The Deviations Journey

On January 18, 2012

2012-01-17T12:26:00.000-05:00

Several sites (including reddit, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Failblog and the rest of the Cheezburger Network, and BoingBoing) are blacking out tomorrow. I will be off social media.

Here's why:

SOPA blockout countdown clock (with link to "Stop SOPA, The Essentials Summary And Bill Text" via @YourAnonNews and video "A call to action for webmasters around the world"

"The day the internet fought back: Anonymous, SOPA & the Battle for Free Speech" (some language NSFW)

"SOPA Blackout Set For January 18th: Here’s All The Info" (WebProNews)

(Link to) Year-End Writin' Round-Up

2011-12-29T22:29:00.002-05:00

Click here for the full 2011 retrospective!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Update: The Next Phase

2011-11-29T00:34:00.001-05:00

I've been validated!

After a roughly 26-hour writing marathon at the end of a fevered-pace weekend (with a 2,900-word count average over the past six days) , I have crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line. Word count by their validator: 50,255 words. According to my Word program, the total is 51,649, a 1,394-word discrepancy. I'll bet it's the footnotes.

I have a lot of footnotes.

According to my Word program, I had crossed the NaNo finish line about 5-1/2 hours earlier than the site's reckoning. What with NaNo's pace, the draft is already very rough, and that roughness doesn't compare with what I had slapped together in those last hours.

My NaNo is effectively over, but my work is far from done. How far?

1. The #SciFund Challenge runs through December 15, and I will continue to cover it in realtime. The #SciFund story -- part of what attracted me to this project is because #SciFund is a story -- is more than the event itself. It's more than a fabulous community of scientists who have bonded with each other -- and with non-scientists -- around the globe, in a way that transforms everyone involved (including me!).

The event has added a new layer to already-existing discussions concerning crowdfunding in general, science funding in general (both within the US and internationally), open access to research, and the state of science, period. And I'm just touching on the main points.

I am personally fascinated -- awed, frankly -- by the interplay of layers I'm seeing. By the way in which the human interest stories of individuals are getting folded into something very, very big that is happening across monetary, academic, technical, and political landscapes. And by the way those relatively tiny but powerful human interest stories are affecting those massive landscapes. It has literally taken my breath away.

That's the kind of material that is part of my ongoing process of discovery. The scope of my project has shifted from what I had first envisioned, much the way in which the dorsal fin shifts on the male spinner dolphins that Matthew Leslie is studying, where it's hypothesized that one edge of the fin grows while the other edge stops growing. When I had started this writing, I had expected to grow one "edge" of the story, but another "edge" has been growing instead, with #SciFund remaining the central focus.

2. I am also dealing with the laws of physics (or at least the laws of coffee-saturated biology). My breaking the 50,000-word barrier doesn't mean that I am up to date in assembling the data I've been collecting. My draft narrative currently runs through November 23. That means I've got five days of #SciFund-related events that I haven't even touched yet, beyond grabbing info off the Web. Before my six-day frenzy I had been running a good ten days behind. And I know I'm missing a lot that's out there, including conceptually. When the #SciFund experiment ends its crowdfunding phase on Dec. 15, I will still likely have days worth of data to process. And that's just for the realtime narrative part.

3. I have concentrated on Archie-writing rather than Michael-writing. Put another way, I have concentrated on the realtime narrative material rather than on material devoted solely to the projects themselves. Those project narratives are important to the draft, but they can be done later because the material there is relatively static. The realtime narrative is dynamic, meaning that it can get away from me if I don't keep up with it.

That still leaves me with a lot to write. However, it's material that will wait for me.

4. Good old-fashioned editing. My draft is slapdash. It's like an underpainting, with basic shapes and colors and the relationships established between forms and angles. It's missing a lot of nuance. It likely contains unnecessary repetitions and some gaping holes. And the narrative itself is choppy, with edges that need smoothing, and bridges that I need to build between sections.

All that said, watching this amazing event unfold has been and continues to be a privilege. (Want to be a Science Santa? Here's a taste!)

Meanwhile, I've had my five-hour nap following my writing marathon. I've lived the "NaNo lifestyle": holed up at home, not getting dressed, eating out of cans, and watching with increasing alarm the level in my one remaining coffee bag decrease. I have not yet seen the movie The Road to Perdition, but I had found Thomas Newman's gorgeous score, which had fueled my last-push marathon after I had spent Sunday night listening to Hearts of Space.

There are errands in my near future. And a shower. Not in that order.

And then -- back to the story.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Update: Science Santa!

2011-11-25T17:11:00.000-05:00

My NaNoWriMo word count reached 39,260 as Thanksgiving ticked over into Black Friday. Almost up to par.

And my Rocket Hub dashboard shows that I've funded four #SciFund projects, but there are more. The discrepancy has to do with my credit card company putting a freeze on my account because, well, they weren't used to seeing me click on the same kind of button that many times. So far as I know, that end of it has been resolved. Once the rest follows, I'll resume my holiday shopping!

Really, go check out the projects. If you want to inspire someone's scientific curiosity, here's your chance to touch base with researchers working on the front lines, doing innovative stuff. And as much as I love the companies from which I've bought things like our little Astroscan telescope, or the gyroscope I photographed for my chapbook of science poems, those things are mass-produced, ready-made products.

They're neat and all that, but they're not personal.

Every thank-you written on a postcard -- from places like St. Petersburg (in Russia, not Florida!) or South Africa or French Polynesia or Tel-Aviv -- or on a Gingko leaf (as Goethe used to do, when writing to his close friends) -- is unique. Every sample of data -- an autographed copy of a notebook page or handwritten mathematics from the research or handwritten field notes -- is a small piece in a grand adventure.

Want a paperweight or jewelry made from a cast-off crayfish claw? How about an alligator foot mold? Or a personalized Roman skull card? How about a bottle of wine that you can't get in any liquor store? Or a T-shirt print in high-res, living color of two algae in flagrante delicto? (Look at this picture; it's gorgeous. If you didn't know ahead of time, would you know what it was? Need a good guessing game for the holidays?) How about a unique DNA sequence from an animal being studied in the field? How about having a specimen named after you?

How about unique, woodturned art made by the scientist? Or a replica of models used in flow tank studies? How about stationery made from elephant poo? Or an acknowledgement in a presentation? Or a personalized kit for doing your own experiment? (Acknowledgements, copies of the research, and special access to progress reports are shared by several projects. Several high-end gifts include personal presentations and field tours.)

Holiday stress wearing you out? There's a virtual rainforest experience for that.

The swag is great in and of itself and there's something for every budget (I haven't covered all the projects here, not even close), but that's just one layer of the magic.

Back in December 2006, I had volunteered at a paleontological dig here in Florida, called the Tapir Challenge. Part 4 of my 4-part report is here, with a photo of the sea urchin spine I'd found. It had nothing to do with what we were looking for, but I was told that the quarry where we worked was full of them.

Then I was told I could take it home with me. And then I was told that it was probably 30 to 40 million years old. I was holding it in the palm of my hand. (Never mind that I had burned much older fossil fuels to get to the dig site. That was different.)

If someone my age gets all goose-pimply from that, imagine what a kid would feel. Now imagine a kid holding a souvenir from fresh, spanking, brand new science in the making, from a researcher who's breaking new ground.

But what about scientific inquiries that come to dead ends, as many do?

I could bust open a mess of incandescent light bulbs and pull out a filament like the one that had finally worked for Edison. I think of all the incandescent light bulbs in the world, especially prior to the changeover to fluorescents.

But what about the filament designs that didn't work? How common are those light bulbs now? Moreover, those filaments had been Edison's teachers. So had his early inventions, including his vote-recording machine, a disaster for being too far ahead of its time. When he lost the faith of his investors and his own funding was in peril, those failures had driven him on.

That makes them magic, too. Regardless of an experiment's outcome, it advances knowledge. That makes it pioneering work.

Speaking of thank-you letters from scientists...

Oh, wait -- Edison was a success by then. How about this one?

It reads, "Your favor of the 19th was duly received. The megaphone is not yet completed and I am quite unable to say when it will be as at present I am busily engaged on the electric light."

Who knew?

Who knows?

Want a taste of what Edison's passion and dogged determination felt like in the face of unknowns and uncertainties?

Here's your chance.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Update: The Best of Both Worlds

2011-11-22T02:55:00.001-05:00

Heading out of Day 21 of both NaNoWriMo and the #SciFund Challenge, my word count stands at a rather pretty 33,399. I had dropped behind the desired NaNo pace during my days of modem slowdown-death.

I'm still behind par. My daily word count currently averages 1,590 rather than the 1,667 intended to produce a 50,000-word opus by month's end.

I'm not worried. First, because meeting the 50,000-word goal by the end of November 30 is the NaNo thing to do, but it's not crucial. Second, while some other writers may be celebrating their post-NaNo collapse on December 1, I'll still be going strong. I'll still be on the #SciFund timetable, which goes through December 15.

Third, because for me it's not a question of word count. It's a question of processing all the data that comes in. I'm still catching up on that end.

And fourth, because I'm not really the author here.

You heard me.

I'm the assembler.

When I talk about "the best of both worlds," I don't refer to NaNo and #SciFund. I refer to two of my creative activities: writing and mixed-media art, specifically collage and assemblage.

Back in the early "aughts" -- roughly 2000 through 2003 -- I wasn't writing, at least not for submission. I was working steady multiple shifts and my brain was too fried for worldbuilding. I saved my creative sanity by picking up odd things -- shells, broken crockery, dropped pigeon feathers, pieces of broken mirror off the sidewalk -- and fiddling with them, to make them juxtapose with each other in interesting ways.

Put another way, I was playing. Like this:

This piece, "Totem," is made from a folding closet door that measured 1x7 feet. The door had been left on the curb for trash and had a hole seemingly kicked into it. I turned the door upside-down and transformed the hole into a bird's nest, housing three paper pulp baby birds in a combination of white pigeon fluff and shed cat fur. Mama bird is a pulp sculpture stuck with adult pigeon feathers. The mirror pieces in the sun/moon combination came from the curb as well.

The rest is sculpted pulp made from more than a ream's worth of discarded office paper that I mixed with gesso and then painted. I had built thick "branches" up from the wood, whacking them with a plastic knife to create the rough texture of bark. (I took this photo before my "good camera" days. It's lacking in detail and doesn't show the piece's true three-dimensionality.)

A friend and neighbor had told me that whenever she visited the cafe where this piece was on exhibit, her toddler son went over to the sculpture and kissed the lizard. (Best compliment for my artwork I've ever gotten.) I subsequently made him his own lizard and then gave "Totem" to his mother before Mary and I moved to Florida -- whose high heat and humidity discourages this kind of sculpting. Pulped paper mixed with gesso is heaven on earth for mold.

So, what does this have to do with my NaNo project and with having the best of both worlds?

One, I'm writing, which is something I'm passionate about. And two, I'm doing the writing equivalent of collecting interesting things and putting them together in what I hope are interesting ways.

In a way, it's like what Aditya Rao is doing with his Chlamydomonas cilia. Each cilium -- think of it as a microscopic hair -- has more than three thousand genetic puzzle pieces. Rao is studying how two very important pieces fit together.

In his puzzle, the pieces have to fit just right or nasty diseases can occur.

In my puzzle -- some of whose pieces come from his project -- I get to make up where the pieces go. I get to play with their shapes a little bit, the way I've done with my mixed-media art. In my puzzle, the pieces are ready-made, but the puzzle itself isn't. Because I'm the one making the puzzle.

In my mixed-media days, I took regular walks to Dorchester Bay in Boston and combed the beach for puzzle pieces like broken ceramic and glass worn smooth by the sea. Or I patrolled my neighborhood the night before trash day. Honestly, Dorchester had awesome trash.

These days, I turn my computer on and comb the Web for #SciFund puzzle pieces. I collect a bunch of them, just as I had filled my tote bag with a bunch of stuff from the beach or from the curb back in Dorchester.

And then I cull. What fits? What doesn't fit? What two pieces need a verbal bridge to connect them? What do I set aside for later? What new development gets a little line inserted earlier in the draft as a bit of foreshadowing? What gets left behind as redundant-redundant? What do I use to shift from one tone to another? What do I earmark as "needs more data?" What do I highlight, to see if any follow-up occurs?

Much of what I do is not actual writing. It's moving the pieces around. The writing part comes in shaping and connecting, and in the occasional commentary, when I feel the need to put in my own two shekels.

Seen in another way, this project is like putting together a found poem. Except that it's a found book. And the book is still being written. Not by me, but by dozens of people.

I'm just the one combing the beach.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Update: Change in Strategy

2011-11-17T20:28:00.001-05:00

The idea behind National Novel Writing Month is to write at breakneck speed. That idea is based on the assumption that writers have done their version of advance preparation, whether that means constructing a novel outline, scribbling notes, and/or doing whatever research they think is required (and inserting placeholders during NaNo when they realize they need to do more research).

For a nonfiction "rebel" like me, the Web is invaluable to my project.

For someone like me, who is following and chronicling the #SciFund Challenge, an event occurring parallel to NaNo in realtime, the Web is my project.

And when my Internet connection sloooooooows dooooooown, I get cranky.

I've done the usual fixes. Reboot. Cold start. Turning the router off and then back on. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I've had three days of that now.

Normally I've been grabbing URLs and catching up with them when I can. (See, for example, this entry.) That doesn't work too well these days, especially after around 5:30 p.m. That's when I notice my connection slowing down. I've started writing this entry at around 5:45: my way of multi-tasking while I wait for a page to load.

By the time midnight rolls around, that wait -- which has grown over the preceding hours -- can be agonizing. Eventually I have to just give up and get some sleep.

So I've shifted gears. I perform my own freelance work on flex-time, which I love, and which allows me to do things like spend "normal" working hours -- when my connection functions at a nice clip -- gathering my data. And this time, I'm not stopping at URLs.

I'm cutting and pasting text and saving pages as .pdf and .txt files. With a vengeance.

Right now I've got one file open where I'm revisiting previously-saved URLs and fleshing out their info. I've got another file open where I'm grabbing and annotating new info that pops up -- for as long as it's poppin' and not stallin'.

Today's news includes the latest coverage of the #SciFund Challenge in Scientific American -- specifically, Rose Eveleth's article "To Study Backward-Finned Dolphin, Researcher Sources Crowds for Cash: One researcher's quest to understand some funky fins taps a new crowdsourcing model to funding his project". Researcher Matt Leslie (take a look at his project here!) is studying an evolutionary oddity: the dorsal fin in a specific type of dolphin faces "backward." He wants to know why.

If you're interested in aeronautics and studies of drag, you'll find his work intriguing. Leslie's video also includes a shot of an X-29 experimental fighter plane, whose wings look -- backward. If you think of dolphins as flying rather than swimming through the water, that odd fin starts to make sense. So do some weird flukes that aren't -- well, flukes.

But eyeballing and hypothesizing aren't enough. Leslie needs to do some drag studies, using a flow tank as a kind of watery wind tunnel. And for that, he needs some funds.

That's just one of today's items, taken in isolation. But I'm also interested in the interplay of what happens across the #SciFund spectrum simultaneously.

November 11 is a great example of that spectrum. Not only was Kristina Killgrove's Roman DNA study (which became fully funded that day) covered by Ed Yong in CNN and by Alex Knapp in Forbes (along with getting other coverage), but #SciFund itself got a boost from Kevin Zelnio, writing in Scientific American. That same day, the Minnesota Daily News, "The independent news source of the University of Minnesota area," covered the #SciFund project "Serengeti Live."

That same day, #SciFund participant Daniel Mietchen blogged about what needs to be fixed in science funding. Discussion on the web revived Mark Changizi's August 2010 article on biases against certain types of grant proposals. And #SciFund participant Shermin deSilva's guest post at the #SciFund blog relayed her candid observations and concerns about science crowdfunding.

Meanwhile, "Dr. Zen" Faulkes was interviewed on Episode 6 of "The Weekly Weinersmith" about his study of "Amazon crayfish." Amazon as in female clones. Crayfish as in invasive. Talk about your real-life "clone wars" (or listen to him talk about them!)-- along with zombie shrimp and some really cool evolutionary questions.

In the middle of all that excitement, crocodilian researcher Marisa Tellez discovered a new parasite species. She's studying the relationship -- millions of years in the making -- between the American alligator and its parasites. That bond may have given the alligator its formidable immune system, and might now be affected by environmental changes.

That discovery was also tweeted on November 11 -- the day after Tellez had gotten a boost from her alma mater. Which alma mater? Her high school. The place that displays her jersey in its auditorium.

(You can also learn more about Marisa Tellez -- a.k.a. "The Latina Crocodile Hunter" -- in today's edition of Hispanically Speaking News.)

My slow connection yesterday fairly sent my word count crashing through the floor, and I've spent the better part of today gathering material that I can access from my hard drive. And I've backed it all up onto my flash drive. You'd better believe I'm ready to write.

Because when I get cranky, I go for the gusto.

Update, Nov. 18: My modem has been replaced. So far, so good!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Update, Sleepy Tweets Edition

2011-11-16T03:47:00.001-05:00

Could be my machine, could be my Internet connection out here. Or it could be Twitter that's slow. But if it is Twitter, then it's also a bunch of other websites I've been trying to access these past two days. *sigh*

That's cramped my style some, but it hasn't stopped me. My earlier posted word count on NaNoWriMo was 26,092 -- slightly better than NaNo's "average" expected pace of 1,667 words per day.

