Pippa Jay's Blog, page 82

Inspiration - The London Aquarium.

Sea anemones. Just love the colours on these!My youngest turned four on Saturday, so the whole family took a trip to the London Aquarium as his treat (although I can't deny we were all excited about it). Frankly I dislike London - it's too loud, too crowded and too expensive. But the children enjoyed the train journey up (apart from a long wait for the right Circle line train) and we arrived just before the aquarium opened to hear Big Ben strike ten o'clock (which impressed them). We've been to a couple of Sealife centres before and I didn't expect a huge amount different at the aquarium, but somehow we spent just over two hours inside.

The Houses of Parliment. The London Eye
Most of my friends know I'm a fan of the weird and the wonderful, and this was too good an opportunity to miss for finding some odd inspiration among the tanks of rays, crabs and guppies (of all things! I can see those in my local pet shop any time). The first surprise when we went in was a glass floor looking down into a huge tank below. Sadly there isn't space to stop and enjoy the view as it's a narrow corridor and the only way in, which was a bit of a disappointment.

BrittlestarsI wish I'd recorded some video of these - their waving arms seemed rather sinister. However I DID record the pretty anemones doing their dance, and some baby fish wriggling inside their egg sacs - did I mention I'm a bit weird? :)

 

The biggest hit for my children was the shark tank and the big, open pool full of rays, flat fish and a mixture of other fish.

Ray tank.
Easter Island shark tankWe got to touch a starfish - for those interested, it feels rather soft and squidgy but the skin itself is kind of scaly/spiny. The underside with all the feet - well, I couldn't feel anything of the feet but the edges of the arms feel quite rough. Youngest got to hold a crab - which was very well behaved and didn't nip - but after weekends spent crabbing at Mersea he wasn't that impressed!

replica(?)whale bones
I do not have a thing for skeletons. Seriously! Although I'm finding it hard to deny considering the number I'm posting in various places. However, having a scifi story out called The Bones of the Sea, it seemed only fitting that I post this, from the largest tank at the aquarium.

Turtle Cleaner shrimps Bat stars. Seriously creepy-looking!I could post pictures from the trip all day long, but that might turn this into a rather long post. So I'll leave you with one final video from the aquarium of Upside Down Jellyfish - yes, they really are called that and it isn't just a description. Enjoy!

Six Sentence Sunday #47

Hello, welcome to another #sixsunday. A huge thank you to everyone who stops by and comments - always much appreciated. I'm continuing with my science fiction romance Keir (due for release in less than two months, yay!) and the hero is beginning to realize his feelings for someone are changing...
 Yet at that moment he wanted more. For the first time in remembrance, he wanted to touch and be touched in return. To hold her and have her return his embrace freely, with more than a friend's affection. To feel her white skin under his fingertips. To brush the hair from her face as the breeze did now, and run his fingers through it.
His thoughts dishonored her gift of friendship to him. © 2009-2012 Copyright Philippa J. Green All Rights Reserved Thanks for stopping by. As always, you can check out the other snippets via the main website - just click on the banner below. :)

At Spacefreighters Lounge - March Mission Journal

I'm over at Spacefreighters Lounge today, with the latest updates - pop over and say hello! :)

The only way is up...?

So yesterday was a bit disheartening all round. I had two children home sick, the brief burst of spring-like weather had degenerated into a wet day with a wind chilly enough to bring tears to the eyes, I managed a dismal five lines of rewrite on the damn sequel that is torturing the living daylights out of me, I got an MS rejected and then, at the end of the day, not only did my daughter show signs of coming down with the same illness but my editor announced she had left my publisher and wouldn't be working with me any more. Wow. Hey, at least nobody died, yeah?

The upshot of all that? I had a cry and promised myself tomorrow would be better. At least my two boys are showing signs of being a bit more perky. And sometime soon muse is bound to come up with some stunning solution to my story woes, right? But losing my fabulous editor after working so closely and so hard together on my first release has left me reeling. And now I don't know what's going to happen next. I hadn't got the sequel delivered to them yet (and if this stuck scene doesn't free flow soon, I'm never likely to) so I'm assuming I go back to making a general submission and see who's willing to take me on. It's a bit unsettling.

But I'm resilient - okay, stubborn - so I shall grit my teeth and get on with it. Try to see this as an opportunity for something and someone new. I always try to see the bright side. It's just a little hard to see it right now. :-/

What is a Starheart? Guest post by Greta van der Rol

Please welcome author Greta van der Rol to my blog on the release of her latest scifi STARHEART.



