I never knew dancing in a skydiving trainer chamber was a sport, but apparently it is, and it's pretty awesome. Check out Kyra Poh in a dance that apparently won the whole thing. This is amazing. :D
Angie
Showing posts with label fun stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun stuff. Show all posts
Friday, October 19, 2018
Friday, September 7, 2018
Working On Your To-Do List?
I found a great web site that helps you work on your to-do list, plus encourages you to build and maintain good habits and get over bad habits. Thanks to Jim Hines for the link a couple of days ago.
The site is called Habitica, and it's a gamification site. What that means is that it takes something in your life -- in this case, getting stuff done and building good habits -- and turns it into a game. Habitica has the form of a fantasy roleplaying game.
When you create an account, which is free, you become a character in the land of Habitica. You're a first level Warrior with basically no gear. The first step is to set up some things you want to do (or want to stop doing) in a fairly intuitive (sorta -- there is a learning curve, but there's also a very thorough wiki) Tasks page. I have a combination of personal and work tasks on mine, ranging from Write 1000 Words, to Walk 1000 Steps, to Eat a Piece of Fruit, to Call Mom, to Read a Chapter of a Writing Book. I have Eat Junk Food as a negative; if I do that, I click on the Junk Food button and my character takes some damage. :/ I haven't done that yet, but I suppose I will at some point.
You set up each task with a frequency (every day, week or month; three times a week, or just to keep tabs but with no set goal) and estimate about how hard the task is. You can set up a larger task with an internal checklist, so if your task is cleaning the kitchen, it could have a checklist that includes Load the Dishwasher, Clean the Stove, Wipe Down the Counters, and Put Away Leftovers. It's really very flexible once you get the hang of it, and the wiki is great help.
As you do tasks, you click to check them off, and the system gives you experience points and gold pieces for each one. Sometimes (after you hit Level 3) you get an item drop. You accumulate experience points and make levels. When you hit Level 10, you can change professions if you want and become a Mage, a Rogue or a Healer. You also get some skills, which are like special abilities, or spells if you're a Mage or a Healer. I haven't gotten there yet (I'm currently Level 4) but it looks like fun.
There are also guilds you can join. I joined The Wordsmiths, a writers' guild, and The Renaissance Man, which despite the sexism of its name, seems like an interesting guild with a broad base of interests.
Guilds can set Challenges, too. A Challenge is a collection of Tasks, usually around a theme and with a deadline. You click to join the Challenge, and the Tasks are added to your Task page. Usually there's some kind of a prize in gems at the end for a random person who worked on the Challenge. Gems are another (rarer) form of currency in the game; there are things you can only buy with gems. I don't have any yet.
You can also form a party. A party is a smaller group than a Guild, and Parties do quests together. I started a party all by myself, since I wanted to try the baby quest (I'm battling some rabid dust bunnies right now :D ) and didn't know anybody on the site. There are two kinds of quests, the Boss Battle quest and the Collection quest. The Dust Bunny quest is a boss battle quest, with some unknown (to me, at least) number of dust bunnies to be defeated. Every time I check off a task, I do some amount of damage to the current dust bunny I'm fighting. When you've killed them all, you win the quest, yay. If you're playing a collection quest, as you check off tasks, there's a chance you'll get an item drop that's a quest item. When your party has collected enough of each type of item, you've won the quest, yay. The whole party gets a reward when the quest is done.
As you accumulate gold, you can buy gear for your character. You also get some gear for checking in to the site a certain number of times. I have a cool set of Bardic Robes (which increase my Perception stat) that I got for checking in the second day I played. I also have a helm, a sword and a shield. Different pieces of gear increase different stats, and you can buy better gear as you move up. Your stats are taken into account as you "fight." For example, having a better weapon gives you more strength, so you do more damage to whatever you're fighting each time you check off a task.
Basically, if you're a gamer geek, this is an awesome way to motivate yourself to get stuff done. I've been amazingly productive the last couple of days. I even called to make a dentist appointment O_O which I'd usually have put off for weeks. [hides under keyboard] I'm sure some of the enthusiasm will wear off soon, but I'm hoping most of it lasts. :)
I highly recommend trying Habitica if you're at all into gaming. If you do, drop a note here and we can get together and go questing. :D
Angie
The site is called Habitica, and it's a gamification site. What that means is that it takes something in your life -- in this case, getting stuff done and building good habits -- and turns it into a game. Habitica has the form of a fantasy roleplaying game.
When you create an account, which is free, you become a character in the land of Habitica. You're a first level Warrior with basically no gear. The first step is to set up some things you want to do (or want to stop doing) in a fairly intuitive (sorta -- there is a learning curve, but there's also a very thorough wiki) Tasks page. I have a combination of personal and work tasks on mine, ranging from Write 1000 Words, to Walk 1000 Steps, to Eat a Piece of Fruit, to Call Mom, to Read a Chapter of a Writing Book. I have Eat Junk Food as a negative; if I do that, I click on the Junk Food button and my character takes some damage. :/ I haven't done that yet, but I suppose I will at some point.
You set up each task with a frequency (every day, week or month; three times a week, or just to keep tabs but with no set goal) and estimate about how hard the task is. You can set up a larger task with an internal checklist, so if your task is cleaning the kitchen, it could have a checklist that includes Load the Dishwasher, Clean the Stove, Wipe Down the Counters, and Put Away Leftovers. It's really very flexible once you get the hang of it, and the wiki is great help.
As you do tasks, you click to check them off, and the system gives you experience points and gold pieces for each one. Sometimes (after you hit Level 3) you get an item drop. You accumulate experience points and make levels. When you hit Level 10, you can change professions if you want and become a Mage, a Rogue or a Healer. You also get some skills, which are like special abilities, or spells if you're a Mage or a Healer. I haven't gotten there yet (I'm currently Level 4) but it looks like fun.
There are also guilds you can join. I joined The Wordsmiths, a writers' guild, and The Renaissance Man, which despite the sexism of its name, seems like an interesting guild with a broad base of interests.
Guilds can set Challenges, too. A Challenge is a collection of Tasks, usually around a theme and with a deadline. You click to join the Challenge, and the Tasks are added to your Task page. Usually there's some kind of a prize in gems at the end for a random person who worked on the Challenge. Gems are another (rarer) form of currency in the game; there are things you can only buy with gems. I don't have any yet.
You can also form a party. A party is a smaller group than a Guild, and Parties do quests together. I started a party all by myself, since I wanted to try the baby quest (I'm battling some rabid dust bunnies right now :D ) and didn't know anybody on the site. There are two kinds of quests, the Boss Battle quest and the Collection quest. The Dust Bunny quest is a boss battle quest, with some unknown (to me, at least) number of dust bunnies to be defeated. Every time I check off a task, I do some amount of damage to the current dust bunny I'm fighting. When you've killed them all, you win the quest, yay. If you're playing a collection quest, as you check off tasks, there's a chance you'll get an item drop that's a quest item. When your party has collected enough of each type of item, you've won the quest, yay. The whole party gets a reward when the quest is done.
As you accumulate gold, you can buy gear for your character. You also get some gear for checking in to the site a certain number of times. I have a cool set of Bardic Robes (which increase my Perception stat) that I got for checking in the second day I played. I also have a helm, a sword and a shield. Different pieces of gear increase different stats, and you can buy better gear as you move up. Your stats are taken into account as you "fight." For example, having a better weapon gives you more strength, so you do more damage to whatever you're fighting each time you check off a task.
