Raymond Jennings's Blog

Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve last posted. I’ve been tempted on a few occasions to put up a blog, but the things most on my mind were about the political and social state of the USA and I didn’t want this blog to devolve into an ideological rant, and it wouldn’t be so much a blog, more a book in its own right. Instead, I’ve been inspired to this piece by one of my favorite songs. Santana feat. Everlast – Put Your Lights On. Some of the lyrics call to me.

“Cause there’s a monster living under my bed

Whispering in my ear

There’s an angel, with a hand on my head

She say I’ve got nothing to fear

There’s a darkness living deep in my soul

I still got a purpose to serve.”

Listening to it again recently, these words struck a chord in me in regards to writing. Almost everyone has a darkness inside them. A monster living under their bed, urging them to do wrong and whether we suppress it (the angel) determines whether we’re perceived as good or bad. The more we contain and hide our darkness, the better we appear to others: less petty, less cruel, more caring and loving. Everyone struggles against their monsters. The more I thought about this, the more I wondered about fiction authors. It seems to me that when we write, we need that darkness, need to be able to touch it and draw on it to create the evil characters, the bad events. We have to imagine the motives of the villains, put ourselves inside their minds, create their deeds and still come out untainted. Maybe I’m being overly dramatic (Hey, I’m an author), but I feel that authors need that darkness to bring the dark side of their stories to life so that the bad guys don’t became thin, flimsy characters. Maybe if we didn’t have that monster under the bed, then our stories would all be happy, shiny things where people are all nice to each other and nothing bad ever happens. I’m not sure that those tales would be much of a read. Adversity defines our heroes and heroines. Perhaps sometimes our monsters run away with us. I read one fantasy series when the hero was constantly crapped on. He struggled to fight for the kingdom and nothing good ever seemed to happen to him, or at least if it did, it was taken away rather quickly. At the end of the first book I was dispirited, but I pressed on, convinced that everything would turn out right in the end. By the end of the second book I thought their was maybe a glimmer of hope, despite his misfortunes. At the end of the trilogy, the hero has saved the kingdom and finishes as an outcast living in a small hut. I felt utterly cheated. I know in real life the good guys don’t always win out or get the reward they deserve but dammit, I’d dragged myself through three books and I didn’t get a happy ending! This probably says more about me than the author, but I could never bring myself to touch another of his books again. The darkness had won. And I’m not alone in feeling like this.

SPOILER ALERT – GAME OF THRONES

 

My wife watches the tv series and the episode where Rob Stark and his family were slaughtered, left her outraged and depressed. The bad guys were winning and pretty much most of the good guys were now dead. There seemed to be no justice. It is perhaps a tribute to George R.R. Martin that he can evoke such passions, but at that point my wife was ready to stop watching it. In both of these examples, the story is dark and I’m sure that the authors had to reach into themselves to find their inner monsters to use in their writing. Considering how many creative people appear to have problems, I wonder if they ended up touching their darknesses once too often and losing, their angels unable to catch them. So to the readers of this world, spare a thought for the authors as they struggle with their monsters to bring you stories, hope that their angels hold onto them and that their lights continue to shine.

 

A friend has been posting up links on Facebook regarding various feminist issues. Being someone who is all for equality, as evidenced (I hope) in my writings, I usually take a look and find myself in agreement with the ideas and attitudes espoused. Two recent posts did catch my attention and caused me to think, though. The first was from someone decrying the tendency of men to act defensively in debates about rape and sexual harassment by saying “It’s not all men” and whilst true, it’s not helpful to the debate as it deflects the discussion and that women know that “It’s not all men” that behave that way. My response after a little thought was to say that men have this knee-jerk reaction because of the tendency of some of the more vocal sections of the feminist agenda to tar all men with the same brush, thus causing men to feel under attack and produce unhelpful reactions. And if women want to say that “It’s not all women” who feel that way, then maybe they might start to see the problem.

