Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Remember when we were there?

40 years ago we were on the moon.  I remember all of us gathered in the den, watching the TV for what felt like days. 

Reminiscing? Check out the LIFE Magazine archive.

Here's our good old moon--with the Apollo 11 landing site, shot last September with my Nikon D40X: 

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"Vampire" discovered in mass grave

"A skeleton exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents..."

So that's what you're supposed to do: ram a big stone in the mouth of the vampire to prevent them from chewing others' shrouds and spreading disease.

Full story in New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126985.200-vampire-discovered-in-mass-grave.html

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Don't just get ahead, get a transparent head...

From MBARI--the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.  (Just so you know, Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of my favorite places on this planet.  Like I could live there).

Anyway, check out the extremely cool Macropinna microstoma, or Barreleye fish.  Yes, it has a transparent head.

Researchers at MBARI "recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. Ever since the "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma was first described in 1939, marine biologists have known that its tubular eyes are very good at collecting light. However, the eyes were believed to be fixed in place and seemed to provide only a "tunnel-vision" view of whatever was directly above the fish's head..."

Read it all here

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BOSKONE

Had a great time at Boskone--my first Boskone on some panels, doing a reading and a signing.  I had my reading Friday night at 10:30--I read chapter 1 from Sea Throne to an audience of five.  Before that I took in the Graphic Novel (& comic) panel with Christopher Golden, John Langan, Stefan Petrucha, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, Rene Walling.  Also caught the YA panel with Chris Golden, who just seems like a cool guy who's done a lot of cool stuff--comics, ya, mainstream fantasy, horror, you name it. 

Then it was off to the Uncanny Valley panel on the acceptence of human-like robots with Muriel Hykes, Robert Katz, Jim Kelly, Paul Melko, Allen Steele, and Charles Stross.  Stross I think beat everyone else at good barbed make-you-think comments.  Paul Melko (I started Walls of the Universe last Thursday) added humor--among other things--to an already fading Friday evening (Friday night seemed a bit subdued to me, as if everyone was tired from traveling, long day, etc.  I know I'd been working all day, and left right for the con, didn't get home until after midnight).

Saturday started early.  I had a 10 AM panel on Men Writing Women--it was me, Paul Melko, Joshua B. Palmatier, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, and Joel Shepherd, with Paul Melko moderating.  (I'm considering this my first real con panel appearance. I've been on a panel at UMass Lowell, done a couple readings and signings--Pandemonium Books and Water Street Books, but this Boskone is my first con as a full panelist.  Really fun, BTW, even for us Introverts).  Good questions on gender behavior, how to write as a female character--and whether the writer even thinks explicitly in those terms while writing.  Skott and I spent the next hour talking to Alisa Kwitney Sheckley and Joel Shepherd (cool SF and fantasy writer from Australia in the US on an educational project with our Congress).   Alisa (of Vertigo where she worked on Sandman--how cool is that!--and a bunch of other stuff) has a novel coming out next month: The Better to Hold You. 

I was on the New Marketing Technologies panel at 12:00 talking about ebooks, podcasting web comics, creative commons licensing, and all the ways authors can sell their work and themselves using all the new tech out there, with Darlene Marshall, me, James Patrick Kelly, Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin, Shane Tourtellotte.  I'll take this moment to say that Darlene Marshall is one of the best moderators around--that and all the insight and experience she brought to this particular panel.  Jim Kelly had a lot to say on this one--obviously--from ebooks to podcasting.  Eytan and Dani Kollin, brothers and collaborative authors of the forthcoming The Unincorporated Man, had us laughing, and jumped in with a wealth of web marketing and book launch experience.  (I'm really sorry I missed their Literary Beer, although I got a card from Dani just before that).  Looking forward to reading their first novel.

I did get to Jeff Carver's literary beer, crowded but a lot of good talk around the table, on marketing and publishing. Jeff also came to my reading, Friday night, which was very cool--thanks, Jeff!

Great art show this year.  I think having Irene Gallo and Stephen Martiniere as GoHs really brought out the artists.  Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, a bunch of others were all there.

At 3:00 PM I took in the Sketch to Finish panel with Dave Seeley, Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, and Stephen Martiniere.  This was an AMAZING panel, each artist running through and explaining progressive steps in their work.  I've seen some of these presentations and videos online (probably linked from Irene Gallo's blog), but it was extra cool to have the artists there and filling in the details.  I picked up a lot in this panel and the art panel I was on Sunday--things like using many more layers in Photoshop than I do now--Stephen Martiniere said he regularly used 50 and sometimes as many as a 100!  I don't think I've ever done any digital work with more than twenty layers--and I thought that was excessive.  I also loved Stephen's use of highlighting and methods for building a scene. 

Sunday morning, bright an early, I was on the Clothing in SF and Fantasy Art panel with Alan F. Beck, Elaine Isaak, Margaret Organ-Kean, Ruth Sanderson.  I think what made this one especially cool were the differences we brought to the panel.  A couple of us were mainstream F&SF authors (me and Elaine Isaak), with three pro artists.  I did some research and note taking before the panel.  I thought this was going to be a tough one--turned out to be fun and enlightening. Not sure what the others throught of me advocating for natural origins in clothing.  (With my own characters in Seaborn, I drew from marine life, fish scales, crab carapace armor, etc).

At noon, I was on another art panel, this time with the incomparable Stephen Martiniere, Dave Seeley and Alan Beck.  This one had the unfortunate title, Drawing with a Mouse, but ended up as an overview of digital art, with advantages and disadvantages of the medium.  Good questions in this one as well, even if it did occasionally plummet into strange technology and storage solutions discussions.  For me, what was really weird was being on the panel with Irene Gallo in the audience.  Yeah, I'm still stunned--yes, shocked and stunned. 