Basically, if you're a gamer geek, this is an awesome way to motivate yourself to get stuff done. I've been amazingly productive the last couple of days. I even called to make a dentist appointment O_O which I'd usually have put off for weeks. [hides under keyboard] I'm sure some of the enthusiasm will wear off soon, but I'm hoping most of it lasts. :)
I highly recommend trying Habitica if you're at all into gaming. If you do, drop a note here and we can get together and go questing. :D
Angie
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Musing About Childhood Games
I just saw one of those little margin surveys on a web site, and it got me reminiscing. :)
It asks, what's the best childhood game? and offers kickball, capture the flag, hide-and-seek, or other.
For me, remembering how we played those games, it depends.
In the daytime, it's capture the flag, hands-down. At school, we played capture the flag on the soccer field, with extra-large chalkboard erasers as the flags. The 50-yard line divided the field in half, and jumpropes marked out huge circles at either end of the field, two on each end, one where your side's flag hung out, and one as the "jail" where captured players from the other side hung out.
For anyone who never played, the point is to get over the border, through/past the other team, grab their flag, and then carry it back across the border to your side, all without getting tagged. This, as you can imagine, is very difficult and takes considerable cunning.
If you're tagged while on the other team's side (or if kids from the other side could lean over the border and grab you -- without moving both their feet onto your side -- and drag you over the border so both of your feet were on their side) then you were captured and had to go to their jail. I have a feeling the grab-and-drag part of the program probably wouldn't be allowed in today's elementary schools. [cough]
If you could make your way past the other team without getting tagged and get to their jail, you got a free walk back with some one person who was in jail -- you could "rescue" them. You had to walk back holding hands, or grabbing their wrist, or whatever your childish ego would allow. :)
An out-and-out win was rare, and when it happened it took cunning. One of my favorite tricks was to wait until nobody was watching me, then step over the border and start walking, all slumped down and dejected-looking, toward the jail. Most of the time, anyone who saw you were assume you'd been captured, and you might get some jeers, but rarely would anyone bother tagging you. When I got to the jail, it was all, "Hah-HAH!" and "Losers!" as I walked back with one of my teammates.
Alternately, I'd walk dejectedly to jail, but then stay there, as though I'd actually been captured, whether or not there was anyone from my team legitimately there. Rescue wasn't the point. Then from jail, where I was free to leave whenever I wanted since I hadn't actually been captured, I'd watch the other team. Most of their attention was usually facing away, toward the border and my side, as they watched for incursions from the front. I'd wait until some other of my teammates were making a push to get over the border, and when all the enemies were fully engaged elsewhere, I'd dash over from the jail to the flag circle, grab the flag and hotfoot it to the border, passing enemies from behind. I actually made it a few times, which was pretty awesome. :D
Out of school, the kids on my block played a sorta similar game we called British Bulldog. We played on a large lawn, the adjoining yards between two houses. Each house had a concrete walk leading from the front door, along the side of the garage, then a short jog back (away from most of the lawn) to the driveway, which continued on to the sidewalk and the curb. We played between Tommy and Jimmy Tousignant's house, and Jimmy Ramirez's house, because there were no intervening trees or bushes, just a big expanse of lawn from one walkway/driveway to the other.
Someone started as the Bulldog, and went in the middle of the lawn. Everyone else lined up on the walk or the driveway, which were Base, a safe zone. The sidewalk was out of bounds. The Bulldog yelled, "British Bulldog" (I don't know why, that's just what it was) and everyone tried to dash across the lawn to get to the walk/driveway Base on the other side.
While this happened, the Bulldog would try to "get" someone. They had to get the person they were after down on their butt on the grass. How they did this was up to them. Pretty much anything was allowed -- tackling, pushing, grabbing and arm and doing the swing-and-slam... whatever. Yeah, it was a rough game. I think that's why we liked it so much. (Yeah, I was the only girl playing.)
If the Bulldog successfully got someone down on their butt, they were captured, and they stayed in the middle. Now there were two people trying to "get" the kids still running across. The game continued until everyone had been captured except one person, and that person got to be the new Bulldog for the next game.
No flags or anything, but there are similarities, and it was one of our favorite games to play in the daytime. :) The fact that it required no equipment at all was probably a major plus.
At night, though, hide-and-seek was king. We played in the daytime sometimes, but twilight and after dark were the best times. The shadows were your friends, and you could be a lot more creative with your hiding places.
I'm going to assume everyone knows how to play hide-and-seek. In the daytime, you have to actually hide someplace where you're hidden. As the light faded, though, you could be sneaky. We played in the front yards of five or six adjacent houses along our street, so there was quite a lot of territory to go through. One neighbor had a row of loose bushes running down the border between their yard and the next; in the dim or dark, you could kneel down on all fours between two bushes and fade into the ragged row of foliage, whereas in the daytime you'd be laughably visible. And once (but only once!) I successfully hid by standing up, straight and still, against a neighbor's garage, along a line of tall, straight, juniper bushes that grew there, a few feet apart. The kid searching didn't notice that two pairs of bushes were twice as close together as all the others. [grin]
Ninjas weren't really a thing at that time in popular kid-culture, in the early- to mid-seventies, but we were totally ninjas on those summer nights, hiding from each other in the shadows and the dim-blurred yards.
What games did you play as a kid?
Angie
It asks, what's the best childhood game? and offers kickball, capture the flag, hide-and-seek, or other.
For me, remembering how we played those games, it depends.
In the daytime, it's capture the flag, hands-down. At school, we played capture the flag on the soccer field, with extra-large chalkboard erasers as the flags. The 50-yard line divided the field in half, and jumpropes marked out huge circles at either end of the field, two on each end, one where your side's flag hung out, and one as the "jail" where captured players from the other side hung out.
For anyone who never played, the point is to get over the border, through/past the other team, grab their flag, and then carry it back across the border to your side, all without getting tagged. This, as you can imagine, is very difficult and takes considerable cunning.
If you're tagged while on the other team's side (or if kids from the other side could lean over the border and grab you -- without moving both their feet onto your side -- and drag you over the border so both of your feet were on their side) then you were captured and had to go to their jail. I have a feeling the grab-and-drag part of the program probably wouldn't be allowed in today's elementary schools. [cough]
If you could make your way past the other team without getting tagged and get to their jail, you got a free walk back with some one person who was in jail -- you could "rescue" them. You had to walk back holding hands, or grabbing their wrist, or whatever your childish ego would allow. :)
An out-and-out win was rare, and when it happened it took cunning. One of my favorite tricks was to wait until nobody was watching me, then step over the border and start walking, all slumped down and dejected-looking, toward the jail. Most of the time, anyone who saw you were assume you'd been captured, and you might get some jeers, but rarely would anyone bother tagging you. When I got to the jail, it was all, "Hah-HAH!" and "Losers!" as I walked back with one of my teammates.
Alternately, I'd walk dejectedly to jail, but then stay there, as though I'd actually been captured, whether or not there was anyone from my team legitimately there. Rescue wasn't the point. Then from jail, where I was free to leave whenever I wanted since I hadn't actually been captured, I'd watch the other team. Most of their attention was usually facing away, toward the border and my side, as they watched for incursions from the front. I'd wait until some other of my teammates were making a push to get over the border, and when all the enemies were fully engaged elsewhere, I'd dash over from the jail to the flag circle, grab the flag and hotfoot it to the border, passing enemies from behind. I actually made it a few times, which was pretty awesome. :D
Out of school, the kids on my block played a sorta similar game we called British Bulldog. We played on a large lawn, the adjoining yards between two houses. Each house had a concrete walk leading from the front door, along the side of the garage, then a short jog back (away from most of the lawn) to the driveway, which continued on to the sidewalk and the curb. We played between Tommy and Jimmy Tousignant's house, and Jimmy Ramirez's house, because there were no intervening trees or bushes, just a big expanse of lawn from one walkway/driveway to the other.