Why am I paying attention to Twitter while I'm doing NaNo? There's a reason the #SciFund Challenge comes with a built-in hashtag. It's got an awesome Twitter feed. Just search Twitter on #SciFund and you'll see what I mean.

Want another awesome feed? Search on #ls_chat and follow a discussion of #SciFund at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern Time on November 16.

I wish I had a clone (not for the first time!), because I'll be speaking at the Citrus County Library's "Write-In," which occurs at 1-4 p.m. Eastern that day. Maybe I can sneak a peek at the #ls_chat Q&A.

So, what am I learning from Twitter these days? For one thing, I'm learning that Kalani Kirk Hausman, whose #SciFund project aims to create a do-it-yourself laboratory for teaching STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) in neighborhood schools, curates a #SciFund digest on Scoop.it.

But let me back up for a minute. Why a DIY lab?

Hausman conducts "Scrap-heap Supercomputing" workshops using surplus university equipment. These workshops have inspired middle-school through college-level students, who get hands-on experience in working to solve global issues -- like cures for childhood diseases and cancer, and the search for clean water resources and clean energy technologies.

(I'm going to get back to that "clean water resources" bit in a moment.)

Why supercomputing? Because the power of those combined surplus machines "contributed more than 4 years worth of computing power in barely 3 months total time" toward solving those problems. That's what a lot of surplus computers, hooked together, can do.

Too bad the university surplus, which must be "disposed of properly," can't be transferred directly to the schools.

That's where Hausman's project comes in.

He's found a way to hook together "nodes" -- very basic computer modules that anyone can grab off the shelf -- together, to make them into powerful machines. He's got free open-source software to go with them. Add in downloadable instructions and you've got a STEM lab, constructed for a fraction of the ready-made cost, that's accessible to teachers everywhere.

That could inject a dose of global competitiveness right into your own back yard.

I've learned on Twitter that, in addition to spearheading this project, Hausman curates the #SciFund Scoop.it digest, which pulls all sorts of #SciFund-relevant materials from the Web.

He also gets on the Twitter horn and tweets those links about the array of individual #SciFund projects and about online coverage of them. One link, one tweet at a time. Day after day.

That's dozens of tweets.

He's trying to raise a lot of money (compared to the other projects) for his DIY STEM lab (Don't take my word for it; go see!). And his project needs a boost. It needs a lot of boosts.

One of the things that makes RocketHub different from Kickstarter is that funds raised go to the projects, whether they meet their goal or not. It's just that the commissions differ.

In addition to promoting his own work, Hausman is using his energies to promote everyone else's fine work. One tweet doesn't take long, but he's been making a lot of tweets, on behalf of a lot of people.

But that's not all. That "clean water resources" bit I was talking about?

When Hausman isn't tweeting about #SciFund or about other great things, he posts the occasional statement that he's donated CPU time to the World Community Grid and its Computing for Clean Water project. The WCG isn't part of #SciFund -- it's another crowdsourced project. Computing for Clean Water seeks "more efficient and lower-cost methods for producing clean water." The site amasses and uses idle time from all the computers entered into the program.

Hausman can donate over 150 hours to WCG in a single week. Without slowing down his tweets at all.

Although not directly part of #SciFund, WCG served as part of the inspiration for Hausman's DIY STEM lab. His computer nodes function in a similar way. He's also planning age-appropriate lessons that will tie class work to WCG initiatives, like Computing for Clean Water.

Another thing I learned from Twitter is that back on November 6 -- which also happened to be the day the first #SciFund project became fully funded (three more have followed, so far!) -- the North Texas Science Education Network gave #SciFund a shout-out. Not only that, but they placed the #SciFund logo on their home page, beside logos for the Texas Nature Challenge and the National Lab Network. NLN connects K-12 teachers with STEM professionals to facilitate hands-on learning.

It fits right in with what Hausman, who's also in Texas, wants to do with his computer nodes.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNo Process Notes: Beneath the Surface

2011-11-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

My draft word count at the end of yesterday was 17,789 -- right on track for a NaNoWriMo pace of a 1,667-word average per day.

My days have gone thusly:

1. Data collection. #SciFund unfolds in vivo, with new developments daily and at a breakneck pace. It is breathtaking to watch.

2. Data rasslin' -- organizing that data into a narrative. These past couple of days I've been doing that for the period leading up to the #SciFund launch, while collecting and annotating the news that comes to me in realtime.

Have a look at the #SciFund blog for project profiles and updates. And at #SciFund participant blogs, like that of Roman DNA expert Kristina Killgrove, who today is being covered in Forbes and CNN. Plus, you can read her review of the TV series Bones.

And there are stories behind the stories. Go to Andi Wolfe's Flickr photostream, where each morning she posts her gorgeous picture of the day -- like this intricate macro, taken in July and uploaded yesterday; or the flower vendor uploaded today.

Wolfe's #SciFund project is the study of Cats Nails (Hyobanche) in South Africa. Why the name Cats Nails? "That's because of the way the style curves out of the flower tube to resemble a cat's claw," she says in her video.

Cats Nails can't make its own food, so it taps into the roots of other plants. Within its pretty pink flowers is genetic information that will tell Wolfe how well its host plants are doing. She is, in effect, studying the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine for an entire ecosystem.

So it was awesome when the Cats Nails project and more #SciFund research made national news in the Netherlands. And it was a little bizarre when it got carried by I Want Information Now About Cats -- a website whose videos include a dog that gets along with cats, a trip to Amsterdam (accompanying music: a song by the group Cats & Dogs), and a Bobcat hydraulic motor component service repair shop. That site's filter is about as good as mine. :-)

While Wolfe thanks her funders, she also thanks "all our veterans for all their hard work and sacrifice." And when Cats Nails doesn't command her immediate attention, the history-making orbital maneuvers by astronaut Bruce McCandless with his nitrogen jet propelled backpack does. (Want to see a jaw-dropping image? Here's what she linked to.)

That's just a taste of what I've been seeing this week. I feel thrilled and privileged to get a glimpse of the people behind the projects.
Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNoWriMo Quick Takes and Observations

2011-11-08T22:07:00.001-05:00

A glimpse into the NaNo lifestyle, with a sample size of one:

1. NaNoWriMo foods: canned tuna (eaten straight out of the can or microwaved with cheddar and hot sauce); garbanzos (mixed with oil and vinegar, garlic, and paprika); ready-made garlic Caesar salads from the supermarket (on sale!); an occasional Clif Bar (chocolate brownie or chocolate chip); spinach (frozen or canned, microwaved with cheddar and hot sauce); broccoli (frozen, eaten alone or microwaved with -- wait for it -- cheddar and hot sauce); WASA multi-grain crispbread; plain yogurt with honey and muesli.

2. NaNoWriMo beverages: coffee! More coffee! New, just bought and tried Kahlua Mocha coffee! Which smells awesome and tastes -- not quite as good as it smells. But a little honey really perks it up. And a little shot of Drambuie last night made it into a really nice kind of Mexican-Irish-Scots coffee. And, when not drinking coffee -- homemade lemonade.

3. The Drambuie had been sitting in my little drink cup for a good 48 hours first, left over from a nip. Alcohol and writing don't mix for me (my hat's off to you, Papa Hemingway). But to fall asleep when my brain wants to stay up and play but I really can't because my eyes are melting down my face? It doesn't take much booze to send me to bed.

4. At times, translation site Babel Fish can be almost as funny as Damn You Auto Correct.

5. NaNoWriMo music: none while I'm writing (sometimes music is muse fuel for me, especially when I write fiction. In this case it's distracting). But in-between I've glommed onto Parov Stelar's "Catgroove" (and TakeSomeCrime's moves!) and Caravan Palace's "Clash" (still great moves from TSC, though I think his "Catgroove" interpretation tells a more solid story).

6. NaNoWriMo dress code: sexy black thermal underwear. Hey, even in Florida it's November. And pretty orange print fleece slipper socks.

Today's #SciFund featured project is "C-Cilia in Motion!!" by Aditya Rao, a great example of science storytelling that features a single-celled organism doing the breast stroke. There's more to it than that; go see!

One reason this project catches my eye is because it's one in the #SciFund "Chlamy" Trifecta: three different ways in which a little alga called Chlamydomonas gets studied in the lab. This tiny plant has amazing versatility. It's like a living, microscopic Swiss Army Knife.

You've got Steve Herbert's "Domesticating algae for the 21st century" in which, with the help of a cousin named Volvox (no relation to Zardoz), "Chlamy" cells might become better able to stick together for easier harvesting. It would be like picking up a slice of bread instead of one crumb at a time.

Why harvest? "Chlamy" is good biofuel material, among other things, like a source of electricity and biomass heat. It produces even more when it's pestered. Luis Valledor gives the little dears a tough time and studies their stress responses, which include making more material that can be refined into energy. More than just watching what they do, he wants to know how they do it. And since green slime hasn't yet become a Special of the Day at dining establishments, farming this alga sidesteps the debate over whether to use more popular crops (and valuable agricultural land) for food or for fuel.

Then there's Rao, who turned to "Chlamy" after working with a menagerie ranging from elephants down to fruit flies. The alga's single cell still isn't small enough for him. He's studying its cilia (those swimming hairs), which are a lot like the cilia occurring throughout the human body. Those little whips are so important than when something goes awry in one, some awful diseases happen. He wants to know how things go wrong, so that maybe some day they can be made to go right. Check out his project page, which also offers a T-shirt printed with a beautiful, full-color picture of "Chlamy" porn.

And the outreach doesn't stop there! Tune in to developments at the Social Media for Scientists workshop (today and tomorrow) run by #SciFund founders Byrnes and Ranganathan.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

A Tale of Two Narratives

2011-11-06T21:27:00.001-05:00

Archie: Don't you know that the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe?

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write a lot and write it fast. To send your censor packing. Editing comes later. Craft comes later. Just git 'er done.

That's just the kind of thing that gives me the willies.

Some writers spit their first drafts out like melon seeds, then sit and polish those seeds into pearls. Some, like me, sit and polish a paragraph, then sit and polish the next paragraph, then go back and sit and re-polish because now I've got two paragraphs that have to be polished together, then move to the third paragraph to sit and polish, then go back to the first two paragraphs...

Wait. Let me try that again. See, it's like this:

I grew up watching All in the Family. In a classic scene from the series, A Sock And A Sock And A Shoe And A Shoe, Archie Bunker and Michael 'Meathead' Stivic debate the fine points of getting dressed. As Archie talks about the fishing trip they're about to take, Michael puts a sock on his left foot. Then he grabs a boot and starts putting that on his left foot.

Archie: Hold it, hold it. Hold it! What are you doin' here?

Michael: What?

Archie: What about the other foot?

(Michael shows Archie his bare right foot.)

Archie: There ain't no sock on it.

Michael: I'll get to it.

Archie: Don't you know that the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe?

Michael: I like to take care of one foot at a time!

Archie: That's the dumbest thing I ever heard, you know that?

Michael: It's just as quick my way.

Archie: Wait a minute, that ain't the point, you see what I -- (Grabs the sock Michael starts to put on.) Don't keep doing it, listen to me! Suppose there is a fire in the house, and you got to run for your life. Your way, all you got on is one shoe and a sock. My way, you got on a sock and a sock. You see? You're even.

Michael: Suppose it's raining or snowing outside. Your way, with a sock on each foot, my feet would get wet. My way, with a sock and a shoe on one foot, I can hop around and stay dry.

Archie: I think you been hoppin' around on your head. (Michael takes his sock back from Archie to put it on his right foot. Archie grabs it.) Wait a minute. Wait a -- listen to me! Supposin' the other sock's got a hole in it.

Michael: It doesn't have a hole in it.

Archie: I said supposin' it's got a hole.

Michael: All right, suppose it has a hole.

Archie: All right, it's got a hole in it. So, you ain't got another matchin' pair, so what are you gonna do? Your way, you gotta take off a whole shoe and a sock. My way, all you gotta do is take off one sock.

Michael: All right, if it'll make you happy I'll start all over again. (Reaches to take his boot off.)

Archie: No, no, no! You're halfway through! Now, jeez, get on with it, we're in a hurry! (Heads for the door, turns back.) You can start doing it the right way tomorrow morning. And do it that way for the rest of your life!

When it comes to writing drafts, I'm like Michael. I like to take care of one thing at a time.

But in the writing I'm doing for NaNo, I tackle one part of it like Michael, and I tackle another part of it like Archie.

I'm like Michael when I write about the #SciFund projects themselves, trying to weave their stories into a greater whole. I respond to the material already out there and incorporate more from outside the proposals. I look for connections and spend time shaping the narrative.

But I'm also writing about events occurring and that have occurred day to day, from Jarrett Byrnes's inaugural blog post "The #SciFund Challenge: A Call to (virtual) Arms", through the sign-ups, the formation of a community, the learning of new skill sets, the push toward launch, the launch itself, and the adventure that continues even as I type. (Congratulations to Kelly Weinersmith, whose project on zombie fish was the first to reach its funding goal!)

And there I'm Archie, throwing on a pair of socks and running shoeless through a fire. The only difference is, I love the sparks. But I've got to type fast or I'll burn to a crisp. I write spontaneously, throw words up on the screen, free associate, free write in streams of consciousness. I write phrases in shorthand, meant to be expanded on later. I toss in bracketed placeholders, reminding myself to insert a detail from my haphazard collection of links or look something up on the Web. It is by far and away the sloppiest writing I've ever done.

But that's what NaNo is for. And that's why December is called NaNoEdMo: National Novel Editing Month. (Or, in some circles, NaNoFiMo, National Novel Finishing Month.)

The two styles play off each other. After an intense session of Michael-writing, I can turn to the Archie portion of my draft and get all loosey-goosey. And when that makes me feel discombobulated, I can hunker down and become Michael again.

In between, I get onto Twitter and watch those pretty rocket flames.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Crouching Typist, Hidden Toddler

2011-11-05T23:02:00.001-05:00

It's 10 p.m. on NaNoWriMo Day 5, my word count is 8,398, and I am On Pace! NaNo's goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days, or an average of 1,667 words per day. That means 8,335 words in five days.

I've just squeezed by that total, by a margin of 63 words.

Earlier Mary and I took our two-mile round-trip post office walk, which is significant because this is her first big walk since her toe surgery eight days ago. She had "mummified" her toe (her word) in bandages, but was able to wear a closed shoe. These past couple of days she's left the bandages off, to let the wound breathe.

She had suggested the walk, which meant I had to tear myself away from the computer. That's a good thing -- I'd just written a section and my brain felt like mush. But I didn't wanna go!

As she started suiting up to head outside a thought struck me. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." I sprinted back to the studio, woke my computer up, and clicked on my OneNote page where I write reminders to myself. I had just drafted a piece about the "Serengeti Live" project. They've been doing things in Tanzania. They've got 230 camera traps taking millions of photos of big cats and other predators, like the hyenas that ate the cameras before the project got new cameras in heavy steel housing. (Want to read some fabulous adventure writing? Go see field researcher Ali Swanson's blog.)

I'd just bridged that project with another one working with camera traps -- only, that project, Eric Abelson's "Does the act of looking change what we see?", is investigating whether camera traps alter the behavior of the animals whose images they're trying to capture. Like nervous mule deer.

I don't look at the #SciFund projects as separate entities. I look for what connects them, common themes, the way one can look at the same thing from different angles. "Serengeti Live" is raising funds to establish a remote Internet connection so that photos of wildlife can be viewed in as close to realtime as possible, without the long waits for data to be loaded into flash drives, spirited out of the Serengeti, and carried back to the States by a friend or a colleague who just happens to be traveling on a plane that day. They need better data management to help them in their work toward better conservation and wildlife management. Just as Abelson's work is also geared toward better conservation and wildlife management, because how can you accurately count animals if they're fleeing camera traps that might emit electronic signals humans can't perceive?

But I was thinking about Tanzania. The "Smart Delivery" project was also in Tanzania, right?

Open my Access file. Click on the link. Watch the Web page pop up. Shout, "Yes!" Scribble another note to myself. Send the computer back into sleep mode. Emerge from my studio grinning like a fool.

Mary asked me, "What was that all about?"

I explained as we walked toward the post office. Jennifer Schmitt's "Smart Delivery" project hopes to be a far more efficient, far less costly way to deliver childhood vaccines to Tanzania's most remote villages. Not by using the traditional delivery trucks the nonprofits use, but by letting small coolers of vaccines hitchhike rides in backpacks, on mules, in car trunks, with Tanzania's people who are on the move and going in that direction anyway. The big nonprofit trucks get sent out irregularly because they're dependent on outside funding, and they are no match for rutted, washed-out roads. But Tanzania's citizens deal daily with that terrain. They know how to move on it. And they carry cell phones.

I wouldn't learn this until after we got home, but Tanzania is awash in cell phones. According to this 2005 BBC article by Simon Hancock, "Some 97 percent of Tanzanians say they can access a mobile phone." And the cell phone networks are everywhere, ranging out into the remotest villages and onto the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Cell phones are how Tanzania -- and the rest of Africa -- have been closing the digital divide.

