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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Space Program
SPACE PROGRAMS
CANADA IN SPACE
- Cmdr. Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut and recent commander of the Space Station, is back on Earth after stepping out of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan on Monday. He was in space for five months.
- Don't forget the CanadArm, which was developed by Canada and is vital to space exploration.
USA SPACE PROGRAM
- Too bad the US has abandoned most of its space program. A
country can't wage a war and have a space program, too.
1965 USA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- There were some tragic events in USA space history, not the least of which was the fire in the cockpit of Apollo 1 on Jan. 27, 1967,when three of the first group of NASA astronauts - Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee - died during a routine ground test of the Apollo capsule, and of course, the explosion of space shuttle Challenger which killed a teacher and all on board in 1986. In 2003 the Columbia broke apart, killing all astronauts on board, including an Israeli astronaut.
- Israeli astronaut killed as well as entire crew in 2003.
RUSSIAN TRIUMPHS AND TRAGEDIES
- Russia, too, has had its space catastrophes, perhaps not so
highly publicized.
- In April of 1961, a Russian named Yuri
Gagarin became the first man to orbit Earth.
- In April of 1961, a Russian named Yuri
Gagarin became the first man to orbit Earth.
- Russian astronauts shot
around the moon in 1967 and attempted to land on the moon before the well known American moon landing in 1969.
- The Russian landing before the Americans got there in 1969 didn't come about, after several failures, although there are stories to the contrary.
INDIA AND CHINA SPACE PROGRAMS
- India and China have their space programs, as well as many other countries such as Britain, North Korea, and Iran, less publicized in the USA.
BREWSTER rockit space guy
A funny comic book by Tim Ricard about rocket science on Rob Bryanton's blog.
Welcome home, Chris!!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Problems Posting Blog
I confess I've had a problem lately keeping up with posting my blog daily.
Now I'm searching for topics for the newsletter.
I'm reposting the finale from my post of yesterday. What do you think?
- I don't know what appeals because I haven't been getting a lot of comments.
- I'm thinking about what to write for my newsletters but not a lot of my readers have signed up for the newsletter.
- Russia has dropped off in my readership but still remains second only to the US for readership.
- India is more interested but not to the extent I had hoped.
- I'm often searching in the dark for topics for my blog posts.
Now I'm searching for topics for the newsletter.
- I've put together a FREE PDF for all those who sign up but I'm waiting for permission from an author I've quoted before sending it. I want to send it with my first newsletter.
- The content should be relevant and interesting to my readers, but I haven't gotten any comments about what my readers would like to see.
I'm reposting the finale from my post of yesterday. What do you think?
Enjoy the summer, readers, and don't forget to sign up for my newsletter.
A little SURPRISE gift for those who sign up will be forthcoming in the next few days, featuring the latest news on Sasquatch with a link to the latest scientific research, and a sneak preview of my new young adult novel.
Watch for my newsletter in your mailbox.
Please add the email to your address book so it's not marked as SPAM. We wouldn't want that, would we? NO!!!
Learn about writing, about authors and conferences, about the latest scientific developments in the world of space science, paranormal activities, and lots more.
Remember Doomsday? Lots of 2012 movies. That's history now, like the Millennium. What exciting future do we have now that Earth has (once again) survived?
Home Movies?
- Do any of you have a home movie to share of something exciting and magical? Would you like to share it here? I love new content from new and exciting young minds.
Comments
- Comments, please? All will be answered and I'll link to your blog if you include the link.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
India News and Pictures
India figures large in my sci-fi fantasy novel, SpaceHive, appropriate for boys and girls 10 - 14 years old and available on Amazon worldwide.
Himachal Pradesh in India
 |
| Map of India |
Hear what the Wasps have to say about relocating to beautiful northern India:
 | |
| Crops just coming up in India at sunrise |
SpaceHive lands in India
Its shadow covered all of western Canada and the northwestern USA. Superconductors whined and screeched. They locked on latitude and longitude. The ship rocketed far into space, whirled and shattered the sound barrier landing minutes later in a distant mountain area of India called Himachal Pradesh.
