Sally Ember's Blog, page 64
August 2, 2015
Runaway Smile is a Finalist in IAN’s Book of the Year Awards
Mazel Tov to you, Nicholas, for another accolade for your children’s book, “Runaway Smile”! Loved having you on *CHANGES* conversations between authors (Episode 7), and hope you’ll visit again this fall!
OPENINGS Aug 12 and in the fall for new guests, so, authors: Watch conversations with my previous *CHANGES* guests any time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPbfKicwk4dFdeVSAY1tfhtjaEY_clmfq
Learn more about and get yourself on or recommend someone to be scheduled as a guest for *CHANGES* conversations between authors: http://sallyember.com/changes-videoca...
Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Originally posted on Nicholas C. Rossis:
I just received the wonderful news that my children’s book, Runaway Smile, was selected as a ‘Children’s Fiction’ Finalist in the2015 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards.
The book is still in the running for the Outstanding ‘Children’s Fiction’ Category Winner, so keep ’em crossed. The category winners will be announced on August 15th. If I win, you’ll probably hear me shout the news from the rooftops. If not, I’ll just quietly hope you’ll forget all about it.
They also sent me a really cool Finalist badge, which I’m so printing out and sticking to the fridge.
And if you haven’t read Runaway Smile, I mean, come on! It’s free to read now, but won’t be forever! Unless, of course, you’d rather buy it on Amazon and support my writing habit passion.
Filed under: Writing
BLURB tinkering update: Draft 6! Your turn!
BLURB tinkering update: up to Draft 6! Your turn!
I need your opinions to keep improving this book blurb, please! Sci-fi/romance, third in a series.
This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change
Volume III, The Spanners Series
Pre-orders, half-price, $1.99: 11/1 – 12/7/15
Release planned for 12/8/15, $3.99
Look for links after 11/1/15: http://www.sallyember.com
BLURB Draft 6
Clara, Moran, Espe, Epifanio and the alien Band of holos are back in This Is /Is Not The Way I Want Things to Change of The Spanners Series. Psi-Defiers launch increasingly violent protests during this five-year Transition, attempting to block Earth’s membership into the the Many Worlds Collective. To join, nations and borders must dissolve and Psi-Warriors strengthen in their battle against the rebels.
Clara, continuing as Earth’s first Chief Communicator, also juggles family conflicts and danger while opening psi skills training Campuses to help Earth through the Psi-Wars. Clara timults alternate versions of their futures as the leaders’ duties and consciences force them each to make difficult choices across multiple timelines while continuing to train and fight.
Will the Psi-Warriors’ and other leaders’ increasing psi skills, multi-species collaborations and budding alien alliances be enough for Earth to make it through the five-year Transition intact? If there is no clear path for Clara’s and Epifanio’s love, does she partner with Steve or go it alone?
What do you do with wanted/unwanted changes?
Thanks to many of you for ideas, rewrites, complaints: we’re up to Draft 6!
Email your ideas to: sallyember AT yahoo DOT com
Appreciate reviewers, book bloggers, promotion help as well!
REVIEWERS: ARCS available around mid-October
with cover, after 11/1/15
THANKS!
Filed under: Beta readers, Indie or Self-Publishing, The Spanners, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume III, Writing Tagged: book bloggers, Book Blurb, pre-orders, release, reviewers, revising, Sally Ember Ed.D Author, The Spanners Series, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume III
August 1, 2015
The Winners of the Annual #BloggersBash Awards Are…
Special Mazel Tovs to my already-known blogger/online buddies who were nominated and/or won: Chris Graham (The Story Reading Ape), Chris Mcmullen, Sally Cronin, Susan Toy, Jo Robinson and Sue Vincent; and, special KUDOS! to some of my previous guests on my talk show, *CHANGES* conversations between authors: Charles E. Yallowitz, Olga Nuñez Miret, Nicholas C. Rossis!
Also, glad to “meet” all the new bloggers I’m finding from this great contest! I invite all the nominees and winners who have not already been on my show who are bloggers and who write books, articles, poems, plays or stories as well, to consider coming on my almost-weekly Google+ Hangout On Air/YouTube videocast (Wed., 10 AM Eastern USA time): Watch conversations with my previous *CHANGES* guests any time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPbfKicwk4dFdeVSAY1tfhtjaEY_clmfq
Learn more about and get yourself on or recommend someone to be scheduled as a guest for *CHANGES* conversations between authors: http://sallyember.com/changes-videoca...
Sacha Black, thanks for doing this!
Best to you all,
Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Originally posted on Sacha Black:
So here we are, it’s results time. If any of the winners/those who place want to display the award on their sites, drop me an email and I will send you the logo.
