Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 50
June 17, 2018
Volcanoes are Cool…at Least From a Distance
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Volcanoes are one of those things that are kind of cool. At least as long as you’re not near them when they’re erupting.
They’ve been a staple of many TV shows, like on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s “And Five Were Left.” Five men from World War II are stranded in a cave under a volcano that’s about to explode. Lots of explosions, steam vents venting, and rocks falling.
And of course, the heroes escape as the volcano blows up.
The show had two other episodes with volcanoes, “Night of Terror” and “Fires of Death.” Gilligan’s Island had a volcano episode, too.
Oh, and my personal favorite, Airwolf. The helicopter got caught in the ash cloud of a massive eruption and had to set down. It put them in the middle of corporate greed and corruption from a mining company.
Hawaii’s volcano has been erupting for at least a month now, making more of the island with lava. The people there generally have a lot of warning, since it’s not the kind of volcano that blows its top like Mount St. Helens.
The scientists are busy studying the eruptions. One of the fascinating things from the eruption is olivine being brought to the surface. They’re green gems. They’re the same gems that make up the Green Sand Beach, also on the Big Island. This link has a close up of the green crystals.
The science of nature is pretty cool.
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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Crying Planet, the first book in my GALCOM series was accepted for a military science fiction bundle from Story Bundle. It will be coming out on June 27.
June 9, 2018
The Importance of Critical Thinking in the Digital Age
[image error]I’ve been spending some time trying to clean out my digital ‘closet,’ in addition to the real closet. I’m shocked at how many files I’ve accumulated, and moreover, how many files I downloaded and then never paid attention to again.
It’s all clutter that wears on me, so I’ve been zapping it into the recycle bin as I find it.
But it’s amazing the amount of information that is available to us. We can go online and look up Eddie Mannix (a fixer for MGM in the 1940s) and even post something that we know for everyone else to read.
Which is also a problem.
There’s so much information available that we have to sharpen our critical thinking skills. They’re more natural for me as an INTP, where logic is the first place I head, but even it’s hard for me. It’s easy to get taken in, especially when the other person is saying what we want to hear.
When I was on writing message boards, this type of attitude ran rampant. People actively said, “I can learn something from other beginners,” and dissed best-selling writers as not knowing what they were doing.
The result is not questioning enough of the right things, which I see everywhere.
The messages coming at us are so powerful that people actually question what should be common sense.
It seems worse for writers. They want validation or to have a best seller so they can quit the day job.
So it’s easy to listen to the emotional messages from people who are good at selling, but not skilled as writers.
Some examples:
Description is boring. Get rid of it all. It’s not important.
I’ve hard variations of this one in many places. Common sense should be to head to a best seller like Michael Connelly and see if he’s left off the description. BTW, he has wonderful descriptions of Los Angeles, all told from the opinion of Harry Bosch. Michael Connelly has also got something 20+ books.
What’s bad is that when writers flock to other writers and get critiques, the comments are generally that their description is boring. It probably is because they just tossed in obligatory description without a thought about what they could do with the characterization. So everyone says get rid of it, not fix it.
I interact with a traditionally published mid-list writer. She advises writers to keep the description to a minimum—and no one questions this (except me). It all fits into the narrative that description is boring, not that it needs to be done well.
And that writer has a series set in a place I went frequently when I was growing up. You wouldn’t know the place from any other generic place. No description of it. Kind of sad.
You must outline. Pantsing doesn’t work.
Yeah, I had to get this one in here. It is a hobby horse for me because I ran into so much of it. The group think veers to outlining and pressures everyone to conform.
What’s bad is no one checks out the source of this particular piece of advice. It nearly always comes from two sources: Other beginning writers recommending it to each other and developmental editors.
Other beginning writers haven’t worked out their process yet. And they’re giving advice on how to write a book. Hmm.
Developmental editors are likely to see only the messed up stories of first time writers who are still learning craft and attribute it incorrectly to not outlining.
Race through the first draft and don’t look back. You can fix everything on the revision.
Honestly, this one really needs a critical thinking Gibbs head slap. Think about this:
You write the story and do it stream of consciousness. Just leave out all the punctuation.
Now you come to the revision and you now have to spend a lot of time fixing that–and chances are it will never be right.
If we don’t have enough time in the first place, why do it in such a way that it takes even more time?
It’s terribly easy to go on auto-pilot, especially with all the digital clutter of the world. Critical thinking is also a difficult skill to master, not only because it rewires our brain…but because there are so many things that keep challenging it.
June 8, 2018
Sky Hair
[image error]Her confidence shattered by death, Pitarra escapes to an artist’s retreat on the planet Demory II. She hopes to rekindle her creativity and paint again.
But her fellow artists jeer at Pitarra’s failures.
Facing the possibility her creativity may never return, she makes a daily trek to her secret spot. Hoping for a miracle.
And getting something different than she expects. Something that no one sees coming.
A heartwarming science fiction story about loss and hope.
Available from your favorite booksellers.
June 2, 2018
The Black Hole of My Closet
I’ve been cleaning out my walk-in closet, which has been like a black hole and not very walk-in. Very much needed clean out. I’m astounded how many plastic boxes I accumulated–I’ve gotten rid of 16…so far.
I’m still trying to figure out how I accumulated all of them. 
May 28, 2018
Nothing Town
A dying town trapped because of a time bubble. They blame Michelle Graham, descendant of the man who broke the town.
She wants to leave. The family house refuses to let her go.
