Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 48

Outrageous

Alzheimer’s Might Not Actually Be a Brain Disease

In July 2022, Science magazine reported that that a key 2006 research paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature, which identified a subtype of brain protein called beta-amyloid as the cause of Alzheimer’s, may have been based on fabricated data.

Empahasis mine.

I’m so mad, I could spit. The dire problems with the chronic fatigue paper that caused millions — literally millions — of people to be treated with completely ineffective treatments — the horribly invalid “studies” on that topic — was a turning point for me. It ought to have been a turning point for the editorial boards of all major medical journals.

Emphasis mine.

Here’s more about the faked Alzheimer’s data.

If you have someone close to you suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s, then I personally suggest you look at the possible connection between the gut and Alzheimer’s. One of the quick, easy, harmless things you could try is a high-fiber diet. This is pure correlation and for all we know (a) it’s statistical noise, or (b) some other factor is responsible and the dietary link is illusory. But as the downsides to a high-fiber diet are minimal as far as I know, why not?

Of course, for all we know, the apparent connection between gut health and Alzheimer’s is also based on faked data! How is anyone supposed to tell?

For crying out loud, I’m so furious whenever I trip YET AGAIN over fraudulent medical data, I hardly know what to say.

So I’ll quote Ryo, speaking to Tano:

I wish to be confident that I may trust what you say. Once that confidence is lost, it is very difficult to recover. That is why you should cherish your honor, not discard it for a momentary advantage. Perhaps someone has taught you otherwise. They were wrong.

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Beautiful quotes

The recent post about beautiful words made me think about this — words strung together in beautiful sentences.

Here’s the first one that sprang to mind for me:

“However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”

Which is a quote from Kai Lung’s Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah, but I encountered it in Dorothy Sayer’s Busman’s Honeymoon. I’ve remembered it ever since. Alas, I seldom have a chance to quote this in real life.

I never much liked Jack Vance as an author, but I always think of him when I think of authors who could put words together neatly. He certainly had a way with words, as here:

“I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.“

and here

“Madouc, this is my advice: pick up yonder clod of dirt, and tender it to that pop-eyed little imp, speaking these words: ‘Zocco, with this token I both imburse and reimburse you, in full fee and total account, now and then, anon and for ever, in this world and all others, and in every other conceivable respect, for each and every service you have performed for me or in my behalf, real or imaginary, to the limits of time, in all directions.’”

That latter one is from the Lyonesse trilogy; I enjoy the precision of the language there. The former I just stumbled across while composing this post. It made me chuckle, so I included it, but I’m not sure where it’s from. There’s another one which would be fun to use in real life.

I’m sure I can find a few more … all right, here:

“Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn’t ring.”

That’s from Guy Gavriel Kay, the Fionavar trilogy. I think this is just a very effective handful of sentences. Among other things, we can see how very effective writing a series of short sentences can be. It’s a nice contrast to the very long lawyerly type of sentence above.

“If love makes you sad, you acquire a little depth, a little compassion. If it makes you happy, you learn how to be joyous. Every relationship should color your soul to a certain degree, don’t you think? Every friendship, every love affair – each one should build up the chambers of your heart the way a sea creature builds the chamber of his shell.”

That’s Sharon Shinn, Jovah’s Angel. There’s a word I like and don’t use often enough — joyous! I like the idea that you have to learn to be joyous! I think that’s true for a lot of people, though a few of us are born with a gift that way, of course. And of course that’s a nice metaphor. Sharon Shinn had another really good metaphor in that recent one of hers, The Shuddering City. Let me see. Yes, here it is:

 She hadn’t wanted Reese to leave, but she hadn’t wanted him to stay, either. Her head was full of thunderstorms and carrion crows, and she couldn’t hear her own thoughts over the din. She had eventually sent him away so she could curl up in the window seat and think, but it turned out she still couldn’t concentrate. So she just rested her cheek on her updrawn knees and listened to the wordless howling in her mind.

If you’ve recently (or not so recently) happened across a memorable sentence or two recently, please share them in the comments!