What is a Starheart?
Thanks so much for hosting me, Pippa.Oh, you're very welcome.If you've been following along, you'd know that I'm telling folk about my new novel, 'Starheart' . Here's the blurb, so you'll know what I'm talking about if you're late to the party. She's lost her husband, her best friend is missing. What else has she got to lose?
Slightly shady freighter captain, Jess Sondijk, thought she had her life under control until Admiral Hudson's Confederacy battle cruiser stops her ship to search for contraband. His questions reopen matters she had thought resolved. What if her husband's death on his way back from Tabora wasn't accidental? Jess decides to investigate, while keeping Hudson at arms' length.
While he's attracted to the lovely Jess, Hudson is also concerned about what might be happening on Tabora and how that may involve the Confederacy's enemies.
Jess and Hudson's interests collide in more ways than one. But while Jess is more than willing to put her life on the line to protect what's hers, Hudson must balance the risk of inter-species war at worst and the end of his career at best, in a deadly game of political intrigue, murder and greed. At the end of the day, how much is he willing to lose for the woman he has come to love?
Today, I'd like to talk about the book's title – 'Starheart'. The obvious thing is probably to imagine that – since the book has a romance tag – this is just a play on the romantic element. If you thought that, you were wrong.A Starheart is a jewel, a rare and unusual jewel. Starhearts have only been found on a very few ptorix worlds. The ptorix prize them; the translation of the ptorix name is something like 'windows of the soul' because they resemble ptorix eyes. The trade in Starhearts is one reason why Admiral Hudson is interested in the lovely Jess Sondijk and what happened to her husband Troy in a botched boarding.Starhearts are not jewels in the sense of emeralds and diamonds, which are formed when carbon is subjected to pressure. The process is easy enough to simulate in a lab and in fact, synthetic diamonds are routinely produced for industrial purposes. Perhaps the closest gem to a Starheart I can think of is a pearl, in as much as it is produced by a living thing. A pearl shell is seeded in some way and the creature covers the irritant with layers of nacre, forming the pearl over time. But here again, pearls are routinely cultured.Starhearts are formed when a living organism, which exists in the tortured depths of a moon not unlike Jupiter's IO, is spewed up in an eruption. If the chunk of lava is retrieved before it freezes, the organism lives on. The resulting gem makes black opal look lack-lustre. Some people might say that it's hard to imagine anything able to live in molten lava. In reply, I point you at the depths of the Atlantic Ocean where two tectonic plates are separating. Lava boils up from the Earth's depths, scalding the dark, icy water. Living things exist down there, clustered around the vents, without light, under enormous pressure. Who knows what exists on IO, or for that matter, the greater universe? All we do know is life is tenacious.You can find out more about Starheart on Amazon here.
I'll be at http://livingwritingandotherstuff.blogspot.com.au/ on 1st March to tell you about my aliens.
To celebrate the release of 'Starheart' I'll be giving a $25 Amazon gift voucher to one person who leaves a comment on any of the blogs I visit until 10th March. So leave a comment here and you'll be in the draw.
Bio Greta van der Rol loves writing science fiction with a large dollop of good old, healthy romance. She lives not far from the coast in Queensland, Australia and enjoys photography and cooking when she isn't bent over the computer. She has a degree in history and a background in building information systems, both of which go a long way toward helping her in her writing endeavours.
Links:
>    - Website
>    - Twitter
>    - Facebook

Greenshift by Heidi Ruby Miller - Review

 My review of Greenshift by Heidi Ruby Miller is now live on the Critique de Book site here. This also makes book five in my SFR Reading Challenge 2012, which elevates me to Earth Reading Level. Must try harder. :-P

Finding Tom - Guest Post by Kerrianne Coombes

Please welcome the very lovely Kerrianne Coombes to the blog, with a guest post on her upcoming debut romantic release Running Home.
 