Now, six years after that article appeared, Schmitt's project wants to use that home-grown network and hire Tanzania's people to deliver vaccines as they traverse their regular routes.

I couldn't help but imagine two people experiencing a chance encounter on a remote dirt road. One carries childhood vaccines to a tiny Tanzanian village. The other has a pocket full of flash drives holding images pulled from camera traps in the Serengeti.

(Though ideally the "Serengeti Live" Internet connection would be up and running by then.)

Out on our residential neighborhood street, Mary asked me, "How is this pace for you?"

I said, "I'm fine. Keep to what you're comfortable with." I thought, You're healing from toe surgery, for heaven's sake! I don't want you to fall! while my inner toddler wanted to grab and drag her by the hand, chanting Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

We took our time. We breathed in fresh, crisp air -- a little too crisp for Mary, who wished she'd worn a scarf against the wind. We admired the oranges on a neighbor's tree. We watched a pink sunset.

Mary, who was starting to feel tired, asked me if my energy level was okay.

"I'm full of adrenalin," I told her. "I'm a three year old right now."

She downed a Power Bar at the post office. We had dinner at Hungry Howie's -- antipasto for her, chicken salad for me. Popped into Winn-Dixie because I was about to run out of coffee. Inside I was jumping up and down, up and down, up and down.

And then we got home, and I all but careened toward the studio.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Behind the Scenes Chez NaNoVille

2011-11-04T14:59:00.000-05:00

Over at the NaNoWriMo forums, mstrom from Vancouver asked, "Anyone else find memoir (or other rebel) writing easier than regular Nano so far?"

I don't have any past NaNo experience to go by, but I know that the way I write fiction is far different from the way I write nonfiction. I think I'd go nuts trying to do regular NaNo.

What's the difference? In my fiction I create from scratch. Here, I'm grabbing hold of information already out there and organizing it, injecting my own spin and my own reactions. When I write fiction I'm like a method actor, struggling to get inside my characters' heads. Here, I'm more like a reporter, still massaging the material at hand, but that means I have ready-made material at hand to massage.

I'm doing research and data collection, but that's different from world-building, which also involves research and data collection, followed by sheer invention. The same goes for story arc. Writing fiction means I'm conscious of my story arc, and I have at least some idea of how to get from Point A to Point B -- though admittedly, my characters often have other ideas and then I have to recalibrate. In my nonfiction NaNo project, the story arc is happening in vivo, and I'm just tagging along for the virtual ride.

Right now, at least, my writing is all about compilation, organization, and commentary. And as such, my preparation was considerably different than if I had prepared to write a novel.

I first learned about the #SciFund Challenge thanks to a tweet in the middle of August from science "blogfather" Bora Zivkovic. (If you have an interest in science, follow this guy.) Ever since then, Twitter has been my main go-to source for #SciFund, not just for its micro-comments but for its article links.

Here's a screen shot from this morning:

All three tweets shown here are from scientists thanking citizen funders. There's been a lot of that lately, which is not only a happy thing, it's also a plot point. These tweets are like video stills that create a moving picture over time. They are snapshots of the story I'm working to develop.

Fabiana Kubke's tweet relates to Daniel Mietchen's project, "Beethoven's open repository of research." Taking his lead from Beethoven, who said, "There should be only one repository of art in the world, to which the artist would donate his works in order to take what he would need," Mietchen applies that principle to research. He wants to make thousands of scholarly articles easily accessible -- to anyone -- by creating and maintaining a central repository. This is open science, a way in which scientific developments are shared with the world in realtime. It's a new approach toward collaboration and transparency.

Erin Ashe is thanking funders of her project, Dolphinpalooza. She tracks Pacific white-sided dolphins, setting out in a little boat with her dog, who is her able assistant and dolphin detector. Co-founder of Oceans Initiative, Ashe is seeking funds to help her keep working in the field, using non-invasive photo identification and statistical research to learn whether those dolphins are declining, endangered, or in good shape, and how well they and humans are coexisting on the water.

Yoav Ram needs to get to a conference to present his findings on how bacteria react to stress. His mathematical models show where conventional wisdom may have gone astray, and may explain why bacteria become antibiotic-resistant so quickly. Their mutations and evolution may also have implications for cancer treatment. Funds will help him travel from Israel to next year's Population Genetics Group meeting in Nottingham.

But what was happening before #SciFund started getting attention from sites like BoingBoing?

In the beginning I started listing my various collected links on Dipity, a free site that generates timelines complete with live links. That seemed to me a pretty cool organizational tool.

This screen shot shows the timeline roughly ten days before #SciFund's launch on RocketHub. Most of the links are to tweets made by #SciFund participants, who at that time were engaged in 28-hour days (by my estimation) preparing their proposals and videos for upload.

But there are other links in there, too. Like a tweet from The Journal Lab, which helps researchers collaborate and work with published papers more easily. "Crowdfunding is becoming key in the arts, could it become key in science?" they tweeted, adding, "Do we have crowds?!?"

While the scientists involved were sweating over their presentations and gaining a pre-launch audience -- that #oss2011 hashtag on the timeline at bottom right points to this year's Open Science Summit, where #SciFund co-founder Jai Ranganathan wowed the crowd -- I could feel that pre-launch tension building. Would this thing work? Were enough funders out there?

Is there suspense in this nonfiction tale? Heck, yeah! If I were writing fiction, I'd have to figure out where and how to build that tension, creating it out of whole cloth. Here, those on the front line are doing it for me. I just need to organize the data.

Dipity seemed a perfect vehicle, and I love the timeline concept. Except that, at least on my computer, it is glacially slow.

When I realized that impracticality, I turned to its List mode and started doing screen captures, which I assembled in MS Paint.

Unlike the timeline bubbles, Dipity's List mode shows the full listing, including the cross-references I included: who replied to whom, who retweeted whom. Yes, I was over-preparing, but only because doing so is far better than under-preparing. It's why raw data is called raw data -- because that's how I felt after wrestling with Dipity.

I wasn't the only frustrated person out there. At the bottom of the screen capture is Marisa Alonso Nuñez, who was having a devil of at time uploading her first-ever video, for her project "Cancer? Yeast has answers." She needs funding to get the antibodies that will let her study the effects on one of cancer's major players, a protein called Polo Kinase. Why yeast? Because the neat thing about Polo Kinase is that it ranges throughout the evolutionary spectrum from yeast to humans, and yeast is much easier to study. (Watch her video. She makes a great analogy that transforms biology into a travelogue.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Zen tweets that he has to raise his game. Sitting in my studio, I get to eavesdrop on the friendly competition and mutual inspiration that goes on in the days leading up to launch. I get to have fun being a nosy parker. If you missed my plug for Dr. Zen's Amazon (a.k.a. marbled) crayfish adventure in my prior entry, go see! He needs travel funds to pursue its cousin, the slough crayfish. His mission: find ways to control an invasive species that clones itself.

It makes sense that Jorge Mederos, cheering the others on in his tweet, is at the top of the screen capture, considering the time he spends up in the tree canopy outside Barcelona. His project, "Can we save Collserola Natural Park?", examines the stresses on "an 85 square kilometer island of nature surrounded by urban sprawl." Funds will help him track environmental data and study insects threatening the trees in this isolated Eden, in the hopes of restoring balance.

Farther back in the timeline, preparations for #SciFund were just starting to heat up. This screen shot dates to mid-September, when Bora hosted Jai over at Scientific American's "The Network Central" blog. On September 19, New Scientist posted an encore of Becky Oskin's August 17 article, "The road less traveled," renaming it "Research funding: creative ways to fill the coffers," with a nod toward #SciFund.

September was Jai's month for blog tours. His promotion of #SciFund, then still open for sign-ups, kept popping up on the Web.

One of those sign-ups was Elizabeth Hadly, who tweets at the bottom of the screen shot, "I'll try it!" If you missed my plug last entry for her lab's "Species in Peril," go see! Her team needs funds to monitor species at risk of losing their genetic diversity, which helps them adapt to a changing environment.

While great for preserving tweets and cross-references where I can access the text easily, Paint doesn't allow for live links. But OneNote does.

I've got a lot of live links to tweets. (And blog entries. And articles.) And after I gave up on Dipity, I started selectively annotating them (in black type):

Once all the projects went live and I could finally read about them, I started making thematic connections that I want to play with. This OneNote page holds reminders to myself.

The page also contains embedded links to files on my computer: an Access database file and a Word file. The Word file contains catch-all bits of draft and is one of many text files I'm working on for this project. Here's the Access file:

This database lists all the participants, the names and URLs of their projects, associated websites, and several other, largely empty fields that I may not need quite as much, given the info that the others contain. Together, this Access file and OneNote comprise my NaNo Central. They let me call up files and websites at a glance. In the Access file, to the right of the project names, is a column affording me direct access to my text files.

I'm also tracking the fundraising, entering each day's data around midnight, give or take a half hour or so:

This is also to help me figure out where to send rocket fuel. Part of me wants to help boost each project. Another part wants to concentrate more on those projects whose funding lags behind.

I've had a couple of episodes where I've had to chase down my files, because anchoring them in OneNote and Access puts updated versions in exotic subdirectories, rather than in the subdirectory where I want them to be. After a couple of scares ("But I saved it! Where'd it go?") I'm still learning how to navigate a system I haven't fully grokked yet.

Thank goodness for backups.

Or, to quote Alison Bechdel's character Mo, "Does 'anal-retentive' have a hyphen?"

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

It's Official: A NaNoWriMo Crazy Person Lives Here

2011-11-02T21:45:00.001-05:00

I'm capturing raw data on the fly!

(Butterfly net image courtesy of eNasco; housefly image courtesy of
Wikipedia; paper pile courtesy of Your Action Business Coaches)

There's a reason NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It implies that participants have done their background research and at least some plotting in advance and are ready to settle in, chained to their chairs, and -- well, do this:

(Nike slogan and background courtesy of Steven Kovar's blog; writing hand courtesy of Miguel Helft's May 30, 2007, New York Times article on pen computing; Underwood courtesy of The Classic Typewriter Page; Reliance Luggable Loo® courtesy of Campmor; toilet paper courtesy of The Lorem Ipsum Bracelet.)

Being a nonfiction rebel is a whole 'nother matter.

Being a nonfiction rebel chronicling new developments as they unfold each day is a real whole 'nother matter!

The new information that is being generated even as I type and that I have yet to mine from the Web not only keeps me on my toes; it helps drive the narrative. And it makes me look at my initial, rough (very, very rough) flowchart of the structure I intended to use and giggle -- in a rather maniacal, somewhat scary way.

Here's what I had planned out, back in September, using these components (taken from my notes):

1. The #SciFund project pool itself. That would be the section yet to be created at RocketHub (how early did I do the flowchart shown below? The text inside it says Kickstarter), in which the scientists involved present their work and solicit backing. That would be the easiest information to access (once it's available).

2. Secondary sources for each project: press coverage, prior research, general background.

3. Tangential sources: related material, not necessarily background material.

4. Human interest angle, either with respect to the scientists themselves and/or with respect to their work and the implications thereof.

5 and 6. Original creative interpretations. Those could include my own interpretations (for example, similar to the science poems I've done) as well as references to other people's interpretations, whatever those may be.

Bwaaaahahahahaha!

It occurred to me, rather quickly, that this would likely mean writing in 30 days something that would rival the Oxford English Dictionary in volume. Which in turn could have led to my mumbling, "Shoot me now."

But instead something really neat started happening.

I'm approaching NaNo completely bass-ackward, but I'm already a rebel so why not? This first week of the month I'm devoting about 70 percent toward capturing raw data on the fly (see instructional graphic above). And I'm scribbling narrative notes that are just slightly more coherent than this primate voice in my head that keeps going Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

The data gathering is time- and labor-intensive, but well worth it in my long-run scheme of things. For one thing, I'm still working my way down the #SciFund project list and transcribing all the project videos, because they have terrific material!

Do you want cute? Get a load of the Atlantic puffins that Robin Freeman is tracking. Or the tuco-tuco now living in the shadow of a volcanic eruption, one of several "Species in Peril" being studied by Stanford University's Hadly Lab. That video (with additional cute species!) also does a terrific takeoff on 60 Minutes -- or, in this case, 180 Seconds -- with PhD students/news anchors Melissa Kemp and Jeremy Hsu.

Want sheer adventure? Tune into "Dr. Zen" Faulkes's quest for the Amazon crayfish and peek into a history of scientific exploration that would make Indiana Jones proud. (Indiana Jones fans: Watch this.) I won't tell you where this video gave me my laugh-out-loud moment; go see it for yourself.

"I will do my best to appear to be menaced by snakes," Faulkes writes on his project page. Can't wait for that? Go over to Chip Cochran's venomous reptile hangout at Loma Linda University, where he studies deadly venom in his quest for anti-venom and therapeutic drug potential. He's on camera holding southwestern speckled rattlesnakes on two hooked poles, one with each arm. He wants to explore the potential differences in venom between the snake from Arizona and the one from California. He's so at ease with these lethal reptiles that as he lifts each pole in turn I think of a dessert waiter offering diners their choice of cheesecake or Boston cream pie.

I'll have more about what catches my eye as I gather information (tweets! blogs!). One thing that excites me is that although these are separate #SciFund projects, they are related on several levels. Camaraderie is one: these researchers have connected and bonded across the world (see?), and the #SciFund Challenge strikes me as one collective expedition into new territory for all involved. The #SciFund site on RocketHub is their exploratory vessel in which they are all co-travellers.

Another level -- one that I am just beginning to see and want to explore in my writing for NaNo -- has to do with certain thematic connections among the different projects. Like energy derived from plants. Go to Jeffrey Bodwin's quest to free cellulose from all parts of a plant and you're looking at the potential for vastly improving the generation of biofuels. Then go to Walter Weare's work on artificial photosynthesis, which seeks to mimic what those plants do, with the ultimate goal of creating biofuel without the bio part. Two chemists are approaching the same basic problem, using different strategies. I love that.

Or take DNA. When I think of DNA I see this:

But when Kristina Killgrove sees it, she's teasing it out of the skeletons of long-forgotten Roman slaves from two millennia ago, to learn about how they lived and where they came from.

And when the Center for Conservation Biology's researchers see it, they're teasing it out of feces to identify which birds and bats prey on insect pests like the coffee berry borer, in their quest to understand how wildlife and farmers can benefit each other in the present day.

But wait! There's more!

But you'll have to wait for it, until I blog again.

Because I have to chase after more raw data and scribble more notes.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

NaNoWriMo Meets the #SciFund Challenge

2011-11-01T03:40:00.000-05:00

Large view

National Novel Writing Month -- NaNoWriMo -- occurs November 1 through November 30. Its goal for participants: write 50,000 words in 30 days.

For several years, I've been a local author panelist in the three-part NaNoWriMo series presented by the Citrus County Library System. But I have not myself participated in NaNo.

Until now. And I am participating not as a novelist, but as a nonfiction NaNoWriMo "rebel."

This year also marks the inauguration of the #SciFund Challenge, which runs parallel to NaNoWriMo. From November 1 through December 15, 240 scientists are engaging in a crowdfunding experiment, seeking support for 49 projects. We're not talking NSF grants here; in some cases, donations can be as small as a dollar.

And those donations come with rewards. Want a specimen named after you? (Donate $20 to Jessica Carilli's project on corals and climate change.) Want a way cool bottle of wine for the holidays? (Donate $15 to Matthew Hutchins' Mythbusters-like investigation on ways to artificially age red wine.) Want a chance to see transmitted images of wildlife, possibly even before the researchers do? (Donate $10 to the Serengeti Lion Project's "Serengeti Live.")

Even smaller donations can get you public thanks and exclusive email updates -- a ringside seat to scientific discovery. How ringside? For as little as a dollar you can receive access to data and digital photos of Walter Weare's lab working on the creation of artificial photosynthesis to convert light into fuel.

Other projects offer souvenirs like T-shirts, mugs, fridge magnets, postcards, bumper stickers, and more. Larger-ticket rewards include an exclusive video chat, original artwork, autographed maps, and personal tours of research sites.

I've been following the #SciFund Challenge since mid-August, reading blog posts that had begun with Jarrett Byrnes's July 29 entry, "The #SciFund Challenge: A Call to (virtual) Arms." I've been following tweets, and -- thanks to co-founder Jai Ranganathan -- have contributed this guest post.

Even #SciFund's cool logo was itself crowdsourced, through a contest held at 99designs. You can find all the #SciFund projects here on RocketHub. Not only do they look awesome, but they've all been Jai approved!

What will I write for NaNoWriMo? I'm neither a science blogger nor a journalist, but I have some publishing creds that include science poetry and science fiction in places like Asimov's. I'm not a scientist, but I hold a master of science degree. Call me a science fan. I'm interested not only in the projects themselves, but in the journeys being undertaken by people who have banded together across the globe, designing their crowdfunding pitches, including videos, in less than a month. Some have learned new outreach skills on the fly. They are all bringing science to the public in a way seldom seen -- and never before seen in such a team effort among many.

