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Day 5
Becky at Becky's Book Reviews is hosting the final stop on the Bubble Homes and Fish Farts blog tour today.

It's been a great week! Here's the complete list of stops:

Monday at The Well-Read Child
Tuesday at Abby (the) Librarian
Wednesday at A Year of Reading
Thursday at Celebrate Story
Friday at Becky's Book Reviews.
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Okay, so right up front I'm going to apologize for spending a disproportionate amount time talking about Bubble Homes and Fish Farts this month. But ya know...having a book come out, is kind of like having a baby. It's a VERY exciting event. Like a new parent, you carry your new book around everywhere, showing everyone you meet...you send out announcements and talk incessantly about the latest cute thing it did, sometimes to the rolling eyeballs of friends and family. So, forgive me as I jump up and down. I hope you'll share my excitement.


If you're in the Chilliwack or Vancouver BC areas, I hope you'll drop in to one of the upcoming book launches. The Vancouver Aquarium has designated animal bubbles as their Super Saturday theme around my March 14 launch there, with kids activities starting at 8:30 a.m. At the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve on March 28, we'll have all kinds of outdoor bubbley fun to add to the mix. Carolyn Conahan, my amazing illustrator, has created templates for kids to colour and turn into animal hats and masks. More info about the launches here.

Then, on March 23-27, I'll be setting off on a blog tour. More details to come.

Meanwhile, some nice folks invited me to be a guest on their blogs this month, so if you want to hear me yibber yabber about blogging, head on over to Alice's CWIM Blog, or if you're interested in my thoughts about where the cool science books of today came from, I have an essay up at Unabridged, and the students at the Institute of Children's Literature peppered me with questions about writing process last month and that transcript can be found here.
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As I read through the array of exceptional children's science books published in the last several years, I can't help but wonder: Cool science, where were you when I was a kid?

The answer, of course, is that cool science has always been around, just not always accessible to young readers, including the kid-me of decades ago. My memories of science books from that time consist of clinical, dry text with black & white illustration, often overly simplistic or of poor quality. It wasn't until I was a grownup looking for science books and magazines for my own kids that I came across dynamic children's writing that captured the "wow" of science. Science hasn't become any more wonderful or awe-inspiring in the last thirty years—the "wow" has been there all along—but effectively communicating that wonder and awe to children is relatively new. Oh, how the kid-me would have loved the vibrant well-told stories and detailed artwork and photography that kids will find between the covers of this today's science books.

So, what's changed? How have today's science writers made the move from dry and lifeless to cool? As a contemporary science writer, what am I trying to do differently than science writers of yesteryear?

One move I make toward "cool" is to keep things fresh. Not always easy to do when writing about things that were discovered long ago. In fact, if you hang around writers long enough, you'll hear something along the lines of "There are no new stories under the sun. Only new ways of telling the same stories." In science writing, we sometimes do get new stories in the way of new discoveries, but for the rest, this old saying holds true. So one of the first things I do when starting a book is ditch the head-on view and look for an unusual angle. I tap my inner kid, looking for the "Ew!", "Cool!" and "Phew!" in the subject, some aspect that will get an emotional reaction from my young readers. For instance, Pascal's law (water can't be squished so the more pressure applied to it, the faster it leaves a pipe...yawn) becomes interesting and relevant to a 10-year-old when explained as the science of squirt guns. See? Physics can be cool. I also try to connect information in new ways. In Bubble Homes and Fish Farts, I use bubbles as the thread to connect an unusual assortment of animals. There are oodles of animal adaptation books out there, but the bubble angle gives survival a whole new spin.

Another big difference is that I don't set out to teach anything. Instead, my goal is to share. This may sound like splitting hairs or playing with semantics, but it's actually an important distinction. Both involve the author imparting knowledge, but the mindsets are different, and so the attitude and approach to the writing is different, too. Teaching turns the writer into a teacher, and the reader into a student—an unequal relationship with the teacher in an authority position. Sharing allows for equality between writer and reader. I think of it as an invitation to a peer. "Come, sit with me. I just have to tell you about this amazing thing I found." Readers will learn a lot of interesting things in my books, but story always drives my tale, not the need to teach specific information for the readers' own good. When I approach the reader with this attitude of mutual respect, I never have to worry about talking down or becoming didactic, as often was the case in early children's science books. It just doesn't happen.

