Theophrast.us - Chris Howard's Writing Blog

Reading, editing, shooting pictures

I spent the morning reading probably the last edit pass of SEABORN I will get, and I had my camera with me, telephoto lens, and between chapters I'd scope out something to snap.  The theme of the morning seemed to be flight--except for my spidery bud in the prior post.

One of my arthropod buddies

I sat out on the back deck this morning, a warm spring morning, a cup of coffee, my post-copyedited manuscript of SEABORN, and my camera.  Shot this little guy on the side of the house.  Click the pics to see the larger view.

Wouldn't this guy be cute around 4 feet long?

I Heart Spuds

I reached into a bag of Lay's Wavy potato chips tonight, and pulled out a heart-shaped one.  Alice and I immediately made a wish and shared it.

Syren Tears

Or, how do mermaids cry and sweat, and what it looks like in the water.  This is the second in a set of posts for those speculative fiction authors out there who have already--or are planning to--dive into a stories with humans/half-humans that live and breathe underwater.  (See the first, How do mermaids hear? on underwater acoustics).

Right off, I'll say if you're a mermaid and someone's trying to sell you the "never let them see you sweat" line, keep your money.

Let's start with an experiment.  Take a glass of fresh water, a glass of saltwater (mix in a few tablespoons of salt into 4oz/118ml of water), and with a teaspoon, pour the saltwater into the fresh a few drops at a time. What do you see?  The mixing of fluids of differing salinity affect the refraction, the way light comes through the fluid.  Where the two mix, there's a blurry swirl in the water.

I've tried to capture it here in these images.  The one on the left is the glass of freshwater, the right has some saltwater mixing in.  This also works in reverse.  Pour the freshwater water into the saltwater, and you get the same swirls and blurriness.

Close-ups of this:

What's happening here?  It's all about salinity, or the measure of total dissolved salts in water.  (Salts come in many flavors and compound varieties, but we don't need to go into that here).

The salinity of human tears, sweat, blood plasma, amniotic fluid are around 9PPT (parts per thousand) and seawater is around 35PPT  (These numbers vary, for example seawater sampled in the north Atlantic is less saline than water sampled from the Red Sea). 

What it comes down to is that even though we have much the same properties as seawater, we are, well, less salty.  When a mermaid cries, her tears take some time to blend into the saltier water around her eyes. She may have trouble seeing through a good fit of sobbing.

The lacrimation system, primarily used for cleaning and lubricating the eyes, includes the gland, reservoir, and canals that manage tear production in most land mammals.  Tears are salty, but they don't sting because our eyes are already accustomed to the salt content in the fluid that protects them.  This protective fluid for the eyes is actually a set of three different substances that make up the tear film, each layered on top of the other, the outermost lipid layer, aqueous layer, and a mucous layer. (For the different kinds of tears, basal, reflex, and weeping, see the Wikipedia article on this).

No sweat.

There are around 650 sweat glands in an average square inch of your skin, and although the mineral composition of sweat changes with the individual and the source of sweating, the blurring effect of mixing two fluids of differing salinity still applies.  In other words, you would be able to see a mermaid sweat, a thin blurry layer of water over her skin.

All of this assumes that your mermaids, mermen, selkies, nereids, people of the sea, have typical human skin and tear functions.

http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/mermaidshear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears
The concentration of sodium in thermal sweat, M. G. Bulmer and G. D. Forwell
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1363543

http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/2008/03/the-sea---water.html

Editors prevent over-spitting

Among a few million other things.  But this one's crucial.  While I try to refrain from spitting with the exception of brushing my teeth, my characters are apparently enthusiastic spitters.  So much so, that my editor had to step in a put a limit on expectorating.  Even I was a revolted by my characters' bad habit--some of them very nice people, the last people you'd expect to go around ejecting matter from their mouths and thinking nothing of it.  Shocking.

Paula sent me the post-copyedited version of Seaborn yesterday morning, along with a long email describing some of the interesting stats turned up in the editing process.  For instance, the need to reduce the number of times my characters roll/rolled or were caught rolling.  Those crazy characters...how delightfully spherical of them.

So, looks like one more quick pass from me, and maybe another one or two from Paula before the book's ready for the Show.  (There are several out there already in reviewers' hands, but an error here or there, rolling, spitting, and a few more overused words are accepted).

So, today's lesson?  Editors are the most overworked people on the planet, and really don't deserve to be hassled by anxious authors. 

This one goes out to Baltimore

Shot this one this morning, a pair of orioles nibbling on half an orange in our front yard. The male is hogging the orange.  Click to see the large view.

Classic

Here's another shot from my ancient Hellas collection, a detail of the "Mourning Athena," relief sculpture (artist unknown, c 450BCE).  Click the pic to see the large view.