The people had fled to the caves in the hills The population of Himachal Pradesh had fled to the caves with the first wave of alien ships. No one lived on the plains or towns.
Ocean and beach in India "Our Black Watch is pleased with India," Zibb said. "We worker bees, nurses and drones were told we could leave the ship right away to explore and eat fresh food, collect nectar for honey, stretch our legs in a forest that's like our old Jive Hive.""The area is ideal." Queen Taranta preened. "We chose well. There are snowy mountains in the north to hide the ship, rivers and trees, tropics in the south and types of animals which have not yet been driven away as the area is so remote. There's plenty of fresh water now."
Snow-capped Himalayan mountains
Bollywood News
Reprinted from The India Times
Could Bollywood make a movie from SpaceHive? Maybe something like RIPD from India Times..."meet your new partner...you got to earn that...I'm the biggest lawman that ever lived and died."
- Hooray for Jason and Aadab Ali from SpaceHive....in real life, will Dev play Ramanujan in Indo-Holly production?
- Will Akshay Kumar and Sonaksi Shinha play Aadab and his girlfriend Iodine?
Quote from SpaceHive:
1. Aadab Ali:
Aadab Ali from SpaceHive "My name is Aadab Ali. May Allah be praised. I'm young Indian, take engineering courses, want to go to engineering college, but aliens come."
2. Aadab talks about Iodine:
Aadab's girlfriend Iodine "I'm freedom fighter now, fierce yet gentle and a good man. My girlfriend Iodine loves such a man. I'm twenty years old and she is sixteen, perfect ages. How happy I am to find a girl like Iodine. Allah be praised, but I must send her away now, to the farther hills where she will be safe like my parents and sisters."
Would it be a spoiler to say all ends happily? The fruit thinks so...
Enjoy the summer, readers, and don't forget to sign up for my newsletter (top left of my blog).
A little SURPRISE gift for those who sign up will be forthcoming in the next few days, featuring the latest news on Sasquatch with a link to the latest scientific research, and a sneak preview of my new young adult novel.
Watch for my newsletter in your mailbox.
Please add the email to your address book so it's not marked as SPAM. We wouldn't want that, would we? NO!!!
Learn about the latest scientific developments in the world of space science, paranormal activities, and lots more.
Remember Doomsday? Lots of 2012 movies. That's history now, like the Millennium. What exciting future do we have now that Earth has (once again) survived?
Do any of you have a home movie to share of something exciting and magical? Would you like to share it here? I love new content from new and exciting young minds. Or mature minds...doesn't matter to me. I'm pretty mature myself, entered my seventh decade 9 years ago. You know, the first 10 years of life are the first decade. So it goes. When you're 20 you're entering your third decade...right?
Comments, please? All will be answered and I'll link to your blog if you include it.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Funny commercials on youtube
Ameriquest Commercials on Youtube
Don't be too quick to judge
- Don't judge too quickly.
- Funny commercials.
- Do you judge from first impressions?
- Stats show that our first impressions stay with us for a lifetime.
- First impressions are important.
Funny commercials
- Ameriquest has funny commercials on youtube about judging too quickly.
- What do you think about forming a first impression?
- Are you aware of the importance of a first impression?
Ameriquest funny commercials on youtube
I bombed at my first presentation
Five minute speech
Last October 2012 I completely bombed at my first presentation as an author. It was a five minute talk promoting my young adult book, SpaceHive, in front of an audience of children's authors and children's book readers.
My son had died two weeks before
My son had died two weeks before and I teared up when speaking without explaining why, also did not capture my audience. I read from SpaceHive and read the wrong portion, it didn't have anything to say. I didn't use props. I did get a laugh from my audience at one point.
Wanted to quit
I wanted to quit long before the moderator indicated time was up.
I repeated myself about music, music being important to my son, but I did not ever mention my son or his death to explain myself, I was not transparent.
