrew Stone (Stone Design) wrote an app called Twittelator for the new iPhone 2.0, and to show it off on the iTunes Store, he took a screen snap of his phone. Right at the top — a Twitter from my husband, David. Woo-hoo!
(click to enlarge)
By the way, there’s a new version of iTunes you should download now, before the servers go crazy on the phone launch Friday. It includes the new Applications area of the store, chock full of iPhone apps, including Twittelator…and my dh.
From TMI Tuesday:
1. LUST: Besides your current Significant Other who do you lust for or have you lusted for?
2. GLUTTONY: What food brings out your inner glutton?
3. GREED: What are you greedy for?
4. SLOTH: What is your plan for an ideal day of sloth?
5. WRATH: Describe a time that you let out a can of whoop ass on someone.
6. ENVY: Who or what do you envy? Why?
7. PRIDE: Have you ever had to swallow your pride? What are you proud of?
My Answers:
1. Lust: Pierce Brosnan. In so many ways.
2. Gluttony: Potato chips. Literally cannot control myself. Once I start, the entire bag goes. I don’t even bring them into the house any more unless we’re having lots of people over so they vanish without my help.
3. Greed: Attention. Money. My way.
4. Sloth: Stay in bed as long as I want with someone waiting on me, then move to the hammock (summer) or the couch (winter), also with someone waiting on me. All accompanied by plenty of Bailey’s Irish Cream, in coffee or on the rocks. Alternatively, sitting by a pool in Hawaii, with people bringing me iced tea with pineapple spears, all day. Which leads me to believe I should probably add Servants to my answer on #3.
5. Wrath: We had an extended series of 1 a.m. prank calls (over several weekends) which would repeat every 20 minutes for an hour or two — just enough time to fall back to sleep, in other words. One night, after being awakened for the fourth time, I ripped the kid on the other end–one of my daughter’s classmates, I believe–a new one and informed him that I had already called the phone company to have his calls traced (true) and if he called back again I was going to have his scrawny ass busted and thrown in jail as fresh meat for the child molesters. I was absolutely hateful. He didn’t call back.
6. Envy: Nora Robert, Debbie Macomber, Katie MacAllister, Lucy Monroe, and any other author who can write quickly and still tell a cracking good story.
7. Pride, Swallowing: The night I had to admit my first marriage was a failure and ask my folks to send money so I could move back home for a while. I was all of 24, and my mother had told me the marriage was a mistake to begin with, but I knew better, of course. It killed me to admit she was right, and for precisely the reasons she’d given me.
Proud of: My kids. They are growing up to be amazing people. I’m not sure how much I had to do with it, but I’m proud of them, nonetheless. I’m also proud of my writing—that I can do it, that I’ve been published, that I get email from fans saying I’ve somehow touched them or made them laugh. I get a deep sense of accomplishment from those things.
Okay, that’s my first ever meme. I’m tagging Amy at Writebrained, Scott Shanks at Epinephrine & Sophistry. and Sheila Roberts at Sheila’s Place. Pony up, guys.
Brilliant stop motion animation by Patrick Boivin at Daily Motion (via Gizmodo):
In the movie Gandhi, there is a scene where Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and his followers decide to break the salt monopoly. India being a tropical country, salt is critical for food preservation and for daily life (to replace the body salts lost through sweating), and the British government and their flunkies raked in huge profits by controlling the production and sale of salt throughout the country. Literally no one else was allowed to evaporate water and collect the residue, and one of the first major acts of civil disobedience in the campaign for Indian independence was the 1930 salt march to the sea.
One day, the Mahatma leads a line of men to non-violently take over a salt plant. They line up in ranks, some eight or ten abreast, and the first row steps up to the gate to ask for salt. The guards, on orders from their British masters, club down the men. The women step forward to carry away the bleeding men to be bandaged, and the next row steps forward. They are beaten, carried off, bandaged. The next row. The next row. As the men are bandaged, they take their places again at the back of the line, and when their turn comes again, they once more step forward, not to fight, but to simply stand there with their eyes open, letting the guards crack open their skulls for the hideous crime of asking for salt, an interminable line of stubborn men who know they are right and who are willing to put their lives on the line to prove it. In the film, a reporter called Walker (the real life Webb Miller) reports the day with the words, ”Whatever moral ascendancy the West once held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated.”
I wept when I first saw the movie. I weep every time I see it, and I am weeping as I write this, just thinking of that courage. I’ve always wondered if, when the time comes, I will be able to muster that inner strength to stand up like that, to face down tyranny with such grace and calm determination, to neither cringe nor retreat. I hope so.