Someone started as the Bulldog, and went in the middle of the lawn. Everyone else lined up on the walk or the driveway, which were Base, a safe zone. The sidewalk was out of bounds. The Bulldog yelled, "British Bulldog" (I don't know why, that's just what it was) and everyone tried to dash across the lawn to get to the walk/driveway Base on the other side.
While this happened, the Bulldog would try to "get" someone. They had to get the person they were after down on their butt on the grass. How they did this was up to them. Pretty much anything was allowed -- tackling, pushing, grabbing and arm and doing the swing-and-slam... whatever. Yeah, it was a rough game. I think that's why we liked it so much. (Yeah, I was the only girl playing.)
If the Bulldog successfully got someone down on their butt, they were captured, and they stayed in the middle. Now there were two people trying to "get" the kids still running across. The game continued until everyone had been captured except one person, and that person got to be the new Bulldog for the next game.
No flags or anything, but there are similarities, and it was one of our favorite games to play in the daytime. :) The fact that it required no equipment at all was probably a major plus.
At night, though, hide-and-seek was king. We played in the daytime sometimes, but twilight and after dark were the best times. The shadows were your friends, and you could be a lot more creative with your hiding places.
I'm going to assume everyone knows how to play hide-and-seek. In the daytime, you have to actually hide someplace where you're hidden. As the light faded, though, you could be sneaky. We played in the front yards of five or six adjacent houses along our street, so there was quite a lot of territory to go through. One neighbor had a row of loose bushes running down the border between their yard and the next; in the dim or dark, you could kneel down on all fours between two bushes and fade into the ragged row of foliage, whereas in the daytime you'd be laughably visible. And once (but only once!) I successfully hid by standing up, straight and still, against a neighbor's garage, along a line of tall, straight, juniper bushes that grew there, a few feet apart. The kid searching didn't notice that two pairs of bushes were twice as close together as all the others. [grin]
Ninjas weren't really a thing at that time in popular kid-culture, in the early- to mid-seventies, but we were totally ninjas on those summer nights, hiding from each other in the shadows and the dim-blurred yards.
What games did you play as a kid?
Angie
Friday, August 3, 2018
Birthday Muffins
So, today was my birthday. I'm 55, and finally eligible for some senior discounts, yay. :)
We didn't do anything really special, but I had a good day, which is the whole point, right? I didn't want to make a cake that'd sit there taunting me as leftovers for a week, so I made a batch of muffins. I've made them a bunch of times, and they turned out pretty good.
They're chocolate banana chocolate chip coconut muffins. They're very dark (from all the chocolate) and don't take a great picture, but they're seriously delicious. :) They're easy to make, too.
Chocolate Banana Chocolate Chip Coconut Muffins
3 brown bananas
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
1-2 tbs butter or margarine to grease muffin pan
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup AP flour
1/4 cup unsweetened baking cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 bag (12 oz.) chocolate chips
1/2 bag (14 oz. bag, so 7 oz.) shredded coconut (flaked will work too)
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Melt the 1/2 stick of butter. I put it in a mug, cover it with a saucer, then microwave it for one minute on 30% power. Your microwave might be different, so be careful.
Grease the muffin tin. I like using margarine; it's softer and you get a thicker layer of stuff on the muffin cups, which makes them easier to remove once they've baked and cooled. Note that you can use either the 12-medium-muffin tin or the 6-large-muffin tin; I've used both, and they work fine, even the baking time is the same.
Mash the bananas thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.
Add the melted butter or margarine, the 1/2 cup sugar, the egg, and the vanilla extract. Mix thoroughly.
Add shredded coconut. Mix thoroughly.
In another mixing bowl (this one can be a bit smaller) put the 1 1/4 cup AP flour, the 1/4 cup unsweetened baking cocoa, the salt, and the baking soda. (I sift my baking soda in a small strainer to get the lumps out of it. If you're the kind of person who thinks baking soda toothpaste makes an awesome ice cream topping, go ahead and just dump your spoonful of soda into the bowl with the flour, etc. No, seriously, there are few "Yuck!" experiences in baking like biting into a muffin and finding that there's a little rock of baking soda in it. :P ) Mix thoroughly.
Add the chocolate chips to the flour mixture. Mix thoroughly.
Dump the flour mixture into the banana mixture.
Mix carefully, with a large wooden spoon or rubber spatula. The trick here is to thoroughly moisten all the dry ingredients, without over-mixing the batter. I find a folding motion, like when you're folding whipped egg whites into something, alternated with scraping the dry mixture off the sides of the bowl, works best.
Portion the batter out into the muffin tin. I like to use a disher -- one of those half-sphere ice cream scoop things, with a sweeper-arm in it -- but a regular spoon will work. Two spoons, or a spoon and a fork, will work even better. Once all the muffin cups are full, I use a fork to make sure the batter is distributed as evenly as possible.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Let the muffins cool for at least half an hour. If you used a good layer of margarine to grease the muffin tin, you should be able to get them out by hand, with a slow and gentle twisting motion. If they're stubborn, use a butter knife straight down the sides of each cup, all the way down to the bottom, then make a gentle prying motion. Do that 2-4 times in each cup, evenly spaced around the cup, depending on how stubborn the muffins are being.
Variations:
Regular Banana Muffins -- use 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup sugar, and eliminate the baking cocoa, the chocolate chips and the coconut. This is basically banana bread batter; you can use it for either muffins or a loaf of banana bread. (The baking cocoa subbed for 1/4 cup of flour, and the shredded coconut is sweetened, and subs for 1/2 cup of the sugar.)
Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins -- make Regular Banana Muffins, but toss a bag of chocolate chips into the flour (and mix) before combining the wet and dry ingredients.
Other Fruit Muffins -- pretty much any fruit sauce/compote will work in place of the mashed bananas. Eyeball how much "stuff" you end up with in the bowl after you mash your bananas, and use about the same amount of other fruit. Chunky applesauce works well, although the apple muffins will be a bit moister. Other fruit compote (fruit seeded/pitted/hulled/chunked as needed, and cooked down with about half a cup of sugar) makes good muffins too. I've made great strawberry, peach, plum, and bing cherry muffins this way, taking advantage of summer fruits. If you use fruit compote/sauce, use 1/2 cup sugar when you make the muffins, to allow for the 1/2 cup of sugar in the compote/sauce. I've never added coconut to fruit compote muffins; I'd probably try them with no added sugar, because the 1/2 cup of sugar in the compote, plus the sweetened coconut, would probably be plenty of sugar.
Seriously, this isn't rocket science, or rocket fuel chemistry -- play with the recipe and see what you get. :)
Angie
We didn't do anything really special, but I had a good day, which is the whole point, right? I didn't want to make a cake that'd sit there taunting me as leftovers for a week, so I made a batch of muffins. I've made them a bunch of times, and they turned out pretty good.
They're chocolate banana chocolate chip coconut muffins. They're very dark (from all the chocolate) and don't take a great picture, but they're seriously delicious. :) They're easy to make, too.
Chocolate Banana Chocolate Chip Coconut Muffins
3 brown bananas
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
1-2 tbs butter or margarine to grease muffin pan
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup AP flour
1/4 cup unsweetened baking cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 bag (12 oz.) chocolate chips
1/2 bag (14 oz. bag, so 7 oz.) shredded coconut (flaked will work too)
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Melt the 1/2 stick of butter. I put it in a mug, cover it with a saucer, then microwave it for one minute on 30% power. Your microwave might be different, so be careful.
Grease the muffin tin. I like using margarine; it's softer and you get a thicker layer of stuff on the muffin cups, which makes them easier to remove once they've baked and cooled. Note that you can use either the 12-medium-muffin tin or the 6-large-muffin tin; I've used both, and they work fine, even the baking time is the same.
Mash the bananas thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.
Add the melted butter or margarine, the 1/2 cup sugar, the egg, and the vanilla extract. Mix thoroughly.