The obvious blindness of the majority of feminists to the difficulties caused by small sections of their own networks led me on to the second post that had me thinking. One in which I’d become blind to a change in circumstances. The second post was from a women who had attended a comic convention where she witnessed another woman dressed as Wonder Woman being ogled, leered at, having pictures taken of her as she bent over to sign autographs, and even groped. The point of the piece was that how a woman dresses should in no way invite men to behave improperly towards her. This is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with and I posted a reply to show my support. It took a few hours for my mind to finally kick in and realize that I was missing a point. What about the male cos-play people at the convention? I’d be betting that if there were good-looking guys dressed in tight or skimpy outfits, that young women would likely also be taking photos without permission and perhaps even coping a feel on the way past. Would women object to this behavior or merely dismiss it as inconsequential because, “men like that sort of thing”? Hmmm… I’m sure when the debate about sexual harassment started back in the 1950’s that men said exactly the same about women and were pilloried for it. This scene slowly led me to thinking about the modern-day and how much has changed. I’m going to provide two examples of the problem.

I follow a web comic called The Devil’s Panties. Its author is a lady called Jennie Breeden and she attends comic cons all the time, promoting her work (which I think is great). At some conventions she organizes a night, mainly for the ladies, which involves kilt blowing. She is armed with a leaf blower and men wearing kilts, preferably in the traditional way (sans underwear), come up on stage to be subject to the leaf blower for the amusement of the audience. Now, if you’re like my wife, you’re probably having a good laugh at the thought, or maybe the videos, if you clicked the link. Personally, I’m fine with the event, people are having a good time and are consenting adults so where’s the issue? But, let’s suppose that in the room next door, a bunch of guys are sitting watching women wearing skirts and no underwear come up on stage to face a guy with a leaf blower. I can almost see the indignation on the faces of some feminists as they scream that the event is degrading to women, that the women are being used as sexual objects, feminists who didn’t bat an eyelid at men being put in the same position for the entertainment of women.

The second example comes in the form of the sex industry, specifically, strippers. Men going to strip shows are seen as being unseemly and seedy, the women dancers being portrayed as victims of exploitation. But what about women seeing or hiring male strippers? No one seems to worry about that, especially not the women. They view their actions as “just having a bit of a laugh” and no thought is paid as to whether the male dancers are being exploited.

And so we come to the point of this piece. People, both men and women, have been so avidly pursuing the same issues for the last sixty years that we’ve failed to recognize that the world has moved on. In some instances, women have quietly achieved equality without anyone, including themselves, realizing it.  As can be seen from the examples, women have gotten there, not by modifying men’s behavior. but by changing their own to equal men. Yet, still the issue of men’s actions is doggedly fought over by the feminist lobby, not seeing that their fellow women are behaving the same as men now. The issue is no longer one of “Men need to learn to behave appropriately towards women” and should instead be: “What behavior is appropriate at all, by anyone, man or woman?” This is essentially what equality should be about. If a behavior is deemed wrong for one group, then it should be wrong for every group. A feminist writer did a piece about men’s health issues earlier this year, in which she pointed out the lack of support that men get in certain areas of health care compared to women. And her belief is that if women truly want equality, then they should be fighting for men’s rights just as strongly as women’s rights. And I’m with this wholeheartedly, I’m prepared to fight for and support women’s rights, but that support is going to wear thin if the same doesn’t happen in return. The reality is that if women are only seeking to remove their own disadvantages whilst ignoring those that men suffer, then they’re not fighting for equality , but superiority instead. I sincerely hope that women can rein in the vocal minority of their supporters so as to stop alienating men and let us work together for a true equality.

A few days ago I got into a Facebook discussion about male-male gay romance fiction. Not my usual cup of tea, but I was reading a blog piece (see here) linked by a friend and because it was discussing writing, I thought I’d take a look. The basis of the article was whether women are capable of writing male-male romance stories. Now as a hetero male, this piqued my curiosity as I also wondered whether it applied to straight men as well and so I read through the article. The points that leapt out at me are that women seem to be the most successful writers of this kind of fiction and that women are also the biggest consumers. When men write in this genre they tend to write about the emotional and romance aspects of the relationship whereas women tend to write about the sexual aspects. The article goes on to say that the women readership tend to be disappointed about the lack of sex in the writings of male authors and so these authors don’t tend to be successful or published.