I take several more steps away from dry and lifeless by engaging readers in a more sensory way. Visually, the illustrations take on a big role, but I want the text to get readers feeling and reacting, too. I search for concrete references that will relate new information to something readers already know—this snail is the size of a large grape; gouramis look like they're shooting hoops when they spit eggs into a bubble nest. My goal is to create images in readers' heads so they really get how big or small (or whatever) something is. For example, saying a blue whale is "big" or "29 meters" doesn't mean much, but when I explain that it can be as long as a basketball court, with a heart the size of a small car, and blood vessels kids can swim through, the images conjured sure show the scale of BIG I'm talking about. I also draw on the other senses whenever possible, describing taste, smell, texture, and especially sound. I'm a huge onomatopoeia fan. Read "fwap-fwap-fwap-fwap", a hammer "clang!", or the "gulp" of a hungry seal, and those sounds instantly echo through your head, putting you in the moment. Lifting the words off the page that way adds layers of interest to the reading experience.

Dry writing often suffers from being too formal, so I like to take it down a few notches, using a voice that is conversational and kid-friendly. And [gasp] that sometimes means using sentence fragments, interjections such as Yikes!, Aha! or No kidding!, or starting a sentence with and or but. I also play with language, adding puns, homonyms, alliteration, double meanings, BIG WORDS, and lo-o-o-o-o-ong words as I would spice to a meal—sometimes none, a little, or a lot, depending on who's coming to supper.

These are the major techniques I use to bring the cool of science to kids...to write the books the kid-me would have enjoyed. The keystone to it all, though, is my genuine sense of wonder or enthusiasm for whatever I write about. A writer's passion has a mysterious way of seeping through the text and becoming contagious. And that's what I want to pass on to my readers—a taste of the wonder and awe I feel at the world around me, so that they'll start asking their own questions, checking things out for themselves, and sharing their excitement with a friend: "Come, sit with me. I just have to tell you about this amazing thing I found."

Science writing has come a long way in the last 30-40 years. This generation of kids won't be asking, "Cool science, where were you when I was a kid?" That makes me smile.

Posted by Fiona Bayrock,
author of Bubble Homes and Fish Farts

Blogger of the Week:
Fiona Bayrock (Books and 'Rocks)...

Today nonfiction writer Fiona Bayrock talks about her blog, Books and 'Rocks--along with some other great blogs maintained by nonfiction authors--and offers her advice to others hitting the blogosphere.

You started your blog Books and 'Rocks in 2007. What prompted you to dive into the blogosphere at that point?

I had thoroughly enjoyed the peek-into-the-process blogs of authors such as Loree Griffin Burns and Chris Barton, and was energized by the breadth and depth of discussion amongst blogging children's lit enthusiasts. The Kidlitosphere was springing into being about then, too. It was an exciting time, and I wanted to add my voice to the mix.

I could also see how a blog could serve as low-key promotion for my work, increasing my name recognition. But, first and foremost, Books and 'Rocks was to be a vehicle for shining a light on books and authors I thought were exceptional, as well as give me a place to talk about writing, reading, publishing, and literacy. Food for my brain.

What kind of posts will readers find on Books and 'Rocks. What would you say is your purpose or philosophy behind blogging? What do you hope to accomplish?

I subtitled the blog as "The meanderings and musings of a children's book author as she ponders the writing life, the biz, the good books she's read lately, and how all that fits into her family, the 'Rocks.", which I thought would let me talk about pretty much anything to do with family and books. And it does, although I generally keep things tightly focused on writing and publishing, with an emphasis on nonfiction for kids, since that's my main writing passion and covers most of the work I do. Within the bigger picture, I hope that in some small way I'm helping to nudge children's nonfiction into the legitimacy zone other genres enjoy.