Add shredded coconut. Mix thoroughly.
In another mixing bowl (this one can be a bit smaller) put the 1 1/4 cup AP flour, the 1/4 cup unsweetened baking cocoa, the salt, and the baking soda. (I sift my baking soda in a small strainer to get the lumps out of it. If you're the kind of person who thinks baking soda toothpaste makes an awesome ice cream topping, go ahead and just dump your spoonful of soda into the bowl with the flour, etc. No, seriously, there are few "Yuck!" experiences in baking like biting into a muffin and finding that there's a little rock of baking soda in it. :P ) Mix thoroughly.
Add the chocolate chips to the flour mixture. Mix thoroughly.
Dump the flour mixture into the banana mixture.
Mix carefully, with a large wooden spoon or rubber spatula. The trick here is to thoroughly moisten all the dry ingredients, without over-mixing the batter. I find a folding motion, like when you're folding whipped egg whites into something, alternated with scraping the dry mixture off the sides of the bowl, works best.
Portion the batter out into the muffin tin. I like to use a disher -- one of those half-sphere ice cream scoop things, with a sweeper-arm in it -- but a regular spoon will work. Two spoons, or a spoon and a fork, will work even better. Once all the muffin cups are full, I use a fork to make sure the batter is distributed as evenly as possible.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Let the muffins cool for at least half an hour. If you used a good layer of margarine to grease the muffin tin, you should be able to get them out by hand, with a slow and gentle twisting motion. If they're stubborn, use a butter knife straight down the sides of each cup, all the way down to the bottom, then make a gentle prying motion. Do that 2-4 times in each cup, evenly spaced around the cup, depending on how stubborn the muffins are being.
Variations:
Regular Banana Muffins -- use 1 1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup sugar, and eliminate the baking cocoa, the chocolate chips and the coconut. This is basically banana bread batter; you can use it for either muffins or a loaf of banana bread. (The baking cocoa subbed for 1/4 cup of flour, and the shredded coconut is sweetened, and subs for 1/2 cup of the sugar.)
Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins -- make Regular Banana Muffins, but toss a bag of chocolate chips into the flour (and mix) before combining the wet and dry ingredients.
Other Fruit Muffins -- pretty much any fruit sauce/compote will work in place of the mashed bananas. Eyeball how much "stuff" you end up with in the bowl after you mash your bananas, and use about the same amount of other fruit. Chunky applesauce works well, although the apple muffins will be a bit moister. Other fruit compote (fruit seeded/pitted/hulled/chunked as needed, and cooked down with about half a cup of sugar) makes good muffins too. I've made great strawberry, peach, plum, and bing cherry muffins this way, taking advantage of summer fruits. If you use fruit compote/sauce, use 1/2 cup sugar when you make the muffins, to allow for the 1/2 cup of sugar in the compote/sauce. I've never added coconut to fruit compote muffins; I'd probably try them with no added sugar, because the 1/2 cup of sugar in the compote, plus the sweetened coconut, would probably be plenty of sugar.
Seriously, this isn't rocket science, or rocket fuel chemistry -- play with the recipe and see what you get. :)
Angie
Sunday, March 4, 2018
This Is Me
In case you missed The Greatest Showman, the musical about PT Barnum, it has some completely awesome music. This is my favorite song, from a workshop session they did while trying to get the movie greenlit.
Keala Settle plays the fat, bearded lady in the movie, and is sort of the leader/focus of all the people from the "freak show" part of Barnum's show. The movie is pretty kind to Barnum generally, playing him as a guy who was all down with and empathetic toward society's cast-offs [coughcough] but in one part of the movie he's been caught up in his infatuation with Jenny Lind, the opera singer, and there's this high-society reception for her. He tries to keep the circus people out, because he suddenly cares what the creme de la creme think of him. Settle's character is all, "You did NOT just do that!" and that leads to this song. Which is awesome.
I had water leaking down my face by about halfway through.
Check out this song, then go see the movie.
Angie
Keala Settle plays the fat, bearded lady in the movie, and is sort of the leader/focus of all the people from the "freak show" part of Barnum's show. The movie is pretty kind to Barnum generally, playing him as a guy who was all down with and empathetic toward society's cast-offs [coughcough] but in one part of the movie he's been caught up in his infatuation with Jenny Lind, the opera singer, and there's this high-society reception for her. He tries to keep the circus people out, because he suddenly cares what the creme de la creme think of him. Settle's character is all, "You did NOT just do that!" and that leads to this song. Which is awesome.
I had water leaking down my face by about halfway through.
Check out this song, then go see the movie.
Angie
Monday, February 12, 2018
Self-Parking Slippers
There's a post on Boing Boing with an incredibly cool video showing off Nissan's self-parking tech. They went to an inn in Japan and installed self-parking systems in some floor pillows, a TV remote on a table, and a whole row of slippers. Watching them all glide around, putting themselves away is surprisingly fun. :)
Thinking about it, though, you could put this tech in a lot of things. Heck, add some sort of flight tech (tiny little anti-grav units?) and your whole house could straighten itself up whenever you want. Decide where things should live and set each thing to home in on its spot, and there you go. Press a button, trigger an app, clap, (ask Alexa?) or whatever triggers it, and everything would go scuttling and gliding into its spot.
If you've ever had a little kid who'd never put their toys away (or been a little kid who hated putting their toys away [cough]) this'd be some serious dream tech. :D
Angie
Thinking about it, though, you could put this tech in a lot of things. Heck, add some sort of flight tech (tiny little anti-grav units?) and your whole house could straighten itself up whenever you want. Decide where things should live and set each thing to home in on its spot, and there you go. Press a button, trigger an app, clap, (ask Alexa?) or whatever triggers it, and everything would go scuttling and gliding into its spot.
If you've ever had a little kid who'd never put their toys away (or been a little kid who hated putting their toys away [cough]) this'd be some serious dream tech. :D
Angie
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Wonderful Star Wars Comics
Sad Panda has a seriously wonderful collection of Star Wars comics that are mashups of Star Wars and Calvin and Hobbes, plus a few other bonus strips -- I loved the Peanuts one. :) Definitely check them out. :D
Thanks to Jim Hines for the link.
Angie
Thanks to Jim Hines for the link.
Angie
Friday, June 2, 2017
John Williams Honored
Harvard bestowed an honorary Doctor of Music degree on John Williams -- who deserves it if anyone does -- and at the commencement ceremony, a Harvard a capella group called the Din & Tonics sang a medley of Williams's most famous instrumental pieces.
No really, it's great. :)
Check it out on The Mary Sue.
The shark lurking behind the group during the "Jaws" number made me laugh. And watching Williams's reactions when the camera cut to him a few times was just as much fun as listening; he obviously enjoyed the presentation.
None of my graduation ceremonies had anything half this cool.
Angie
No really, it's great. :)
Check it out on The Mary Sue.
The shark lurking behind the group during the "Jaws" number made me laugh. And watching Williams's reactions when the camera cut to him a few times was just as much fun as listening; he obviously enjoyed the presentation.
None of my graduation ceremonies had anything half this cool.
Angie
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Calvin and Hobbes
The very first Calvin and Hobbes comic was posted today, thirty years ago. It was an awesome comic, and it ended too soon. Read that first strip here.
Angie
Angie
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Finished the Afghan
I finished the afghan I'm giving my mom for Christmas. It's pretty huge. Which was deliberate -- I wanted it to work as a throw on her bed, and not just a lap-blanket sort of thing -- but still, I was kind of O_O when I spread it across our king size bed to take pics.