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Puppies, Day 3

Blen boy, Bt1, R1, R2, Bt2

Ruby 1 is the little one

How (I imagine you are perhaps asking) do I tell the whole colors apart?

Easy so far! Bt1 is black black black, not a white hair anywhere. Bt2 has a tiny white snip on his chest. Yes, I have to turn them over to check. Bt2 is way out in front now, gained from the first, packing on the grams.

R1 is barely over half the size of R2. So far they are therefore super easy to tell apart. All gained overnight except Little R1. I am now giving her 3 to 4 ccs of formula every six hours. For contrast, if she were an orphan, she would get a bit over 7 ccs every 3 hours. I judge the amount carefully. I want her to nurse strongly. The formula is to give her the strength to nurse effectively. I don’t want her declining to nurse.

I see no reason to be worried about her. It is common for one or another puppy to need a boost. I think she will be fine. The rule is, “good puppies” double their weight in seven to ten days. In practice, 11 days, or 12, is okay. I think big Bt2 will double in maybe six days. Little R1, maybe ten, but maybe a little longer.

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Beautiful Words

A post at the Reader’s Digest: The 30 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language

Splendid! I’m right there for this! Tell, me, what ARE the thirty most beautiful — no, let’s not be that demanding — thirty beautiful words, whether or not they are the MOST beautiful.

I definitely have favorites, most of which aren’t going to appear here because they’re jargon rather than “real words.” I mean, like

Ovoviviparous

Which is a great word, a lovely word, all those v’s just roll off the tongue, I love this word and all its variants, such as ovoviviparity. But it’s not a real word in the sense of words such as, say,

Vivacious

Which only has two v’s, but is also a nice word, better than average.

For a list of beautiful words, I really think you ought to be picking words which are real words rather than jargon, and also words that aren’t just silly such as

Floccinaucinihilipilification 

Which is a real word in a sense, but never actually used except as an example of a long word. Who did use it? Some author, long time ago … Heinlein? … I’m not sure, but I remember one character saying to another something like, “You’re such a floccinaucinihilipilificator,” and of course that’s something that sticks in the mind.

Oh, an author I don’t much like, but whose language skills are thoroughly admirable, is Jack Vance. Who can forget this wonderful bit of dialogue?

“Ah,” said Magnus Ridolph, “you think I dealt with you unfairly. And you brought me to Jexjeka to work in your mines.”
“You got it right mister. I’m a hard man to deal with when I’m crowded.”

“Your unpleasant threats are supererogatory.”

And certainly supererogatory is a great word, though I don’t know if I’d call it beautiful.

All right, so, what are some of the words that are actually picked out of the vast English language by the linked post? Let me take a look …

Sibilance. I disagree. This is a fine word, an onomatopoetic word, but it is not a beautiful word to my ear. Next?

Tranquility. Okay, this time I do agree. That is a beautiful word. Let me skim down the list and pick out a few more I particularly like.

Epiphany. I’m biased because one of my dogs was named Sevenwoods Epiphany. On the other hand, I named her that for a reason. This is a beautiful word.

Quintessence. I do like “q” words. Maybe almost as much as “v” words.

However, overall, the linked post does a good job of demonstrating how personal the perception of beauty is. I wouldn’t pick out most of those words as beautiful. Here are some I might pick:

Effervescent

Incandescent

Celestial

Liminal

Luminous

Vespertine

Yes, I see I do like “v” words. I’m also distracted by meaning to some degree. That’s hard to avoid, although my liking for “ovoviviparous” has nothing to do with its meaning, of course..

Okay, what’s one of your favorite words? Drop ’em in the comments!

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Description creates mood

A post at Kill Zone Blog: Description Creates a Mood

So it does! That’s not ONLY what this post is talking about. This post is also talking about how description AND mood create characterization, like so:

The fearful character might interpret their environment like this…

The moon refused to brighten the path, the forest dark, ominous. Trees loomed, froze. Leaves quaked. Stars cowered in the haze. Each footstep that neared — deliberate, slow, methodical — crunched dead flora. Sweet pine soured by the raw stench of death. Blood crawled across my tongue, vomit lurching in my throat.

