Forgetting Emily Post

Laura Claridge has written a bio of Emily Post. Reviews are available at Slate, Newsweek, and a bunch of other places, but it's the Newsweek piece that caught my eye. After three years of working on Emily Post, we learn:

[Claridge] was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. For a while she lost her memory, including her awareness of who Emily Post was and why she had been writing about her

I have spent four and half years on a book. I can't imagine staring at the pages and wondering who this character is, and why my bookshelves are filled with information on her times. Could there be a worse nightmare for an author? Writer's block takes on a whole new meaning, huh?

The good news is that Claridge recovered completely from cancer, regained her memory, and finished the book.

NaNoWriMo to Start

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month...November, and this is the 10th year that ambitious, self-motivated, and either jobless-and/or-mindlessly rich dilettantes and fools will chain themselves to their laptops and try to whip out a 50,000 word draft in thirty days.

Check it all out here. There's still time to register, and if you're lucky enough to be in a citified region with a nice group leader, you may even be invited to a kick-off party toward the end of October.

What do you get? A first draft in thirty days, one to occupy you for the rest of the year. If you don't know how incredibly rare and valuable that is, you ain't no writer yet!

Bad News for Freelancers' Magazine Markets

Not that I expect to ever write for Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, or National Geographic for Kids...I take that back, I would like to write for that last one. But according to MediaPost's Media Daily News, I probably won't get that chance. Due to plunging circulation, MediaPost writes that these three and several other magazines may fold in the next few months, due to declining sales and ad revenues.

Other mags at risk: Kiplinger's Personal Finance (newstand sales down 19.6%), SmartMoney (down 20%), Mens Vogue (down 17.9%), Nickelodeon (ad pages down 30.2%!), Sports Illustrated for Kids (ads down 24.8%).

All bad. And all those places that I joked I'd go work for if things got bad--places that served food and coffee? They're closing too. The one good thing is that we're all in this together.

Wicked Absinthe

Thanks to a short piece in Wired (last August) I learn that we in the US get better absinthe than the poor connoisseurs of France. Here's a link to a longer Wired 2005 feature--the August piece was a short follow-up. And if you thirst for more, check out the Wormwood Society, from whom I purloined this lovely pictures.

According to the August blurb , the US has been very slow to permit the sale of absinthe. Only four brands are allowed: Lucid, Kubler, Green Moon, and St. George Absinthe Verte. The maker of one, Ted Breaux, says of absinthe in Europe: "80 to 90 percent is industrial junk."

Ouch. We were thrilled, five years ago, to find we could buy small bottles of absinthe in France and bring them home as gifts. We got the absinthe spoons, the whole bit. (you are supposed to put a sugar cube on the delicately-slotted spoon, set that over the glass, and pour the absinthe over it into the glass.)

The liquor has such a mystique about it--if you've ever read Hemingway, you want to taste absinthe. After WWI, only Spain continued to sell it--absinthe was considered to dangerous and maddening to be marketed in most other countries. It's made from wormwood. Sounds gothic.

Now scientists say absinthe got a bad rap, so it's legal again. Will it ever be mundane? Doubt it.

Atlatl Competition

The 8th annual Blackwater Draw Atlatl Throw is this Saturday (Oct. 18). Man, I'd like to see this become an Olympic event.

Blackwater Draw is off State Hwy 467 in New Mexico--here's more information. Just in case.

And...woo-hoo!...there's actually a World Atlatl Organization. Who knew?

I am not making fun. I think atlatl is the coolest word in the lexicon (it's actually an Aztec, or Nahuatl word), besides being a bit of the oldest technology on earth. An atlatl is a gizmo for launching a spear with just a little more oompf than your arm alone can muster.

This picture is of Roy Madden using an atlatl, from the Altlatl page of Flight-Toys. When he whips his wrist forward, the spear flies out of the 16-inch (looks like) atlatl.

Update to the Witch World Estate

The Tennessee Court of Appeals has rendered a decision on Andre Norton's copyrights and royalties. In brief, when Ms Norton died in 2005, her last caregiver and a fan battled over rights to her books (see previous post for more details). The decision is that the caregiver controls copyrights on all books published in Andre Norton's lifetime, and the fan gets royalties for books published since she died. New link here.

Here's a website dedicated to Andre Norton that has statements from the caregiver about the lawsuit.

Owners Manual--Recommended Reading

Six simple rules for reading Owners Manuals, like: If the product needs a manual longer than one page, the designer failed. Plus some hilarious illustrations and sidebars. Where? In Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine, online here. (That's the cover image at right) (the article is by James Lileks).

My favorite part so far: the sidebar on "Best Manual Cautions Ever"

"Use the dishwasher only for its intended function. If, for example, you are a coyote chasing a road runner, and you have strapped the dishwasher to your body intending to ski downhill on the mounds of suds it produces, you have voided your warranty..."

Graphic Bio of J. Edgar Hoover

This is one of those moments when I feel like my grandmother, shaking my head and muttering, "What will they think of next?"

Graphic biographies. Their time has come.