Types of posts? All over the map. I post book talks whenever I find a new fave, I point to other blogs when their posts are thought-provoking or tickle my funny bone, and I report award news, as well as regular updates and news about my writing and publishing journey. Readers will also find light musings such as my paper clip conspiracy theory, the fortune cookie that told me I had a way with words and should consider writing a book(!), or my concern about people searching Amazon for my book using an ampersand instead of "and". I keep things casual and conversational, as though chatting with a friend over coffee.

I haven't come across a lot of blogs by nonfiction writers--am I missing them? Are there others you visit regularly?

Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of us out there. In addition to Loree and Chris, the nonfiction writers I follow regularly include: Marc Aronson, Elizabeth Partridge, Mary Bowman-Kruhm, Peggy Thomas, and I.N.K. - Interesting Nonfiction for Kids (group blog).
Process intrigues me. Reading these blogs is like getting a glimpse through studio windows.

Also blogging, but with a lighter nonfiction touch, are children's nonfiction authors Lizann Flatt, Tanya Lee Stone, Deborah Hodge, Tanya Kyi, and Wendie Old. I'm sure that's not a complete list, so, Alice's dear readers, if you've got links, send 'em my way.

Tell my readers a little about the books you've written. Any recent projects we should know about?

All science and nature books so far, always with a twist or coming at the topic from a different angle. I follow my curiosity, looking for new connections and new ways to understand why things are the way they are. Passion is contagious. I try to pass it on in my books and magazine articles.

My latest project—thanksforasking!—was a particularly fun one to write. Just out from Charlesbridge, Bubble Homes and Fish Farts is a nonfiction picture book about the amazing ways animals use bubbles (to live in, keep warm, ride, talk, and even shoot hoops). Carolyn Conahan, the staff artist for Cricket Magazine, illustrated the book in beautiful watercolor paintings, capturing the science with a touch of whimsy—a perfect match to my text. We're excited about the reception it's received so far. It was named a Junior Library Guild Selection and Kirkus called it "a volume that's sure to rise to the top". Squee!

What's your advice for new bloggers, particularly other nonfiction writers?

You can't be all things to all people. Know why you're blogging and who your audience is, and then choose your content accordingly. Be fresh, genuine, and original. Be you. All promotion all the time is a turnoff; a sprinkle here and there is fine. Not everyone is cut out to blog, but if it's something that interests you, go for it. Blogging can be a great way to think deeper, get involved, and network. I've heard from several sources that there is much interest in behind-the-scenes stories about how authors work and the journey—warts and all—that a project goes through to become a final book. For nonfiction, that process has lots of interesting nooks and crannies to explore. And because there are so few nonfiction writers blogging, we're still a bit of a novelty...the demand is there.

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A few weeks ago, fellow Charlesbridge author Chris Barton listed the next seven things he planned to do to support his forthcoming picture book, The Day-Glo Brothers. He then invited seven authors with new books---moi among them---to chime in with seven things they were doing for their new books.

Well, as you know, I've filed the last month under D for doozie, which put me *waaaaay* behind on blog reading, so I'm just chiming in now. Okay, Chris, here goes...

The next seven things I plan to do to support Bubble Homes and Fish Farts:

1. Give a "Ten Things Every Children's Author Should Know" talk at my local library: February 9, 2009 at 7 pm, Chilliwack main branch. (If you're counting shameless plugs in this blog post, this is #3)

2. Create and send a handout template to the folks at the Vancouver Aquarium for them to photocopy for my March 14 book launch there. This means I get to test different bubble solutions to see what works best for the super duper bubble makers kids will make at the launches. Have I mentioned being an author is fun?

3. Go through my eight pages of teacher guide notes to create science and language arts activities for a Bubble Homes and Fish Farts guide.

4. Be Jan Fields' February Guest Chat Author at the Institute of Children's Literature a.k.a. ICL. I'll be talking about "Funky Nonfiction". For more info, click here and scroll to #4.