I also expect to contribute some "rocket fuel" here and there, as I tag along and scribble, cheering them on.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Calls of Science and The Wild

2011-10-09T20:09:00.001-05:00

Squirrel kits inside our storm shutters

This entry is written to fit Sunday Scribblings prompt #288: The Call.

Call of Science

As I wrote here, I'm following the progress of the #SciFund Challenge. In all, 240 scientists have answered the call to participate in this science crowdfunding experiment.

Artists and graphic designers! -- The #SciFund Challenge logo contest (cash prize) will be active for the next couple of days.

You can also read my guest post at the #SciFund blog. My post contains writing tips to help scientists connect with non-scientists while pitching their projects. I write from the perspective of a hybrid: I have a master of science in psychology, but I am not a scientist per se. (I like to think of myself as a science fan.)

Call of The Wild

A family of squirrels has taken up residence inside one of our storm shutters. Their nest is tucked between aluminum slats mounted on tracks and one of the windows in my studio. Normally the window is covered with a shade, but I can hear them knocking about. Last night I decided to say hello. The action in the first video starts about 20 seconds in.

Today I increased my camera's zoom a bit. The three kits have their Alvin, Simon, and Theodore moment at around the 3:12 mark in the second video.

According to the blog Squirrel Pest Control Guide for Beginners in its section "Caring for Infant Squirrels (Kits)", three kits (at minimum) are the typical number to which a female squirrel gives birth. They depend on her entirely for their first 75 days of life.

I believe the mother is still with these little ones. Their actual nest is to the right of frame in the videos.

I'm currently taking a laissez-faire approach. The fact that they're nesting in an area made of aluminum and stucco-painted concrete (plus metal window screen with glass behind) means they're away from material that could be more easily damaged. At least, that's my theory. I'm not treating them as pets (i.e., I'm not feeding them), just letting them have their space and enjoying a couple of photo ops. Otherwise, my window shade stays down.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks. Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

October Preview and News Bits

2011-09-29T16:26:00.001-05:00

I've got three Florida-based events next month. Please stop by and say hello if you're in the area!

1. Florida State Poets Association convention (Oct. 14-16, at the Orlando Marriott, Lake Mary), where as contest chair I will emcee this year's awards ceremony.

2. NaNoWriMo Kickoff at the Lakes Region Library in Inverness (Oct. 19, 3:30-6:30 p.m.), where I'll be a panelist along with Loretta Rogers, Dylan Newton, and Flossie Benton Rogers.

3. Necronomicon 30 (Oct. 21-23 at the Hilton Bayfront in St. Petersburg). In addition to my usual table on Author Alley, you can find me on five panels this year:

a. "What Has Social Media Done for You Lately?"
b. "Three or More (writing book series)"
c. "Intro to Writing Poetry" (moderating)
d. "The Liquid State of Publishing" (moderating)
e. "Connecting Science Fiction with Poetry & Song."

Thanks to Ao Bibliophile for having me as a guest blogger! (And thanks to KamJos, who commented, "I love love love the Deviations series!")

Thanks also to kgilr7, who answered the question, "What are the best non-classic free ebooks you've read?" (posted on Reddit by SmoSays) with, "The Deviations series by Elissa Malcohn. There are seven books in the series and each one of them is absolutely amazing. She also is pretty nice and responds back if you write to her."

(There was a time when I thought I'd have to break Bloodlines into two volumes, making seven overall. The series count is actually six books.)

My article "The Many Shades of Dark Poetry" is now posted as a .pdf in the mid-summer 2011 WyoPoets newsletter, on pg. 4 and pg. 5.

Also live (though not yet available for embedding) is Part 3 of the publishing workshop I gave with Lakisha Spletzer back in July. Thanks again to Kisha for setting up, recording, and posting this event!

The Publeconomist had this to say about my review of Dr. Loren Olson's book: "Check out the recent review of Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, A Psychiatrist’s Own Story on PsychCentral. Elissa Malcohn wrote a beautiful and detailed review of the book. Definitely one of the better that I’ve read." The blog is written by Anthony DiFiore at inGroup Press, which had also published Finally Out.

Tim Lieder, editor of She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror, is calling for submissions to his second Bible-themed anthology, tentatively titled King David & The Spiders from Mars: More Tales of Biblical Terror. He writes that "this will be a Bible-themed horror anthology specifically based on The Book of Samuel. Some of my favorite stories from the first anthology were David centered including Elissa Malcohn's 'Judgement at Naioth' and Christi Krug's 'As If Favorites of Their God.'"

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to The SciFund Challenge, spearheaded by biologists Dr. Jai Ranganathan and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes. As of this writing, 150 scientists (no, wait, that was less than 12 hours ago; it's now 172!) have signed onto this crowdfunding project, which goes into full swing on November 1. The sign-up period closes on October 1.

As Ranganathan wrote back on August 2, "What if scientists were rewarded for communicating with the general public? What if scientists could raise a large portion of their research budget directly from the public, through a crowdfunding campaign?"

A project like #SciFund is much more than a fund-raising exercise. It's a way for scientists to learn and use communications skills that in turn help laypeople like me understand the benefits of what they're doing. A bit like this awesome film, "I'm A Scientist" by Stephen Curry (runs about a half hour).

Also, check out this adorable song by cosmology research fellow Andrew Pontzen about the purported faster-than-light neutrino.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Midnight to Midnight

2011-09-24T05:27:00.001-05:00

Not long ago I posted the 7th of my 24 climate change sonnets, as part of my midnight-to-midnight event (explained in this entry). You can follow the action here.

In the meantime, this guest post appeared yesterday. Thanks to AO Bibliophile for the opportunity!

Earlier, Mary found this in her office:

Large view

I think this is a Brahminy Blind Snake (a.k.a. Flower Pot Snake), Ramphotyphlops braminus. From the U Florida description, the size matches, as do the color and the smooth and shiny scales. This species was first reported in Florida in 1983 and is found pretty much throughout the state. "Outside of Florida, it has been widely introduced to many tropical localities and is considered the most widespread snake species in the world." And it's parthenogenic! Cool. :-) Mary captured her and we escorted her outside.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

My Saturday Plans: Two Global Actions

2011-09-21T19:49:00.002-05:00

Opening slide for video poems

Two global events will occur on September 24, 2011:

1. Moving Planet, a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis.

2. 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change.

I thought: Why not do both?

Barring an emergency, I plan to post -- not here, but on my all-purpose blog, Chronicles From Hurricane Country -- from midnight to midnight, one poem per hour (at any time during that hour). That's starting from 00:00-01:00 and ending at 23:00-24:00 Eastern Time on Saturday, September 24.

All the poems are sonnets. Each takes its cue from an article dealing with climate change. The source articles had been posted beginning on September 15 -- the date of the 24-hour Climate Reality Project that inspired me to do this -- through September 19, the day I drafted the twenty-fourth poem.

Stay tuned. The action starts September 24 at midnight!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

September Catch-Up

2011-09-19T13:07:00.001-05:00

1. Jack-o'-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy (Raven Electrick Ink), which contains my story "Visitations," is now available.

Writes Lisa Morton, author of The Halloween Encyclopedia, "Reading Jack-o'-Spec is like stepping into a Halloween party that's been going on for 2,000 years. There's something delightfully pagan about these stories and poems, something that captures Halloween's dark, autumn atmosphere. Whether it's a mad scientist invoking Halloween ghosts on Mars, boys trapped in not one but two haunted houses, or a rich evocation of poetic seasonal spirits, Jack-o'-Spec has something for all Halloween lovers."

From the product description: "Jack-o'-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy features the many faces of science fiction, fantasy, and horror Halloweens: steampunk Halloweens, post-apocalyptic Halloweens, alternate history Halloweens, outer space Halloweens, and noir Halloweens, not to mention new speculative takes on Halloween perennials, such as haunted houses, witches, ghosts, vampires, and, of course, jack-o'-lanterns."

"Visitations" falls into the alternate history category.

2. An interview with me has just gone up at Niteblade.

3. The Midsummer 2011 issue of WyoPoets' Newsletter, reprints my article, "The Many Shades of Dark Poetry."

4. Two of my reviews -- for Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us (Clark McCauley, Ph.D. & Sophia Moskalenko, Ph.D.) and Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight (Loren A. Olson, M.D.), are now live at Psych Central.

5. Another review is out for Mythic Delirium 24, this one from Tori Truslow at Sabotage: "'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn mixes prose-poetry and verse, and from its first lines clearly does not intend to play nicely with the dragon-slaying hero trope: 'She is the wet dream of every budding knight, the centerpiece of every quest. Her scaly head on a pike makes the ultimate maiden magnet.' In all these poems the central figure is changed irrevocably by journeying beyond what they’re used to; the reader, too, has their preconceptions of certain archetypes neatly twisted around."

6. Part 2 of the publishing workshop I gave with Lakisha Spletzer is also up:

7. My submission to William Gurstelle's Practical Pyromaniac Clerihew Contest garnered a Special Mention. It joins an entertaining collection of fire- and science-related poems.

8. And I've been playing Phylo, which is my first and thus far only Internet game. Actually, it's crowdsourced citizen science from McGill University's Bioinformatics Department.

From the website's description: "Phylo is a game in which participants align sequences of DNA by shifting and moving puzzle pieces. Your score depends on how you arrange these pieces. You will be competing against a computer and other players in the community."

The combined alignments can help biologists on a number of levels, including problem-solving with respect to genetic diseases. Turns out that humans prove far more capable than supercomputers at this kind of pattern recognition. (And it's great fun.)

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Wordle-Play

2011-08-18T00:13:00.002-05:00

I wanted to see what would happen if I made Deviations word clouds -- so I went over to Wordle. According to the website, "The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I've combined the six word clouds into a single image here, but they can be viewed separately (at full size and crisper) on my Wordle gallery page.

The clouds make for a neat analysis. I especially like how the terms "Masari" and "Yata" -- the two main peoples of the series -- relate to each other across the volumes. "Yata" trumps "Masari" for almost the entire series, beginning as slightly larger in Covenant. That discrepancy increases in Appetite and increases yet more in Destiny. Both are enlarged in Bloodlines (the longest book in the series), but "Yata" still outshines "Masari." Both drop into the background in TelZodo (which, as the words show, focuses mainly on its title character, along with TripStone), but "Yata" is still significantly larger than "Masari." Only in Second Covenant does "Masari" gain in stature, to the point where its size matches that of "Yata" exactly (by my measurement). The clouds do a nice job of encapsulating that particular dynamic of the epic.

TripStone, the main heroine of the series, maintains a steady prominence through Destiny. That standing decreases slightly in Bloodlines, giving her the same emphasis as BrushBurn. The drama in Bloodlines is as much his as hers, given the disruptive influence of the character Jirado, whose name is the next-largest one in the cloud. Clearly, the action in Promontory takes center stage, contrasting with but not equaled by the drama unfolding in Crossroads (with its major players HigherBrook, Ghost, CatBird, and Gria). Even so, the place name of Crossroads (TripStone's village) is slightly larger than Promontory, a dynamic in itself.

TripStone's slightly decreased emphasis holds steady in TelZodo, but the title character clearly takes prominence. Taken within the context of the individual novels, "TelZodo" ranks the highest in the series. That has mainly to do with the book's narrative style. The other volumes are ensemble pieces, but TelZodo is a Bildungsroman, defined here as, "the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order."

TripStone vanishes by the time we get to Second Covenant, whose story is told by members of the new generation. Her name appears in the book, just not often enough to merit representation in the word cloud.

Destiny, a drug that can be considered a character in itself, sneaks into Covenant as one of the smallest words in the cloud. Its size grows considerably in Appetite and considerably more in its title volume, Destiny. It drops back down in Bloodlines, to smaller than it had been in Appetite. It drops out of the TelZodo word cloud entirely (despite the role that Destiny Farm plays in that book), but it roars back to life in Second Covenant. Not only does "Destiny" hold more within-novel prominence here than in any other Deviations book, but it outshines all of Second Covenant's sentient characters.

The Covenant, a religious system that is also a character in its own right, undergoes its own journey. Its small size in its title volume is deceiving; the religion, constantly in the background, drives the action. By the time of Appetite it has been destroyed and has shrunk in that volume's word cloud. It vanishes entirely from the word cloud for Destiny.

But it peeks back in for Bloodlines, achieving the same size it had possessed in Covenant. It barely makes a showing in the TelZodo word cloud, a tiny blip between "now" and "away;" and it appears again, matching its original strength, in Second Covenant.

The gods, absent from the word clouds for the first three volumes, stake their claim in the Bloodlines word cloud, stick around in unbeliever TelZodo's word cloud, and make their best showing in the word cloud for Second Covenant.

I could play with this every which way. Wordle's a neat tool for studying story dynamics.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Summer Catch-Up

2011-08-04T21:08:00.002-05:00

I received and am currently savoring these issues, thanks to Andy Sawyer, Reviews Editor at Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction (and course director of U. Liverpool's MA in Science Fiction Studies).

Special Collections

Thanks also to U. Liverpool and to other libraries that have welcomed the Deviations series into their special collections.

The University of Liverpool's Sydney Jones Library, Special Collections & Archives is Europe's largest catalogued collection of SF material, including the Science Fiction Foundation Collection and a wealth of literary archives.

So far, libraries receiving the full series also include:

The Eaton Collection at the University of California, Riverside. From the website: "The Eaton Collection is the largest publicly-accessible collection of science fiction, fantasy, horror and utopian fiction in the world. ... It is visited by scholars from around the world both for its American and international holdings."

University of South Florida Library's Special Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection: Includes the SF collection of John Clute, believed to be one of the largest privately held collections in the world.

University of Sydney Science Fiction and Fantasy Collections: The library's Ron Graham Science Fiction Collection and Colin Steele Collection together form one of the largest institutional collections of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the world.

Georgia Tech's Bud Foote Science Fiction Collection: Includes well over 8,000 cataloged science fiction novels, anthologies, monographs, journals, and films. The collection spans the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and features items in English, Danish, Russian, French, Japanese, and many more languages.

Temple University's Paskow Science Fiction Collection: This collection contains more than 30,000 volumes, magazines (pulps, fanzines, and academic journals), over 100 cubic feet of manuscripts, and selected posters, paintings, drawings, and related materials.

The Maison d'Ailleurs (translated as "House of Elsewhere"): This museum of science fiction, utopia, and extraordinary journeys is located in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, and is the only public institution of its kind in the world. It is a non-profit foundation functioning both as a public museum and a specialized research center.

Deviations Website Back Up/Second Covenant Reviewed

My Deviations website has once again served its time in the penalty box for exceeding its allowed bandwidth. It again became accessible on August 1, still with this blog entry of alternate free download sites as backup.

Last year, David Roth of the Examiner reviewed Covenant, here. On August 2, he had this to say about Second Covenant:

"Five stars out of Five for Deviations: Second Covenant ©2011 by Elissa Malcohn. I have read literally thousands of books in my lifetime. During my time as a critic, this is the first time I’ve offered the same writer five stars twice....

"No longer the diamond in the rough that was Deviations: Covenant, Second Covenant is a fully clarified grade-A gem in the world of speculative fiction. A must read for lovers of the dark side of the genre. This is not your daddy’s science fiction. This is hard core, riveting, and page turning. Everything good fiction should be. And, perhaps most profound is that it is frighteningly believable!"

Publishing Workshop

On July 30 I joined Lakisha Spletzer (foreground) to give a publishing workshop at the Lakes Region Library. Kisha recorded most of it on video and has uploaded Part 1.

More to come! Stay tuned. Or, better yet, head over to Kisha's YouTube channel for her vlogs on writing process and more.

My display included:

1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).

2. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").

3. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").

4. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" -- on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 27th Annual Collection -- and poem "Derivative Work").

5. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").

6. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.

7. She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010; contains my story "Judgment at Naioth").

8. Divinations: Writing by the Throw of the Dice.

9. Open Laboratory 2010: The Best of Science Writing on the Web (Coturnix, 2011; contains my poems "Manipulations" and "In Development")

10. Poetic Variables: Science Poems for January 2011 (a poem for each day in January, each written in a different form, in celebration of Science Online 2011)

11. Mythic Delirium #24 (contains my poem "The Last Dragon Slayer")

12: The Deviations Series Omnibus: All six books of my series collected into a handy CD.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

My DIY Checklist for E-Book Release

2011-07-27T22:59:00.002-05:00

This Saturday I'll join Lakisha Spletzer for a self-publishing workshop at the Lakes Region Library in Inverness, FL. E-books are among the topics we'll discuss.

Now that the full Deviations Series has gone live (my Deviations site is over bandwidth until August 1; alternate download sites here), here's a geeky entry based on my release checklist. Best viewed if you're interested in the mechanics of e-book creation or in my process (which is admittedly idiosyncratic), or you have a pathological love of detail.

Step 1. Baseline: manuscript in MS Word.

I drafted the series in Word, on a reconditioned 2003 IBM ThinkPad, because I'm still a half-Luddite who uses Windows XP. Normally the computer I use shouldn't matter with respect to e-book conversions, except that my Internet computer is now a Lenovo Ideapad netbook that doesn't have Word. I use Open Office on the Ideapad instead. The main reason Open Office figures into my procedure is so that I could work on both my computers.

My manuscript is ... a manuscript. That means no fancy fonts or different font sizes. It's double-spaced Times New Roman, which makes it easier on my eyes for editing purposes and easier on other people's eyes for workshopping.