Not talking about bios with graphic violence, but about the graphic novel. Publishers Weekly has reviewed Rick Geary's 112-page graphic bio of J. Edgar Hoover on its blog "THE BEAT", which is all about comics. I guess I just never thought of J. Edgar Hoover's life as lending itself to comics or graphic novels . . . nor of a psychological bio (according to reviews) that is largely presented in pictures.

The Biographer's Craft points out that " Of course, Geary is not the first to come out with a graphic biography. Capstone Press has a whole line of them. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux has published graphic biographies on Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan, both by Andrew Helfer (with different illustrators). On the whole, however, these works have been intended for young audiences. "

This cover image is from Amazon, and you can see a large version here. I wonder if artistic renderings are subject to the same laws and nonfiction text would be? Just musing here, but the idea that a picture might misrepresent something--could the illustrator be sued, as a writer might be?

Blog Insurance and a new MBA

Poynter Online announces that the Media Bloggers Association has created BlogInsure, a liability insurance plan to protect bloggers. Here's the press release.

I tend to think of blogging as I do it--an isolated activity with little recognition. I can't get my best friend to check in, so why would I need insurance? However, not every blogger wallows in obscurity. As we know well. There are people who do indeed need insurance to defend themselves against charges of invading privacy, libel, defamation, and all that nasty stuff.

As for Media Bloggers Assoc., it costs $25 a year to join. Besides access to the insurance plan, you get legal referrals, a free course in the law as it applies to bloggers ...hmmm...support and... some coming-soon stuff, such as newsletters. You also get to apply for accredited membership, which can get you media credentials to events.

All in all, worth checking out.

Stonehenge Video

Not to beat the topic to death, but here's a two and a half minute video from Yahoo UK that sums everything up very nicely.

Stonehenge for Healing

The new excavation at Stonehenge (the first since the 1960s) has led to this theory from archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright (any relation to Loudon?) and Timothy Darvill:

It was a healing center, they say, and pilgrims chipped of bits of the blue stones to take home with them. The blue stones are the 80 or so brought from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, which had to be a major undertaking 5000 years ago.

My post from April (and its links) give the background of the dig. Here's the new Smithsonian article and photo spread on the progress made so far. An item that didn't make the headlines, but which I find interesting, as that some charcoal in the area dates back to the eighth millennium BC--ten thousand years ago. Which means people were camping there ten thousand years ago.

Being partial to the liberal media, I rarely cite Fox News. Let me correct that imbalance now and point you to their coverage of the event, as well as their photo collection--which includes this AP shot of two archaeology students (Steve Bush and Sam Ferguson) at work.

Stories Can't Always be Vetted

Cola's Journey is the story of Sudanese boy soldier Cola Bilkuei, who escaped his life by journeying to South Africa and telling/selling his biography. Sadly, it's not available outside of Australia yet, but here's an essay from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Essay author Malcolm Knox was asked to verify Cola's story, and makes observations that the historian-in-me treasures:

Ultimately, though, between what could be verified and what lies on the pages of Cola's book, there will always remain a margin where we must simply take his word. Some will ask why any author's word should be trusted. My answer is that if we take such a hard line, we will deprive ourselves of all oral history, of every story that is one person's recollection.

If we did that, winnowing history to what is documented on official records, swathes of human experience would be lost.

Bravo. We will always have charlatans, and we will always hate them because they make fools of us. But let's not deny ourselves rich tales--fiction and non--because we're so afraid of being taken.

Magazines CHEAP!

In Arizona, a small chain of used bookstores (warehouse-sized, not little hole-in-the-wall storefronts) sold used magazines for fifty cents each. The store put them out on racks like any Borders or B&N would, in alphabetical order.

For a freelance writer always looking for markets, this was heaven.

In Los Angeles, there's nothing like that. Libraries have popular titles, but there are few surprises. Used bookstores don't have the space or time to stock magazines. I suspect that's true in most cities.

Maghound to the rescue!

"Netflix for magazines" is how one person described it to me. One monthly fee, depending on how many mags you want ($4.95 for three, $7.95 for five, etc.) AND you get to change the magazines whenever you feel like it.

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

Oh, the humanity...

I love Bitch Magazine, if only for the name.

The heavily tatted Andi Zeisler and Debbie Rasmussen present a plea to save their mag by raising $40,000 by October 15.

I'm not making fun. Writers suffer when the markets for their work dry up. But unless the writer's last name is King or Dunne (hey, there's my problem! My name's too long!) chances are they can't do much to keep Bitch or any mag in business--other than write well, that is.

So imagine the catch in my voice, the barely-held-back-tears brimming out of my eyes, and . . . and . . . screw the other charities. . . help the weiner dog grow!

Hurricane Ike Uncovers Civil War Ship

I love this stuff, not that it in any way makes up for the lost neighborhoods, lives, and incredible destruction. But Ike swept so much sand from a spot six miles from Fort Morgan Rd in Fort Morgan, Alabama that a Civil War ship was unearthed. Here's the CNN Ireport from V. Boozer.