Hi5'n in the Galapagos

I'm looking at the global social network map over at Wandamere by way of an analysis of the map post at Valleywag.  It's basically our planet with national boundaries filled in with the color of the dominant social net in that particular country.  My first thought was...how cool.  Then it became obvious that there's a drawback in using the brand colors for mapping when several of the major social nets have all gone blue.  (So, is that MySpace that's taken over America, and Facebook in Canada?) 

My second thought: are they really hot on Hi5 in the Galapagos or did the islands simply get lumped in with Ecuador where Hi5 is hot?

Here's another cool social net face-off between facebook, myspace, orkut, bebo, linkedin over on GoogleTrends, showing news reference and search volumes. 

Check out the giant version of the map here: http://www.wandamere.com/SocialNetworks_WorldMap.png/SocialNetworks_WorldMap-full.jpg

What are you reading?

I'm right at the end of Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog--which is fantastic and funny.  Also halfway through another reading of Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain.  (I'm reading the ebook this time.  I have the hardcover somewhere--may have loaned it to my dad).   

So, what are you reading?

Amazon | BookSense | B & N | WorldCat | LibraryThing | Google Books | Alibris | BookFinder.com | AbeBooks

Chloe loves Little Brother

I do too.  We're talking about Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother, about Marcus (w1n5t0n), coolly subversive, hacker of high school surveillance systems, good guy, who--along with his friends--finds himself in deep sh*t with the DHS after a terrorist attack on San Francisco.

Look for a review from Chloe.

We have the print edition, but you can download it here:
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/

So does Pablo Defendini--so much so that he created a new cover for the book  (via Irene Gallo's blog)

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Think organic

Not in what you eat but what you write.  (Think Dr. Seuss).  So, I'm wondering about the world that fills the pages of what I'm writing right now, and I'm looking back at my last three Seaborn novels--and then I'm studying the Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom painting by Repin, and one of the thoughts that strikes me--rather sharply--is that many of us writers of fantasy fall into the worldbuilding groove of basing the fantastic on something very real, familiar…solid fortress walls of stone, cities made of towers.  Even when we take a few steps over the edge, and say, make our characters live in the trees, we tend to think of houses in the branches, flat level floors, rectangular windows, gabled rooflines--the familiar bolted on to the fantastic.

Is it because it's the simpler path?  Is it because we need to stick with something readers can reference--I mean we're already asking them to accept magic, faeries, things that live off human blood?  Could we lose our readers with a blind rush over the imaginative edge--into the absurd--readers scratching their heads a third of the way into your book, thinking, why can't the protag live in an ordinary house--you know, stucco, Spanish tile, etc.  Why does the author insist on dragging me through the character's "house"--some amorphous, self-propelled, windowless, floorless, jelly candy the size of a gymnasium with shifting walls the consistency of yogurt?   

Here's Repin's masterpiece, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (1876).  Click to view the larger version.

Back to Repin:  What I noticed right off is that here's this fantastic underwater world, and everybody's dressed like they've stepped out of a fête in Victorian England--with a few nice eastern touches to add an exotic element.  Where's the weird natural ocean feel?  Where are the spines, fins, bold coloring, bioluminescence, organic branching coralline growth of the world under the sea?

I did some doodling for this post.  Wouldn't a city under the sea look like this?

What do you think?  An author needs to hook readers with something of the familiar?  Or should an author sprint for the edge, not look back, readers be damned? Somewhere in the middle?

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Sadko

Sadko is a Russian epic--named after the hero of the story.  Sadko is a "merchant and gusli musician from Novgorod, he is transported to the realm of the Sea King. There, he is to provide music to accompany the dance at the marriage of the King's daughter. The dancing grows so frenzied that the surface of the sea billows and surges, threatening to founder the ships on it. To calm the sea, Sadko smashes his gusli. The storm dissipates and he reappears on the shore."

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Sadko.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadko_(musical_tableau)

David Apatoff (Illustration Art) just posted about Repin, and that struck a memory--made me remember Jeff posting about Repin--and other great Russian artists a while back:
http://jeffhayesfinearts.blogspot.com/2006/01/great-russian-painters.html

And here's the Ilya Repin masterpiece, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (1876, State Russian Museum). Click for a larger view, or hit that link (above) back to wiki commons for the super-sized version.

Electricity

Spent a few hours painting tonight.  This is in progress, so I'll be updating--really like the way this is going, though.  (Click the pic for the large view).

Apollo

Apollo (Aπόλλων), the son of Zeus and Leto, brother of the huntress Artemis (they're paternal twins).  (I took this in the museum at Delphi).  Click the pic for the large view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

Another edit pass

I printed out the latest PDF of SEABORN, and I'm going through it with an orange highlighter, slapping on little yellow stickies to mark the pages. 