But first, I wanted to share with you the speech I made earlier today at the first Annual Bloggers Bash:
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Filed under: Writing
July 31, 2015
Part III: Science Alert, Serious Wonder and Cosmos Up
Part III: Science Alert, Serious Wonder and Cosmos Up
[All three posts in this series have the same introduction, but I choose info from each of the four science compilation sites separately for each post. This post focuses on gleanings from Cosmos Up]
INTRO: I should have been a research scientist. I love science. I’m extremely intelligent, determined, creative, and organized. I coulda been a contenda for a Nobel prize. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Why am I not a scientist? I had a series of misogynistic (one of my teachers hated the four girls in my advanced science class so much he would pith [paralyze] the frogs by holding them in the air directly in front of one of us so that each frog would urinate on our blouses), anti-Semitic (another one wore his “John Birch Society” pin to school every day, displayed prominently on his lapel; there were three girls in my class and he insulted each of us daily), incompetent (in an lab accident at his “real” job, this poor man had lost most of his sight and drive and spent each class time mostly ignoring all of us) and otherwise horrible science teachers in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades.
With better teachers in those critical years, my life could have turned out very differently. Those terrible teachers turned me so far off science I only took one more “hard” science course (because it was required, in undergraduate college), despite many more years of education, through getting a doctorate.
As an adult, I became enthralled with quantum physics, health/anatomy, nutrition, child development/learning and the multiverse/astrophysics, so I read. A lot. I also watch documentaries. I am not even close to understanding some of the physics stuff, but the rest I got quite adept at utilizing. To “keep up,” I subscribe to many science-oriented blogs and curation sites.
My favorites are: Science Alert, Serious Wonder, Brain Pickings Weekly and Cosmos Up. I will excerpt from some of the “best of the best” of what I’ve recently perused.
Part III is all from Cosmos Up, which means this month’s offerings are all astronomical! I hope you enjoy! Go subscribe!
Astrophysics and Quantum Physics/Mechanics
1. Jan 11, 2015, “NASA Reveals Three Amazing Travel Posters for Earth-Like Planets”
http://goo.gl/gfZgB1
“NASA has marked the discovery of potentially habitable worlds by its Kepler space observatory with a poster series imagining the ‘out of this world’ holiday options they may one day offer. Drawing inspiration from travel billboards of the 20s, 30s and 40s, the posters are the brainchild of NASA visual strategists Joby Harris, David Delgado and Dan Goods.”
and
and
“These posters are even available online and can be downloaded for free via JPL’s website. There are additional exoplanet posters in the works, NASA said.”
January 14, 2015, “Rare Phenomenon In The Solar System, What Has Cassini Photographed?”
http://goo.gl/EiDpnM
“Cassini…captures a strange hexagonal formation present at one pole of Saturn. The diameter of the ‘hexagon’ is 30,000 miles. This formation is present at the north pole of the planet. Inside the formation…the wind blows up with a colossal speed [of] about 322 kilometers per hour. The center of this strange formation is actually a very powerful storm. Scientists say that…it isn’t present on any other planet in our solar system.”
January 27, 2015, “Oldest Star System in Galaxy Discovered by NASA ‘could Point to Extremely Advanced Alien Civilisations’”
http://goo.gl/kJG1Ue
“’There are far-reaching implications for this discovery [of a sun-like star with 5 orbiting planets ranging in size from Mercury to Venus],’ lead researcher Tiago Campante said in a statement. ‘We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8 billion year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy.’
“’Planetary systems around stars have been a common feature of our galaxy for a long, long time.’”
February 11, 2015, “New Crazy Theory: The Universe has ‘No End and No Beginning’”
http://goo.gl/t7HUkr
“They showed that quantum particles can never meet or cross paths.’As far as we can see, since different points in the universe never actually converged in the past, it did not have a beginning,’ Professor Saurya Das said.”
April 14, 2015, “New Map Reveals Distribution Of Dark Matter At Cosmic Scale”
http://goo.gl/8uIp6G
April 15, “NASA: No Signs Of Advanced Alien Civilizations In 100000 Galaxies”
http://goo.gl/DNhEEy
“Either they don’t exist, or they don’t yet use enough energy for us to recognize them.”
MY VIEW: Or, they don’t use energy in the form we expect them to be using it, which is “high levels of mid-infrared radiation.” Why do earth-based scientists presume that signs of alien “intelligence” will be recognizable to humans from great distances or at all? We could be looking for “life” in all the wrong ways.