From the responses, it seems this may be the same ship exposed briefly in late 2006. It was seen, reported (here) then sand covered it up again. A video of that ship was made on Halloween, 2006, and can be seen at the Alabama Gulf Coast Video site. Sure looks like Vickie Boozer's picture, but I'm not too discriminating.

Hurricane Camille uncovered a ship at the same rough location in 1969, and it's been seen off and on since. Orange Beach Website has the best pictures (I borrow one here, but they have over a dozen closeups) and says the ship was revealed by Ivan in 2004.

Speculation in 2006 suggested that the ship was the Monticello, a two-masted schooner en route from Cuba in 1862. The Union Navy was blockading the port of Mobile and its gunship Kanewha reported pursuing and burning the Monticello at this location.

More gold from Pella

To follow up on discoveries in Macedonia (see an earlier post), even more golden artifacts are being found near Pella. The count is now 43 graves dating from 650 to 279 BC, 20 of them warrior graves from the period 580 to 460 BC. Some warriors were buried in the bronze helmets, with swords and knives at their sides, and their faces and chests were covered in gold foil decorated with drawings.

Here's the Los Angeles Times/Reuters story, with pictures so bright they hurt the eyes. And here's a link to the Daily Mail's article, with more pictures, including shots of the graves themselves.

Willi's Wine Bar Posters

Since 1983, Willi's Wine Bar in Paris has released an annual Bottle Art Poster by internationally recognized artists. Willi's is at 13 Rue de Petits Champs, a little north of the Jardin de Tuileries...if you're in the city.

The first edition (left) of their Bottle Art Series was actually a 1935 piece of art by AM Cassandre which had never been published before. The poster was probably part of an advertising campaign created in the 1930s for another wine shop, Nicolas--and for some reason was never used, at least until Willi's Wine Bar selected it.

This year's release (right) is by Jean Charles de Castelbajac, and you can buy it online for around $80 (or $450 for one of the 200 posters signed by the artist), here. Some of the out-of-print posters sell for close to a thousand dollars, so that seems a fair price. (Trivia point: Castelbajac's first Parisian store sat next to Willi's in the 1980s.)

Many of the past years' posters are available on line and they include art by photographer Lyu Hanabusa, scultor Alberto Bali, artists Tom Fowler, Wayne Ensrud, and others.

2nd trivia point: in the late 1970s, Mark Williamson, owner of Willi's Wine Bar, worked briefly for Steven Spurrier at Spurrier's specialty wine shop, Caves de la Madeleine. Spurrier was the instigator/organizer of the 1976 "Judgement of Paris" tasting that put Napa wines on the map, and is played by Alan Rickman in the movie Bottle Shock.

And--this is really trivial--I went to Napa and just missed the movie location filming. Dang! Would have loved to get a menu or something signed by Professor Snape.

Exercises for Developing Characters

Got to hear some great advice from Prof. Steven Wolfson yesterday.

The occasion? The UCLA Writers Faire, a free event held every September, offering four rounds of seminars in four hours. All you have to pay for is the parking. Those 40-minute seminars cover all aspects of fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, etc: writing, selling, inspiration, character development, markets, you name it.

The point is to get people to sign up for courses at UCLA (many are online) but there's no obligation to do so. Lots of people just come and enjoy the day and the advice.

So what was this great advice?

• An exercise to help you understand your characters better: list and describe their daily habits. One full day--what do they do and why?
• Characters should be in a constant state of want (you've heard this before, right?) Know the aches and wants of every character--and write in the margins of your manuscript a scene-by-scene running commentary of who wants what. Every scene!
• When you're stuck, sit down and interview the characters. What are they going to do next? What have they done so far that troubles them?

Bear in mind that these tidbits are crunched into a dynamic, 40-minute presentation on the art of storytelling.

2008 Hugo Awards

The biggest action in Denver last month may have been the Democratic National Convention, but Hugo Awards were announced August 9th at the 66th World SciFi Convention--called Denvention, of course. Two of my favorite authors now have shiny phallic statues:

• Michael Chabon for the the novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union,
• Connie Willis for the novella "All Seated on the Ground"
• Ted Chiang for the novelette "The Merchant and the Alchemists' Gate"

Do we all know the difference between a novella and a novelette? Me neither.

Continuing:

• Elizabeth Bear for the short story "Tideline"
• Stardust for best dramatic presentation, long form
• Dr. Who "Blink" for best dramatic presentation, short form.

Connie Willis has been a favorite since Doomsday Book and probably has more Hugos than most aliens have digits.

Recommended Reading for September

The Road. Yes, I'm way behind the curve and most literary folks have read and reviewed it by now. I got on the ball and checked it out of the library because (shallow twit that I am) I heard that Viggo Mortensen was doing the movie. As with so many of his picks, this is about as unsexy a role as can be imagined.

Here's a sample of why this book is so worth your time:

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely askew. He thought the iron armatures had softened in the heat and then reset again to leave the buildings standing out of true. The melted window glass hung frozen down the walls like icing on a cake. They went on. In the nights sometimes now he'd wake in the black and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun.