This is looking up from the foot of the bed. Note a copy of Charles's Adventures of an Arkansawyer on my nightstand. :)
A closeup showing the pattern. It's a basic feather-and-fan that I worked out on a paper towel, fiddling and swatching and fiddling and swatching till I had something I liked. One thing I noticed is that if you do a F&F pattern with a stockinette ground, which is how you usually see it, the rippled edges will curl up, which looks like a mistake. :/ I experimented a bit and found that if you knit that edge with a garter stitch ground, it lays flat, so the first few inches and last few inches of the afghan are in garter stitch, which you can see more clearly below. The texture is a bit odd, but I'll take that in exchange for an edge that lays nicely flat.
This took me about six weeks or so to do. I've been knitting while I watch Netflix on my computer, and I've been watching a lot of Netflix. :)
Angie
This is looking up from the foot of the bed. Note a copy of Charles's Adventures of an Arkansawyer on my nightstand. :)
A closeup showing the pattern. It's a basic feather-and-fan that I worked out on a paper towel, fiddling and swatching and fiddling and swatching till I had something I liked. One thing I noticed is that if you do a F&F pattern with a stockinette ground, which is how you usually see it, the rippled edges will curl up, which looks like a mistake. :/ I experimented a bit and found that if you knit that edge with a garter stitch ground, it lays flat, so the first few inches and last few inches of the afghan are in garter stitch, which you can see more clearly below. The texture is a bit odd, but I'll take that in exchange for an edge that lays nicely flat.
This took me about six weeks or so to do. I've been knitting while I watch Netflix on my computer, and I've been watching a lot of Netflix. :)
Angie
Monday, September 21, 2015
Shooting Open Locks
So you're a writer and your character wants to shoot a lock off a gate or a door or something, to get to where they need to be. Does that actually work? What kind of gun/ammo would you need? How many shots? Let's find out!
Seriously, this is a fun video. :)
Also, that dude is a pretty awesome shot. O_O
Angie
Seriously, this is a fun video. :)
Also, that dude is a pretty awesome shot. O_O
Angie
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Awesome Latte Foam Art
Michael Breach makes truly amazing art in latte foam using a toothpick. Click through and check it out. (I love the one he did for the movie Gravity.)
Thanks to Dear Author for the link.
Angie
Thanks to Dear Author for the link.
Angie
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Workshop Stuff
I went kind of radio silent for a few weeks there -- sorry about that. I have things to post about, but I'm not going to dump it all at once. First is the Anthology Workshop I went to from late February through the first week in March. Great stuff as always. Anyone who has any interest in writing short fiction should try to get into one of these workshops some year. I think the 2016 Anthology Workshop still has space, or at least it's not marked as full yet. Click through and scroll down.
For anyone going "Huh?" right now, the Anthology Workshop is an intense week-and-a-bit on the Oregon coast with about forty writers and half a dozen editors. We get six anthology assignments ahead of time -- submission guidelines, like you'd see for any anthology -- starting right after the first of the year. Each assignment has a deadline a week away, and then we get the next one, boom-boom-boom, six stories due on six successive Sundays. You're not required to write for every book -- you can pick the ones you want -- but why wouldn't you? This is a great opportunity to submit work and then listen to a bunch of editors arguing over your stories. Oh, and possibly make some sales to Fiction River, as a nice bonus to eight days of learning.
Most of the workshop days are devoted to going over stories, one book's worth per day. They start at one end of the row of editors at the front of the room, and each editor says whether they'd have bought the story or not, and why or why not. The last editor is the one (or occasionally a pair, editing a book as a team) who's actually buying stories for the live anthology. There's a white board for each book, where BUY and MAYBE stories are listed, along with author and wordcount. Sometimes all the editors agree one way or the other, but usually not. The discussions back and forth between editors of differing opinions can be entertaining, and are always educational. That's really what it's all about -- seeing how and why different professional editors can and do disagree over a story, occasionally with snark or sarcasm involved. When we're done with all the stories, the editor(s) look at how many BUY stories they have, and if there isn't enough wordcount, they go through the MAYBE stories to finish building the TOC. Watching them do this is another great educational opportunity.
So each day, the editors go over one book's worth of stories. I always write for all the books, and so do a lot of the other attendees. Before this year, if a story was passed up, we were encouraged to sub it to some other pro market right away, but this time we were told not to. Good thing, too.
The six books we wrote for were, in scheduled publication order:
Hidden in Crime, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a historical crime volume
Visions of the Apocalypse, edited by John Helfers, a book of stories taking place during (not just before or after) the end of the world
Last Stand, edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Felicia Fredlund, stories about characters making a final stand, and no, it's not all they-died-in-the-end stories :)
Superpowers, edited by Rebecca Moesta, a YA anthology about teenagers learning to cope with some kind of super power
Haunted, edited by Kerrie Hughes, an anthology of haunting stories
Pulse Pounders: Adrenaline, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, a book of short thrillers
Click through and scroll down a bit to see the up-coming anthology covers. Last I heard, they're planning to find new art for the Last Stand book, but the others are pretty set except for names on the covers.
I initially sold a story to Haunted, which is cool; I've worked with Kerrie before and am looking forward to working with her again. I missed with John's Apocalypse book, which was disappointing; I've sold stories to him the last two years, but this time I didn't quite hit what he was looking for. Dean hated my story for Last Stand, but Felicia liked it a lot. I honestly wasn't expecting to make it in there, but after going over all the stories, they did some horse trading between themselves and Dean got one he wanted that Felicia hadn't really cared for, and Felicia got mine. :) Kris teetered a bit on mine, but it didn't quite make it, which was disappointing, but I've never sold her anything before, so I was almost expecting it. Then on the last workshop day, she announced that someone not in the workshop who'd been invited to submit to the book, and who'd wanted a 10K word space saved for them, couldn't submit something after all, leaving Kris with a 10K word hole. She bought two extra stories after all, one of them mine, woot!
Now this year, there was an extra person sitting up front with the editors. Mark Leslie Lefebvre, AKA Mark the Kobo guy, was a student in the workshop last year. He stepped in and offered some Kobo support when a couple of editors had more stories they Really Really Wanted to buy, but which they didn't have room/budget for. Two of last year's volumes have special Kobo editions with three more stories in them, which is awesome, so thanks to Mark for that. But this year, Mark was sitting up front. Huh?
Okay, there had to be a reason. Last year, there was some talk about how, if the special Kobo editions were a success and sold well, they might do special editions of all the books this year. But as days went by, they weren't buying extra stories, and there was no mention of a Kobo edition. Huh. But there was Mark up there, doing the Yes-Maybe-No thing with all the stories. My guess was that he was doing a stealth book, his own anthology, and I was right. :) They went through all the stories that Mark or one (or more) of the other editors had loved, but either didn't have room in their book, or it was a story for someone else's book that didn't get bought. We had a whiteboard for each book (Dean and company screwed each day's board up onto the wall somewhere in the room after that day's workshop was over) and then Mark had a couple more where he assembled his picks, plus all the unbought picks from the other editors. Hashmarks showed which stories had a lot of love from the editors, even if the one it was written for didn't buy it. That last round of TOC building was great, especially for the folks who got last minute surprise buys.
There's some great stuff in there, stories I'd have bought if I'd been one of the editors. The book's not on the Fiction River site, but they were calling it Editors' Cut at the workshop. Fiction River doesn't always stick to just one genre in each volume, but Mark's book will have more variety than usual. Should be great for anyone who just loves short fiction.
Like last year, we had sign-ups to eat lunch with the editors and Allyson (the publisher of WMG), and I went out with a few people. And there were great discussions in, around, and after workshop sessions. Some notes:
If you love a trope that nobody's writing anymore, other people will love it too, so write it to fill that hole. This is especially an opportunity for folks indie publishing -- don't let New York tell you Horror is dead, or Westerns, or romantic vampires, or kids finding weird objects while playing, or whatever you're into.