Before I converted Vol. 1, Covenant, into an e-book, I created specs that applied mainly to its Adobe Acrobat version, because I could make that version pretty. After futzing around for a bit I came up with this:

Specifications
Text, header, and footer: Garamond 13 pt.
Paragraph spacing: 0.06" above and below paragraphs
Leading: 0.02"
Margins: 1.5 inches left and right, .5 inch top and bottom
Chapter heads: all caps, left-justified, Verdana 20 pt. boldface, followed by two hard returns
Sub-chapter heads (which applied to Appetite and beyond): Verdana 13 pt. boldface
If two lines, upper sub-chapter line has 0" below paragraph; lower line has 0" above paragraph
Section break symbol: 24 pt. Botanical character U+F056
End-of-book symbol (after two hard returns): 28 pt. Botanical character U+F050

Note that this is not meant to match any formal type of book formatting. However, I used it to standardize the look of the series -- in Acrobat (.pdf).

I initially used drop caps at the beginning of each chapter, but found that they did not translate into Reflow (which permits viewing .pdf files on different-sized screens). I also had to limit my use of the Botanical characters to Acrobat and ditch them before I converted my files into other formats, otherwise they showed up as "V" and "P," respectively.

Step 2. Convert to Open Office (so that I could work on both computers) and apply specifications.

Once I applied the above specifications I did some extra clean-up: substituting smart quotes with plain quotes, auto-ellipses with three periods, double-hyphens with m-dashes, and changing double-spacing to single-spacing after periods. I'd grown up on standard manuscript format that had called for double-spacing after periods, but I learned to single-space when I did desktop publishing in the 1980s. (Note that for manuscript submissions, e.g., to a publisher or a magazine, some markets still prefer "standard format." See William Shunn's site for particulars.)

Inevitably, I also did the first of what would be several read-throughs and re-edits, which made my original Word manuscript obsolete. And I still missed some errors on occasion.

Step 3. The Trifecta: Open Office, HTML, and Word-redux

Here I became (a) fairly inefficient, and (b) fairly obsessive. Some of these steps changed a bit with each release, but I kept mainly to this procedure.

First, I saved my Open Office file as HTML, but only for its HEAD section codes and its BODY and HTML opening and closing tags. The rest would get tossed, because I wanted as stripped-down a version as I could manage. That gave me fewer moving parts to break when I further converted the file to other formats.

Stripping down the Open Office-->HTML file proved extremely cumbersome, even using the Search/Replace function to knock out tags like P CLASS="western" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-top: 0.06in; margin-bottom: 0.06in; line-height: 100%". I had to deal with a bunch of those in slightly different versions. Whatever I did would be a labor-intensive exercise. I also knew that I needed to format my books for Smashwords, which required a stripped-down Word file.

So I converted my edited and re-edited Open Office file back to Word. Using Search/Replace, I added HTML tags manually for paragraph breaks, boldface, italics, and underline. These tags would be stripped out for Smashwords, but they served as format placeholders.

One "quick" way to format for Smashwords is to save the Word document as Text, which strips out all the codes, and then bring the Text document back up into Word. I'd have to re-bold, re-italicize, etc. The HTML tags let me find where to re-input those codes.

Once I had saved my stripped-down Word file as Text, I copied and moved it into my HTML file, to accompany the HTML codes I'd left in place. Further changes in the HTML file involved replacing special characters (such as diacriticals) with ISO 8859-1 code, because some didn't translate directly, particularly into the PDB ebook format (eReader, Palm, Phone, PDA). During my re-edits I made note of the special characters I had to change.

I then did another read-through of the book, pulling the HTML file up in my browser. (I'd also added some touches, like inserting a hard rule between chapters.) Invariably I'd catch errors (and likely miss others), which meant I'd make changes in triplicate: in the HTML file, the Word file, and the Open Office file.

All this drudgery proved advantageous for me in one way: it broke down my resistance to making certain changes in the manuscript. I had pangs about some sections of text. Even my final tweaking had me killing some wayward darlings and massaging narrative.

Step 4. Dueling Freeware

My blog entry "You CAN Do This At Home!" provides links to e-book reader and conversion freeware. As I created my files, I noticed that not all conversion software is alike, hence the bolded notes in my checklist. I also kept separate subdirectories for intermediate files (files created en route to final formats for uploading) and for the final formats.

As I finished each step, I added "DONE" to the checklist. Here's Part One:

Re-read [book title] and tweak as necessary in Open Office.
Also make changes in stripped HTML version, repeated in Smashwords (.doc) and .odt
a. No drop caps
b. Change any smart quotes to plain quotes; make note of any other symbols such as diacriticals. Leave botanicals in OO and in .pdf file
c. Convert from OO to .pdf file. NOTE: .pdf files takes less space when printed to file than when exported directly from OO. Make Accessible and check Reflow. Set security parameters: high-quality print, no changes.
d. Print .pdf file and re-read, checking for spacing especially. [To be honest, I stopped doing this after Destiny and just read off my screen.]
e. Convert from OO to HTML and change botanicals to regular characters: ~~~ for section breaks and ___ for end. Check spacing in browser.
f. In Mobicreate, convert from HTML into MOBI/PRC files. Check in Mobireader.
g. Re-check in Calibre. In Calibre, convert from PRC to EPUB and LRF. Check in viewers. NOTE: MOBI takes up less space when converted from HTML in Mobicreate than when converted from HTML in Calibre.
h. Convert first from OO back into Word, for format. Then in Word (Admin), convert from Word file to LIT by clicking File and then Read (MS Reader icon). Check in Reader. No botanicals. NOTE: Can now convert to LIT in Calibre.
i. Follow instructions in file "HANDebooks_ How to make PDB" and make PDB file from the file converted to Word. Start with Step #6 NOTE: Do in Admin, not User account. User can't do macros [at least not on my machine]. NOTE: Calibre now converts to PDB but not well; continue to convert manually.

Step 5. Smash It All

At this point I returned to my Word file, and this section of my checklist:

NOTE: Transfer Smashwords-blurbed copyright page info.

Smashwords format:
1. Before "Clear Formatting":
a. Indicate where italics are, using HTML tags
b. Insert boldface HTML tags in chapter heads, subheads, AND [where applicable] in locational heads after section breaks. (In the case of Second Covenant I also added HTML tags for underlining.)
c. Change section breaks from Botanical to ~~~ and to ___ at end
2. Save as .txt, then bring back into Word
3. Replace paragraph tags with manual line break codes.
4. Check spacing before and after chapter heads and section breaks.
5. Save as .doc before inputting codes!
6. Input italics and boldface.
7. In final copy, delete HTML tags
8. Proof.
9. Prepare Smashwords blurb (limit: 400 char.) for upload.

Step 5 in the above list was especially important. Just bringing the text file back into Word wasn't enough. I had to save it as a .doc file, otherwise my added bolding, italicizing, etc. would be knocked right back out again. That was one lesson learned quickly, and somewhat painfully.

Step 6. By Any Other Name

Uploading a book to my website means changing graphics and layout on my main web page and on my Deviations web page. I code my pages manually with basic HTML for the most part, so I wanted to be redundant-redundant in case I messed up and had to fall back on an earlier version with which to start again. Hence this part of my checklist:

Note for webpage name changes:
Change index to index-old
Change index2 in upload-pending subdirectory to index -- version xx
NOTE: downloads.html is now redundant, but should be kept because of prior links to that page. Redirect code has been entered

Step 7. Can You Download Me Now?

I've got a basic Earthlink account, which gives me eight websites to play with, each limited to 10 MB. All of my download pages reside in the main Deviations website, but the e-book files themselves reside in that and in additional websites. I keep a spreadsheet that tracks what file is where, how much space it takes up, and how much room I have left.

Before anything goes live, I upload my e-book files to their respective websites. Then I open the download file on my hard drive and make sure I can retrieve them, using this checklist:

A "yes" signifies the file has been downloaded and checked on the hard drive
EPUB -
PDF -
HTML -
PRC -
LRF -
MOBI -
PDB -
LIT -

When everything goes live, the order of my upload is as follows:

DEVIATIONS SITE:
a. Upload e-book files to the appropriate directory(ies)
b. Upload on Deviations directory:
[The first files to be uploaded are graphics files, like book covers; and secondary files, like previews.]
c. Only after these files have uploaded, then upload, in this order:
Non-Ebook HTML Files
-- downloads page(s)
-- index
Only after that...

MAIN WEBSITE
d. Upload updated files:
-- Rename index to index-old
-- Rename index2 to index and upload
-- resume
-- bibliography

e. Upload to Smashwords

Some of my graphics files are up on my website, but I link to others that I've uploaded to my Flickr account. I also need to make sure that those images are available and made public.

Then it's time to announce the release! (That's a separate checklist in itself.)

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

1,179 Visitors in a Single Day

2011-07-11T00:44:00.002-05:00

According to Google Analytics, my Deviations website received 1,179 visitors on July 9. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and Welcome! Click here to reach my blog entry showing alternate free download sites.

The flat line preceding Saturday's blast off is due to the Deviations website being unavailable until July 1 because I had exceeded my bandwidth. The same now seems to be happening again -- hence my "Redirecting Traffic" entry -- though another 396 visits came through on Sunday.

Thanks to Free Kindle Books and Tips for showcasing the series. That nod sent 327 visits my way over the weekend. And thanks to K.L. Nappier for recommending my work to Pixel of Ink.

(Kathy and I are each other's fans. I have devoured her supernatural thrillers Full Wolf Moon and its sequel, Bitten, losing sleep because I couldn't put them down. Neither could I put down her paranormal mystery Voyagers, a different genre from what I usually read. Her character development, world-building, social commentary, and pacing pull me right in.)

Speaking of mushrooming...

My yard work on Saturday revealed a crop of fungi.

Behind the beauty above, you can see the oak that Mary had grown from an acorn dropped in 2003. (Click here for a full shot of the tree in our side yard, taken a bit over a year ago.)

Here's a close-up of the underside of the cap:

Not far away, closer to our volunteer saltbushes, was this specimen:

And this one:

Swing to the front yard, where these grow in the shade of loropetalum:

A volunteer cherry tree grows by the back porch. I daresay it is feeding many birds right now:

This shot is admittedly overexposed, but I like the look of it. Here's the same thing with edge effects added, and with brightness, contrast, and gamma tweaked:

The same view, photographed with a more realistic exposure setting:

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Gifts of Various Sorts

2011-06-26T12:37:00.000-05:00

Written in response to Sunday Scribblings prompt 273: "Give."

1. The book that keeps on giving

I've just received the paperback version of 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake, also known as "quakebook." This project began with a tweet from @ourmaninabiko shortly after the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In a little more than a week (March 18 to March 25), over 100 people made this book of raw, first-hand experiences in Japan a reality.

I'd been following the tweets (on this list) and had watched this project, which appeared first as an e-book, unfolding. Every penny from revenues goes directly to the Japanese Red Cross.

Don't let its slim 95 pages fool you. This is powerful stuff, best read in small doses. A copy will also go to a dear friend of mine, who has made 20 trips to Japan over the course of 40 years.

2. Giving care

"Convention preparations" for me normally means a science fiction convention, but this one is different. I now have my ticket to attend a Fearless Caregiver Conference, one of several given throughout the country.

3. Gifted with a contributor's copy and a review

My poem "The Last Dragon Slayer" appears in Mythic Delirium #24.

Alexandra Seidel reviews the issue in Fantastique Unfettered:

-----excerpt start-----

"[A] venture into lightheartedness" is what editor Mike Allen calls this latest issue of Mythic Delirium. The poetry assembled here certainly makes for an excellent adventure, and lightheartedness often plays a part, but even so, all these lyrical quests have a weighty center.

The best example for this is probably 'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn, a poem in eight parts, eight parts of tale that is nothing if not epic. Each part is in itself a poem and comes to you each in a different form. This poem of a dragon and questing dragon slayers --while it does many other things--clearly acknowledges the longing for myth, the longing for adventure in all of us.

-----excerpt end-----

I only recently discovered this comment, left back in March by alana (#17) on The Book Smugglers: "I’m all about the strong female protagonist. Right now I'm in the middle of Elissa Malcohn's Deviations (#1) and I’m loving it."

She was responding to author Neesha Meminger's terrific guest blog on her inspirations and influences.

4. Gifts in the making

Inspired by comments from crich70 and astra over at the MobileRead Forums, I've assembled an Omnibus CD of my Deviations series:

The books remain in separate files. E-book file formats are the same as those available for free download on my website (which should be accessible again on July 1; meanwhile, click here for a list of free download sites): EPUB (For EPUB-compatible software, including iPad, Kobo, Nook, updated Sony Reader, and Stanza); HTML (to be read in your browser); LIT (for Microsoft Reader); LRF (Sony Reader compatible); MOBI (For Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle); PDB (For eReader, Palm, Phone, PDA, etc.); PDF (Adobe Acrobat file, tagged to reflow on different-sized screens); and PRC (also for Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle). The autographed CD also contains brochures with book summaries and excerpts.

5. Gifts of nature

This ibis joined three others for a swoop past the house, and rested in a tree across the street as its buddies moved on. It caught up with them several minutes later.

Eudocimus albus, Family Threskiornithidae. Says eNature, "Around their colonies, ibises eat crabs and crayfish, which in turn devour quantities of fish eggs. By keeping down the numbers of crayfish, the birds help increase fish populations. In addition, their droppings fertilize the water, greatly increasing the growth of plankton, the basic food of all marsh life. White Ibises gather at dusk in spectacular roosts, long lines of birds streaming in from all directions."

I watched this sunset from my local community park, shortly before a storm blew in.

6. Gift of music

As soon as I saw the Sunday Scribblings prompt, "Give" by Missing Persons began playing in my head and formed the "theme music" for this entry. I'd bought their 1984 cassette "Rhyme & Reason" based solely on that song.

Redirecting Traffic!

2011-06-06T07:07:00.002-05:00

I seem to have exceeded my bandwidth again. First, I want to thank everyone for stopping by and downloading Deviations. I truly appreciate your interest! And I apologize for the current situation. If you can't get to this site, I believe you can still access files that are not on my main Deviations directory.

In the meantime, I'm gathering info on where you can find my books for free download. Here's a compendium, including my main site. I've indicated where I believe material might not be available until my site is restored.

Key to the formats:
EPUB: for EPUB-compatible software, inclding iPad, Kobo, Nook, updated Sony Reader, and Stanza
HTML: to be read on your browser
LIT: for Microsoft Reader
LRF: Sony Reader compatible
MOBI: for Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle
PDB: for eReader, Palm, Phone, PDA, etc.
PDF: Adobe Acrobat file, tagged to reflow on different-sized screens.
PRC: for Mobipocket Reader devices, including Kindle

On my website:

Vol. 1: Covenant
(All versions of Covenant are currently on my main Deviations directory, so may not be accessible when I've surpassed my traffic allotment.)

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF
PRC

Vol. 2: Appetite
(All versions of Appetite except for Acrobat (PDF) are currently on my Deviations directory, so may not be accessible when I've surpassed my traffic allotment.)

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF
PRC

Vol. 3: Destiny

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF
PRC

Vol. 4: Bloodlines

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF
PRC

Vol. 5: TelZodo

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF
PRC

Vol. 6: Second Covenant

EPUB
HTML
LIT
LRF
MOBI
PDB
PDF

Smashwords carries the full series in multiple formats.

As of this writing, Manybooks carries the first five volumes, with Second Covenant in submission.

Barnes & Noble offers the first four volumes for Nook.

EPUB versions are available from My author page on Goodreads. Here are the download sites for Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, Bloodlines, TelZodo, and Second Covenant.

When last I checked, the Goodreads reader didn't show boldface and italics for Appetite, but they showed up in my Calibre reader after I had downloaded the file.

PDF versions of the full series are available from Obooko.

I'll supply more info as I find it. Again, thank you so much for stopping by!

Second Covenant Sneak Preview Now Live! And More...

2011-05-31T21:20:00.001-05:00

(Cover created in MS Paint, MS Photo Editor, and MS PowerPoint. Click here to see original photo context.)

I'm having a Traffic Jam Special! Earthlink has informed me that the Deviations site "has been so popular that it has exceeded its monthly traffic allotment." Access should resume on June 1, but my download files are on a separate directory. Click here to get the HTML version of Second Covenant, which is Vol. 6 and the conclusion of the Deviations saga. Free downloads in additional e-book formats should be available once my site is back up.

Here are some reviews I've recently discovered (sometimes it takes me a while). Murray Gunn posted this on Goodreads last August:

"It's difficult to believe that such a well-written book could be free. I didn't lose a moment of my reading time to my editing mindset as I have with other Creative Commons ebooks. Covenant is the story of two races locked in a fatally symbiotic relationship and the desperate attempts of rebels from each to break the cycle. The characters are engaging and the plot moves along with a good rhythm. I can't wait to read the next one."