July 7, 2015, “There Are Millions Of Hidden Supermassive Black Holes In The Universe, Scientists Says”
http://goo.gl/A97g4h
The closest supermassive black hole to Earth is V4641 Sagitarii which is 1,600 light years away.
“Astronomers have spotted five monster black holes previously hidden by dust and gas in space and they suggests that there might be millions more of them lurking around our universe.”
Look for Part I, published on June 1, which focused on info gathered by Alert.
Part II was published June 30, with info from Serious Wonder
and Brain Pickings Weekly.
Filed under: Science Tagged: alien civilizations, alien life, astronomy, Black Holes, Cassini, cosmology, Dark Matter, Earth, Earth-like planets, exoplanets, galaxy, NASA, outer space, physics, planets, quantum physics, science, solar system, space, star systems, stars, sun, supermassive black holes, universe
July 30, 2015
BLURB tinkering update: Draft 3! Your turn!
BLURB tinkering update: up to Draft 3! Your turn!
I need some help trimming and improving this book blurb, please! Sci-fi/romance, third in a series.
This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change
Volume III, The Spanners Series
Pre-orders, half-price, $1.99: 11/1 – 12/7/15
Release planned for 12/8/15, $3.99
Look for links after 11/1/15: http://www.sallyember.com
BLURB Draft 3
Clara, Moran and the alien Band of holos are back in This Is /Is Not The Way I Want Things to Change, Volume III of The Spanners Series. Moran [Rabbi Ackerman, Chief of the OverSeers covert and special Operations (OSOps) and the Psi-Warriors] and Clara (Dr. Ackerman Branon, Earth’s Chief Communicator, the first direct liaison between Earth and the Many Worlds Collective) face Moran’s wife’s kidnapping, a cave-in, an earthquake and rebellion, using their ever-improving psi powers. Clara as the CC guides Earth as it is growing, adapting and improving in The Transition, the first five years of Earth’s membership in the MWC. She also arises each day to discover if she is with either of her two loves or single, trying to keep her heart stable across alternating timelines.
The MWC Chief Media Contact, Esperanza Enlaces, and the older Spanners give their unique perspectives on The Transition, just as the younger Spanners do in Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever.
Get the thirty-year overview of Clara’s tenure as the CC and Earth’s transformations in Volume I, This Changes Everything, free everywhere.
What do you do with wanted/unwanted changes?
Thanks to several of your ideas, rewrites, complaints, we’re up to Draft 3!
Email your ideas to: sallyember AT yahoo DOT com
Appreciate reviewers, book bloggers, promotion help as well!
REVIEWERS: ARCS available around mid-October
with cover, after 11/1/15
THANKS!
Filed under: Beta readers, Indie or Self-Publishing, The Spanners, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume III, Writing Tagged: book bloggers, Book Blurb, pre-orders, release, reviewers, revising, Sally Ember Ed.D Author, The Spanners Series, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume III
July 29, 2015
One-year Anniversary of *CHANGES* *conversations between authors* on 8/5/15!
CHANGES Episode 37, with teen author, Vartika Singh Sikarwar, and host, Sally Ember, Ed.D.
For my one-year anniversary of the CHANGES conversations between authors show, I am proud to be hosting my first teen author guest, Vartika Singh Sikarwar, who is also a memoir writer, essayist and poet!
We are LIVE on Wednesday, August 5, 10 – 11 AM EDT USA,
Google+ https://plus.google.com/events/cj1b52u2sjs7ul83c11urdicqno or
Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52tbA0kZ4jI
Vartika’s writing can be found: http://www.wattpad.com/user/VartikaS ,
https://www.facebook.com/MyAdventureToTheSecretDoor
and http://www.teenink.com/users/VartikaSinghSikarwar
Watch conversations with my previous CHANGES guests any time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPbfKicwk4dFdeVSAY1tfhtjaEY_clmfq
Learn more about and get yourself on or recommend someone to be scheduled as a guest for CHANGES conversations between authors: http://sallyember.com/changes-videocasts-by-sally-ember-ed-d/
HOWEVER: I seem to be “running out of guests” for CHANGES conversations between authors. Coming up next week on its one-year anniversary and only have 2 guests scheduled after that; done by mid-Sept., at this point.
Should I close up shop?
Do you have ideas about whether or not to continue, and, if so, how to attract fascinating author guests?
Thanks, Crew!
Filed under: CHANGES Episodes Tagged: *CHANGES*, *CHANGES* conversations between authors, fantasy, Fantasy author, Google+ Hangout On Air, Google+ HOA, Sally Ember, Secret Door, teen author, Vartika Singh Sikarwar, YouTube
July 28, 2015
Looking for reviewers who like utopian science-fiction, and seeking book bloggers
PLEASE SHARE! Vol III, This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change of The Spanners Series, ebook by Sally Ember, Ed.D., releases 12/8/15.
