Heather Anastasiu's Blog, page 20

Pretty in Pink: Why I Love Punky Hair Colors

I'm getting a tattoo today, a big half-sleeve on my left arm. I also have bright pink-and-blue hair, which I've had some variation of for a few years now. It's very normal to me, I barely notice it when I look in the mirror, which is why when I get reactions to it, I'm like, oh yeah, this isn't 'normal.' I've had many people make assumptions: that I'm immature, rebellious, want to be identified with goths, do drugs, live lasciviously. Or friends have told me they were intimidated by me when they first met me! In actuality, I wake up, go work studiously on my grad school work or creative writing, pick up my kindergartner from school, have dinner with my little family, stay in almost every night, and go to bed by midnight. While I'm far from conservative politically, I live very conservatively. I barely drink. I'm happily married (and have been for 9 years). I do laundry on the weekends.

Why I first elected to have pink hair is probably fodder for another long blog post [I have a chronic illness and was bedbound for about six months after my son was born, and I needed a little brightness in my life], but the basic reason I continue is: why not? So many people color their hair, why not brighter, more vibrantly fun, alive colors?!? There's too much brown in the world, too much gray. What pink hair means to me is: wake the hell up! live today alive and aware! don't go through life half-consciously, punching in time at a job and then mindlessly going about routine. Too bad negative associations along go with the hair and tattoos, but here I am, working to bust stereotypes one day at a time :)

And yeah, tattoos? It's gorgeous artwork that I get to wear around all the time. I look at it and it makes me smile. A little bit of pain for a lifetime of payoff is absolutely worth it to me. Besides, like giving birth, you forget the pain afterwards, until of course the next time you go under the needle and are like CRAAAAAAAP, why did I sign up for this again ;)

Also, coming soon: a step by step blog post on how I make my hair so pink and pretty without going to a salon, and on a budget.

The Science Behind GLITCH

All good sci-fi starts with the imagined possibilities of what could be based on what is. Some writers like Margaret Atwood prefer to call their work 'speculative fiction' rather than 'science fiction', because she says that all tech in her dystopian futures have seeds in realities and research that exist today. While I'm not quite as hard-core (there's certainly a large place for FICTION in my science fiction) most good sci-fi stories have to be believable, and, like The Terminator, demonstrate both the fears and hopes about the interaction of the human race with technology. (and yes, I watched this movie hundreds of times as a kid!)

When I started planning my dystopian sci-fi trilogy, my husband had just read this article in Popular Science about computer chips that mimicked brain function and could be used as brain implants to help memory loss in Alzheimer's patients and a variety of other illnesses. My interest was immediately sparked. Sure, brain implants might start out as hopeful solutions for medical problems, but what if widespread brain implants became the norm in society, to be used as a means of social control??? I immediately recognized this as the basis of a good sci-fi story.

There were also some articles I read at the time about the equivalent of Blackberry/Iphone implants, and this too made sense to me. Our cell phones are already our constant companions, attached to our hip or even our ear, like BlueTooth headsets. How far a stretch is it to imagine the advertising of the cell phone you never misplace, never lose, that is always as close as your own forearm? I'm on my computer probably an average of 8 hours a day, constantly glancing at my Twitter and Facebook status updates, multi-tasking with six or more windows open simultaneously, always wired in and connected. What if that wiring was moved from my fingertips, however, to inside my head?

Take for example, Michael Chorost's book World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet. I found this book after I'd already written Glitch, but it perfectly demonstrates the possibility of things that are now only fiction. He's a hearing-impaired writer who has computer chips implanted in his ears that feed information his brain has learned to interpret as the English language. Chorost writes, "A surgeon drilled an inch and a half into my skull, countersunk a ceramic-encased microchip behind my left ear, and threaded sixteen electrodes into my inner ear... it took me months to learn how to interpret the software's representations of vowels and consonants as English" (6).

His book is pretty much an optimistic thought experiment, grounded in current science and research, about how such "human machine integration" might increase exponentially (7). He likens the interaction of the human body and implanted chips to the hardware/software interaction on PCs, envisioning how "the systems [might] become increasingly mutually dependent on each other" (7). When talking about humans and the internet, he asks the question that is the stuff of sci-fi: "What if we built an electronic corpus callosum to bind us together? What if we eliminated the interface problem--the slow keyboards, the sore fingers, the tiny screens, the clumsiness of point-and-click--by directly linking the Internet to the human brain? It would become seamlessly part of us, as natural and simple to use as our own hands" (9-10). This is not simply a flight of fancy. While we might not have the present technology to make all of this a reality, it has foundations in things that already exist.

Tracking devices implanted in humans are already a reality (again, starting with people such as those with dementia) as a means of locating them if they wander off. It started with pets, it's moved to people. The idea of implanted computer chips in the human body doesn't seem that far-fetched anymore. While full cyborg transformations might be a little further off, what do these baby steps toward such a future mean?

Now, I don't actually think all of this is horrific or implicitly a doomsday scenario. I think some of this hardware-in-our-bodies stuff makes sense. I'm a realist. I see the benefits, I see how intertwined our lives have already become with technology, and I don't think it's actually bad. How could I? I love the internet, I can't imagine life without it anymore! In the end, technology is as good or evil as the use we put it to. The biggest example is, of course, nuclear technology. We have the technology to destroy our world a hundred times over. But we haven't used it. At some point, morality and the value of human life (or at least the value of self-preservation) prevents catastrophe.