Two new reviews have appeared on Manybooks:

"Loved this series. Really takes you to a different place. Not for the faint of heart. Once I read the first one....I had to read the rest!" -- holbritter

"Love this book and the entire series." -- ian

This nice nod comes from Jo Walton, who writes, "Elissa Malcohn has continued to produce poems, short stories and novels without ever having a breakout hit to bring her visibility," in her recap of 1985 Hugo Nominees. I had been a finalist that year for the John W. Campbell Award -- not a Hugo, but given out during the awards ceremony to the best new SF writer of the year. A single novelette -- "Lazuli" (Asimov's, Nov. 1984) -- had gotten me on the ballot.

Mythic Delirium Issue 24 is slated to appear in June. Here's what reviewer Alexandra Seidel says in Fantastique Unfettered:

-----excerpt start-----

"[A] venture into lightheartedness" is what editor Mike Allen calls this latest issue of Mythic Delirium. The poetry assembled here certainly makes for an excellent adventure, and lightheartedness often plays a part, but even so, all these lyrical quests have a weighty center.

The best example for this is probably 'The Last Dragon Slayer' by Elissa Malcohn, a poem in eight parts, eight parts of tale that is nothing if not epic. Each part is in itself a poem and comes to you each in a different form. This poem of a dragon and questing dragon slayers --while it does many other things--clearly acknowledges the longing for myth, the longing for adventure in all of us.

-----excerpt end-----

You can also preview the issue's gorgeous cover image on Mike Allen's home page.

My article "Social Networking and the Found Poem" can now be accessed from the WyoPoets site, in their April newsletter (.pdf file). If you're connected with me on Facebook, you can view the original post here.

Watch this space for Second Covenant updates!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.

Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Publications, Reviews, Birds

2011-04-30T15:16:00.001-05:00

Publications

My contributor's copy of A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock has arrived, with my poem "Far From the Pleasure Garden":

Watch this space for ordering info.

I now also have copies of Open Laboratory 2010: The Best of Science Writing on the Web in hand, with my sonnets "Manipulations" and "In Development":

My To-Do list includes submitting to Open Lab 2011. Check out the most recent "submissions so far" list with links to the original articles. After five years of being self-published, Open Lab will now be brought to you by Scientific American Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux (more info here). Congratulations to series editor Bora Zivkovic and to all involved!

Beautiful illos by Paula Friedlander and Tim Mullins will accompany my poem "The Last Dragon Slayer," forthcoming in Mythic Delirium #24. Preview the art here.

The WyoPoets Newsletter has reprinted my article "Social Networking and the Found Poem" in its April 2011 issue. Another reprint, "The Many Shades of Dark Poetry," is slated for July. Both originally appeared in Of Poets And Poetry, the newsletter of the Florida State Poets Association.

Reviews

Back in March (discovered by me in April), Bard Bloom posted this review of Covenant and inspired a discussion that made my day. Writes Bloom, "I give this one an enthusiastic recommendation. Interesting characters, interesting moral quandary, and lots of responses to it. I was expecting one of two easy answers, but Malcohn quite bravely avoided them both."

A new review of She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror has appeared at Shock Totem. Writes John Boden, "Take a measure of Mad Max futurism and mix liberally with prophets, the damned, and revenge and you have Elissa Malcohn’s, 'Judgment at Naioth.'"

Birds

Closer to home, the ibises are back in town:

Eudocimus albus, Family Threskiornithidae. Says eNature, "Around their colonies, ibises eat crabs and crayfish, which in turn devour quantities of fish eggs. By keeping down the numbers of crayfish, the birds help increase fish populations. In addition, their droppings fertilize the water, greatly increasing the growth of plankton, the basic food of all marsh life. White Ibises gather at dusk in spectacular roosts, long lines of birds streaming in from all directions."

I spotted this peahen moseying around our local strip mall:

Genus Pavo, likely Pavo cristatus (India blue peafowl). According to United Peafowl Association, "Peafowl are native to India, Burma, Java. Ceylon [Sri Lanka], Malaya. and Congo. Peafowl are relatives of pheasants. The main difference between peafowl and pheasants is in the plumage. Peafowl are very hardy birds and with proper care, can live forty to fifty years. The term 'peafowl' refers to the species name. The male is called the peacock and the female is called the peahen. Offspring under the age of one year are called peachicks."

Mary and I subsequently learned that several peafowl are in the area. This individual seemed relatively comfortable around humans, and actually walked toward me as I took this next shot.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

News Bits

2011-02-22T14:48:00.002-05:00

Bloodlines wins New Covey Cover Award

I recently learned that my fourth Deviations volume, Bloodlines, has won the Sept. 2010 New Covey Award for Most Artistic Cover: "selected by the Covey Judges as the cover that best combined art and design."

Click here to see how I put that cover together.

Quatrain wins Darwin Day Award

Artist Glendon Mellow (blogging as The Flying Trilobite) held a Darwin Day contest, in which he asked for a Tweet-sized post of 140 or fewer characters describing his fabulous painting Darwin Took Steps. The prize was a print of the painting.

On February 14 I learned my quatrain was the prize-winning post:

Preconceptions dropped away / As he stood atop Bartolome. / For Darwin, a glimpse of nature's plan: / Ascent of stairs, Descent of Man.

Click here for more info, which includes a photograph I took of the real Darwin Steps on Bartolome, Galapagos Islands, and a stunning panoramic view from the summit.

Mole cricket photo picked up by Paws For Wildlife

Thanks to Sebastian Bawn for soliciting my shot of a tawny mole cricket for use in the U.K. site Paws For Wildlife.

New chapbook: Poetic Variables

Poetic Variables: Science Poems for January 2011 is my third chapbook and a sequel to 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010. More info and ways to order are at my website.

Last month I posted a science poem a day, written in various traditional forms, in honor of Science Online 2011. The "fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web" ran from Jan. 13-16. Click here to access the conference page, which has links to posts, tweets, photos, and videos from the event.

You can access the index and live links to my January 2011 poems here. Those posts include links to the science articles that inspired the poems, along with links to descriptions of the different poetic forms used. Poetic Variables includes discussions of those forms.

From the back cover blurb: "Thirty-one poems celebrate both scientific variety and the many forms of verse. From mental time travel to a 14-million-year-old lake. From jet-lagged mold to frugal amoebas. From quantum states in migrating robins to salmon finding their way by smell. And much more, in forms ranging from Abecedarian to Villanelle, Persian Ghazal to Korean Sijo and beyond."

Thanks to Daniella Martin (Girl Meets Bug), An Inordinate Fondness #12 (hosted by Bug Girl), and Prof. Zen Faulkes for the shout-outs and poem citations -- and to P.F. Anderson, Thebeautybrains, Ellen Byrne, Dawn A Crawford, Karin Fornazier, Vida Jaugelis, Raima Larter, Joanne Manster, Susanna Speier, Karyn Traphagen, Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker, the Citrus County (FL) NaNoWriMo Group, and The Way We Write for all the retweets!

Two science sonnets to appear in Open Laboratory 2010

Two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," will appear in Open Laboratory 2010. Click here for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection -- and click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!

Two poems appear in Star*Line, including an Editor's Choice

I have two works in a special science poems section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. "Ciliate Sestina" received Editor's Choice and can be read here.

Guest post at Indie Authors How-To blog

Thanks to Lakisha Spletzer for asking me to guest-blog at her Indie Authors How-To site. Click here to read my post, "What's Your Journey?"

Love Your Library

On February 18 I attended the Citrus County Library's "Love Your Library" evening, complete with wine-tasting, food, live jazz (from the Citrus Jazz Society), silent auction, and more. Click here for my photoset.

I donated this book bundle to the silent auction. The bundle included:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press). (Click here for more info and free downloads.)
2. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
3. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
4. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" -- on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 27th Annual Collection -- and poem "Derivative Work").
5. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
6. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.
7. She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010).
8. Chapbook Divinations: Writing by the Throw of the Dice.
9. My latest chapbook, Poetic Variables: Science Poems for January 2011.

Thanks to library director Flossie Benton Rogers and to everyone who worked on this fabulous event!

Inverness Book Festival

On January 29 I participated in the Inverness Book Festival in the seat of Citrus County. The event occurred in the Old Courthouse Historical Museum. Thanks to festival coordinators Sandra Koonce, the GFWC Woman's Club of Inverness, and the Citrus County Historical Society! Ten percent of sales were donated to the club.

Crystal River Women's Club

On January 19 I spoke to the Crystal River Women's Club. Thanks to Pat Rada for inviting me and to the club for a great audience!

I usually gear my presentations toward writers, but in this case I spoke mainly to readers. My talk focused on how I became a writer, why I write what I do, what inspires me, and how my life experience has shaped my creative output in its various forms. My bottom lines: (a) Follow your passion, and (b) Nothing is wasted.

L-R: Jo Ann Ryan, Education & Literary Chair; Margie Harper, President of CRWC; me; and Pat Rada, Chair of Wednesday's program.

I used a portion of this talk in my guest blog at Indie Author How-To (see above).

Poetry Panel at Tampa Writers Alliance

On January 5 I joined John Foster and David Roth for "The Heart of Poetic Expression... Learning to Romance Words." Thanks to Tampa Writers Alliance President Chris Taylor, to the other TWA volunteers, and to a great audience!

From the panel blurb: "Why is it that many of the best selling novels seem to have a poetic sound to the writing? Perhaps these successful authors have mastered writing poems as well as storytelling. Could understanding the structure of poems help hone the skills of a novelist?"

L-R: Me, John Foster, and David Roth. The meeting occurred at the Carrollwood Barnes & Noble in Tampa, FL.

Coming up: On February 23 I'll speak to the Kings Bay Rotary Club on "A Gaggle of Muses: Creativity for Fun and Sometimes Profit."

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

2010: A Look Back

2010-12-31T13:53:00.001-05:00

A summary of my year in writing and publishing, events, audio, video, and more of life...

1. Writing/Publishing

This year has seen a mixture of submitting, self-publishing, and engaging in exploratory and collaborative projects.

As planned, I released two Deviations volumes this year: Bloodlines in June and TelZodo in December, both as free e-book downloads. Next year I'll release the series conclusion, Second Covenant. If you've been following the series (thank you, readers!), I've got the final installment's blurb and preview here.

I had hoped to start producing audiobooks this year, but that's taking longer than expected. The folks at Podiobooks have given me some great pointers. I've recorded a read-through of Covenant, but the real work comes in the editing, which I hope to devote time to in 2011. I've also gotten some requests to produce paperback versions, so am considering my options there as well. Thanks to everyone who's gotten in touch!

This year also marked the first time I've produced chapbooks: 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010 and Divinations: writing by the throw of the dice. (I've also submitted the sonnets to Open Laboratory, an annual anthology of science blogs. Click here for links to everyone's submissions.) Divinations is an outgrowth of my participation in Folded Word's "24/7" project in August. My website has info on the chapbooks and on my publications in general.

Also for the first time, I entered (and won!) a song-writing contest, sponsored by Woodview Coffee House. Details here.

My novelette "Flotsam" (Asimov's, Oct./Nov. 2009) made the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 27th Annual Collection. That's the second consecutive year I've made the list.

I've been named to the Broad Universe Motherboard, and am the new chair for the adult contests of the Florida State Poets Association. I also have a guest-editing stint coming up -- stay tuned!

In addition to participating in Post A Story For Haiti, I this year joined Shadow Forest Authors as a book donor. (I also marked my one-year anniversary of being a book donor for Operation E-Book Drop and Books For Soldiers.)

Additional publications in 2010 include:

Fiction and micro-fiction:
"Judgment at Naioth" in She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, October).
"Icarus Redux" in Niteblade, June.
Micro-fiction "Heisenberg's Metamorphosis," "Bittersweet," and "Fierce Harvest" in PicFic, Sept. 6.
Micro-fiction "Empty Nest" in PicFic, May 18.
Micro-fiction in Thaumatrope, Feb. 12.

Poetry:
"Duet Singularity" and "Ciliate Sestina" in Star*Line 33(5/6). "Ciliate Sestina" was named Editor's Choice.
"Far From Free Association" in the open-mic section of Poets for Living Waters, a poetry action in response to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Evolutionary Variants on a Russian Proverb" in Star*Line 33(4), along with my write-up of the speculative poetry workshop I gave at Ancient City Con IV (and Edward Cox's review of my 30 Science Sonnets).
"Pele's Wandering Fire" in Of Poets And Poetry, June. This poem also received second prize in the Spring Fling contest, Florida State Poets Association.
microcosms on May 17, August 12, and November 22.
"Nor'easter Requiem" in unFold, April 23.
"Total Lunar Eclipse" in Astropoetica, Spring (reprint).
"Butterfly Woman" (text and audio) in Goblin Fruit, Winter.
Thanks also to artist Paul Vincenti, who posted my sonnet "A Meeting of the Arts" to go with his painting "Ballerina."

Interviews:
Print: "Downrange: Elissa Malcohn" appears in the inaugural issue of Valent Range, Summer.
Online: I was interviewed by Trisha Wooldridge (Jul. 31; to benefit the Bay State Equine Rescue); Tracy S. Morris (Sept. 15); and Jane Hunter (Nov. 7).
Podcast: Conversations Live! on March 3; That Sci-Fi Show on Oct. 9 (my segment begins about 20 minutes in).

More Audio
You can hear me reading an excerpt from Appetite in the Broadpod (Episode 2: Women's History) and my poems "Neighbors" and "Eye of the Beholder" in Episode 5: Humor. I reprise "Neighbors" in the Science Fiction Poetry Association Halloween Reading.

More Online Writing
This year I began writing book reviews for Psych Central. Two have been posted so far, for Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers (Karyl McBride, Ph.D.) and The Use of Technology in Mental Health: Applications, Ethics and Practice (Kate Anthony et al.). Two more reviews are currently in submission.

Forthcoming
Fiction:
"Visitations" in Jack-o'-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy, Raven Electrick Ink.

Poetry:
"Shrine to the Disconnected" in Dreams and Nightmares #90.
"The Last Dragon Slayer" in Mythic Delirium #24.
"Far From the Pleasure Garden" in A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock, Dark Scribe Press.

Promo
My events this year were all Florida-based and included the Florida State Poets Association Spring Fling (Hernando), Oasis 23 (Orlando), Ancient City Con IV (Jacksonville), Deep Carnivale (Tampa), Spooky Empire (Orlando), and Necronomicon 29 (St. Petersburg), along with author fairs at the Land O'Lakes Library and the Hudson Regional Library. As in past years, I was a panelist in the three-part NaNoWriMo series at the Citrus County Library, which also held its inaugural author fair this year. Online, I participated in Coyote Con. Click here to get more details about past events and here for more info on what's coming up. Thanks to all the volunteers and staff who made these events possible and to everyone who stopped by my panels, workshops, and tables!

Projects
I've been trying to hammer a gaggle of ideas into shape that include a couple of nonfiction projects. To prepare for one of them, I've begun to transcribe dozens of tapes of conversation. I've transferred the audio from cassette to digital and am using the awesome freeware Express Scribe. I make part of my living from transcribing and have done so for decades, so this kind of activity comes naturally.

2. Visual
Thanks to the Marine Society of Australasia for using my photo of a crab spider (taken in 2005) in their publication The World of Crabs.

Here are links to my Top 10 favorite shots/videos of 2010:

10. Moon Over St. Petersburg (Oct. 25). I spotted this sight as I walked from a parking garage to the Bayside Hilton, where I was attending Necronomicon. I had taken this shot freehand at night, using a 1/40-second exposure at f4.
9. Passionflower (Oct. 5). An unusual and stunning flower native to the Southeastern U.S., seen in my neighborhood.
8. Great Egret 5 (June 10). I snapped this shot just as the egret was taking off from a retention pond about a mile from my home. New construction subsequently placed a fence around the pond, which was dredged and rebuilt. I'll miss taking my camera down to the water's edge.
7. Persephone's Dream (Dec. 28), a photo collage I made using a couple of pomegranate shots.
6. Lycosid With Spiderlings 4 (Nov. 3), taken inside my garage. Female Wolf Spiders (Family Lycosidae) carry their young on their back. Unless you feel as I do about spiders, you won't find this a pretty picture. I was fascinated by the sight -- and enchanted.
5. Mating Dragonflies (Nov. 24). Catching this pair was a case of sheer luck that consisted of looking up at the right moment and having my camera strapped to me. I had just stepped out of Mary's Ranger and into the parking lot at the mall.
4. Male Luna Moth, series 1 (Sept. 9). I had never seen a Luna Moth in person until this day and had been aching to encounter one. This one made its appearance at a strip mall.
3. Southern Black Racer (Aug. 10). This photo just edges out my Luna Moth series for the #3 spot. For years I had wanted to photograph both these creatures. I had seen black racers before, but they'd always been too fast for me, until this shot taken at the same retention pond where I'd photographed the egret.
2. The Pane of Separation (Sept. 13), a could'a-been-close encounter between an anole and a fly, with a window between them. I took this shot at a McDonald's in the same strip mall where I'd seen the luna moth.
1. Solstice Total Lunar Eclipse, December 21, 2010 (video). As I spent the night taking these 89 photos from my driveway, I thought it a propos that my poem "Total Lunar Eclipse" had been reprinted this year (see above). The eclipse of the poem had occurred on July 6, 1982, eight days before my mother's death. I was living in New York at the time, but had come down here and had spent the night watching the eclipse from this same house.