Looking for reviewers who like utopian science-fiction/romance with multiverse and psi elements, and seeking book bloggers to help with Volume III’s release. ARCs and info ready in late Sept. through early December.
Pre-orders: 11/1 – 12/7/15
Release date: 12/8/15
sallyember AT yahoo DOT com if you’re interested and available!
Cover art and logo by Aidana Willowraven: http://www.willowraven-illustration.blogspot.com/
This Changes Everything, Vol I, is a perma #free #scifi #romance ebook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HFELTG8
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376197
Vol 2, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, is $3.99
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424969
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU5Q7KC
Always love reviews for the first two volumes (free to reviewers), of course! http://www.sallyember.com/Spanners-2
Filed under: Indie or Self-Publishing, Marketing, Reviews, Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Spanners, This Changes Everything, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume I of The Spanners, Volume II of The Spanners, Volume III Tagged: Aidana Willowraven, book bloggers, ebooks, new release, permafree, reviewers, Sally Ember, The Spanners Series, This Changes Everything, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change
July 24, 2015
Looking for Beta readers and reviewers who like utopian science-fiction, and seeking book bloggers
PLEASE SHARE! Vol III, This Is/Is Not the Way I Want Things to Change of The Spanners Series by Sally Ember, Ed.D., is coming out soon.
Looking for Beta readers, and reviewers who like utopian science-fiction, and seeking book bloggers to help with its release starting in Sept. through late November. sallyember AT yahoo DOT com if you’re interested and available!
Cover art and logo by Aidana Willowraven: http://www.willowraven-illustration.blogspot.com/
This Changes Everything, Vol I, is a perma #free #scifi #romance ebook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HFELTG8
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376197
Vol 2, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, is $3.99
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424969
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU5Q7KC
Always love reviews for the first two volumes (free to reviewers), of course! http://www.sallyember.com/Spanners-2
Filed under: Beta readers, Indie or Self-Publishing, Marketing, Reviews, Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Spanners, This Changes Everything, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change, Volume I of The Spanners, Volume II of The Spanners, Volume III Tagged: Aidana Willowraven, beta readers, book bloggers, ebooks, new release, permafree, reviewers, Sally Ember, The Spanners Series, This Changes Everything, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, This Is/Is Not the Way I Thought Things Would Change
July 18, 2015
The Indie author help page questions
Tagging all #Indie #authors (most of my clan, here): consider sending in responses to any and all of these questions weekly!
Originally posted on readful things blog:
For anyone who would like to answer these questions, feel free to copy them and send your responses to readfulthings@gmail.com
For anyone who missed it the other day, Charles Yallowitz and I are starting a help page on both of our sites for indie authors who are new to the publishing arena. Nothing too complex, just asking authors the same set of questions and hoping to get answers from those who write across a broad array of genres. The answers will be posted to the blog once a week and then links to those posts will be put on a page where authors can go and refer back to them. We will also be listing sites that have useful info for authors about marketing and promotion both free and paid.
So if you’d like to take a moment and answer the questions, it would be much appreciated. Only thing we…
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Filed under: Writing
YUP!!! DALAI LAMA SAYS MORE WOMEN AS LEADERS MIGHT LEAD TO LESS VIOLENT WORLD
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speaks to what would help reduce violence in this modern world: more women as political leaders.
Yes.
Not a cure-all, but a great start.
IMHO: Make sure they’re also: compassionate, creative, independent (not bought by lobbyists or corporations), intelligent feminists who are also pacifists and socialists. THEN we’re on our way to somewhere great!
Originally posted on Live Love Laugh:
WORLD CRISES REQUIRE A COMPASSIONATE APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP.
The Dalai Lama thinks that the world would be less violent if more women assumed leadership roles globally.
In a recent interview with Larry King on Ora TV’s PoliticKing, the Dalai Lama, the face of Tibetan Buddhism and one of the planet’s most recognized spiritual leaders, said that the world is in need of more women as leaders.
“According to scientists, women have more sensitivity than men. Sometimes I really feel that more women should take responsibility in the leadership of our planet. It would mean less violence,” his Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, said.
He doesn’t, however, endorse Hillary Clinton publicly for president as he doesn’t want to get personally involved in American politics.
The Dalai Lama visited the United States in July to meet with former president George Bush, to launch a global compassion initiative, and to celebrate…
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Filed under: Writing
