Mark Your Calendar — Sell An Article

For my science fans, here’s a nugget about a celestial show you may want to watch.

Comet PANSTARRS: March 10 to 24, 2013

Comet PANSTARRS discovered in June 2011 using the Pan-STARRS 1 Telescope at Haleakala, Hawaii, is expected to put on its best show during this two-week period. During this time, the comet will also be near its closest approaches to the sun (28 million miles, or 45 million kilometers), and Earth (102 million miles, or 164 million km).
 While Comet PANSTARRS was a very dim and distant object at the time of its discovery, it has brightened steadily since then. It still appears on target to reach at least first magnitude and should be visible low in the west-northwest sky shortly after sunset. On the evening of March 12, 2013, the comet will be situated 4 degrees to the right of an exceedingly crescent moon.

Why mention this now instead of in March?

Because, for those of you who write for social media like Yahoo news or e-How, now you have a time critical subject to research, write about, and sell! If you are unfamiliar with this market, as easy place to start is ezinearticles.com. Click here for the editorial guidelines: http://ezinearticles.com/editorial-guidelines/

Ezinearticles doesn’t pay for articles, but it does offer affiliate marketing. Advertisers link to your articles and you get paid for click throughs. It’s not big or easy money, but it is a place to start to learn the ropes.

Check out Associated Content. It pays for articles outright.

If you are a blogger, get paid to post at Blogger’s Pay Per Post. There are strings attached, but you can earn from $.50 to $10. per assignment piece.

Bukisa is a traffic driven buyer. So you have to write on popular topics to draw a paycheck.  However, Bukisa allows you to re-post material that has been published elsewhere. So using Bukisa can double earnings on non-exclusive material.

This gives you plenty to start your at-home writing career. So start researching that comet heading our way, write an article or two, and sell, sell, sell.

More on Drones for Syfy Buffs

I clipped this from a forum on the subject. Since this portion from the chat gave a link, I am posting the remarks and the reference here. Those writing science fiction, futuristic or fantasy stories may find this information helpful.

Swarms of cyborg insect drones are the future of military surveillance

The kinds of drones making the headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which routinely strike targets in Pakistan – killing terrorists and innocents alike.
But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed.
Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public.
The fear kicked off in 2007 when reports of bizarre flying objects hovering above anti-war protests sparked accusations that the U.S. government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a…lance.html

After writing this post, I stumbled onto a humorous video about microbots, including a photograph of a mosquito-sized drone that can extract a DNA sample from a human covertly. As TheTrutherGirls says, “Get a fly swatter and screens!” Enjoy the video!

And just to feed your paranoia, here’s a video from a NSA whistleblower. He confirms the government’s program of domestic intelligence collection. Just think of all this stuff as research for your novel about nanobots and their nefarious controllers. :-p

Using Science in an Action Scene

Today I found the coolest video that shows what happens to boiling water when it is pitched into the air in arctic temperatures. It makes INSTANT snow. Cooler yet is the science behind it: hot water is easier to freeze than cold water. How’s that for defying logic?

According to Mike Krumboltz, writing for Yahoo’s quasi-news segment “The Sideshow:”

The man boiled water and then tossed it over the balcony of his apartment. Normally, that sort of thing would get you arrested. But in arctic-like temperatures, the result is quite beautiful. As soon as the man tosses his pot of boiling water into the freezing air, it turns to snow and leaves behind a trail of mist across the sky.

If you paid attention in high school chemistry, you might remember that boiling water freezes faster than cold water. Known as the mpemba effect, the phenomenon remains a mystery to many. Not even scientists can agree why hot water tends to freeze quicker.

I envision a bad guy on a high balcony trying to hurt the hero standing below in the snow. The fiend pitches boiling water at the man below him. The hero cringes, bracing for a scalding, then laughs and bounds through the snow veil into the building to apprehend the crook. What do you see?

To see the science in action, watch this video.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/boiling-water-turns-snow-siberia-171453719.html

Duck! Or You’ll Get Whacked by an E.T.

Just like the submarine drug runners of yesterday’s post, I have found another off-the-wall story that should be printed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, but instead comes from Veterans Today. The news is this: China and the US are carrying out joint naval maneuvers off the US coastline near San Francisco. The purpose? Preparing for an invasion of unfriendly space aliens.

(Source:http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/09/17/ufo-war-chinese-and-us-navy-off-san-francisco/ )

Holy cow! Call Batman! When I read it, I thought to myself, “Someone is pulling my leg.”

Then I stumbled on this video.

Ok. So what’s my point? First, let me ramble, then I’ll explain.

I thought Stars Wars (a.k.a. space based weapons/ defense systems) died with Ronald Reagan. Obviously not. Then it was the Russians who were the enemy. Recently we heard about Planet X headed our way to collide with the earth. Now we are preparing to protect ourselves from space aliens. Good thing we have big boats in the big Pacific Ocean to save us! Or are the joint maneuvers really to prep us for the greatest laser show on earth that is about to unfold in the night sky near you?