Same setting filtered through a joyful character’s perspective…

The moon’s golden smolder caressed the hiking trail below the deck, the forest content and celebrating the reunion of nocturnal friends. Paws pattering, wings breathing new life into the evening hours, the sweetness of pine kissing soft fur and feathers as they flitted by. Strawberry wine slipped across my palate as I basked under the umbrella of stars in the night sky.

The “nocturnal friends” thing did make me wince a little. Could be both examples are just a trifle extreme. Nevertheless, yes, description is filtered through the character and that’s important.

This post was written by Sue Coletta, who won me over by emphasizing not just word choices, but sentence structure:

For the fearful character, I used punchy verbs (loomed, quaked, cowered, soured, crawled, lurched), staccato sentences, and offset longer sentences with em dashes to maintain the pace. The only gerund varied the sentence structure and rhythm. I also juxtaposed — sweet pine soured by the raw stench of death — but we’ll get to that after.

With the joyful character, I used softer verbs (caressed, celebrating, pattering, breathing, kissing, flitted) longer sentences, and gerunds to create a relaxing pace.

Good post, even though I do think both examples are more extreme than anything you’d probably want in a real book. If you click through, the post also includes a looong list of onomatopoeic words.

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Puppies!

First picture, I know, not very visible except as blobs. They will be very blob-like for the next couple weeks. Morgan is comfortable and happy. She is a wonderful mother.

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Life Intrusion!

So, Morgan decided to jump the gun on her scheduled section/spay on Wednesday, then jump it again for her very hastily rescheduled section/spay this afternoon.

She had five puppies in an hour and a half, finishing about an hour before the section/spay was supposed to begin. No problems at all. Except I only had one hemostat for crimping off cords. But no serious issues with bleeding, so it was fine, despite the puppies coming one right after the last.

If this had been my first litter, I would now be under the impression that breeding is easy. As it is, I can see I obviously saved up alllll my luck for the past twenty years for this one whelping. If that continues, who knows, maybe they will all thrive without any input from me and I won’t need the formula I have here until weaning … hard to believe, but it could happen!

Normal weights for Cavaliers are 6 to 9 ounces. I have personally had puppies from 3.75 to 12 oz.

These puppies: 9, 9, 9, 8.75, 6

Black and tan, black and tan, Blenheim, ruby, ruby.

I most wanted a ruby girl. Both rubies are girls. One of those is the small one, but six oz is fine. Barring disaster, they should be fine. They all *seem* fine. I didn’t look at palates, but they are all nursing, I think.

I am very happy and very tired and I am going to crash and not think about anything for the rest of the day.

Pictures later …

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Update: One Step Forward, One Step Back; or, Revision is a Thing

So, I paused moving forward with RIHASI last week to do some editing.

This wasn’t the “pause to delete a chapter” type of editing, which sometimes I will do because if I know I’m going to delete a chapter, then that chapter bugs me more and more the longer it sits there, waiting to be deleted. Eventually, I go back and take it out and stitch up the transition between the two chapters on each side, and then it’s done and I can stop thinking about it.

If you’re curious, that happened, for example, in Tarashana, where I initially had a chapter between leaving the starlit lands and arriving in the winter country — I moved everyone through the pass on screen, is what I’m saying. But not enough happened, less that I particularly liked, and after all the book was super long already, so I wound up cutting that entire chapter and doing a “time has passed” sentence after everyone is through the pass and looking down at the Convocation.

Or sometimes I may know a chapter is just not right, and that REALLY bugs me until I go back and fix it. That happened in The Floating Islands, where I cut chapter five and wrote a totally different chapter five twice. Yes, that was annoying.

Of course, sometimes I finish the whole thing and THEN do major revision, such as with the Death’s Lady series, where I deleted … I don’t remember … a huge chunk near the end and completely rewrote it. Even half-lost in the mists of time, this stands out as an absolutely massive revision. It’s the part where Jenna does some of the heavy lifting to get to the conclusion of the action plot. I’m not sure that’s clear, but I don’t want to drop a big spoiler here. Anyway, trust me on this, it was MASSIVE, leading to the “revision from Hell” tag that basically acted as a subtitle for this series for years and years, until I kind of recovered.