5. Chase down and fiddle to get web-ready and print images to complete my online press kit.

6. Sit on the CWILL "How to Get Published" panel at the Vancouver Public Library.

7. Be the March guest blogger at "Unabridged" , the Charlesbridge blog.

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Okay, so after a long absence, I was going to write this blog post all about how I've been AWOL because I've been spending every extra moment rebuilding my website to the point that I'm dreaming in html . . . you know, with pointy brackets around every action I take. But that's all gone out the window. I just have to stop the presses for this:

A Kirkus review that authors dream about. Yes, notoriously-hard-to-please Kirkus likes Bubble Homes and Fish Farts! That Kirkus reviewed the book is fabulous. That they liked it is chair-dancing "Squeeee!" territory. Here's what they said:

"Bayrock's love of "way cool science" bubbles over in this surprisingly substantial book. How do animals use bubbles? For sailing, running, breathing, nesting--even playing (dolphins seem to blow bubbles just for fun). Sixteen double-page spreads cover 16 wholly different ways that fish, insects, amphibians and mammals use bubbles. Did you know that one species of spider creates a bubble home to live in underwater? That the popping bubbles of snapping shrimp can be "so loud it gets in the way of U.S. Navy sonar"? That the water shrew can actually run across the surface of the water courtesy of the bubbles trapped between its hairy toes? Lively expository prose deftly combines straightforward facts (the scientific name of each animal), sound effects (the "fwap-fwap-fwap-fwap" of tree frogs creating foam) and kid-friendly comparisons (the gourami fish spitting eggs into its nest looks like it's playing basketball). Conahan's whimsical watercolor illustrations, complete with conversational bubbles, add humor and interest. Three pages of additional facts and a combined glossary/index round out a volume that's sure to rise to the top. (Informational picture book. 5-10)" --Kirkus Reviews

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So, about that earthquake yesterday. . . the magnitude 2.7 earthquake that occurred 40 miles from here (as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center) around the time I checked my mailbox? That one? Um. . . well, with all the jumping around I was doing, it's quite possible I caused it.

But I had a good reason. You see, yesterday was like a very special birth day---an advance copy of Bubble Homes and Fish Farts arrived in the mail from my publisher! A book, a real book, the very. first. one! Not galleys or F&Gs or layouts or, or, or. . . but a real hardcover BOOK! So, yeah, there was a whole lot of "Squeeee!"-ing and jumping around at Casa Bayrock yesterday around mail time. Quite possibly enough to cause an earthquake, I should think.

This book has been a long time coming, and oh, it's so been worth the wait. It's beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. It's not bragging for me to say so. Sure, I wrote the text, but the whole visual feel is due to Susan and the amazing folks on the Charlesbridge design team and to my brilliant illustrator Carolyn Conahan, who found the perfect way to express the science and whimsy I had hoped for. I can take none of the credit for that. It's such a scary thing for a picture book writer to relinquish creative control to the art department and illustrator, but these guys totally got what I was trying to do and made it real. Oh, and you want to know a really cool detail? The dust jacket is a lovely matte finish except for the bubbles. . . they're all shiny, like bubbles should be! Those Charlesbridge folks are the awesomest.

Seeing your book for the first time has to be one of the biggest highs in an author's life, so, join me in a big "Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" won't you? :^D
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Wahoo! My editor just told me that Bubble Homes and Fish Farts (Charlesbridge) will be a Junior Library Guild Selection! No, it won't be released until February, but apparently the good folks at JLG make their selections from galleys and F&Gs well ahead of publication. Way cool!

I spent some time poking through the JLG catalogue. Oh wow. . . so many of my favourite books. . . so many of my author idols. . . I am SO honoured. But you know what else I'm feeling? Relief. I know it seems like a funny emotion to have right now, but this is the first "real world" feedback on the book, and somebody unrelated to me likes it! LOL!

And it's a double-goodie day, today. The long-awaited cover is ready for unveiling.