Whatever the truth is, this series of stories demonstrates the constantly changing technological information about which an author needs to be informed IF you are writing science fiction or doomsday stories. Even if your story is imaginary, it has to have a basis in truth to ring true to your reader. Good science fiction, even when set in the future, hangs on good science.

As the author of secretsun.blogspot.com says:

 I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about where exactly Edgar Rice Burroughs came up with all of this stuff. It certainly wasn’t out of the thin air.

Fizzies

Who remembers Fizzies?

I used to pop the tablets into my mouth and wait for the explosion of effervescence. Crazy kid.

So what’s the point of talking about Fizzies?

Products from childhood are tied to memories. The memories are tied to experiences. Experiences are tied to feelings, images, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations.

When writing about a specific event, draw on memories of a similar occasion to vividly imagine the scene. What do you hear, smell, taste, sense? It is these sensory details that bring the scene to life and make it real for the reader.

Sometimes the silly little details — like the explosive fizz and flavor of a Fizzies tablet boiling on your tongue –ignite the reader’s own memories. Those personal sensations meld with the words of the author to conjure a vivid experience in the reader’s imagination. The stronger the link between memory in real life and the imagined scene penned on the page, the more pleasure for your reader. The setting comes alive with sensory stimulation.

The brain cannot separate emotionally charged imagination and the real thing. It reacts to both equally. That’s why intense romantic scenes arouse and woefully sad ones evoke tears. The emotions conjured are the same whether the source event is real or fictitious.

So before you create a scene, recollect your own reactions and observations surrounding a similar circumstance in your past. Then write with those feelings fresh in your mind.

Research in Palm Beach

Isn’t it marvelous when a trip taken for one purpose can be made to fulfill another purpose at the same time?

My husband traveled recently for business purposes. I was able to tag along. While he attended meetings, I did research. His business meetings were conducted in a famous old hotel in one of the world’s playgrounds of the wealthy.

In the murder mystery I am writing, one of my characters is apprehended in a public place populated by the affluent. It turns out that the hotel in Palm Beach is the perfect location for the scene.

So while my husband is working, I poke around the hotel and take notes. I record descriptions, floor plans, names of bars, meeting rooms, et cetera. During what could have been mind-numbing hours of waiting for my husband, I do research.

The bonus is I will have the information saved in a file for future use in other stories. Knowing how fruitful my imagination is, I have no doubt that I will collect a few story ideas at the same time.

Twofers: two for the price of one.  I love it when one event can serve dual purposes.

“Excuse Me, Where Do You Keep Your Coma Patients?”

Go to this link to read the adventures of up and coming novelist Jordanna East as she attempts to uncover information, for accuracy’s sake, inside an urban hospital. The lengths we writers go to for research is humorous.

“Excuse Me, Where Do You Keep Your Coma Patients?”.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

As authors, we are always looking for unique ways to make our stories stand out. One way to achieve that is to weave weird facts into the story line. Here are a couple to show you what I mean.

First, persons with a go-getter personality — dominated by ambition, logic and decisiveness — are likely to have a ring finger that is longer than his or her index finger. Why? The long fourth finger is an indication that this person was exposed to a higher than average amount of testosterone en utero, according to author Dr. John T. Manning of Rutgers University. He covers the subject in his book Digit Ratio.

Second, women change their taste in men based on their hormone levels. Researcher Tony Little found that women taking birth control pills tend to choose men with pronounced masculine features. The manly traits indicate a higher testosterone level, which is also linked to aggressive behavior and a higher than average likelihood of divorce.

Finally, an adrenaline rush can make the sparks fly between partners. Research by Arthur Aron and Donald Dutton prove it. They found doing something daring together increases the odds of bonding with your date. In one study, male subjects were asked to cross either a shaky or sturdy bridge to speak to an attractive female “researcher”  who provided the male subject her phone number. Those men who met the female after the shaky bridge crossing were more likely to follow-up with a phone call and an invitation to go out together. The exhilaration of being in a risky situation together increases attraction.

Who knew?

Remark on C. J. Gorden’s On Reading and Being Read

URL: http://cjgorden.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/on-reading-and-being-read/

 

A murder mystery writer, of whom I am fond, advised me to get my facts straight in any story I write. If not, I will alienate my reader. The advice was repeated to me on three occasions, so I knew my friend felt strongly about the opinion.

 

Yesterday I read C. J. Gorden’s “On Reading and Being Read.” The link is above. She describes her own penchant to look up facts she reads in books. For example, an author mentioned a street in Melbourne, Australia in a novel, and Gorden used Google Maps to locate the street. Then she used an additional feature that allowed her to see the view from street level: she could tell what restaurants and merchants were actually in that location. She used Google Maps and verified what the author said about an abundance of ethnic restaurants on that particular street.

 

Gorden illustrates the savvy of today’s reader. Technology allows the curious reader to look up facts and maps almost instantly.

 

Reading Gorden’s post reinforced the advice of my mentor: Don’t wing it. Get your facts straight before committing words to the page.