That said, in my sci-fi trilogy GLITCH, I get to explore what would happen if we DID go too far, what shocking adaptations of the complex human organism might occur, and how the future of the entire earth might depend on humankind's ability to navigate such technology, for better or for worse.

SCBWI, Meeting Awesome Authors, & Being Interviewed

So this was an officially awesome weekend. I went to my first SCBWI meeting yesterday in Austin, and met some groovy authors: Cynthia Leitich Smith, Varian Johnson, and April Lurie. It was really neat to meet some actual authors face-to-face, and to know I'll be among such illustrious company! I also met the founder of the Dear Teen Me website, and then spent the next hour wandering around BookPeople's extensive Teen section day-dreaming of my book being on the shelves.

Today started with a wonderful brunch with the fam (seriously, these Sunday brunches where the hubster makes omelets and toast with jam, then we all eat and chat, drink coffee while Joseph spazzes out or plays with toys around the kitchen--these are the f'ing memories that are gonna be with me forever). Then Joseph and I had a laundry folding party (it had become a mountain) and we changed his bad attitude by turning on the Wiggles station on Pandora (the sacrifices a mother makes!) and doing dance party/jumping on the bed sessions (he danced, I watched) in between folding things.

Then I went and met at the university library with a videographer who's doing a video piece to go along with the interview I did for the paper about my book deal. Okay, I know it's not a big thing, but it was so much fun! Having someone videotape me while I geek out excitedly about my book? Awesome. I don't think I've seen myself on film since the grainy back-of-the-auditorium taping of a play I did in eighth grade, so I'm dorkily excited about that. And it will be a YouTube piece that I can link to from my website so people can see what Heather looks like in real life. And no, apparently I cannot talk without extensive hand motions :) I'll post it here next week when it goes live.

School Daze & Kindle Love

It's a catch-up-on-homework week, so natch, I'm taking time off to blog, stare at my twitter feed, and generally do anything-but-write-that-paper :)

I've also been thinking about my Kindle Love. This week, me and that cute little device have been spending a lot of time together. The thing about being a grad school student is that professors make you print out OODLES of scholarly articles for classes (and even more on your own when you are doing research). I went through an entire expensive ink cartridge on my laser printer my first semester. But since I got my Kindle for Christmas, all semester I've just been reading the PDFs on it, saving paper, saving hassle, and they're all in one place. This is infinitely cool. Then for one of my classes I had to read Pilgrim's Progress. No problemo, it's a free e-book on Amazon, downloaded and read it.

And then there's the other little feature the Kindle is for--you know, like reading books for fun :) Which, as part of my Procrastination Station mood, I've also been using it for a bunch this week. I'm finally getting around to reading Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey series. Yep, it's as awesome as everyone says it is, don't know why I waited so long to dive in!!

Lastly, there's the main reason I bought the Kindle in the first place: reading ARCs of books. I hate reading on my computer screen, but I love reading advance copies of books through NetGalley. I had no idea the Kindle would be so freaking handy for school stuff too.

At the same time, I'm not a total Kindle Convert. If given the choice, I'd still rather read the paper kind of books. It's a different experience somehow. With actual books, I almost always sit down and read them in one sitting. They are an Event. For some reason w/ Kindle books, I read for awhile, then stop, read a few more chapters the next day, then stop. I don't know if it's because you can feel the pages pass and see your progress in the thickness of pages left. It's weird to see my reading habits change with the technology. I'm glad that I'm getting published now rather than later so I can hold my beloved book in my hands, stare for hours at the cover, caress the pages, and see it nestled on shelves at book stores :)

Very Good Things in My Life Today

Eating a grilled-cheese sandwich, interspersed with bites of fresh-cut Roma tomatoListening to my son sound out words slowly and then announce each one triumphantly when he figures it out, a little puzzle-master becoming more and more fluent, stacking up words till they become sentencesSnuggling in the crook of my husband's arm after he gets home from class and drinking a beer together

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney, Review

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney. First of all, can we just bask in the gorgeousness that is this cover? It's even better and person, with the script filigree all shiny and raised over the matte background, I'm so cover-lusting!

As soon as I learned the premise of this book, I was hooked: it's pretty common knowledge that in the fey mythology, iron is deadly to faeries, and the premise that this girl had iron tattoos woven magically into her skin?! And that a sexy fey boy is involved? Couldn't wait, and I finally got this book at my closing Borders this week, and totally devoured it tonight in one sitting.

This book had all the things I love in a good story: a real romantic connection, the supernatural, and a slowly revealed mythology that comes to a kick-ass climax at the end, bringing elements that begin the story to a close with satisfying symmetry. I also liked that Donna was so strong, literally and figuratively. Even just the paradoxical idea of iron, something we think of as brute and burly, being woven in delicate tattoos on a girl's forearms, is a striking image. Not to mention that I love a girl who can hold her own, even rescue the DUDE once in awhile. A nice break from damsels in distress, I'm excited to see where this series goes!