While on the topic of the Death’s Lady series, by the way, now that I’ve dropped the series into KU, I’m scheduling a big promo for the series to try to slam KU pages read way, way up for this series. A side effect of this promo is that if you didn’t pick up the whole series at my Patreon, you’ll have a chance to pick it up ALMOST that inexpensively in April. I’ll put something about that in the April newsletter, along with the first part of the story about the boys who climbed the rainbow. As you know, I’ll drop that complete story at my Patreon when I have it. However, it’s not finished yet, so I’m not sure when that will happen. It’s at five thousand words, give or take, and they’re just at the top of the rainbow and about to look around. Even though I have a vague notion what’s going to happen, I’m not sure what they’ll see.

But what I was actually going to say was this:

If you’ve recently read the Death’s Lady series, but you haven’t left a review, this would be a nice time to do that, either at Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews can be important in coaxing readers who may not be familiar with my work to pick up the series, ideally the whole series at once, and this is such a highly peculiar series, I expect reviews to be important.

However, back to RIHASI and revision:

This time it was smaller-scale revision, but it was bugging me. I was getting close to the end, and what I was thinking was, “Shouldn’t they have had this conversation long ago? Why are they having this conversation here?”

So I went back to look at different places this important conversation might have taken place and putting bits of it here and there in earlier scenes, and the whole process turned into kind of a thing that engulfed the week, so I’m about at the same number of words right now as I was this time last week. (110,000 or so.)

So the coming week will lead to forward progress, I expect. If life doesn’t interfere too much, I ought to be finishing this draft this week, but in fact a certain amount of interference is expected, so we’ll see. If I DO finish the draft, that will be great, but I may not put the book up for preorder until (a) I’ve done primary revision and sent the thing off to a few early readers, and (b) I’ve gotten comments back from one or two early readers. At that point, I should have a much better idea about further revision — how much, how long it might take — and then I will feel much more comfortable picking a preorder date. Which will be a month after the book drops at my Patreon, of course. I’m currently thinking May 2 / June 2, but that is a guess.

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MARAG now available again at my Patreon

Just letting you all know that I just deleted the earlier post with the epub file and dropped a new post with the updated version.

Now utterly pristine and totally without typos, or at least closer to that ideal. I stumbled across one more typo myself, where a character’s name had changed throughout except in two places. ??? I said, because I do a find-and-replace when I change a character’s name, so how does that happen?

Well, in case you ever want to change a character’s name throughout a book, I’ll tell you a couple ways it can happen.

A) If you Find “space name space” and replace with “space new name space,” then any instance of the name with a period or comma after it will not be touched. I know I’ve made that mistake at least once, because that happened when I changed “Irra” to “Iraka” in this book. Four instances of the name didn’t change.

The reason to put spaces around things when you do a global search and replace is that if the word is embedded in a larger word, hilarity can ensue. This happened long ago in the Death’s Lady series, where I changed “arrow” to “bolt” and therefore got “spbolt” and “ybolt” and “hbolt.” Ever since, I’ve tended to put spaces around words when I do a global search and replace, and this works great except when I forget about punctuation.

The safest way to change a name is therefore with spaces, and AFTER THAT, you should do a global Find of the old name, without spaces and without Replace, and take an actual look at the few remaining instances of the old name to confirm that you want to change each instance.

Here’s another way mistakes can happen:

B) If you personally misspelled the name twice, then the misspelled version of the name will of course not be touched when you replace the name. That also happened in MARAG when I changed something or other to “Hasiro” — the name changed everywhere except in two places, where it had been misspelled and stayed misspelled.

Not sure if either of those problems resulted in the typo I tripped over last night, but my guess is probably it was a Type B error. Anyway, it’s fixed now. At least in the epub file. I need to fix it in the other three files and upload those at KDP before I forget.

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Unexpected Sale: Winter of Ice and Iron

Just noticed by pure chance that Winter of Ice and Iron is $1.99 right now on Amazon. I have no idea how long that will last, so now is the time to pick it up if you’d like.

dggahg

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