3. Etc.

Various challenges marked 2010, but the hardest emotionally for Mary and me was the death of our 18-year-old cat, Daisy, from kidney failure in April. Daisy joined her buddy Red, who had passed two years earlier at 16.

We raised the roof in March -- and lowered a new one into place, which got rid of our pesky ceiling-spotting problem.

In May, following the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, I joined others in Citrus County participating in the Matter of Trust Hair for Oil Spills Program. My own hair donation marked the first time I'd had a haircut since the 1970s (I've enjoyed the cut so much I've kept it). In addition to collecting and shipping hair and fur, I traveled to Tampa to participate in a "BoomBQ" to make the hair booms themselves.

In September I added my video to the It Gets Better Project, started by Dan Savage in response to LGBT teen suicides. This year, Mary and I also became involved with our local Gay-Straight Alliance.

This has been a good year for me health-wise. In 2010 I dropped 20+ pounds, with concurrent decreases in my blood glucose and cholesterol. My main tool was keeping a food journal. The most influential change in my diet was eating less cheese. I plan to continue the trend in 2011.

May the New Year bring blessings for all. Stay safe and warm out there.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Blessings

2010-12-24T11:50:00.000-05:00

Created using MS Paint, MS Photo Editor, and MS PowerPoint. Links to photo components in their original contexts: Lily, Great Egret, Luna Moth, and Passionflower.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Now Live!

2010-12-02T01:30:00.002-05:00

TelZodo, the fifth Deviations volume, is now live! As with the rest of the series, this book includes mature content. Free downloads are available on the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Blurb:

Fifteen years have passed since Rudder annexed Promontory. Seventeen years have passed since the Covenant's destruction. Born in-between those two events, TelZodo is coming of age in Crossroads. And he is in trouble.

He should have been a scientist like his parents, Ghost and Piri, but the lab and its corpses terrify him. His freedom from Yata dependence made him a celebrated hybrid child, but he is sterile. Living as a whore and driven to the brink of madness, TelZodo's only salvation is to return to his birthplace, Promontory, a city that once wanted him dead.

Living in Promontory and hobbled by poor health, TripStone's life is equally bleak. The region's austerity has made her hard, and the last thing she wants is a visit from Ghost's "crazy" son.

TelZodo's arrival plunges them into a battle of wills that strips them down to their emotional cores, leaving them no choice but to face their personal demons together -- if they don't kill each other first.

The title character's life started unfolding for me shortly after I had written his birth scene in Vol. 2, Appetite. I had one thoroughly insomniac night while writing Vol. 4, Bloodlines, in which I laid down a loose outline for TelZodo and started envisioning the sixth and final installment, Second Covenant. I plan to release the series conclusion in mid-2011.

Unlike the other volumes in the series, TelZodo is a Bildungsroman. It also differs from the preceding volumes in that it contains only two points of view, TelZodo's and TripStone's.

Thanks to everyone who has come along with me for the ride thus far!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Events, Publications, Promo

2010-11-20T11:58:00.003-05:00

Citrus County Author Fair and Write-In

On November 6 I joined about 20 people at the inaugural Citrus County Author Fair. Thanks to library director Flossie Benton Rogers, reference librarian Tom Mueller, programming and youth services coordinator Karen Slaska, and library staff! Thanks also to the GFWC Woman's Club of Inverness for scrumptious home-baked refreshments. Ten percent of sales were donated to the library.

My display included the usual gang:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press). (Click here for more info and free downloads.)
2. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
3. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
4. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" -- on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 27th Annual Collection -- and poem "Derivative Work").
5. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
6. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.
7. She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010).
8. Divinations: Writing by the Throw of the Dice.

The library also displayed local author works.

In addition to the paperback of Covenant, the standing e-books are from my series. I donate five copies to the library (one for each branch in the county). On the day of the fair I handed Flossie five copies of Bloodlines.

People wandered in and out throughout the afternoon:

You can see the full photoset here.

Six days later I was a panelist at "Write-In," the second of the library's three-part NaNoWriMo series:

L-R: Dylan Newton, Loretta C. Rogers, Citrus County Library director Flossie Benton Rogers, Joyce Elson Moore, and me.

Our format this year differed from past years, in that Dylan, Loretta, Joyce, and I discussed various topics, with Loretta serving as moderator. Topics included how to get over hating your characters, what to do if you have to hurt your characters and don't want to, making your characters three-dimensional, finding motivation to write, what to do if your plot falls apart, and more. After taking questions from our audience, we broke up into small groups for more personal consultations.

Publications Update

Nick Cato had this to say in his review of She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: "My absolute favorite of the anthology is Elissa Malcohn’s 'Judgment at Naioth,' a fantastic short about an Israel existing in a different time and place where the Philistines are a major drug gang and David is an aging musician in a dance club populated by prophets who are kept addicted to drugs. His eldest son Amnon is a ruthless mayor and his favorite son Absalom is among the denizens of the club. Solomon, a prophet in this strange world, has told David’s daughter Tamar that David must die to set the world right again; in another world David is a king whose forty-year reign is prosperous for his people. Ms. Malcohn has put an exciting spin on the Biblical story of King David with this one."

My story "Visitations" has been accepted to Jack-o-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy.

Deena Warner did the cover design below for A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock, expected out in early 2011 from Dark Scribe Press.

The collection will include my poem "Far From the Pleasure Garden." You can read more about the anthology and see the Table of Contents here.

I'm in the final stages of preparing TelZodo, the fifth and next-to-last Deviations volume, for release next month.

I've also joined Shadow Forest Authors, "A fellowship of authors and supporters for charity," especially with respect to literacy programs.

More Promo

An interview with me appears on the Broad Universe Blog. Thanks to interviewer Jane Hunter!

Back in July, I had entered the Woodview Coffee House song-writing contest. On November 5 I learned I'd taken first place, and performed the song at the coffee house. Blog entry with photos and links to audio here.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Necronomicon 29 & More (Photo heavy)

2010-10-27T08:31:00.001-05:00

Moon over St. Petersburg, FL, where Necronomicon was held. I managed to take this steady shot freehand, with a 1/40-second exposure at f4.

First, some news briefs...

The cover for Bloodlines is now in the running for a New Covey Cover Award, here. You can see the full set of this month's contestants here.

Examiner reviewer David Roth gave Covenant five out of five stars here. Among other things, he writes, "Without sensationalized graphic violence or the glamorized pornography of pulp romance novels, Ms. Malcohn achieves what good science fiction/fantasy is intended to do. She has created a believable world, with characters with whom you can empathize, in a good story that is well and eloquently told."

You can hear me perform my poem "Neighbors" (which appears in Vampyr Verse) as part of the Science Fiction Poetry Association's 2010 Halloween Poetry Reading, put together by Liz Bennefield. I also have some digital collage art on the page. Also among the performers: David Kopaska-Merkel reading "By the Grace of Winter's Queen," David Lee Summers reading "A Vampire's Domain," Lyn C.A. Gardner reading "House 5," Karen A. Romanko reading "Country Inn," T.J. McIntyre reading "The Revolutionary Behind the Tavern," Shelly Bryant reading "Night Falls," Stephen M. Wilson reading "Frost Bitten," Liz Bennefield reading "Alien Life," and Maria Alexander reading "The Little One" (translated from the French, "Petite"). Gardner, Romanko, and Bennefield also provide digital art.

I attended Necronomicon 29 on October 22-24, 2010 in St. Petersburg, FL. Thanks to coordinator Ann Morris and all the volunteers for a great convention!

Click below to continue...

My display included Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press); Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads); She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010; contains my story "Judgment at Naioth"); Bram Stoker Award-winner Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press; contains my story "Memento Mori"); IPPY Silver Medalist Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press; contains my story "Arachne"); Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work"); Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors"); My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010; and chapbook Divinations: Writing by the Throw of the Dice.

Thanks also to K.L. (Kathy) Nappier and her husband Richard for putting me up over the weekend and for their awesome hospitality.

Above: Kathy with her able assistant, Justine.

Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc (in the gown) poses with friends.

Several passers-by.

At three months old, Puck was already autographing his own calendar (thanks to food coloring), which sold out. Throughout the weekend he seemed fascinated with the convention, loved being held and petted, and met each day with a fresh costume change. His human Dee kept him on a leash for walks and also carried him in a homemade Kitty Snugli, while keeping food and litterbox at the ready.

David Gerrold was this year's Guest of Honor and gave a fabulous address about reading outside the genre to develop as a writer, why we have smartphones instead of flying cars, and much more.

On Saturday morning, John Tumlin and I hosted a speculative poetry workshop and reading. That afternoon, I joined Richard Lee Byers, E. Rose Sabin, and Terri Garey to talk about "Pitfalls & Traps Writers Can Avoid on the Road to Success," from the writing process through publishing.

Necro coordinator Ann Morris reads contestant entries for the Masquerade on Saturday night.

The title of this entry was "Prince of Darkness." Note "BP" on the hardhat.

The shield and costume for Captain America were all handmade.

Effect created with latex and spirit gum.

Alice in Wonderland.

I also encountered a young Iron Man.

These lovely ladies welcomed us to the Necronomi-Prom.

Dancing just starting to get underway. I headed off to bed before things really got going.

More Necro photos may be found in my photoset.

Necronomicon came on the heels of the NaNoWriMo Kickoff, the first of the Citrus County Library's three-part NaNo Series.

We had an audience of almost 30 people. Here I am with my usual wares:

I dug out my old literary tee for this place because it's purple. I wore that, along with my rainbow peace pin and rainbow kerchief tucked alongside my belt (you can just see the ends in this shot), in memory of the teens who have committed suicide over the past few weeks as a result of bullying. More info on "Wear Purple Day" is here.

I joined fellow panelists (click on the pictures to get to their bios) Loretta Rogers:

Joyce Elson Moore:

Dylan Newton:

and our fabulous attendees:

The Kickoff consisted of two sets of presentations. First, we held a genre workshop. I gave a general intro to the concept of genre and spoke about science fiction and memoir/biography. Loretta covered westerns, inspirational, and mystery; Joyce covered young adult, historical, and romance; and Dylan covered fantasy/paranormal and children's fiction. Earlier, we'd collected surveys from attendees that told us what genres and other areas they wanted us to discuss.

After a break, the second half of the Kickoff included "words of wisdom." Dylan started us off with inspiration and energy: what it takes to write 50,000 words in 30 days. (Her NaNoWriMo project became Despite the Ghosts, a paranormal romance published with The Wild Rose Press.) Joyce followed with general info on how to get published. Loretta spoke about how writers get their ideas. I brought up the rear with general guidance and helpful writing hints, and gave a preview of what we're doing for the "Write-In" next month, the second part of the NaNoWriMo series.

Thanks to Citrus County Library director Flossie Benton Rogers, reference librarian Tom Mueller, programming and youth services coordinator Karen Slaska, library staff, and Friends of the Lakes Region Library!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Spooky Empire Ultimate Horror Weekend (Photo Heavy)

2010-10-15T19:41:00.000-05:00

I was a guest at the Spooky Empire Ultimate Horror Weekend Oct. 8-10, 2010. Thanks to Linda S. Cowden (Auntie Maim) for coordinating the Author Track!

Full report follows.

Thanks also to K.L. (Kathy) Nappier for securing some superb budget accommodation at the Country Inn & Suites, a short walk from the convention's locale at the Wyndham Resort. ("Elevators!" "Continental breakfast with eggs and sausage!")

For once I got a decent sleep before the con. I took off from home around high noon and arrived about 90 minutes later at Room 212...

... where a young squirrel greeted me from the palm tree outside my window.

I'd first swung by my P.O. Box, where my membership pin from Broad Universe awaited -- just in time for me to take to wear throughout the weekend. The pins are being distributed to members in celebration of Broad Universe's tenth anniversary, but I've also just joined the organization's Motherboard (a.k.a. executive board).

I'm also wearing an Orlando Area Science Fiction Society t-shirt.

Kathy and I hoofed it to the Wyndham, where we met up with Linda to get our badges & tent cards before the Zombie Walk. Behind us was this line waiting to get into a convention that, last I heard, clocked in at around 15,000 attendees:

Below: Zombie Walk about to begin. I thought it quite a propos that the Tourist Info spot behind them is captioned, "Know Before You Go."

Much screaming soon ensued.

See my photoset for more Zombie Walk shots. Also get a load of this video, courtesy of Orlando Attractions Magazine.

Traffic had been warned:

Kathy and I repaired to Uno for dinner, where Spooky Empire had infiltrated as well -- from Young Frankenstein showing above the bar...

("Put ... the candle ... BACK!")

... to Kathy's special Spooky Empire Zombie drink eyeballing my beer.

Across the aisle, a zombie family decided to have me for dessert.

Across from Uno, the Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not Museum lay at its usual tilt.

Back at the Wyndham, we caught a saucy performance by the VaudeVillains burlesque troupe.

John Citrone of Xomba gave a Horror Journalism workshop after the performance, with article, pitch, and review samples along with their deconstruction. For me it was an education in SEO (search engine optimization) and the special considerations of writing for the web.

My Saturday schedule included three panels, two signings at the author tables, and an interview. Kathy and I had a solid breakfast at the Country Inns & Suites, then trundled our wares to the Wyndham with a semi-mad dash across broad and busy Sand Lake Road.

I had my full complement of offerings with me but only so much room for a display, which included Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press); Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads); Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori"); Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors"); and She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010; contains my story "Judgment at Naioth" -- the anthology is newly reviewed here and received a starred review at Publisher's Weekly).

After the first signing I packed up my gear and high-tailed it to my first panel, "Believers, Skeptics, and Cynics," led by renowned cryptozoologist Scott Marlowe of MonsterQuest fame. We discussed where we fell on the spectrum of whether we believed in monsters, which expanded to paranormal phenomena and UFOs. With respect to monsters, I consider myself a skeptic and also questioned the language. In my view, a thin line may exist between "monsters" and species not yet formally discovered. (What would we have said, for example, about the "Hobbits" of Indonesia, prior to finding the current evidence? That said, "evidence" is also in the eye of the beholder.) Other panelists included Robert Shuster, Stokely Gittens, Vince Courtney, and Joe Garden.

From there I sat in on "Zombie Outbreak: How to Survive," where Kathy took her seat beside T-shirt Bordello's "Don of the Dead" Myers and played to a packed room:

Zombie blogger Scott Kenemore moderated the panel, joined also by Kimberly Raiser, reviewer Laura Reuther, and Rob Fox.

That left us an hour before my next book-signing and Kathy's next panel. We scooted to the Wyndham's Market Cafe, where Karen -- who if I heard correctly was serving 11 tables, all of them in a hurry -- was Positively Fabulous. She got us served, satisfied, and out of there lickety-split.

After Signing #2 I hoofed it to an interview with That Sci-Fi Show, which was broadcasting live onsite for the weekend. Thanks to Chris West and Sci-Fi Amy! My 10-minute spot begins about 20 minutes into the show's final installment on Oct. 9. Transcript to come.

Then I was off to moderate "Poetry: Spice Up Your Story," with readings and discussion among myself, Linda S. Cowden, and Sierra Costner. We told our stories of how we became poets/genre poets. I distributed literature from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Audience members scribbled notes as we discussed markets, resources, sources of inspiration, and different poetic forms.

That brought me to 6 p.m., with one more panel to go for the day. I had a quick dinner back at the Country Inns & Suites, where I also dropped off all but my display books -- though I managed to make a sale at my 9 p.m. panel, "Villain or Victim: Which is Easier to Write?" There I joined Richard Lee Byers, Jason Surrell , Kimberly Raiser, and moderator John Catapano.

I loved this panel topic, because the line between my villain and victim can be pretty slim. One tends to turn into the other and back again. As one might expect, we all pointed out the necessity of making characters complicated, victim and villain alike, along with the pitfalls of providing too much background info that might spoil a character's mystery. Discussion crossed from literature into film, spanning from the tragedy of Frankenstein's monster to the layering of Hannibal the Cannibal.

And then -- to bed.

Sunday began with the 11 a.m. panel "Research & History Can Make or Break Your Story," moderated by historian Brett Link, with myself, Linda S. Cowden, Owl Goingback, and K.L. Nappier. Along with research methods and the importance of using multiple and primary sources (i.e., Wikipedia can be the first step, but don't make it the only step!), we discussed the advantage of having way more notes than make it into a story.

Then I pretty much laid back until my 3 p.m. signing, before heading to a final, quick Q&A panel as part of John Citrone's presentation "Writing Fiction Isn't as Hard as it Seems -- It's Much Harder." But not before I snapped this shot:

(Scott Marlowe is just in frame at lower left.)

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Publications, Promos, Photos

2010-09-20T21:05:00.001-05:00

Before I start talking about myself, here's an example of the power of positive energy: Apex Magazine editor Catherynne Valente is reading for a special issue that will "showcase writers of Arab descent and Muslim writers." Read her post for details.

The July/August 2010 issue of Star*Line (journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association) includes my poem "Evolutionary Variants on a Russian Proverb," a review by Edward Cox of my collection 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010, review of Valent Range (which contains an interview with me), and my write-up of the speculative poetry workshop I gave at Ancient City Con IV this past July.