How do you say Boat Jousting en francais?

From the Los Angeles Times, which also ran an article on the boat jousting festival of Languedoc. in Sete, near Montpellier. Just to show that boys will be boys all over the world.

Alexander's Wreath-Time Band

A wreath of gold that dates back to the 4th century BC was found last week in the ruins of Aigai, where Philip of Macedonia had his royal palace.

I'm using the picture from a 2001 story from the Archaeology.org site and hope they don't mind. How could anyone describe such an exquisite object without a picture? Unbelievably, a farmer ploughing his field unearthed this artifact, which dates to 450-425 BC.

The newly-found wreath was found in a copper vase that local workers mistook for a land mine, and it was found with bones. That's what AP says, and its story includes pictures of the copper bucket and the wreath in situ.

The AP article quotes experts from the University of Thessaloniki who date the find to the 4th century--close to when Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father, was stabbed to death in the marketplace. That event happened very near where the wreath and bones were found.

Since it was found so recently, I think the guess about its age is preliminary. How does one date gold, anyway? Or are they dating the bones or other organic material found in the copper vase, which was covered?

All News All the Time

Bill Dwyre, a Los Angeles Times sports writer, made a great point in an August 26 column. Noting all the blogger-style reporters in Beijing, he said "Reporters who once came looking for stories came this time looking for places to sit down and type. Immediately."

Dwyre goes on to point out that "instant gratification" technology may mean that the network's time-honored traditional reporting of games, conventions, etc., may be too slow to satisfy 21st century audiences. Crafting stories and presentations, with enough context and background info to make them compelling, is no longer the point--just get the news out, fast. Viewers must know within seconds who won the match, period.

My favorite paragraph-plus from Dwyre's column:

"What wasn't news became news because we...type it and hit a button that sent it to the world...
"In Chippewa Falls, Wis., Herbie hits a button and yells out, "Hey, ma, Dwight Howard just got the opening tip over Pau Gasol." Herbie is dazzled that he got the word so fast, and the typist is equally dazzled at the speed he got it there. Neither seems to wonder whether what had arrived was worth the effort on either end."

Pay to Track Queries

Here's a service some writers might find useful.

Word Hustler has a database of 3,000 markets and will send your query letters (you write them, of course) and track the queries for you. If you don't have a decent printer, it could be useful. Their rates seem reasonable.

They also encourage you to upload your projects and will automatically send the right number of pages of your screenplay or novel to each contest or market.

Where do they make their money? You pay .99 per submission for under 4 pages. That includes postage (even SASE postage), and the prices go up from there.

I can see where this would be handy, though I doubt I'll be a customer. For me, it's a control issue. I want to see and touch that query letter, not just send a command.

Upload all my writing, set up my queries with a third party? Hmmm. A couple of years ago, I decided to try Writers Market online query tracker--they had a huge database of markets as well. For a couple of months, it worked fine. Then Writers Market shut it down, redesigned it, and--3 or 4 months later--started a new, improved version. All previous records? Gone. Just gone.

Luddites, I think, are usually nice people who've gotten a nasty electrical shock.

World's best hot chocolate

When the topic of "the best hot chocolate in the world" came up on an egroup recently (due, no doubt, to the fact that all of us were dealing with summer heat by imagining ourselves in winter's cold), the winner by consensus was Angelina's in Paris--though other places certainly had votes.

Angelina's website was thoughtfully posted. The first thing to be gleaned from it is that the century-old (est. 1903) tea shop was bought by Groupe Bertrand in 2005.

Am I a luddite for being disappointed by this news?

Not that Group Bertrand is trying to franchise the place, of course. . . oh, wait, they are.

Well, if you had the best hot chocolate in the world, wouldn't you franchise it? I mean, look at these pictures. Doesn't that belong in Disneyland?

Recommended Reading

As a writer, I especially like the way Garth Nix handles scene transitions and the passage of time. But basically, these are just great stories with female heroes.

Once again, thanks to fire...

...archaeological treasures are revealed.

This time in Britain on the Yorkshire moors. According to this story by Martin Wainwright (any relation to Loudon?) in the Guardian, a 6-day fire on Fylingdales Moor burned away the peat to reveal a 3000-year-old landscape. That was in 2003, but it's being reported as if it were new now.

According to the North York Moors National Park, a large grant for more research has just been awarded. That explains the renewed interest.

Rock art was there before, but triple the amount was uncovered by the fire--as well as Mesolithic flint tools and tracks from the 18th century, when shitloads (literally) of urine were brought from London to an alum factory. Great mordant, urine.

Here's an English Heritage site on Fylingdales, showing a barrow from the Bronze Age. The picture is from there as well.

Dark Celtic Anthology seeking entries

I pass this along for those interested--please see the book's website for more details.

The Phantom Queen Awakes
A Dark Celtic Anthology

Edited by Mark S. Deniz & Amanda Pillar

"The Morrígan is commonly portrayed as a triple goddess, but her tripartite nature is uncertain at best. This ambiguity shall be at the heart of The Phantom Queen Awakes. The Phantom Queen Awakes will focus on Morrígan's tripartite nature.