Past a certain level of craftsmanship, whether a story sells or not isn't really about quality, it's about taste. Don't let a rejection, or a bunch of rejections, discourage you. If you're pretty sure a story is well written, keep subbing it, or indie publish it.
If you're doing a punch story, a short story with a quick hit at the end, do a double-punch -- two hits in quick succession -- to make it even more powerful.
When you're writing for submission, readability is key. No 10pt fonts, no weird fonts, don't try to be "special." Try to be readable. If the editor notices your formatting, you blew it.
Define what "success" means to you before you plan a promo campaign. You have to know what you want so you can tell if your campaign was successful and worth the resources you put into it.
80% of people who download a free book won't read it.
You need at least 3-5 books in a series for perma-free on the first book to be of any benefit. (And there's some disagreement about whether perma-free is ever a good idea. Temporary free promotions might be better.)
Amazon categories -- use Fiction, General and Fiction, [Genre] as your two categories. Then your keywords will get you into other categories under those. There are a bazillion categories under Fiction, General that you can only get in through Fiction, General plus keywords
When you sub to a literary market, don't label the story by genre in your cover letter, and don't note genre credits. For literary markets, no previous credits are better than genre credits.
Never use the term "self-published" -- use small press, independently published, etc. The stigma is still there, so don't get it on you.
A good title will sell a story before you've even written it (in tradpub). It'll also sell a story to readers.
Stories about the everyday tragedies of human life need to rise above the everyday tragedies of human life. They're realistic, but a reader needs more of a reason to read about that particular one. Usually it's not something anyone outside the main character's family and friends would care about. [Writer]'s story worked because their character was heroic and had a humorous thread in their voice about what was going on with them. Also, you need to balance the tragic event with being an entertainer. The reader has to want to read that story -- they'll want to read it because it's entertaining. What about the story and the characters makes the reader want to hang with them, especially since most people aren't keen to spend time with their own family and friends who are horribly sick, or whatever, much less a stranger?
To transcend the horrible mundanity, maybe the character does something different, something heroic. Or the story could have an awesome voice.
If you're editing an anthology, or putting together a collection of your own short work, the gut-wrenchingly emotional story should be at the end, or maybe in the middle, but most definitely not right up in the beginning.
When building your TOC, figure about 1/3 of readers will read the book front to back, in order.
Don't start a story with the character's first and last name -- nametag opening. It has to be up front quick, but not the first two words.
Kris's technique for analyzing someone else's book/story -- Take a book you never want to read again, underline setting words with a different color for each sense. Then go through and color each word for how it supports the story, setting or character or plot. The idea is to load the technique into your head so it filters to your subconscious and five stories [of your own] later you'll start using it when you write. It's not deliberate; it comes out of the subconscious as you write.
Dean's technique -- Take a book and type the opening in your manuscript format to get the feel for what the writer was doing word-by-word. You'll start realizing what the writer is doing and how they do it.
Whenever you get comments about too many details, it's always the writer putting the setting details in (the writer's narrative voice) rather than filtering it all through the POV character's opinion. Everything should be filtered through the character, which makes the words build character as well as setting. If you feed setting in through the POV character, readers won't notice all the setting coming in; it reads very quickly.
If anyone notices your setting in the beginning, you fucked up.
Don't use a series name in the title of a story in an anthology because too many people will see that it's a series story and skip it.
Stories are circles, and the end has to reflect back on the beginning. If an ending isn't working, it's probably because there's a problem with the beginning, or because the ending doesn't reflect on the beginning.
On a crime story being resolved -- the reader needs to know who committed the crime and that the story is over. A mystery/crime story puts order onto chaos. If the story is noir, the reader needs to know that order will never be imposed on the chaos. If it's not a mystery per se, they might not catch the crook, but in any case the reader needs to have that info.
This isn't everything, but it's most of what I had in my Notes file on my laptop. This is an awesome workshop, and I'd be taking it even if I never sold anything. In fact, the first time I went, the anthologies weren't "live," and nobody sold anything; we were all there for the learning. This is a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in publishing short fiction.
Angie
For anyone going "Huh?" right now, the Anthology Workshop is an intense week-and-a-bit on the Oregon coast with about forty writers and half a dozen editors. We get six anthology assignments ahead of time -- submission guidelines, like you'd see for any anthology -- starting right after the first of the year. Each assignment has a deadline a week away, and then we get the next one, boom-boom-boom, six stories due on six successive Sundays. You're not required to write for every book -- you can pick the ones you want -- but why wouldn't you? This is a great opportunity to submit work and then listen to a bunch of editors arguing over your stories. Oh, and possibly make some sales to Fiction River, as a nice bonus to eight days of learning.
Most of the workshop days are devoted to going over stories, one book's worth per day. They start at one end of the row of editors at the front of the room, and each editor says whether they'd have bought the story or not, and why or why not. The last editor is the one (or occasionally a pair, editing a book as a team) who's actually buying stories for the live anthology. There's a white board for each book, where BUY and MAYBE stories are listed, along with author and wordcount. Sometimes all the editors agree one way or the other, but usually not. The discussions back and forth between editors of differing opinions can be entertaining, and are always educational. That's really what it's all about -- seeing how and why different professional editors can and do disagree over a story, occasionally with snark or sarcasm involved. When we're done with all the stories, the editor(s) look at how many BUY stories they have, and if there isn't enough wordcount, they go through the MAYBE stories to finish building the TOC. Watching them do this is another great educational opportunity.
So each day, the editors go over one book's worth of stories. I always write for all the books, and so do a lot of the other attendees. Before this year, if a story was passed up, we were encouraged to sub it to some other pro market right away, but this time we were told not to. Good thing, too.
The six books we wrote for were, in scheduled publication order:
Hidden in Crime, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a historical crime volume
Visions of the Apocalypse, edited by John Helfers, a book of stories taking place during (not just before or after) the end of the world
Last Stand, edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Felicia Fredlund, stories about characters making a final stand, and no, it's not all they-died-in-the-end stories :)
Superpowers, edited by Rebecca Moesta, a YA anthology about teenagers learning to cope with some kind of super power
Haunted, edited by Kerrie Hughes, an anthology of haunting stories
Pulse Pounders: Adrenaline, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, a book of short thrillers
Click through and scroll down a bit to see the up-coming anthology covers. Last I heard, they're planning to find new art for the Last Stand book, but the others are pretty set except for names on the covers.
I initially sold a story to Haunted, which is cool; I've worked with Kerrie before and am looking forward to working with her again. I missed with John's Apocalypse book, which was disappointing; I've sold stories to him the last two years, but this time I didn't quite hit what he was looking for. Dean hated my story for Last Stand, but Felicia liked it a lot. I honestly wasn't expecting to make it in there, but after going over all the stories, they did some horse trading between themselves and Dean got one he wanted that Felicia hadn't really cared for, and Felicia got mine. :) Kris teetered a bit on mine, but it didn't quite make it, which was disappointing, but I've never sold her anything before, so I was almost expecting it. Then on the last workshop day, she announced that someone not in the workshop who'd been invited to submit to the book, and who'd wanted a 10K word space saved for them, couldn't submit something after all, leaving Kris with a 10K word hole. She bought two extra stories after all, one of them mine, woot!
Now this year, there was an extra person sitting up front with the editors. Mark Leslie Lefebvre, AKA Mark the Kobo guy, was a student in the workshop last year. He stepped in and offered some Kobo support when a couple of editors had more stories they Really Really Wanted to buy, but which they didn't have room/budget for. Two of last year's volumes have special Kobo editions with three more stories in them, which is awesome, so thanks to Mark for that. But this year, Mark was sitting up front. Huh?