Writes Cox, "The wide range of subject and information covered by the author form a big bag of ideas that are just waiting for some dreamer to extrapolate into tales of fantasy and wonder -- and, who knows, maybe someone will. But for the time being, while we're dealing with the truth, 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010 is an entertaining and thoughtful read, and one very strong reason why Twitter is a good thing." (Chapbooks are available directly from me, through the e-mail address on my website.)

But the standout piece for me in Star*Line 33(4) was Bryan Hall's article, "Freedom in Speculative Poetry." The art of escaping to other worlds while one's body is imprisoned isn't an allegory for Bryan; it's real. He writes of honing his craft and of connecting with fellow poets through the lens of incarceration's harsh realities. This piece alone is worth the price of the issue.

Back in August I participated in Folded Word's writing month event, called "24/7,". Participants spent the first 24 days of the month writing short works, then spent the final week in revisions. The second part of this entry gives more details.

I wasn't required to give a central theme to the entries, but I chose the theme "Divinations" and used a pair of dice to generate prompts. A linked index of my entries appears here.

I've now compiled those entries into the chapbook pictured above. I've made some revisions to the original works, changed their presentation order, and changed or omitted a few of the accompanying photos. Three works of "24/7" Twitter-fiction have appeared in Folded Word's publication PicFic: "Heisenberg's Metamorphosis," "Bittersweet," and "Fierce Harvest."

Thanks to Tracy S. Morris for her author spotlight of me on her blog "Rambling Roses, Purple Prose and other Asinine Alliteration" (and to She Nailed A Stake Through His Head editor Tim Lieder for this shout-out).

Coming up in October:

Spooky Empire in Orlando, FL, Oct. 8-10. In addition to gigs at the signing tables, I'll be on panels "Believers, Skeptics, and Cynics;" "Poetry: Spice Your Story;" "Villain or Victim: Which Is Easier to Write?"; and "Research and History Can Make or Break Your Story."

I'll be a panelist at the Citrus County Library's kickoff for its three-part NaNoWriMo series on Oct. 20. You can download the .pdf brochure here. Fellow panelists and I will meet soon to read participant wish lists before we finalize our presentations for the program's fourth year.

Necronomicon 29 in St. Petersburg, FL, Oct. 22-24. In addition to holding court in Author Alley, I'll be part of a speculative poetry workshop and will be on the panel "Pitfalls & Traps Writers Can Avoid on the Road to Success."

A closing photo-op...

Last week Mary and I were catching a quick bite at McDonald's when I spotted a young anole just outside one of the picture windows. The fly had come indoors. For the next few minutes, lizard and fly observed each other. From the look of the anole's open mouth in this shot, I can imagine it salivating; at times the fly's behavior seemed almost like taunting. Best viewed large.

Getting a decent photo of the pair proved challenging. Often my camera focused on the window itself, or on a tree behind and across the parking lot from the anole, making blurs of both lizard and fly. They were also backlit from the strong sunlight outside. This shot uses a 12x optical zoom from about six feet away, since I was wary of getting too close to the pair and frightening them off. I cropped the original shot and altered brightness, contrast, and gamma to bring out more detail.
Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Deep Carnivale 2010

2010-09-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

Entrance to Deep Carnivale, which took place in the Performing Arts Building at Hillsborough Community College in Ybor City (Tampa, FL).

I attended Deep Carnivale on September 11, 2010. Thanks to David Audet and all the volunteers for putting on a great event!

The gallery.

More artwork, plus costumes.

The Performing Arts Building's A/C was in top form -- so much so that I ran out to my car for a change of clothing. I ditched my shorts for long pants and threw the denim shirt you see here over my shortsleeved print shirt.

Shown here is part of my display, which included:

1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).
2. Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads).
3. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
4. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
5. Issue 14, Electric Velocipede (Hugo Award winner; contains my story "Hermit Crabs," which is on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition). I am now down to my display copy. "Copies will be available soon at Night Shade Books," according to the EV website.
6. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work").
7. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
8. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.
9. She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010), set for official release in October. Pre-order here.

Thanks to K.L. Nappier and her husband Richard for their terrific hospitality after the event!

I've known Lara Zielinsky online via the Florida Writers Association, so was glad to finally meet her in person.

Patel Conservatory, part of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts.

LaFrance Vintage Clothing.

Community Stepping Stones ("Saving children, youth, and community lives through the arts").

Mary Jo Melone and Art Keeble, authors of Baseball Was My Life: Stories from West Tampa.

Nanette L. Avery.

WMNF 88.5 Community Radio.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Just in time for the New Moon! -- & publications news

2010-09-09T21:28:00.001-05:00

Large view

As I write this at around 9 PM on Sept. 9, the Moon is just past New (at 4 percent of Full). About five hours earlier, Mary and I got our first in-person look at a Luna Moth.

Actias luna, Family Saturniidae (Giant Silkworm and Royal Moths). We were exiting Office Max on a rainy day. I happened to look up, spotted this individual on an overhang, and ran back to the car for my camera. I normally carry my camera with me, but didn't want to risk getting it wet.

Wingspan ranges from 7.5-10.5 cm. according to Bugguide. (From a distance I estimate this individual was around 10 cm.) The feathery antennae mean it's a male.

"Three broods in the south, March-September," says Bugguide. Adults do not feed and have a life span of only about one week, to reproduce. In the U.S., this species ranges through every state east of the Great Plains.

Here are more camera angles:

Large view

The other day I spotted this Looper Moth:

Large view

Family Noctuidae, subfamily Plusiinae. This individual was hanging out at our local strip mall in early afternoon. (I love its little head fans.) Thanks to John Himmelman at Bugguide for the ID.

In publications news...

1. A blast from the past (in more ways than one)! My four-part report of a volunteer stint I did at the University of Florida's "Tapir Challenge" dig is part of The Boneyard 2.1, a blog carnival devoted to paleontology. Host David Orr was accepting non-recent blog posts, so I sent him my material from December 2006. The carnival is chock full of links that will keep me exploring for a while.

2. PicFic, a publication of the Folded Word literary press, posted three of my Twitter fiction pieces on Labor Day, along with others written by participants in its "24/7" event. Mine include "Heisenberg's Metamorphosis," "Bittersweet," and "Fierce Harvest."

3. "Far From Free Association" appears in the open-mic section of Poets for Living Waters, a poetry action in response to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, here.

4. More Twitter poetry appears in microcosms.

5. Two poems have been accepted to Star*Line. Although speculative, these poems are based on actual news stories. The two-part "Duet Singularity" takes it cue from Greg Miller's, "Holy Surgical Side Effect" (ScienceNOW Daily News, Feb. 10, 2010) and Stuart Hameroff, M.D.'s "Quantum computation in brain microtubules? The Penrose-Hameroff 'Orch OR' model of consciousness" and is written in free verse 3-line stanzas. "Ciliate Sestina" takes its cue from Olivia Judson's "Unorthodox" (New York Times, Feb. 9, 2010). Unlike my science sonnets, these poems extrapolate considerably from the facts. I'll give a holler when the issue comes out.

This will be a science poetry-themed issue of the Science Fiction Poetry Association journal, Star*Line, guest-edited by Robert Frazier. Bob Frazier edited Star*Line when I first discovered SFPA in 1980, and had bought my first poem submitted to the journal. "Ybba," published in 1981, and "Wings," originally in Asimov's in 1983, appeared in an anthology he edited, Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic, Owlswick Press, 1984.

6. Author Rachel D. Thompson makes this mention of Deviations on her blog from August 4: "This series is definitely not for the faint of heart (as it involves cannibalism), but it was a wonderful story, with lots of insight, as well as character and world-building."

On tap for this weekend: Deep Carnivale in Ybor City, Tampa!

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Ancient City Con IV (Photo Heavy)

2010-07-14T17:38:00.000-05:00

First and foremost, kudos and thanks to K.L. Nappier, who did all the driving in a car stuffed to the gills with our Author Stuff! And thanks to convention director Christopher Gabaldon, art director/webmaster Henry Livingston, and all the other volunteers who made Ancient City Con IV possible!

Continued...

Kathy picked me up around 2:30 on Friday afternoon -- which means she picked me up, plus two wheeled plastic totes, suitcase, book bag, canvas tote-with-netbook, and canvas tote bag with whatever didn't fit into the rest. And camera and fanny pack, which joined me in the front seat.

We got to the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront in time for dinner at Jacksonville Landing, once all our gear was settled in Room 813 -- blessedly quiet for a convention hotel.

I hadn't stayed at a convention hotel in years -- usually I'm at a smaller lodging several miles or at the very least a good-sized walk away. Being an elevator ride from the action was sheer luxury, made cute by the mechanical frogs. Or migrating ducks. Sometimes they sounded like a noisy flock, sometimes like spring peepers, sometimes like green treefrogs: a bank of six (or was it eight?) elevators calling up and down the shafts every time one passed a floor level.

And that was before I had downed two glasses of Guinness with my chicken Caesar salad and my first taste of delicious conch fritters (recommended by Kathy).

Jacksonville Landing.

Above: "Last Band Standing" competition.

One of many bridges spanning the St. Johns River. At night this one shines in gorgeous blue lights.

Seen across the parking lot beside the Hyatt.

Ancient City Con didn't begin until Saturday, bright and early at 8 a.m. We set up in Creator's Alley, a straight shot of craft and fine artists and writers.

The latest addition to my display is She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press, 2010), set for official release in October. It includes my story "Judgment at Naioth," which takes its cue from events in Samuel I and Samuel II. Pre-order here.

My display also included:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).
2. Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads).
3. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
4. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
5. Issue 14, Electric Velocipede (Hugo Award winner; contains my story "Hermit Crabs," which is on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition). I am now down to my display copy. "Copies will be available soon at Night Shade Books," according to the EV website.
6. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work").
7. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
8. My chapbook 30 Science Sonnets for April 2010.

My table bordered Kathy's.

We each took a turn in the Dr. Who booth.

Costumes around the con:

Storm Troopers come courtesy of the the 501st Squad Seven.

Droids from the R2D2 Builders Club swiveled their heads and beeped greetings at passers-by.

On Saturday I participated in the "Writing Industry Q&A" panel, where I recommended the blog written by Nathan Bransford, Jane Friedman's "There Are No Rules," and Eric's "Pimp My Novel," along with Victoria Strauss's "Writer Beware" and Preditors and Editors. (Kathy added the Absolute Write Water Cooler.) Moderator Gary Roen asked our audience where they thought the industry was heading, particularly concerning e-books. His informal poll indicated that the hardcopy book is still far from dead, and that predictions of its demise flare up every few decades. (I'd cited this article about how the phonograph was allegedly poised to kill the book back in 1894.)

From there I high-tailed it to a corner of a large, open-area pavilion set aside for workshops, to give a session in character and plot development. I'd been warned in advance that tables would be set in a circle (actually three sides of a square), with room for just a few people, so I retooled my large crowd version into something more intimate. The workshop area shared space with tables for gaming, registration, photos, and other activities, with all the ambient noises those entail. Given all that, we did well, combining a brainstorming session and writing craft Q&A. Joining my regular handout and a new worksheet was the URL to Patricia Wrede's awesome world-building questionnaire on the SFWA site.

From there it was back to my table, bordered on the other side by Movie Crypt. Those folks kept us well entertained with videos, from trailers to spoofs, until dinner time. Their music had people literally dancing in the aisle.

Eleven of us descended on Jacksonville Landing and Cinco de Mayo for dinner. Our table included people representing Auntie Maim (Linda S. Cowden), Movie Crypt (including Kevin Ranson), Necronomicon (con chair Ann Morris), Oasis (con chair Juan Sanmiguel), Trinity Gateways (including Doris Ross and Lisa Mercado), and T-Shirt Bordello, along with K.L. Nappier, me, and literary guest of honor Richard Lee Byers.

The "State of the Genre" panel on Sunday, moderated by Movie Crypt, focused more on movies and television. Here, too, we discussed ways in which the industry had changed. Several of us were old enough to remember the days before cable (never mind the days before the Internet), when each region boasted its own home-grown horror movie show. (I'd grown up watching Chiller Theater, Creature Features, and the myth-centered Sons of Hercules.) As with publishing, new technologies are making video creation and dissemination accessible to more and more people, lending even more importance to word of mouth.

I had a small but active group for my speculative poetry workshop, where I showed and distributed materials from the Science Fiction Poetry Association (including .pdf files Dragon Lust and The Universe in Three Lines) and elsewhere. My handout provided an overview, with prompts and space for drafting poems. Prompts took their cue from various subsets within speculative poetry -- science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, myth, etc. -- and could be used alone or in combination. Our discussion first focused on the different magazines publishing speculative poetry, both inside and outside genre markets -- including a Rhysling Award nominee from the Lyric, the oldest poetry magazine in North America. Discussion then broadened to talking about different poetic forms (one participant tried her hand at a cinquain) and to ways of getting students more interested in writing in general.

The Jacksonville Times-Union provided excellent coverage of the convention. Check out the paper's article, photos, and video.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Bloodlines passes 1,000 downloads in 3 weeks

2010-07-02T21:35:00.005-05:00

Last weekend, a short three weeks after its release, Bloodlines topped 1,000 downloads (that I know of), compiled among Manybooks, Smashwords, and Obooko. Vol. 1, Covenant, had taken eight months to accomplish the same number of downloads from those sites. Here are the current numbers, as of 9:30 p.m., July 2, 2010. (I see a large gap on my screen; scroll down for the table.)

	Manybooks	Smashwords	Obooko	Total
Covenant	1,480	447	43	1,970
Appetite	1,466	443	40	1,949
Destiny	1,233	451	35	1,719
Bloodlines	862	164	29	1,055

I don't know how many actual downloads have occurred over at my Deviations site, but visitors have come from 83 countries/territories and six continents since May 2009.

Thank you, readers! To say I am thrilled at this is an understatement.

The series has two more books to go. I plan to release Vol. 5, TelZodo, in December. (Click here for a blurb and preview; contains spoilers if you haven't read earlier volumes.) The concluding Vol. 6 follows in mid-2011. I'll post that blurb and preview when TelZodo goes live.

I've also been exploring audiobook production and am in the middle of a fairly steep learning curve. Thanks to Craig Robertson, Nathan Lowell, and Kenn Crawford over at Podiobooks for their guidance! I've got a lot of sound editing ahead of me, but my goal is to have Covenant recorded and tidied up before the year is out.

Coming up: Ancient City Con in Jacksonville, FL, where I'll give workshops on plot/character development and speculative poetry. If you're at the con, please stop by and say hello! I'll be in Creator's Alley, with advance copies of She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror from Dybbuk Press, along with other publications in which my work appears.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too

Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

2010-06-23T10:37:00.001-05:00

An interview with me appears in the inaugural issue of Valent Range, which publishes science and science fiction poetry. Editor Scott A. Kelly is giving these issues away for a limited time! More info here.

"Pele's Wandering Fire" appears in the June 2010 Of Poets And Poetry (Florida State Poets Association). Back in April, the poem received second prize in the FSPA's Spring Fling contest (theme: Hawaiian culture), free verse category.

Last month's activities at Oasis appear on the Science Fiction Poetry Association's news page. I'm third from the left in the top panel shot.

I'm giving two workshops at Ancient City Con next month -- one in character and plot development, one in speculative poetry.

Links to all 30 of my science poems for April appear in this entry listing submissions to the 2010 edition of Open Laboratory: an annual anthology of the best science blog posts, dated Dec. 1, 2009-Dec. 1, 2010. Science-themed posts from general blogs are eligible.

She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror is now available for pre-order here. Official release is set for October. The "alternate timelines" and "wild-eyed, drug-crazed prophets" in Erin O'Riordan's blurb fit my story "Judgment at Naioth," which takes its cue from the book of 2 Samuel and the rape of Tamar.

What's appeared to me...

I had a terrific lunch with Kathy Nappier and Tracy A. Akers yesterday. Kathy spotted this Palamedes Swallowtail through the window behind me. So of course I had to whip out my camera, swing around, and take a shot at full zoom.

Papilio palamedes, Family Papilionidae. For a Palamedes, this individual was downright sedate. "Flutters wings constantly," says Bugguide, but I didn't see any of that here. My other shots of Palamedes (with dorsal views) date from April 2006 and September 2006.

The Palamedes Swallowtail has a wingspan of around 5 inches (11-13 cm). It ranges through the southeastern United States, extending into central Mexico. Its season spans from March through December in the northern part of that range (2 flights), with a third flight in the southern part of its US range.

I spotted this Southern House Spider in the bathroom the other night. Kukulcania hibernalis, Family Filistatidae (Crevice Weavers). Thanks to Eric Eaton and Jebus31 at Bugguide for the ID.

Says Bugguide, "Females are frequently mistaken for small tarantulas or trapdoor spiders. Males are often mistaken for recluse spiders (Loxosceles). This is a totally harmless species that builds 'messy' webs emanating from crevices, often on the outside of homes."

(I at first mistook this one for a wolf spider, then wondered if it was a wandering spider.)

According to the University of Florida, females range from 13-19mm in length (not including legs); I guessed this individual to be around 20mm, a body length of roughly 3/4 inch. Says UF, "Although the webs tend to accumulate debris and may be unsightly to some, this harmless spider is beneficial and captures many pest insects, including house flies, horse flies mud daubers, cockroaches, and May beetles." Females can live for up to eight years.

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