This got me thinking about the past and current publishing world. Up until recently an author could only get published, first by convincing an agent that their work is worthwhile and then by the agent convincing a publisher that the piece can make money for them. The reality was and still is for publishing houses that they are businesses and their objective is to make money. If they don’t they won’t be businesses for very long. I understand that, I really do, but where does that leave most authors? If they want to be published and successful then they have to write a story that will make money for the publishing houses. It might not be a good story or even a story that they want to write, it just has to be popular. Consider a painter who decides that they’d like to paint a picture of the flower beds in their back garden and share it with the world. They do the initial sketch and then an agent turns up and looks at it, thinks about it and then suggests that the painter adds some kittens to the painting because kittens are cute and will appeal to more people. So the artist complies. Then the agent returns and suggests that puppies would be good, too, and then ponies. And by the time the agent has finished making the picture marketable, the artist’s original idea is lost, swamped by things to make his work popular.

Lots of authors have faced this problem. Do they sacrifice their original idea for the sake of profitability or do they try and make their work available as is, probably lost in obscurity? Unlike the past, today Indie authors have a multitude of options for self-publishing via e-books: Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, etc. Marketing is still an issue but now an author can put their work in front of people unadulterated by profitability. A lot of Indie authors produce readable and enjoyable works. Perhaps not good enough to be blockbusters or make them millionaires but good enough to entertain people. And isn’t that what writing is basically about? I read a piece earlier this year about an author/agent who conducted an experiment by submitting a piece to several publishing houses/agents trying to get them to accept the piece for distribution. It was rejected out of hand by everyone. The work submitted was in fact Kilgore Trout’s Breakfast of Champions, considered a classic, however, in this day and age, publishers wouldn’t touch it on the grounds of being unprofitable. I wonder how many other ‘classics’ are out there, self-published by indie authors because mainstream publishers weren’t interested. Speaking for my own works, i never imagine that I’ve produced a masterpiece that’s just waiting for the literary world to discover and hail as the greatest thing since Shakespeare, but I hope I’ve produced a readable story that people can enjoy. Perhaps most Indie authors are like talented sports people, really good, but not quite good enough to make the big time such as the NFL or MLB? Or maybe I’m doing us a disservice and we are good enough, just not recognized? After all, with Amazon boasting a catalog of 2.5 million books, it’s pretty hard to get your particular work noticed unless you’re already a big name, but I hope Indie authors will hang in there, because the publishing world is changing and the big publishing houses no longer control the agenda like they used to. I think that the Indie author has a lot to contribute to the art world and our efforts are increasingly more recognized.