Okay, there had to be a reason. Last year, there was some talk about how, if the special Kobo editions were a success and sold well, they might do special editions of all the books this year. But as days went by, they weren't buying extra stories, and there was no mention of a Kobo edition. Huh. But there was Mark up there, doing the Yes-Maybe-No thing with all the stories. My guess was that he was doing a stealth book, his own anthology, and I was right. :) They went through all the stories that Mark or one (or more) of the other editors had loved, but either didn't have room in their book, or it was a story for someone else's book that didn't get bought. We had a whiteboard for each book (Dean and company screwed each day's board up onto the wall somewhere in the room after that day's workshop was over) and then Mark had a couple more where he assembled his picks, plus all the unbought picks from the other editors. Hashmarks showed which stories had a lot of love from the editors, even if the one it was written for didn't buy it. That last round of TOC building was great, especially for the folks who got last minute surprise buys.
There's some great stuff in there, stories I'd have bought if I'd been one of the editors. The book's not on the Fiction River site, but they were calling it Editors' Cut at the workshop. Fiction River doesn't always stick to just one genre in each volume, but Mark's book will have more variety than usual. Should be great for anyone who just loves short fiction.
Like last year, we had sign-ups to eat lunch with the editors and Allyson (the publisher of WMG), and I went out with a few people. And there were great discussions in, around, and after workshop sessions. Some notes:
If you love a trope that nobody's writing anymore, other people will love it too, so write it to fill that hole. This is especially an opportunity for folks indie publishing -- don't let New York tell you Horror is dead, or Westerns, or romantic vampires, or kids finding weird objects while playing, or whatever you're into.
Past a certain level of craftsmanship, whether a story sells or not isn't really about quality, it's about taste. Don't let a rejection, or a bunch of rejections, discourage you. If you're pretty sure a story is well written, keep subbing it, or indie publish it.
If you're doing a punch story, a short story with a quick hit at the end, do a double-punch -- two hits in quick succession -- to make it even more powerful.
When you're writing for submission, readability is key. No 10pt fonts, no weird fonts, don't try to be "special." Try to be readable. If the editor notices your formatting, you blew it.
Define what "success" means to you before you plan a promo campaign. You have to know what you want so you can tell if your campaign was successful and worth the resources you put into it.
80% of people who download a free book won't read it.
You need at least 3-5 books in a series for perma-free on the first book to be of any benefit. (And there's some disagreement about whether perma-free is ever a good idea. Temporary free promotions might be better.)
Amazon categories -- use Fiction, General and Fiction, [Genre] as your two categories. Then your keywords will get you into other categories under those. There are a bazillion categories under Fiction, General that you can only get in through Fiction, General plus keywords
When you sub to a literary market, don't label the story by genre in your cover letter, and don't note genre credits. For literary markets, no previous credits are better than genre credits.
Never use the term "self-published" -- use small press, independently published, etc. The stigma is still there, so don't get it on you.
A good title will sell a story before you've even written it (in tradpub). It'll also sell a story to readers.
Stories about the everyday tragedies of human life need to rise above the everyday tragedies of human life. They're realistic, but a reader needs more of a reason to read about that particular one. Usually it's not something anyone outside the main character's family and friends would care about. [Writer]'s story worked because their character was heroic and had a humorous thread in their voice about what was going on with them. Also, you need to balance the tragic event with being an entertainer. The reader has to want to read that story -- they'll want to read it because it's entertaining. What about the story and the characters makes the reader want to hang with them, especially since most people aren't keen to spend time with their own family and friends who are horribly sick, or whatever, much less a stranger?
To transcend the horrible mundanity, maybe the character does something different, something heroic. Or the story could have an awesome voice.
If you're editing an anthology, or putting together a collection of your own short work, the gut-wrenchingly emotional story should be at the end, or maybe in the middle, but most definitely not right up in the beginning.
When building your TOC, figure about 1/3 of readers will read the book front to back, in order.
Don't start a story with the character's first and last name -- nametag opening. It has to be up front quick, but not the first two words.
Kris's technique for analyzing someone else's book/story -- Take a book you never want to read again, underline setting words with a different color for each sense. Then go through and color each word for how it supports the story, setting or character or plot. The idea is to load the technique into your head so it filters to your subconscious and five stories [of your own] later you'll start using it when you write. It's not deliberate; it comes out of the subconscious as you write.
Dean's technique -- Take a book and type the opening in your manuscript format to get the feel for what the writer was doing word-by-word. You'll start realizing what the writer is doing and how they do it.
Whenever you get comments about too many details, it's always the writer putting the setting details in (the writer's narrative voice) rather than filtering it all through the POV character's opinion. Everything should be filtered through the character, which makes the words build character as well as setting. If you feed setting in through the POV character, readers won't notice all the setting coming in; it reads very quickly.
If anyone notices your setting in the beginning, you fucked up.
Don't use a series name in the title of a story in an anthology because too many people will see that it's a series story and skip it.
Stories are circles, and the end has to reflect back on the beginning. If an ending isn't working, it's probably because there's a problem with the beginning, or because the ending doesn't reflect on the beginning.
On a crime story being resolved -- the reader needs to know who committed the crime and that the story is over. A mystery/crime story puts order onto chaos. If the story is noir, the reader needs to know that order will never be imposed on the chaos. If it's not a mystery per se, they might not catch the crook, but in any case the reader needs to have that info.
This isn't everything, but it's most of what I had in my Notes file on my laptop. This is an awesome workshop, and I'd be taking it even if I never sold anything. In fact, the first time I went, the anthologies weren't "live," and nobody sold anything; we were all there for the learning. This is a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in publishing short fiction.
Angie
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Your Brain on Fiction
A writer friend on a mailing list linked to an article called Your Brain on Fiction, which talks about how the brain responds when one is reading fiction.
It seems that reading vivid adjectives or active verbs stimulates the same parts of your brain that activate when you're actually experiencing the adjective or doing the verb. For example:
This also works with social interactions. Reading about characters going through emotional experiences and relationships makes readers more able to understand other people, empathize with them, and navigate social situations.
Although that last bit made me wonder. It sounds weird that kids would pick up more about social interaction from movies than from television, and I don't really buy the "going to the movies with parents" thing. When a little kid is really into a TV show, they're going to want to talk about it, whether or not Mom or Dad knows who all Spongebob's friends are. And what about watching movies on TV? Maybe they meant to differentiate between watching television and going to a movie theater, rather than between TV shows and movies. It still sounds iffy; I'd have liked to get more info on that.
Still, this is pretty cool. Definitely click through and read the whole thing.
Angie
It seems that reading vivid adjectives or active verbs stimulates the same parts of your brain that activate when you're actually experiencing the adjective or doing the verb. For example:
Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.
In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “chair” and “key,” this region remained dark.
This also works with social interactions. Reading about characters going through emotional experiences and relationships makes readers more able to understand other people, empathize with them, and navigate social situations.
It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because children often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may experience more “parent-children conversations about mental states” when it comes to films.)
Although that last bit made me wonder. It sounds weird that kids would pick up more about social interaction from movies than from television, and I don't really buy the "going to the movies with parents" thing. When a little kid is really into a TV show, they're going to want to talk about it, whether or not Mom or Dad knows who all Spongebob's friends are. And what about watching movies on TV? Maybe they meant to differentiate between watching television and going to a movie theater, rather than between TV shows and movies. It still sounds iffy; I'd have liked to get more info on that.
Still, this is pretty cool. Definitely click through and read the whole thing.
Angie
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Interview
Vanessa MacLellan, one of the contributors to the 2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, has been posting interviews of other writers who have stories in that book, and my interview went up today.
As with the anthology itself, the emphasis in the interview is diversity in fiction. I write diverse characters because I want to accurately reflect the world around me in my work, but it goes farther than that. Click through to see why.