But in the meantime, there are men and women stepping forward every day. Some risk their lives, others their reputations and their livelihoods. They all do it because they know what is right.
One of those is Mark Klein, a former AT&T engineer who blew the whistle on the secret monitoring system the NSA built within AT&T’s internet switching center. He is now righteously furious at Congress’s recent overthrowing of the FISA Act which required that security agencies get permission for wiretapping. Yep, now, thanks to your Congressmen and Senators, the feds can listen to your private communications without asking anyone, and the telecoms who enable them are protected from lawsuits, using the logic that “if the President says its okay, it’s legal.”
Shades of Richard Nixon. No, shades of Big Brother. You can read more about it in this article from Wired.com and in this one, from BoingBoing. But best of all, read Klein’s own words, including his original memo about the spying program, necessary reading for anyone who lives in America.
And here’s a little tidbit that may reveal something about AT&T’s attitude about the whole thing. Ms. Suspicious? You bet I am, but not about online billing, hon.
So here’s to Mark Klein and brave souls like him. When I spot one, I’m going to mention him or her here. They are important. They are heroes, every one.
Who are your heroes?
Photo of Mark Klein by hughelectronic (via Flickr), used under Creative Commons license 2.0 (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike)
I’m blogging at Rose City Romance Writers today, where I made a very public confession of one of my most serious lifetime flaws, complete with pictures. Get a glimpse of my psyche.
And my kitchen.
Did you know that the low hanging, large, reddish moon that would be called a Harvest Moon in late September/Early October is called a Strawberry Moon when it happens near the solstice?
The summer solstice was yesterday, June 20, at 7:59 PM EDT, so I thought I’d do a quick roundup of ways some folks mark this longest day of the year.
Traditional
Flowers: Gathering nine different types of flowers and placing them under your pillow on the solstice is supposed to make you dream of the person you will marry. Nine is a number sacred to the old Nordic and Saxon gods (which is why there are nine Vikings in my crew of Immortal Warriors.)
Weddings: Druids celebrated the summer solstice as a marriage of heaven and earth, which is why June is the month for weddings
Bonfires. In Cornwall in the old days, every peak and hall glowed with light on Midsummer Eve as the fires begged the sun not to retreat into winters darkness.
Spirals: Ancient solar dances would spiral in to the center and back out again, representing the path of the sun.
Herbs: Practioners of herbal magic believe that herbs gathered at the solstice are imbued with extra potency.
Stones: Tracking the sun was immensely important to early people, so they knew when to plant and harvest and when to honor their gods—so important that they would spend years building what amounted to giant stone calendars. Stonehenge is the most famous of these, but Machu Pichu, New Grange, the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, and dozens of other stone sites around the world served the same function.
Modern
Parades: Seattle’s Fremont District (The Center of the Universe) holds a fair and a wild parade to celebrate the solstice and the amazing energy of the neighborhood.
Nativity of St. John the Baptist: This Christianized version of the solstice marks the birth of this important saint (unlike most feast days, which celebrate the martyrdom of the saint). Particularly important in northern and eastern Europe and the celtic countries (where the solstice was also key), it is one of the most solemn of Catholic holy days, even celebrated when it falls on a Sunday (also not typical for a saint’s day).
Picnics and Bonfires: In Denmark and other countries, Midsummer is marked by spending much of the day outside, ending with a nice bonfire on the beach.
Stones: In the tradition of the great ancient builders, my husband recently put the item “Stonehenge” on the whiteboard that his team uses to keep track of projects at work. Yesterday, he assembled his personal mini-Stonehenge kit (carefully aligned, of course) and crossed the item off the list. No one noticed. Sigh.
He intends to do it again in December anyway.
How do you celebrate Midsummer?
First, there is water on Mars. (Link to Wired article with nice image showing ice chunks subliming.)
Second, the Smithsonian now has their photograph collection up on Flickr Commons, with all photos hi-res and tagged as “No known copyright restrictions.” (Link)
Things like this give me hope.
My friend and one-time critique partner, R. Scott Shanks, Jr., has been having some frustrations getting his website up and running, so he decided to post to his blog, instead. Click the link. Read. Enjoy. Remember that he wrote the following in a timespan of approximately 17 minutes, and know that he is a far better writer than I—than almost anyone—and some agent should make a fortune off him when he finishes his book.