Producing something in the world of art, whether painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc, takes an combination of skills, creativity being foremost, but also a lot of hard work. For decades I read books with no concept of the effort behind them. Writing my own books opened my eyes to some of the things that an artist has to go through, from coming up with the initial idea, to setting it down on paper, refining the work and eventually getting it into a form ready to publish. But that’s not the end of it. At this point it takes something else. The artist either has to have an immense ego and believe that their work is the best thing since sliced bread or they have to summon up their courage and put their work on offer to the public. Lacking the former, I had to take a deep breath and gather up the latter. For anyone who hasn’t done something like this, I can say that it’s a defining moment. The piece that you’ve worked on for perhaps years, will now be open to scrutiny by everyone and you have to prepare yourself for the feedback. Maybe you’ve already shown it to friends or family and they’ve said nice things about it, but there’s always a doubt in your mind. Maybe they were just being kind, not wanting to hurt your feelings? Perhaps what you’ve written isn’t actually very good? I’m sure artists, musicians, etc, all feel the same way and still they take the step and go public. Now you have to listen to people who have no interest in sparing your feelings and are only going to comment on the work itself because they don’t know you. Getting reviews can be a roller-coaster ride. First you’re excited to get a review and then you read it to see what it says. Even good reviews can contain criticism, but these can help you improve. One of the reviews for my first book described it as “Uncomplicated”, which disheartened me at first, but went on to say that “There is something appealing about a book/series that doesn’t drag the characters through hell and back, suffering all the way.” And so, a good review, but still thought provoking. My wife is an avid fan of Game Of Thrones – the TV series, and the trauma she suffers from watching it due to what happens to the characters she likes is surprising. The fact that the series can evoke such emotion speaks volumes for the depth of the work, but it’s not to everyone’s taste. And here we get down to what art is all about, entertaining people and providing enjoyment. Back when I was a kid I used to think that some art was good and some bad. That opinion was based purely on whether I liked it or not. I’m happy to report that I’ve matured since then, a little anyway, and now I try and limit myself to stating that I either like something or not without condemning it as good or bad. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some things aren’t technically poor and deserve criticism for that, but art in all its forms is vastly more complex. A good example is Cirque du Soleil. I’ve been to a couple of the shows with my wife, who loves them. Me, I can see how technically excellent they are, but mostly it leaves me cold. Another item that has me scratching my head is some modern art; a cow cut in half and stuck in a tank of formaldehyde is art? Hmmm, now maybe I’m just blind to the nuances here, but I don’t see anything artistic about it. However, there are people who hail it as genius. I do wonder if its a case of the emperor’s new clothes, that experts hail something as great and the flock follow along, not daring to contradict them. All I can find myself saying is that it baffles me. Even so, Damien Hirst, like the rest of us artists, still had to take the step and put his works on display. And so regardless of what you may think of what someone has produced, remember that they had the courage to offer it up before you. It’s harder than you might think.

I do try to keep this blog about my books wherever possible,  but sometimes events have me worried enough to deviate from that policy from time to time. In this case it’s the results of the UK local and European elections. I’ve given it a week to let the situation settle and collect my thoughts on the alarming resurgence of UKIP. For those people who don’t know who they are, UKIP is the United Kingdom Independence Party. They are a right-wing organization that blames the European Union for interfering in UK policies, gays for natural disasters, and immigrants for the state of the UK economy. Their solution appears to be to take the UK out of the EU, deport all immigrants and scrap things like maternity leave, scrap vacation entitlement, raise taxes on the poor… the list goes on. For me, I think it’s sad that they have managed to get so much support and that politics in the UK has moved so far to the right, with even the Labour Party (Democrats to the US) now being decidedly right of center. Even having said that the UK’s political stance is still left of the US but the worsening situation in both countries, and others around Europe is a worrying sign of the times. In both the UK and US, right-wing politicians are eager to put the blame of their countries woes on vulnerable groups; the poor, the unemployed, immigrants, the socialists… the lists are frighteningly similar. The target of their propaganda? The middle class and religious conservatives who are being hit by the economic crisis.

This weekend I happened to be watching two episodes of The World At War, a terrific documentary series detailing the causes and events of World War 2. The episodes I was watching were about ‘The Final Solution’ and the first episode detailed the rise of the Nazi Party. It showed how they appealed to the population, particularly the middle class, by blaming Germany’s woes on the left-wing, immigrants, jews… It’s an interesting parallel. What really concerns me is that people are still falling for the same lines despite the  warnings of history over the last century. Why can’t people see through the lies and blame casting? Then something came to mind that I had seen about the debate on gun control in the US where the argument goes back and forth on the issue, The pro-gun lobby argues that citizens need to be able to defend themselves from each other as well as totalitarian governments that may arise. The anti-gun lobby says that the huge amount of gun crimes is solely due to the  availability of weapons in the US. Both sides do have a point, but then I saw a post that said that Mexico has a gun crime problem despite having strict gun control laws, whereas Canada and Switzerland have a lot of gun ownership and only a small percentage of the problems the US has. The suggestion was made that the issue isn’t gun control; it’s one of education and teaching citizens to have respect for each other and human life. This then led me to another post about the Scandinavian countries and their free education system, where their education is not only considered excellent but is also free through university level. These countries have high taxes but are also low crime and with very good social systems, free universal healthcare along with education. And interestingly, the far right-wing have a hard time gaining a foot hold in these countries. The wealthy and hard workers can still make money but not at the expense of the common citizen… Maybe their systems deserve further consideration if we are to avoid a repeat of the past? Perhaps better education in all things, especially in treating our fellow man better, is the answer?