"We want stories set in the ancient world of the Celts, that talk of Morrígan. She does not have to be a central figure (although she must appear at least once in the tale), however we would prefer it if she was....Push the boundaries, for tales that resound with the reader long after they've been put down.

"Supernatural creatures are allowed, although they must be in tune with Celtic mythology. We do not want gratuitous violence or sex scenes. The editors would prefer stories of a darker nature, and are much more likely to take well written stories with this in mind.

Word Count: 50 to 6,000 (the lower word count being reserved for excellent flash fiction and poetry).

Payment: $.01 per word for original stories, no reprints

Deadline: 1st December 2008 - we are implementing a new submission selection for the anthology but will let all authors know as soon as possible after the deadline day as to the decision regarding their story.

Submission Format:

• Please write the title, your name, your address, email, contact numbers and the word count at the top of the manuscript submission.
• Please include the page number in the footer.
• Manuscripts should be in either the Courier New or Times New Roman font.
• Please make sure your manuscript is double-spaced.
• We will only accept manuscripts electronically and they must be in .rtf (rich text format).

Submissions: Send submissions as attachments to: phantom.queen@morriganbooks.com

Green Sahara Findings

Many news outlets have run the story of Paul Sereno's discovery of a cemetery in the Sahara of Niger that dates back to the time that of the Green Sahara--some 10,000 to 6,000 years ago. The best source of info is the Project Exploration site.

The cemetery, literally in the middle of nowhere [albeit a lawless nowhere that requires armed forces to protect it], was found by Sereno in 2000, when he was tracking dinosaur bones. It includes the graves of two groups, separated by thousands of years, who lived near a lake:

• The Kiffians, extremely tall folks who lived from 9700 to 8200 years ago. They sustained themselves by hunting and fishing, and left the area or died out when the lake dried out about 8,000 years ago. But over millennia the climate changed, the lake came back, and...


• the Tenerians lived at the location from 6600 to 4800 years ago. They buried their dead on their sides, almost in a fetal position, on beds of flowers. The Tenerians raised livestock, and were shorter and lighter in build than the Kiffians.


• The Tholians, a crystalline species...kidding. The other two are real, but don't the names Kiffian and Tenerian sound like aliens from a Star Trek episode?

By 4,500 BP, "the climate began its slow deterioration to present day arid conditions," according to the Project site. It has marvelous photos of the mother-and-children embrace in a Tenerian grave (I'm assuming; that relationship hasn't been proven by dna yet). These photos came from there, but go to the site to see them in their full glory.

The National Geographic site also has a photo essay online of the Gobero cemetery, as well as its feature article on the discovery.

Blog-Surfing: a Rationale

I used to feel guilty, spending an hour that would be more productively used WRITING. No more.

It seems that everyone else considers an hour spent surfing is an an investment, not a waste. Check out blogs, and you'll see immediately that blogger blog about other blogs. Clearly, if everyone else is doing it, it's ok. Right?

So, I scrolled through Infomaniac (which periodically lists Useful Sights for Journalists) and found a link to 10,000 Words, and followed that a collection of sites that will help me learn a language! Wow!

There's Babbel, which is free-while-in-beta-testing (and has a few glitches), BBC Languages (slow to load but fun), Learnit list --with widgets to shoot you 20 new words a day (sounds a lot like school) . . . and more. More ways for me to rationalize frittering away my time, because, let's face it, playing on-line Boggle till my eyes bleed isn't really improving my vocabulary like I thought it would.

And it's all good, cuz I got a blog posting out of it.

Let's start a Feature-A-Month Club!

I scribbled down a quote from Mikki Halpin, book author and former editor for Seventeen , contributing editor for Glamour. She was speaking about the freelance writer's dilemma:

I realized that even if I had a feature every month, I couldn't make a living.

The quote was from a New York Observer article in March or April.

How do we survive? Because, let's face it, most of us can't complain that we sell a feature a month, and it's not enough.

I'm pinning my hopes on the novel. No one will pay for it till it's written, agented, and sold...one out of three for me. These steps can take years. Meanwhile, we either work at other jobs or scramble for writing gigs and send our best article ideas to $1-a-word or $2-a-word markets (for the record, I've never sold to the latter but I know they're there) and hope that the savings can be stretched out a l-i-t-t-l-e bit longer.

On the plus side, there are no more debtors' prisons, and stretching is good for the muscles, right?

Amiens Cathedral

I haven't written about Gaul lately, have I?

this is a picture of Notre Dame Cathedral of Amiens in the summer, when it is cleverly lit to look as it did when it was first built, and all those sculptures were actually painted.

Through August, the lighting starts at 10 P.M.; through September 21, at 9:45 P.M.--that's if I'm reading the website correctly. The spectacle ends then, until the Christmas holidays.

Amiens is a sweet, quiet town at the lowest part of the Somme, with just enough old world charm, canals, art and trendy shops to be well worth a visit. It's named for the Ambiani, the Celtic tribe that controled the territory way back when.