Ta da!
Wheeeeeeeeee!!!
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Okay, so yesterday I finally succumbed and signed up for Google Alerts for my name and book title. It had always seemed like just one more internet email thing to keep track of, so I'd been dragging my feet.

Well, today the first alerts arrived. No surprises in the alerts for my name, but lo, something other than my website came up for Bubble Homes and Fish Farts (Charlesbridge 2009).

AMAZON.COM!!!

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts is on Amazon! Just the title and author name...no cover pic or details yet, but it's THERE!!!

Oh! Oh! Oh! It's coming! It's coming! It really is.

Can you see me chair dancing?
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I visited my local Bernal Heights library branch this afternoon, in search of a place to sit and read. It turned out to be one of the last weeks the building is open before it closes for an extensive renovation. On a kid-filled sunny spring Saturday, the current building gives the impression of being a community center rather than a library, with more conversations, computers, and chaos than visible books.

I’m looking forward to the new design. The neighborhood obviously is drawn to the location, which swirls with families out walking dogs and babies.

— — — —

Things I’m currently researching…

• Wedding venues in the Detroit area that are:
  • Non-religious
  • Interesting-looking or unusual
  • Cheap, cheap, cheap!
• Things to do in Brighton, UK
• Search Engine Optimization
• Cat grooming (did you know you can use baby powder to make your cat less itchy?)
• Better WordPress plugins (I’m playing with a new Twitter sidebar)
• Management jobs in SF for my sweetie Chuck this summer

With the recent news of Yahoo’s potential acquisition by vile Microsoft and its prior layoff of 1000 hardworking geeks, there was a bit of an air of piracy in the office last week.

Linden Lab is going into another round of recruitment, focusing on web developers, QA folk, and other nerdy types. If any web developers out there (you, yes, YOU Joy!) want to work in a more stable, hilarious, and weird environment, you might want to fill out an application to work at Second Life. Free beer, the Love Machine, and a frightening amount of RockBand can all be yours!

Linden seems to be where the socially-developed nerds go to work. There’s a much larger % of women, extroverts, parents, and charmers working at Linden than is considered industry standard. Which means you tend to not find yourself in conversations with dudes who can’t make eye contact with a girl, or folks who get REALLY EMOTIONAL about their code.

It’s good to be a god, too, even if it’s only in-world. You can read more about our wickedcool office culture in the Tao of Linden.

Photorealism Inside a Virtual World?
Originally uploaded by cogdogblog

My head hurts from thinking about this, but damn it’s cool.

ant $40? Got 90 minutes or so? Want to get paid to check out a 3-D virtual world?

My employer and I are looking for local San Francisco people with NO experience using Second Life to help us evaluate some possible changes, tweaks, and/or new features to our software and support portal.

Interested? At a minimum, you should:

• Be over 18
• Be able to get to downtown San Francisco
• NOT be an expert computer-user.

Still interested? Take a brief survey. As opportunities arise, we’ll put the word out to those who fit our testing needs. I’m looking forward to meeting you!

Lately I’ve read some very thought-provoking posts that I’ve wanted to comment on at length, but unfortunately I just don’t have time to do them each the justice they deserve right now. So here’s a starter pack to make you think about them instead.

• Technology with Altitude
  

  “Ron Gardner, Contentdm specialist for OCLC, made the point that libraries are getting a lot more involved in the creation that goes on in libraries. It got me thinking that we are still a little fixated on what comes into the library (metadata creation, organization, even the library website) rather than caring as much as we should about what goes out.

  In a profession full of humanists and expert researchers, is it time for us to be thinking even more about what people produce in libraries, rather than simply finding them the right resources and leaving them to their best devices? Could the library profession be a key player in the quality of information that with or without our help is going to wind up available to millions through search and discovery mechanisms that are not of our own flawless (ahem) design? We’re already playing a role in the production of mass digitization of our existing resources and the creation of digital portals for our unique resources. Isn’t the next logical step to be the stewards of the things that are created from access to those things?” [Hectic Pace]

  My answer is an emphatic yes, although I believe Andrew is probably thinking about academic libraries in this context. I, however, read it as an extension of what I’ve been saying for years about public libraries. More on this soon, due in part to an interesting conversation I recently had with Taylor Willingham.
   