Thanks to Van for doing these interviews!
Angie
As with the anthology itself, the emphasis in the interview is diversity in fiction. I write diverse characters because I want to accurately reflect the world around me in my work, but it goes farther than that. Click through to see why.
Thanks to Van for doing these interviews!
Angie
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Writers' Police Academy
The 2015 Writers' Police Academy schedule has been posted. This is the most exciting event we've ever offered, by far. We even have a full-size Boeing 727 jet onsite where you'll learn to handle unruly and dangerous passengers. There's time on indoor firing ranges (pistol and rifle), a forensic lab, investigating bloodstain patterns, riding in patrol cars as they skid out of control, performing the PIT maneuver on a suspect vehicle as it flees from your patrol vehicle, door breaches and searching buildings for armed bad guys (yes, there'll be actual door-breaching and shooting involved this year), lots of fire, sirens, smoke, interacting with police academy recruits and firefighters, and much, much more. And, as always, there's lots of heart-thumping action, including a few surprises. OMG, this one's over the top!
Registration opens February 14, 2015
Event Registration – $375
Registration fee includes lunch at the police academy on Friday and Saturday, including a Wisconsin tailgate party as one of the meals, transportation to and from the academy and hotel, and the Friday night reception.
Sisters in Crime is offering a discount for members. Details are listed on the WPA "Schedule" page. If you are not a member you should join now to receive the generous discount!
* We again anticipate an overwhelming response once registration is open. Space, even though there's more of it this year, is limited. Therefore, all slots are first-come/first served. You will not want to miss this one of a kind, exciting weekend. Registration begins at 11 a.m. on February 14, 2015. Remember -- the event sold out in 6 hours last year so be ready to sign up the moment registration opens.
Click through for a photo of the event site -- they're at a public safety training center with great facilities.
Angie
Registration opens February 14, 2015
Event Registration – $375
Registration fee includes lunch at the police academy on Friday and Saturday, including a Wisconsin tailgate party as one of the meals, transportation to and from the academy and hotel, and the Friday night reception.
Sisters in Crime is offering a discount for members. Details are listed on the WPA "Schedule" page. If you are not a member you should join now to receive the generous discount!
* We again anticipate an overwhelming response once registration is open. Space, even though there's more of it this year, is limited. Therefore, all slots are first-come/first served. You will not want to miss this one of a kind, exciting weekend. Registration begins at 11 a.m. on February 14, 2015. Remember -- the event sold out in 6 hours last year so be ready to sign up the moment registration opens.
Click through for a photo of the event site -- they're at a public safety training center with great facilities.
Angie
Monday, February 9, 2015
How Not to Be Awkward Around People With Disabilities
This is a fun video, with lots of great info and some laughs. Thanks to Lee Wind for the link!
Angie
Angie
Friday, January 23, 2015
Amazing Historical Archery
Like most people, I grew up thinking that the ultimate display of archery skill was the stationary shooter aiming at a target. When I was in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism -- a sort of learn-by-doing history club) I learned about war archers, who massed behind the infantry and shot arrows in volleys, aiming high shoot their arrows in parabolic arcs over the heads of their own fighters to come down onto the enemy. War archers in the SCA counted on the massing of arrows for effectiveness, to make them difficult or impossible to dodge.
Lars Andersen studied historical documents and illustrations and has learned to shoot the way combat archers shot in pre-gunpowder days. This guy is amazingly fast, accurate, versatile and mobile. Watching this video makes me want to dive into historical fantasy just so I can write about a serious archer. :) Check it out:
Thanks to BoingBoing for sharing this.
Angie
Lars Andersen studied historical documents and illustrations and has learned to shoot the way combat archers shot in pre-gunpowder days. This guy is amazingly fast, accurate, versatile and mobile. Watching this video makes me want to dive into historical fantasy just so I can write about a serious archer. :) Check it out:
Thanks to BoingBoing for sharing this.
Angie
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
The Best Turkey Soup
My favorite part of Thanksgiving is making turkey soup a few days later out of the turkey carcass. Usually I just make regular soup, like making chicken soup -- carcass in a stock pot with a lot of water, plus an onion, couple carrots, couple stalks of celery, about half a bulb of garlic, salt and pepper, simmer all day, strain. (I have a stock pot with a strainer insert that makes this easy.) If you wait to fridge it all overnight before eating it, you can skim the fat off the top so it's not as greasy. (Tall and narrow containers are better than short and fat ones; the thicker the layer of cooled fat is, the easier it is to remove.) Then sometimes I'll add back the carrots, whatever turkey meat is left over at that point, and maybe some potato, and stick-blend it all to make the soup a little thicker.
This time, I was talking to my friend Mimi Tulane a few days ago, and mentioned that I hadn't made turkey soup yet, and that I still had the sweet potatoes to do as well. (I have some health issues that make it not-smart (on a Running To The ER For IV Meds not-smart) to eat a lot at one sitting, so doing the turkey and stuffing and half a dozen sides all in one meal is kind of pointless.) So I was blathering away in e-mail and I guess I didn't make things clear, because Mimi wrote back and said she'd never heard of turkey-sweet-potato soup before, but it sounded like it could be good.
Of course I'm reading this and I start laughing and go to type an explanation, but then I stop and think. Huh, that does sound like it could be good. [bemused smile]
I tried it. It's awesome.
I made my turkey soup -- the broth version, all the solids removed -- then baked a couple of sweet potatoes until they were very soft. I heated up enough of the skimmed broth to fill a stew-size pot about two-thirds, then put the sweet potato flesh in and hit it (carefully) with a stick blender until there were no chunks visible. Then I added milk (about an inch and a half in that pot; probably like two or three cups? sorry, I don't measure) and blended it again.
It was really wonderful. My husband was raving about it all day, and he's not really much of a soup person. It's meaty from the turkey, with some sweetness from the sweet potatoes, and some richness from the milk. I had more later with cut up pieces of leftover turkey in it, and that's good too. I imagine anything you'd usually put into turkey soup would be good -- potatoes, carrots, pasta, rice, whatever you're into.
This is great. Seriously, next time you make a turkey, try it. And thanks, Mimi -- you're brilliant. :)
Angie
This time, I was talking to my friend Mimi Tulane a few days ago, and mentioned that I hadn't made turkey soup yet, and that I still had the sweet potatoes to do as well. (I have some health issues that make it not-smart (on a Running To The ER For IV Meds not-smart) to eat a lot at one sitting, so doing the turkey and stuffing and half a dozen sides all in one meal is kind of pointless.) So I was blathering away in e-mail and I guess I didn't make things clear, because Mimi wrote back and said she'd never heard of turkey-sweet-potato soup before, but it sounded like it could be good.
Of course I'm reading this and I start laughing and go to type an explanation, but then I stop and think. Huh, that does sound like it could be good. [bemused smile]
I tried it. It's awesome.
I made my turkey soup -- the broth version, all the solids removed -- then baked a couple of sweet potatoes until they were very soft. I heated up enough of the skimmed broth to fill a stew-size pot about two-thirds, then put the sweet potato flesh in and hit it (carefully) with a stick blender until there were no chunks visible. Then I added milk (about an inch and a half in that pot; probably like two or three cups? sorry, I don't measure) and blended it again.
It was really wonderful. My husband was raving about it all day, and he's not really much of a soup person. It's meaty from the turkey, with some sweetness from the sweet potatoes, and some richness from the milk. I had more later with cut up pieces of leftover turkey in it, and that's good too. I imagine anything you'd usually put into turkey soup would be good -- potatoes, carrots, pasta, rice, whatever you're into.
This is great. Seriously, next time you make a turkey, try it. And thanks, Mimi -- you're brilliant. :)
Angie
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