Finding Tom…. 
When I start a story I always sit down and write a background for my two main characters. I always ask myself questions like, what do they look like? What is their temperament like? But I also ask myself, where are they from? I am sure that this is what 99% of writers do, but sometimes I go a bit too far ;-) I tend to ask myself what has brought them to the point where my story begins, and then I delve into the 'soul' of that character and write little snippets from their lives.  I find that this practice makes me get to know my character and understand their motives behind certain parts of my story. 
Take Tom for example. He is my leading man in Running Home. He is an ex-military soldier, turned recluse, who believes he is better off removed from society. *Awwww* He has taken on the small farm left to him by his parents—who both have sadly died *Another awwww* So when I first thought of him, I had to ask myself why he is a recluse. 
The scene that I wrote—which I will not share, for lack of editing—is a scene when he goes into the local village and comes face to face with people who blatantly stare at his pronounced limp. This is not something that Tom is used to, nor comfortable with. Before his accident, Tom was a very fit, able bodied man. His whole life was about being super capable, and immensely in control of his body. And while I was writing this scene I understood how terrible this would feel for a man such as Tom. 
My brother was in the military. He is someone who I am so very proud of. What they—military men/women—have to deal with on a daily basis, baffles me. I know I could not do it and come out sane. These people, are a cut above the rest—real life heroes—and so, I wanted Tom not to come across as a dick for stepping away from life. I wanted him to come across as a little vulnerable, without being annoying. 
After writing this scene I found out that Tom stepped away from 'normal' life, not to feel sorry for himself, or mope. He stepped away to save the last vestige of his original self. On his farm, he is king, no one to judge, no one to watch him and question him about his limp. Tom likes to feel in control. 
So imagine what happens to Tom when I throw Joanne Sloane into the mix!

Blurb Tom Cane, Ex-military man and self professed recluse turned farmer, wants nothing more from life but the chance to wallow in his own pity.  The shrapnel lodged permanently in his leg a daily reminder of his failings during his last tour of duty.  On a cold, rainy, British evening fate delivers a new reason to live in the form of Joanne Sloane, the daughter of a socialite and abused wife of an up and coming businessman.  Desperate and in fear of her life, she flees her home and stumbles onto Tom's land. Together their passions ignite and the need to rescue one another entangles them in a bitter fight for their lives.

Buy Link here.
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Thanks to The Rasmus

In 2004 I was heavily pregnant, suffering horrible morning sickness, and bored out of my mind. I started watching the music channels on the digital freeview since I was finding daytime tv beyond tedious. A song caught and held me, something a bit different and from a band I'd never heard of, in a style of music I'd never listened to before. The lead singer looked a bit odd, and the video seemed very surreal, but it caught and held me.

The song was In the Shadows, and the band was The Rasmus. I don't know why the song got under my skin so much, but it did. I listened to it repeatedly. I bought the album it came from - Dead Letters. Around the same time I woke up one morning with a character in my head and a name - Keir. I wrote twenty pages of story, not having written much in the five years before, despite having been an avid writer all through my teens. Then baby number two arrived, I became chronically depressed, and both music and story sank into the background.

Shift forward another five years. My three children playing happily in the garden over summer. Me, hugely overweight a year after the birth of my third child. Bored, miserable, tired. Feeling as though my identity was slipping away, aside from being a wife, a mother. Losing the person I'd been under labels that, although I was proud of them and took joy in being those things, had me wondering who and what I was any more. I needed something else. I needed my passion back.

I dug out the short story about Keir. I'd left him sitting in a dungeon, alone, dying, with no hope. Could I save him from that? And so save my own sanity? I started to write again. Once I'd started, I couldn't stop. I scribbled and typed endlessly, frenziedly. The words poured out of me. My husband thought I'd gone crazy. Maybe I did a little, but it felt so much better.

And as I wrote, I listened to music. I listened and I sang. In the years since I'd first heard In the Shadows, The Rasmus had two new albums out - Hide from the Sun and Black Roses. I LOVED them! So much of the feel in Keir is down to that music. It inspired me and kept me going. I'd found my passion again.

So Keir has come out of the shadows and into the world, and took me with him. Music carried us there, and for that I will always be grateful. I'm writing again, and I'm published. I've been to see a few bands over the last year and loved it, but now the chance has come to see The Rasmus live at last, and that is the biggest to-do on my list. I have my tickets! The past year has been an utter blast, and sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe that it's real. I'm finally the person I want to be - mother, wife, friend and author - and I couldn't be happier. :)

(Oh, and on the wildly unlikely assumption that this should ever get back to Lauri Ylönen - I apologise for saying you looked 'odd'. I should say 'distinctive'. Blame it on pregnancy hormones. :)  )

The Girls From Alcyone by Cary Caffrey - Review

My review of The Girls From Alcyone by Cary Caffrey is now up on the Critique de Book site here. Check it out. This makes book four of my SFR Reading Challenge 2012.

Ambasadora by Heidi Ruby Miller - Review

My review of Ambasadora by Heidi Ruby Miller is now live on the Critique de Book site here. I gave it 5 stars. This also makes book three in my SFR Reading Challenge 2012.