• The Associaton for Library Services to Children is blogging away, and it’s home to a great post by Ann Crewdson about Second Life, Third Life, Fourth Life….
  

  “Many of us are in denial that we are in the age of digital natives. How many times have we walked by people whom we thought were crazy, only to find out that they have an earpiece attached to their cellphone? Watching someone using the Wii controller to jog around Second Life is even odder only because we’ve never exercised that way. Second Life is just another information place we can meet these people and serve them. It doesn’t have to be one world or another. We can straddle as many worlds as we want and be all the more information richer. We can even defeat a 12-year-old at a video game. It’s the same game, different skin. Second Life is the internet, in a different form. If we only set our minds to it we can free ourselves of our psychological barriers. If I can do it, you can do it too!”

  While I agree with a lot of what Ann says, it’s more the attitude that I wanted to note, because more than the technical know-how, that’s what makes “librarian 2.0.” It’s the willingness to play, experiment, and learn. Had Ann decided Second Life wasn’t for her or her library, I’d still highlight this post. It’s the folks who write something off without even trying it (especially while telling others that “no one needs to do this” or who spend all of 10 minutes doing something and then are surprised when the end result isn’t stellar) who work against the best values of our profession. This is true for many things, not just Second Life or virtual worlds. After all, we had this kind of debate around allowing email in the library, too, not so long ago.

  If you don’t care, that’s fine. But we now live in a permanent world of “and,” not “or,” and we can’t each do everything. Nor can we all do everything. So find your part of the “and,” and see what you can do with it. There’s a whole mess of digital honey out there to catch flies with.
   

• If you haven’t already read Karen Schneider’s farewell post on the TechSource Blog - Sailing On, please do so now. She says a lot of the things that need to be said, and that’s me you see standing behind her, waving my hands in the air and singing “amen.” I can’t choose any one piece to quote, and there’s really nothing I can add.

  I can, however, complement it with a link to Peter Brantley’s post about Libraries Re-shaping.

  “The tiller of change is advancing on the field, the corn has been harvested, and the stalks will soon return to the soil. We better be thinking about the new crop, or the field will lie fallow.

  I appreciate the severity of my suggestions. I think this is a conversation that libraries should have, openly and vigorously, because half-measures will not suffice. I may be wrong in my specifics; an out-of-step troubadour with atonal music and lyrics in an offensive language. That’s fine. Other and better learned troubadours must surely exist to play the music that will capivate.

  Here we go …” [Peter Brantley’s thoughts and speculations]

  Although the post focuses on academic libraries, I’m going to give away the ending because it’s applicable across the board. It’s also why I’m optimistic about libraries and librarians.

  “Why effect these wrenching changes?

  Because It’s Time. The librarians that I have talked with - admittedly, they self-select, although they represent a cross section of functions - are ready to move forward into the future. We know how much things have changed; we’re not kidding ourselves. We know there should be fundamental transformation, even if some of us necessarily and selfishly want its expression to come in just-a-few-more-years. Yet, a bright future beckons. It is exciting, and we can be part of it. We know it - we have a huge range of skills, and we’re bursting with new ideas.”
  

n my new role as a user experience goon at Second Life, I’m often called upon to participate in rap battles with other employees.

Because we’re all busy, rap battles tend to be text-only and asynchronous, conducted over IRC, twitter, or instant messenger.

Past themes have included: My prowess as a Developer, My (imaginary) Car, Linden Lab Office Culture, and Various Programming Languages.