I'm International!

Huzzah!

My article "Resting on a Knife-Edge" is in the new issue of Ancient Warfare. Great illustrations, too.

The article is about Caesar's war with the Belgic tribes of Gaul in his second campaign year, and his near-disastrous run-in with the Nervians. Other articles in the magazine discuss aspects of Julius Caesar's strategy, his legions, the last stand of Vercingetorix in Gaul, and--leaving Caesar aside--Hoplite shields.

Hmmm...what's the dollar-euro exchange rate right now?

Go subscribe! Really, the synchronized diving finals can wait.

Common Ancestor? Try 660,000 years ago

Scientists working on the mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthals have determined that we have to go back 660,000 years to find a common ancestor between them and us. And it looks like there was no interbreeding during the ten or twenty thousand years that both Neanderthals and homo sapiens shared the continents.

Given our taste in men, I can only assume that the Neanderthals were a bit more discriminating. Or maybe it was an in-law thing. In any event, here's the Los Angeles Times story. The Neanderthal DNA was taken from a 38,000-year-old bone found in a Croatian cave.

Underwater Archaeology

"Archaeologists in the UK are exploring a vast expanse of sea floor between southeastern England and the Netherlands that, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, was a rich landscape inhabited by Mesolithic hunters and gatherers."

Oh! Oh! Oh! The first thing this makes me think of is that Iron Age Europe, 2000 years ago, had a lower, and in some places marshier, coastline than today. I recall reading that Julius Caesar's description of northern Belgae (the Low Countries) validated the beliefs of climatologists who suspected that seas began to rise millennia ago, and were still rising in Caesar's day.

The opening quote, btw, is from an August 5 article by Bradley T. Lepper titled "Underwater Archaeology a new field of exploration." The July 10 issue of Nature (Vol 454) has an article but sadly, you have to pay to see it online. However, if you google Laura Spinney (the author) and Archaeology, you may find a non-commercial copy somewhere. Like here.

The article is about Doggerland, a silly name for the marshy plain that once connected Britain with mainland Europe. Since about 8,0000 years ago, that blasted plain is now under the North Sea--hence the archaeology tie-in. Scientists have not only found artefacts there, but they are able to map the area and spot ancient rivers.

Skipping around, here's a site on the mapping from the University of Birmingham. That's where this picture with the river channel is from.

Antikythera Mechanism Decoded . . . partly

You may have read about the Antikythera Mechanism before. A corroded bunch of bronze and iron gears found in a shipwreck in 1901 by Greek sponge divers near the idyllic island town of Antikythera (presumably, humans diving for sponges, not sponges diving for fun. . . because, if it were sponges diving for fun they would have kept the Antikythera for themselves, right?) Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah. This thingy was found in a shipwreck over a hundred years ago. What is it? Good question. It' was built in the first century B.C. and looks kinda like a clockwork, only it predates clocks by many centuries. It has 29 surviving gears, according to this BBC story, and one of them contains the dates for the Olympics.

Amazing. Apparently, scientists subjected the thingy (they call it the Antikythera Mechanism, since Mechanism sounds more impressive than Thingy) to tomography. A 3-d image was produced, and:

"The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two
Panhellenic Games: the "crown" games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea and Pythia; and
two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been
deciphered."

The ancient Olympics were not just every 4 years like now; they were actually four sets of games held over four years.

What I remember reading about the Antikythera is that--although this particular thingy was made long after the death of Archimedes in 212 (in Corinth), historians speculate that it was based on a prototype or design of the great scientist/tinkerer.

Wikipedia's Antikythera Mechanism page is quite up to date on this new research, as well as previous discoveries about the thingy, and has tons of references and links to articles in scientific journals like Nature. The "Antikythera Mechanism Project" maintains an accessible website, though it is being redesigned. It has links to a lot of the scans and digital radiographs of the 82 fragments of said thingy, as well as to much of the scientific data compiled. The pictures here are from their Image Gallery.

Journalism Gig! No Pay! Sign Up Now!

Writers in Los Angeles were [unnecessarily] excited about the Craigslist ad for a NEW MAJOR NEWSPAPER in Los Angeles. Wow! First clue that it was not the answer to your employment woes was that all the attempts to contact the Craigslist address bounced. Oops.

But now they have a website! Nice, professional. . . anticipating a circulation of between 200,000 and 500,000. Wow. And they need writers, web developers, editors. . . and they're not going to pay them.

"You will not be paid for this time now but, you may be considered for what will likely be the most coveted media jobs in the country. "

I'm sure that will entice the many professionals looking to support their families. After all, what do little things like food and shelter mean when weighed against the opportunity to help some starry-eyed cheapskate put out a real newspaper?

Booker Dozen and Free Pictures

For those novelists aspiring to prizes and recognition, and heavily into visualization, the "Booker Dozen" finalists were just announced. So go to the link and picture your name alphabetized between Aravind Adiga and Steve Toltz. The short list for the Man Booker prize will be announced in September.

Between the first and second sentences, if anyone's interested, a 5.8 earthquake shook Los Angeles.