Ended Boskone with a book signing at 2:00 PM with Ann Tonsor Zeddies.  I signed a couple copies of Seaborn, and spent the rest of the time talking about web comics, art, and Japan.

Great con, missed a lot of authors this year.  Hoping Boskone draws them all back next.  (I know several people were sick for this one, so hoping we've cured all disease for Boskone 47!)
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Underwater Clues To Alien Life

Very cool.  University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist James Holden makes a comparison between the deep sea and other worlds...

"...the scene might be a window to the future, when astronauts will look for life near underwater volcanoes believed to exist in the huge ocean on a moon of Jupiter, Europa."

"To go down to these undersea mountain ranges and see with your own eyes the hot rocks and vents with life forms that grow nowhere else on the planet is a huge thrill," he says. "To me it suggests that metabolic processes in potential alien microbial life could be the same as the Earth's, even if the actual cell machinery is different."

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Underwater_Clues_To_Alien_Life_999.html

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Writing compatible kitchen activities

There have to be many, but baking is the first that comes to my mind.  I used to do a lot more baking--mostly yeast breads like sourdough loaves.  I let it all go a couple years ago, but I'm trying to get back into it.  I make a mean pizza dough that can be used for focaccia and other flat breads as easily as very thin crust pizzas.  

What's great about breads and many other baked foods is that there isn't a lot of prep.  You mix some stuff--basically flour, water, yeast, maybe some spices--and then you let it sit in a warm oven and rise for an hour or more.  You do this a couple times, let it rise.  After that it's pretty much setting the timer and letting things bake.

If you're preparing some starter for bread--like a sourdough, you're going to make some really runny dough--flour, water, yeast, and let it sit around for 2 - 3 days.

BTW, I'm making pizza tonight! 

If anyone wants my recipe, shoot me an email or comment.

Here's my basic setup--KitchenAid, flour, yeast in prep:

  

Here's what today's rising pizza dough looks like:

Make your own anitimatter

Billions Of Particles Of Anti-matter Created In Laboratory

"Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. “We’ve detected far more anti-matter than anyone else has ever measured in a laser experiment," said Hui Chen, a Livermore researcher who led the experiment..."Chen and her colleagues used a short, ultra-intense laser to irradiate a millimeter-thick gold target."

Very cool.  Full article on Science Daily.

Short Fiction as Strategy

Okay, I've jumped into this short story writing groove lately.  I submitted another this morning--my second in a couple weeks.  I'll have a third wrapped up this week, and probably sub'd over the weekend or early next week.  And there's no slowing down.  I have so many story ideas built up in my journal that it's more a matter of which ones do I spend time on, which ones am I passionate enough to chase?

As we know, an author's problem is never a lack of good ideas, but time to pursue the ones we already have.  I've spent the last two years completing three novels, one of which has been published--Seaborn, the second is Seaborn's sequel and is with my editor, and the third is at a different publisher, under consideration. 

I saw Craig Shaw Gardner at the SF in the 21st Century panel at UMass Lowell a couple weeks ago, and in a conversation about short fiction, he remarked that "short stories are great advertising."

Hmmmm…  Tapping my chin, looking up at the ceiling tiles in thought.  So many great SF novelists also create great short fiction, and I'm not just talking Heinlein and Asimov and the great SF golden age storytellers, but all the way up and including the great storytellers I read now, like John Scalzi and Kelly Link and Tobias Buckell and Elizabeth Bear and Mary Robinette Kowal and a hundred others.

I have a few novel length ideas going strong, but what I really want to do--at this moment in time--is help Seaborn continue to sell, to continue being stocked on the shelves at B&N. 

What's an author to do?

Not just write more, but complete more.  And the only way to do that is to go short.  After three novels and armed to the eyes with ideas, I've found that I've become a better short story writer.  I writer shorter, faster fiction.  A couple years ago I couldn't keep a story under 6k words.  Now, I'm writing 3000 - 4000 furious words and sealing the story shut.

My strategy is to continue writing short fiction, submit to the big four or five, write more SF, and get some of these published.

Another change is that I've written one story--and I have ideas for others--outside SF and F, but I mean just outside the genre door, close enough that the story might be thought of as fantasy, but mainstream enough to be considered for magazines and journals I've never considered for submission. 

Okay, it's not just publicity.

I'll add that writing short fiction is very gratifying.  I can see why some authors prefer short form to long. (I don't--but maybe that will change?)  There's the rush of completing a story that feels right.  Short fiction is like getting dessert every time you're hungry--without the other problems that lifestyle might carry with it.  Novels--like 38 course meals--take so long to complete, and sure the book-complete rush is almost blinding, with a short story you get the goodness in nice enjoyable dollops, sweet enough to keep things going. 

Write short!

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Incredible Deep-Sea Discoveries Announced

"An astounding batch of new deep-sea discoveries, from strange shark behavior to gigantic bacteria, was announced today by an international group of 2,000 scientists from 82 nations."

Full Story here.

I've read about some of this research like the White Shark diving, but I think things like "giant, filamentous, multi-cellular marine bacteria" are going to be cooler discoveries for science.

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The Cure

Title: Armored Roses and Ashes.

I'm reusing some recent themes for this one, but with a fist and an open hand, and all around her the world is ash--trying for both sorrow and triumph--with pink being the central color.

This is my submission for the deviantArt PiNKiTUDE Contest supporting the Susan G. Komen For the Cure foundation and its mission to promote early detection as the key to breast cancer prevention. Pinkitude is MGM's program for breast cancer awareness.

Detail here.  Full piece below.  Click the second image for the large view.

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