Then past and present bleed together…horse-drawn wagons ride alongside cars. A timeline rupture?
Michelle races against time to stop the unfolding disaster. But it may change everything she knows.
A twisted science fiction short story that keeps you turning the pages
A science fiction short story available from your favorite booksellers.
May 23, 2018
The Art of Science Fiction Book Covers
This is a fascinating look at the old pulp covers of year’s past.
May 22, 2018
The Demise of Vacant Lots
When I first arrived in the Washington, DC area, my brother lived in the Dale City area. It was a new housing community with mega-houses being built. His was a five bedroom house–tiny bedrooms, a living room, and a gigantic family room.
And there were places along the roads where there were no houses. Grasses grew tall and waved in the wind. I’m sure mice and rabbits crept through it, nibbling on grass.
Those empty spaces soon were covered in more mega-houses. In fact, there is very little in this area that remains empty. A small patch of land here and there, usually because of the odd size or placement. It always has a sign up on that says For Lease, but no one can do anything with it.
When I was growing up, we had two vacant lots in our city. One was across the street from the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church. It was all dirt, and people tossed junk into it. Fun walking through it to see what junk was there. Either the church owned it or they bought it because they eventually flattened it out, wrapped a cyclone fence around it, and added grass for a playing field. Still there.
The second lot was behind my house. It was huge! I imagine it was owned by one of the people on the opposite end of the block. No one paid it much mind. The grass grew tall in the spring rains, then turned yellow and dried out.
The local strays wandered through it, their tails flicking up. The cats were all black and mangy. Our cats hopped the fence, too, stalking through the grass.
We had a cyclone fence bordering our yard and the lot. My father was into amateur radio then and had something like four antennas up, all tethered with guy wires. There was a gate also that opened to a strip of land that was a tiny vacant lot. We owned that one as part of our property.
The kids would walk back from the elementary school and cut through the vacant lot. However, to get to where they were going, they had to hop the fence to the tiny lot, then hop the gate, then cut through our yard. We’d sometimes look out the window and see boys–girls never did this–just strolling past our house from our backyard.
My father always chased them off. The kids probably talks about the “mean man” who scared them away. But with all the guy wires, he didn’t want someone to get hurt.
That lot’s now gone. The developers filled it with condos.
I think I liked the vacant lot better.
May 21, 2018
Breaking out the Old Military Uniform
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I’m doing something I never expected I would do…I broke out the old military uniform. There’s a Memorial Day related event sometime this week where the veterans have been invited to wear their uniforms.
Yes, it fits. It’s actually too big for me. 
May 20, 2018
Classic Car Sightseeing at the Kennedy Center
Last weekend, I went to see the opera, Barber of Seville, at the Kennedy Center. If the title’s not familiar, you’ve probably heard some of the music:
“Fieguro! Fieguro!”
It was a fun production. The title character helped a count who had fallen in love with a woman from afar. The problem was that she was ward to a doctor who wanted to marry her for the money. It was a comedy, and the actor who played the doctor did a lot of comedic stunt work.
During the intermission, I wandered outside and got an extra treat: Classic cars were on display.
[image error]1964 Chevy Impala
This is a car that makes me feel old. When I was growing up, the first car that I remember that we had was a 1964 Chevy. It was white and had what we called the “seat monster.” The hooks holding the backseat in place broke, so when my father stopped suddenly, the seat slid forward. Needless to say, when my best friend and I were riding in the back, we squealed with fun terror at the monster.
The car got stolen from a parking lot and used in a holdup. The police found it, so it hung around until we got the first of two Volkswagen buses (pumpkin and chocolate).
[image error]1957 Chevrolet
I was a fan of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The submarine Seaview and the Flying Sub both had fins inspired by cars like this.
[image error]Yes, those are wings on that Chrysler
There wasn’t a placard for this car, so I have no idea why it has wings. Can you imagine driving your car and taking off like a plane? Speed Racer had some elements of that, and later on with Knight Rider, with both their jumps.
It was a lot of fun checking these out. DC doesn’t have the kind of culture for these types of cars, so I don’t see anything like this very often.
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STORY UPDATE: Progress is slower than I want–I’m guessing it will be 60 days. Part of it is that it’s a new genre in novel form for me, but also the historical aspect is very different for me. Some of the things that it’s made me think about:
Milk used to be delivered to your house in glass bottles by a milk man.
People did not lock their doors. We always did in Los Angeles, so I found very strange that my grandparents in San Francisco and later Morro Bay never did.
And a look at a place that was built in 1946, called The Pink Motel. There are a lot of great photos to look it. The hotel is closed to people staying there, but it’s been used in a lot of films.
May 19, 2018
Remake of She-Ra, Princess of Power
Normally, I haven’t been interested in many of the “remakes” of old TV series. With too many of them, it’s obvious the makers only think of the old show as a title they might be able to make money with.
But with this announcement for She-Ra, Princess of Power, I’m at least interested enough to see where it goes.
It was a pretty good show when it originally aired in the 1980s. It came out after He-Man and the Master of the Universe became popular. Fat Albert was also a popular show (pretty sure after the recent celebrity trial, that’s going to be off-limits for a remake).
The world itself was developed to be like Tolkien’s (though a lot more pink and lavender). One of the best things about it was there were a lot of women characters, and they were all portrayed as capable and resourceful. That was something different than a lot of what I’d seen at the time.
I’m hoping Netflix doesn’t ruin it by going too dark.