I refused a raffle ticket for a painting.
All in all, I don't believe I'll be invited back again to this group.
I learned something
- I learned a lot and did a lot of thinking and research since then. Experience talks.
- I also learned that authors typically dress in jeans and colorful shirts or they dress very well in skirts and scarves and dangling earrings.
- I'm learning how to dress like an author and I will learn how to present my works.
- First impressions. Don't bomb. Engage your audience, use props, dress appropriately, use humor if you can, and be prepared.
First impressions. Thanks, Ameriquest.
Friday, May 17, 2013
WRITING ESSENTIALS BY MORGEN BAILEY
Morgen Bailey returns with some invaluable advice about writing and writing essentials. Welcome back, Morgen. Your posts are always captivating and well thought out. I feel honored to feature you here again today on my blog:
Blog
post: ‘Writing essentials’
In my experience too many novice
writers worry about finding their ‘voice’ and understanding their ‘craft’ early
on. It can be a long journey but providing you write regularly (daily is the
ideal but when does life afford that luxury, although 300 words equates to
100,000 words a year so a great incentive) you’ll get there… and here are a few
basics to put in your suitcase:
·
Probably
the most used phrase is ‘show don’t tell’. If you have a character who is angry
for some reason, saying ‘Andy was angry’ is a classic example of ‘tell’. Simply
put, you’re not showing us how. If you wrote ‘Andy slammed his fist onto the
table’ you are.
·
Dialogue
tags – it’s recommended that you can only go up to six pieces of dialogue
(between no more than two people) without attributing it to someone. And
there's nothing wrong with ‘said’. Don’t be tempted to look at your thesaurus
and say ‘Andy postulated’. You could also avoid tags by another character
saying “Oh Andy, that’s…” or in the description; ‘Andy laughed. “That’s…”
·
Character
names are important as we often get a sense of their personality by what
they’re called. A Mavis is likely to be older than a Britney and would,
usually, act differently. Avoid having names starting with the same letter; if
you have a Todd talking to a Ted, the reader can easily get confused. Bill and
Ted would be fine and as we know, they had a wonderful time back in the late
1980s.
·
I’m
a big fan of repetition… of not doing it. Unless it’s ‘the’, ‘and’ etc, a word should
only be repeated if the second instance is to emphasise or clarify the first.
For example, ‘Andy sat in the car. He beeped the horn of the car.’ You don’t
need ‘of the car’ because we already know he’s in the car. If you said ‘Andy
sat in the car. He beeped the horn and the car shook’ that would be fine
because you’re clarifying that it’s the car and not the horn (because it’s the
last object you mentioned) that’s shaking.
·
Stephen
King’s writing guide / autobiography ‘On writing’ has been the most suggested book
in the interviews I’ve conducted. Amongst other things he’s notoriously against
adverbs (‘ly’) and fair enough – in ‘completely dead’ you wouldn’t need the
completely because dead says it all, and a character doesn’t need to be
‘sighing wearily’ because the sighing tells us enough, but adverbs are
necessary in the right context. Again it’s all about clarification and fine-tuning.
·
Every
word has to count; does it move the story along or tell us about your
characters? If not, the chances are it can be chopped.
·
If
you’re having trouble with a passage move on or leave it and return later with
‘fresh eyes’.
·
Read.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s your genre or not (one of my Monday nighters
writes amazing sci-fi but has never read a word of it) but reading will help
you see how a story is structured and balanced between dialogue and
description; short sentences speed the pace, long passages slow it down.
·
Join
a writing group, get your work critiqued. Read your work out loud. It’s amazing
what you’ll pick up when you hear it outside your head.
·
Subscribe
to writing magazines, go to workshops, literary festivals. If you really want
to write immerse yourself in all things literary.
There are many more
examples I could give you but all you need to remember is that it’s not about
clever words (because that ends up becoming ‘purple prose’) but just getting
pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and having fun. When your characters take
over (and they will) you’ll have the time of your life!
Morgen Bailey
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