My Blood Runs Blue

Book Trailers are a thing nowadays. No more do we have to haunt book stores, reading back blurb after back blurb. Gone are the days when authors and publishers had to pull you in with only the written word and some graphics on a city bus. The days of begging to be put on some newspapers To Be Reviewed list are over. With the internet and television, authors and publishers can touch thousands or even millions using video trailers. Reaching that many people  might even help bring non-readers into the fold. Certainly the following trailers by today’s guest author have that potential. 

Check out these trailers out and then come back for our interview with internationally famous Stacy Eaton, author of My Blood Runs Blue series.

My Blood Runs Blue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFkmUVmzYg&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Blue Blood for Life: http://www.youtube.com/watchv=rNJa9S5W2iU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Thinking About Thinking: "Choosing Reality"

Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View of Physics and the Mind

B. Allen Wallace

New Science Library (Shambala Publications),

Boston & Shaftsbury (Eng)1989

various publishers for more recent works:

Available at Amazon - all by this author

I first found this book at a second hand book store. The cover was graphically interesting (trails, I believe, from particle physics experiments), and after checking it out for a bit, found there was a good deal of information about the history of physics, and how science develops ideas, in language that  I, the one-time liberal arts student, could actually  mostly understand.

Once I got into the book, I found an entire landscape that explained, to a great degree, some of the questions that I've had on my mind from time to time. Why do we think that today's science is immutable truth? Why is it that groups of scientists looking at the same data, can come up with wildly different answers? How real are the constructs that are generated to explain unexpected results in experiments? What kinds of processes generate new information about our reality, and how do we know if they are true?

New find!

There was a time when I thought the slush pile reader at a publishing house was the best job anyone could ever have. After all you get to read all those books for FREE! And if the book was bad, you just tossed it aside. Fact is, I would have read the slush pile for free.

Since receiving my Kindle last spring, I have been haunting the cheap books on Amazon.  Really for the price of an order of french fries you can get a book. But I've learned how hard it is to just toss a book. Unlike that cup of coffee you just dump because it didn't taste right,  you really want to give the author a fair chance, so you read more than just a few pages.  And the real reason I wanted to read the slush pile? So I could be the one who found the gem the publishers missed. With the kindle and the low cost of reading self published works, we all now have the chance to find those special books. But unlike that coffee, buying a book is more than just money, it is an investment of time.

 Lots of books are read before something is posted because I want you, dear reader, to trust what is placed here. So when I say my money and time was well spent with this book, you can be assured  I don't say it lightly.

The Childe
By C. A. Kuntz
Published by C. A. Kuntz

From Barnes and Noble:
Cat Colvin is pretty much your typical run-of-the-mill teenager growing up in the small port town of Astoria. Sure, she is taller than average, has a mane of fiery red hair that is impossible to tame, is left handed, and has one eye that is sky blue and one that is amber, but that is where the differences end . . . unless you include the “minor” detail of her slow metamorphosis into the Childe. 

We all know how difficult high school can be, and for Cat Colvin it is no different. Except for the fact she has the daunting task of trying to hide her budding Childe traits as they begin to reveal themselves at the most inopportune times. 

Time for Gardening -- Finally!!

Practical Science for Gardeners
Mary Pratt
Timber Press, Oregon, 2005
ISBN 0-88192-718-X
Available from Timber Press

I have to admit it.  I'm a garden junkie.  Not that I have the best garden (far from it), not that I know all there is to know about gardening (although I'm really good at raising little seedlings), not even that I relish hours spent weeding in the hot sun (I don't), but once Xmas is over, and we get past the solstice, and the days start getting longer, I've already got the seed orders in, the little pots and trays have been dug out of the shed waiting for the seeds to arrive, and I'm ready to sit and dream about all the great things that will happen in my garden.  This year, I have discovered a really good tool that I didn't have before, and I'm reading and re-reading sections to get them solid in my mind as the garden season arrives. 

Writers and artists often talk about leaving something behind of value when they "shuffle off this mortal coil" and with "Practical Science for Gardeners"  Mary Pratt has certainly done just that.   She worked on the book even from her hospital bed, including the illustrations, and "died in December 2004, delighted to know that the book had been accepted without question for publication."

This is *nothing* like most of the gardening books you've ever read.  It's fully based in science, with the caveat that we understand that most science is provisional, true until something new is discovered, and then we readjust it to that reality.  For Mary Pratt, this book was clearly a labor of love, and a great deal of thought went into all of her explanations, connecting science to the garden without the ponderous explanations of a biology text.