Below are a few examples of my amazing rap power, mostly gleaned from IM logs. Enjoy responsibly, and please remember check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Killing jira issues like Rambo kills commies / Tasks and subtasks crying for their mommies /As&Os got me going mental / Yoz wants to rap but he’s too CONTINENTAL

Chillin wit’ Jonhenry / Talking ’bout JIRA / Drank me some coffee / Wish it was a beerah

open up email to try and cat-heard / 60 threads later / time is going backward / I just get in when wham! it’s lunch / wtf have I done besides data-crunch?

think you bad / ’cause you so much taller? / you may be blue / but I’m white collar / rollin’ in my office working on a search / you think you’re rapping but its SO MUCH WORSE

Kickin’ it smoove in my GTO / ops wants to have a meeting / but I’ve got ta go!

’m allergic to peanuts. I’m the reason you have to endure a transcontinental flight with low blood sugar. I’m the reason your kid can’t bring PBJ on a field trip. Peanuts make me tip over and grab my throat.

So, of course I ate some last night.

It might not have been peanuts. It could have been chick peas, peanut oil, ground pistachios, or pine nuts. Any of those disreputable characters could have caused the trouble.

All I know is: I was lied to, and I had a very bad evening.

The Indian take-out restaurant on the corner will NOT be getting a holiday card from me this year. If someone would care to write out a polite note for me in Urdu, I would love to graphically detail for them the throat-closing unpleasantness that follows a wide grin and un-fact-checked assertions of “no nuts! no nuts!” that are obviously uttered to get me out of the way rather than out of any actual understanding of what I am requesting.

I made it to work this morning despite the powerful epinephrine-hangover that follows one of these episodes. Fortunately, Betsy saw through my ruse and sent me off to the Zen Room (yes, we have a zen room) to lie down until I could go to the doctor’s.

So now I’m home, with a fridge full of Indian food and a powerful need to check my email. I opened my computer and was greeted with today’s horoscope:

1. My work name is Erica Linden. Everyone who works for Second Life gets a Linden last name. This makes us weirdly popular in-world.
2. There is a huge bouquet of stargazer lilies on my desk. Got ‘em for myself. Who needs boys? Not me. Nope.
3. My mom phoned at 8am to make sure I was alive. A minor earthquake in Oakland made it on CNN. I didn’t feel a thing.
4. My roommate threw a drink at a critic, and has cemented his place as a literary bad boy.
5. My on-the-2 style of salsa dancing is considered impressive out here. Thanks Cornell ballroom club!
6. I still need an apartment. If you know of anything, let me know. I’m looking in the mission/bernal/noe neighborhoods. And I’ve got a friendly cat.
7. There’s a big bulldog who hangs out in my office and rides a skateboard.

Thank you. That is all.

Do you want to discuss books with a video game character? 

According to Galleycat, Random House is promoting a new book club in the imaginary world of Second Life where hundreds of thousands of real-life people use digital representations of themselves, or “avatars,” to interact with a videogame landscape. 

As I've explained before, Second Life is a "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" (or MMORPG), a participatory videogame environment that allows players to explore fantastical landscapes and communicate with typed messages.

What do you think? I spent some time reporting in this new world, and I really enjoyed it. Should writers be paying attention to these strange places where potential readers lurk? How should we write about it?

Check it out: 

"The Bookseller reports that The Random House Group held the first meeting of its virtual book group in Second Life yesterday (Tuesday), as the first step in a series of initiatives the publisher is planning to engage with the virtual world. Members discussed Audrey Niffenegger's THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE in the Rose Garden of the Elysian Isle, an area specially developed for RHG to host book-related events."

So a year ago this very day Jeremy Neumann set foot into a sparsely inhabited virtual world and planted a flag that implicitly said "The Penguins have landed." Since then he has spent plenty of time exploring, lots of time chatting and making new friends, a small amount of time building and dancing and pretty much a year annoying and ignoring real life friends and family:-( Oh yes, and emoticons have entered his day-to-day written vocabulary :-((((((((((

A year on much has changed - Second Life has experienced a full-on media furore and the world has grown from a population (registered accounts) of just over 200,000 to more than five-and-a-half million today. Other publishers have entered the world - in fact last weekend saw Second Life's first Book Fair, following swiftly on the heels of the London Book Fair. Huge multinationals including banks, car manufacturers, mobile phone networks and, just last week, Coca-Cola announced presences inside Second Life, some with greater or lesser success than others.