Also of note, PicApp is online! Free pictures!

I haven't quite figured it out, but go here and set yourself up with an account. Then you can search for royalty-free pictures to embed in your own blog. Rather than copying the picture, you get lines of html text to copy into the blog--as I just did with the image of Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre.

Initially, certain lines of the text printed over the picture, extending the margin. Once deleted, the margin snapped back into place, so my advice is to delete with impunity--you can always recopy and paste.

Writing Quotes

I collect writing quotes. I firmly believe every lover of words should collect good quotes, but I have sub-collections dealing with writing and history.

Here's my favorite, from a History Channel interview with David MuCullough: "To write well is to think clearly."

Here's one that was posted on FreelanceWritingGigs yesterday, by Deb--who clearly loves to collect quotes too, since she posted a whole batch of them:

There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write. From the great Terry Pratchett

And digging into my own collection once more, here's one from Norman Mailer:

Writing is wonderful when you talk about it. . . But writing as a daily physical activity is not agreeable. You put on weight, you strain your gut, you get gout and chilblains. You’re alone, and every day you have to face a blank piece of paper.

Craigslist Ads that make you go . . . mmmmm

Yes, they do. How to take this freelance writing ad found in the Los Angeles Craiglist today?

Looking for talented writer for only 3 hrs=$300!!!! (Santa Monica)

The successful candidate must have:
- Creative mind
- Excellent verbal and article written skills
- Would prefer BA in english, , or similar degree, but not required.
- Must be Asian, Female, age around 22-28 years old
- Payment will be cash upon work completion
If you recognize yourself through this description, please contact me ASAP.

(email address deleted.)

It all sounded so normal and promising until "Must be Asian, Female, age around 22-28. . . "

Surprised the poster didn't add "HOT!" to the qualifications.

Awards for Gall!

Two things jump out of the news at me (well, more than two, but I grabbed my handy cudgel and beat the rest back into the fiery pit from whence they came). One good, one bad.

The good--and puzzling--gallish thing is my two favorite ballers, Steve Nash of the Suns and Baron Davis of (be still my heart) THE CLIPPERS, riding tandem on a bicycle built for two. If you're wondering which one is Daisy, check out Nash's shirt. Oops--those are hibiscuses, sorry.

There's a short-short-short video of this on BallHype. Don't know who to credit this picture to; most sites say a reader of Barstool Sports submitted it--presumably with no strings, since everyone--even Yahoo!--is using it.

The second, bad gallish thing has to do with archaeology.

Apparently one Tommy Bow, who owns both a construction company and a big piece of property in Illinois, subscribes to the philosophy that "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." After signing agreements with agencies that promised to protect a rare, thousand-year-old archaeological site on his new parcel of land, Bow went ahead and bulldozed it into oblivion.

Read about it in the local paper. Bow says the site's not destroyed and claims that everyone's exaggerating his teensy little mistake, but somehow, I just don't believe him.

The site, btw, included a hundred homes of a nomadic group that may have been the builders, or the immediate ancestors of the builders, of Cahokia. The site on Bow's property had been partially excavated; now it's gone.

Here's a photo of Cahokia from britannica.com. I'd like to know who built that and I hope Illinois and the Federal government hits Tommy Bow with everything it can. "Philistine asshole" is about the most polite phrase that comes to mind. But I'm still in a good mood over the Davis-Nash picture, so surely someone else could do better.

Greatest Birthday Party Ever

For a 9-year-old. It takes gall to do this:

Or to hold a tarantula or a scorpion:

More gall than I had, anyway. You'll note that no middle-aged females are in these shots!

Who Owns Witch World?

Andre (ne Alice) Norton is in the news, three years after her death. Seems that her will left past royalties to her nurse and caretaker, and future royalties (of posthumously published works) to a fan who became a great friend.

It's all sad and sordid; read about it at CNN or any of the other outlets that printed the AP story. The Tennessee Court of Appeals will have to decide who's right; the caretaker feels that all was to be left to her and has a video with Norton stating as much. The fan/friend, though, disputes.

I'm just surprised that Andre Norton lived in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Nothing wrong with it; I've never been there. But like most people, I build up a picture of what kind of person an author is from their books. I knew Andre Norton was a woman, and I pictured her living in Europe, probably Paris. Either that, or New England.

She was born in Cleveland and died in Murfreesboro. Clearly, telepathy isn't one of my gifts.

Les Huitres

Like other areas, France is suffering an oyster blight. But that's like saying, oh, "like Temecula, France has vineyards."

In coastal beds along the north and west coasts, baby oysters have died. Boom. Just like that. Since the babies would have been harvested in 3-4 years, expect the death of romance and mass starvation in France in 2011.

The Los Angeles Times reports this as a side item, almost, to their front page story about similar oyster die-offs along the Pacific Coast: California, Oregon, and Washington. There, the culprit has been found: an insidious bacteria that swept in with warmer water, which can also live quite well in the growing "dead zones" (unoxygenated waters) near the northwest coast.