All of them are minor, and all but two or three are very minor, a line that should be italicized but isn't, that sort of thing.

Seaborn countdown timer

Want a SEABORN countdown timer for your site?

Paste the following code into a web page, blog post, sidebar, anywhere on the Web:

<iframe marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/countdownSEABORN.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" style="WIDTH: 214px; HEIGHT: 324px"> </iframe>

Ocean Seed

Painted this one for Illustration topic: seed  (Click for full view).

One step closer

I have the PDF of SEABORN, typeset, looking wonderful--still a little ways from the final, but I'm sure this is the final format, the type, very nearly the exact page count.  Can't wait to see it with a cover on it!

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Alice and I took the kids to Cambridge today, spent a few hours wandering through the museums.  Amazing stuff, especially the marine exhibit--all made from glass.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is the public face of three research museums: the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum

What's your Publishing Timeline?

I'm calling for authors of SF, fantasy, horror to post a timeline of events from the day the editor says "yes" to the day the book hits store shelves.  I'd like to gather some data on what other authors go through, how long the contract negotiations last, how long the editing, copyediting phases last.  I'd like to track title changes, cover art changes, and when in the sequence of events authors/editors/agents begin to seek blurbs, issue press releases, distribute advanced reader copies. 

Build yor own, post them, comment here or email me at chrishoward.author@gmail.com

Be as detailed as you like.  You can write a simple list of dates and what happened, or you can put down every day and what happened. 

I posted my publishing timeline a week ago, and I've included links to my original Visio doc along with a couple other formats, SVG and VXD (XML format), and less useful but printable PNG.

Download my timeline here:
VSD - Visio 2003 format | VDX format | SVG format | 600 dpi PNG  

Use any of these as a basis for your own timeline.  I've placed them under a Creative Commons Share Alike license:
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

I have posted mine for SEABORN (http://www.saltwaterwitch.com) which will be out in July from Juno Books, roughly 14 months from the editor saying "yes," my agent and editor finalizing the contract, to the book hitting the stores:

Click the pic to view it larger.

Google Ocean

I know what's down there.  Those Googlers are going to be shocked at what they bring to the surface...

Google Ocean promises do to the oceans--floor to sruface--what Google Earth did for interactive mapping and geographic information.  And perhaps more.

Check out the details at JustMagic:  http://www.justmagic.com/GM-GE.html

News: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9931412-7.html?tag=nefd.lede

Memed...best SF movie scene

Carole McDonnell passed me the Best SF Movie scene meme...

There are some famous, favorite scenes already mentioned by Carole, Stacia, and others, great scenes from Gattaca, Blade Runner, Dune, Logan's Run.

So, I dug around for something not yet mentioned:

The Fifth Element, the scene in which Zorg (Gary Oldman) explains how the universe works, how things are to the priest Cornelius, and ends up having to be saved by his captive.

Here's the scene on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcNIWPkNzA

It would be difficult to tell you why I love The Fifth Element.  I know a lot of people hate it, put it down as one of the worst SF movies, but there's something about the mix of Gary Oldman, high-speed rocket taxi chases, operatic cut scenes with murder, countdown timers on explosives, good versus evil, the end of the world, and futuristic kitsch that works for me.

You're tagged:  Skott, Pam

Win one of Stacia Kane's Personal Demons

Mark Henry--who just gave me some good advice--is running a contest to give away a copy of Personal Demons by Stacia Kane...and all he asks in return is some advice.  Go check it out:

http://mdhenry.livejournal.com/73322.html

Ends Friday, so hurry, think fast.

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How do you practice for a chapter reading?

I have two offers for readings in the Boston area and my book won't be out for three months. Time to practice. How do you read your own work? Is it as simple as starting in the beginning and saying each word aloud? Do you read dramatically? How dramatically? Do you speak in a different voice for each character?  Do you practice? How much?

Mark Henry (Happy Hour of the Damned) suggested reading to your writing/crit group, which is...well, brilliant.  Can't believe we've never done that.

I've posted a practice reading of the first chapter of SEABORN below, and would love some feedback from authors and readers. I went through Mary Robinette Kowal's fabulous series of posts on reading aloud…and plunged in.

Posted my reading here, or you can listen directly here:

Listen: mp3, m4a (Quicktime), wma (Windows media)

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Listening to Zero 7
Drinking coffee, Newman's Free Trade stuff

Reading aloud...

Any author reading words aloud should check out Mary Robinette Kowal's eighteen--yes 18--part series on how to do it right, I mean everything from the basics, to cross-gender voices, to vocal fatigue. 

Part 1: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/reading-aloud/

And I thought I was doing well with my reading of SEABORN chapter one

Thanks, Skott!