Penguin's Second Life strategy has been to take a measured and restrained approach to this exciting, baffling and rapidly changing online phenomenon. We began with the release of a special sampler of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the book that inspired the makers of Second Life, and will this week be following up with the distribution of the Penguin Virtual Bookshelf - designed to adorn any 3-D virtual home - and containing samples of 10 hot Penguin titles including Glass Books of the Dream Eaters and works by William Gibson. Later this year we'll start bringing authors into Second Life for events including something that even now, jeremy neumann is hugging himself with excitement about. For information on any Penguin activities in Second Life keep an eye on this blog or join the Penguin Readers group inworld.

We also bought a small plot of virtual land under the gorgeous Hooper Bridge to develop for an inworld Penguin HQ. So much Second Life architecture is banal recreation of the real world it would be great to do something different and special here - after all, what are the point of doors when in Second Life one can fly? So if anyone has any great ideas for a Penguin build let us know in the comments or contact jeremy neumann in Second Life. We'll sort out a suitably otherworldly prize if we use your idea.

It has been an incredibly interesting, often fun and sometimes frustrating year in Second Life and one which has afforded us a good look at the ways that online communities develop and ways that we can involve ourselves and our authors in those communities. It is unclear what the future holds for virtual worlds, Second Life and, by extension, Jeremy Neumann - but later today he might be found under the Hooper Bridge, wearing his party hat and toasting his first birthday with a large glass of virtual bubbly.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

So five days after getting back to the US, I am caught up on my RSS feeds. This is mostly because I prioritized things like getting pictures on Flickr, going food shopping, getting to the pool, arguing about Twitter, and making this little YouTube movie. Here are some things I read that I think you might like to read.

• Chris over at Libraryola does some actual investigating into the hubub surrounding the WaPo article about the library’s weeding policy. He gets a much more well-rounded answer from Sam Clay, the system director, than what the newspaper published.
• Walt asks if SecondLife and social software networks are where our patrons really are. I love the idea of SL, and the immediate potential as a place for geographically spread out people to come together is great (free teleconferencing!) but not a single person I’ve talked to out here uses it… yet. So, for me there’s a difference between going where my users are and trying to make them go someplace I like. I’ll evangelize about the usefulness of the Internet generally, especially for poor rural populations who can use it to save money and save gas, but I’ll wait a little before diving whole hog into SL. The comments seemed to have turned into a Walt vs. Jenny debate, we’ll see if they stay that way.
• Casey (that’s Mad Scientist Mover and Shaker Casey) has reprinted the Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming with a caveat about copyright. My favorite: Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience, that’s gotten me further than most of what I learned in library school.
• Jenny points to a cool opportunity to be a virtual scholar for the Urban Libraries Council. It’s a little outside my usual interest areas of services to rural populations, but it might be just perfect for someone.
• Rachel at LISJobs ruminates on why online publications still charge for classified ads by the word, and uses the opportunity to mention how LISjobs is still free as in beer.

Can you sell books in imaginary stores?

The publishing industry gurus at GalleyCat just reported that Bantam Dell will start promoting books in the imaginary world of Second Life where hundreds of thousands of real-life people use digital representations of themselves, or “avatars,” to interact with a videogame landscape. 

As I've explained before, Second Life is a "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" (or MMORPG), a participatory videogame environment that allows players to explore fantastical landscapes and communicate with typed messages. It's a community, in other words, and I love seeing how writers can build reading communities on the web.

Will it work?

"As first reported by PW Daily and now picked up by Ed Nawotka at Bloomberg, Bantam Dell has announced that it is the latest publisher to set up shop in the virtual world of Second Life. Fittingly, they've chosen Dean Koontz and his newest novel THE GOOD GUY (slated for publication on May 29) as their launch title there."