And our illustrious president stands ready with his veto pen to stop any bills that address climate change. Does he want oysters to go the way of the dodo bird, or is he simply a dodo bird himself?

They were rather slow.

Specialty Bookstores on 3rd

On a walking/eating tour of Third Street in Los Angeles (a real tour, btw, not just lollygagging) . . . (not that there's anything wrong with lollygagging) . . . (and the tour was given by Melting Pot Tours, if you're going to be in Los Angeles and want to stuff yourself, shop, and pick up local history at the same time) . . .I visited two side-by-side specialty bookstores that are now on the internet:

• The Cook's Library, which has books on everything to do with cooking. Everything! And book signings, events, and always a plate of treats out for customers to sample. Of course, on the website you can't taste any treats, but if there's a cooking book you want to locate, these are the people to call.
• Traveler's Bookcase, with every guidebook for every country, as well as sections on adventure travel, traveling with kids, etc. Again, if a tour book has eluded you, they'll hunt it down.

I don't know how they divvy up the books that combine travel AND cooking, but since the store owners and clerks are all best friends, they've come up with something.

As for the picture. . . it's the handle of a doorway across the street. One of those "only in L.A." shots.

Beware of Freeloading Employers!

Writers Weekly has a compact, neat little piece titled "Red Flags in Freelance Help Wanted Ads." Just in case you would like to be alerted to the kind of companies that DON'T pay. I would add one more pet peeve of my own: Beware of projects that will pay on publication, but can't give you a publication date. They mean well, but there's a good chance you'll never see the money.

If we all lived in a perfect world, and were all so wealthy that we didn't have to worry over the rent. . . not paying writers would still be wrong.

Tour de France

It's worth about 22 seconds on the evening news or CNN, but the Tour de France has spent the last three days in my favorite part of the country, Brittany. Brest, the Morbihan Bay, St. Malo, Nantes. Not that anyone--even ESPN--covers it.

However--here is a site that has hour-long highlight videos of each day: Justin.TV

Yay! Another site with pictures and video is Steephill.tv And of course, there is the official Tour website, en francais.

Hommes in tight pants. . . Yes, I am a sports fan. Vive la France!

Orkney Orksplorations

Never been to the Orkneys but no adolescent who fell in love with The Once and Future King can hear "Orkney" without thinking of Morgan le Fay and that poor parboiled cat (Morgan never did find the right bone to make her invisible, did she?)

The BBC reports that a month-long archaeological exploration will commence at the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. It's the third-largest stone circle in Britain but its age and purpose--even the exact number of original stones--is unknown.

So the archaeologists will dig up trenches from the 1970s, when the last attempt took place, and also do some geophysical surveys.

According to a Historic Scotland report (where this picture comes from), the Ring of Brodgar is included in a World Heritage Site and:

"is one of the best-preserved and largest known henges in the British Isles. It is almost a perfect circle and 36 out of c. 60 original stones survive. The stone circle is surrounded by a substantial rock-cut ditch with two opposing causeways. The monument is surrounded by other standing stones and at least 13 Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds."

Nap Article

Freelancers have the luxury (usually) of sleeping and rising when we wish, and that includes taking naps. So here's a great piece from the Boston Globe about the art and joy of napping. It includes a blow-by-blow of the benefits of different nap lengths: which are most refreshing, which make up for lost nighttime sleep, etc.

For a relatively short piece, it had tons of info that I didn't know--such as the fact that caffeine takes 20 to 30 minutes to kick in. Nice, quick graphics, too.

100 Agents?

According to Kriste Matrisch from Writers Relief Inc, ". . . on average, your query needs to be seen by at least 100+ agents before deciding to revise or abandon the project. Securing agent representation is a tough task. "

100? Seriously?

Does this make us happy or sad?

Querying 100 agents is a daunting task--but at least I don't feel so downhearted now. After all, only six have rejected me. Peanuts!

Ms. Matrisch was quoted in Writers-World, btw, in a "here's what our readers say" piece published in issue 8:07 of their emailed newsletter.

After a week away (you noticed, right?) I'm back to trolling for jobs. Here's a sample of the opportunities:

• Specialized blog writer who "possesses excellent writing skills" and can devote 10 hours per week "to quickly turn around time-sensitive projects while also handling long-term assignments." Wow, I can do that! But. . . "Though the internship is unpaid, it will allow candidates to work in a real-world online publishing environment while improving their writing skills and building a portfolio of work." Well, once I figure out how to pay my gas bill with a portfolio, I'll apply.
• Interior design/home furnishings daily or weekly feature writer. "If you are looking for a venue to get your design concepts out there, always on to the hottest thing, and have unrivaled taste we’d love to hear from you. " Well, that doesn't describe me. But listen to this: "Please note that this is a start up site and compesation [sic] is currently unavailable. "
• Up and coming funny video blogger: "The exposure you would get (3.5MM visitors) could jumpstart your career."

Now I must admit that intersperse with these gems were full-time jobs paying up to $80,000 per year for experienced copywriters, etc. That just makes it more shameless that these flim-flam bozos pose as legitimate employers!