My greatest fear in seeing the rhetoric of the right-wing in the UK and the US is how similar it is to the Nazi Party in its beginnings. Are we to see the transports being filled once more with the ‘undesirables’  just because we’re not prepared to think and consider carefully what these politicians are telling us? Even in the US I see citizens with right-wing tendencies supporting the stance that the unemployed and those on benefits should be rounded up and forced to work for their food, and at the same time crying out because they believe the Obama administration plans to put everyone in FEMA camps and enslave the entire population. But I guess it’s ok to put people into camps as long as it’s not you?

Well, I guess i can’t avoid a reference to my books in the end and I will say that the political system in the galactic empire is more socialist in nature with good education, universal healthcare, etc. I suppose it’s a system that I would like to believe works, but I’m not foolish or egotistical enough to think that I know the answers. I can only hope that we can find a system that works before the transports are rolling once more and the ovens are fired up again.

In my last post I covered how difficult it was for people to assimilate into a new culture. One area that I didn’t mention was the technology because I thought it deserved its own post. It is one of the things that is continually touched on in the second book and also in the follow-up stories I’m writing. In book 2 Cyndora is constantly exposed to new technology and it does become a little overwhelming. To help me write this topic I constantly referred back to stories a work colleague told me. He had a teenage son at the time and the school the son attended had arranged an exchange visit with a school in Kiev, in the Ukraine. This was just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the declaration of independence of the old soviet states. First his son went and spent a couple of weeks in Kiev with a family there and a couple of months later, they reciprocated, with the class of Ukrainian students visiting England. Even before the teenagers had arrived, the families of those hosting them were given a briefing on what they should and should not do for their visitors. They were told not to buy them things unless in an absolute emergency and that they should prepare themselves to help the children acclimate to UK society. My friend said that he really didn’t envisage a problem at the time and he and his family went off to Heathrow airport to meet the arriving visitors and collect the boy they were hosting. His first indication that all might not run smoothly came as they drove from the airport back to their home; a journey of some 50 miles, during which the Ukrainian lad hung on to the door of the car for dear life, and when questioned, he explained that he was making sure that it didn’t fly open as they drove along. He was used to the reliability (or lack of) of old soviet style production, not western manufacturing quality. I had this episode in mind when Cyndora makes her first planet-fall via shuttle and when she’s worried about air-cars flying over pedestrians, not being used to the reliability of Imperial technology.

Once they got home, the boy was then amazed at how luxurious their house seemed to be with all the various gadgets available, especially the PC that they owned. Then my friend discovered how little clothing their guest had arrived with and, despite instructions to the contrary, immediately took him out shopping for extra changes of clothes. The boy was amazed at the variety available in the UK shops, being used to soviet austerity. I understand from my friend that those hosting the girls had it even worse as they went wild over the fashions and cosmetics on offer. The worst thing was when they visited a supermarket. In this case it was one set below street level and had steps leading down to it. As you descended, it was possible to see down into the store and take in its size. Their visitor stopped halfway down the steps and surveyed the place with a stunned look, finally asking, “Food? This is all food?”

In the west we sometimes forget how well off we are and I wonder how we would react to a society that has even more than we do. Cyndora and Jaydea have to cope with a galactic society that has abundant, clean and cheap energy sources that power technologies such as replicators that provide good quality clothing and healthy food for even the poorest of Imperial citizens. I’ve tried to convey some of this in my writings, thinking back to those tales of my friend’s Ukrainian guest, wondering how the boy felt, and what it was like when he had to return to his own country. It makes me thankful for everything I’ve been blessed with.

One of the underlying themes of my books is looking at how Earth people from the not too distant future might react to being subsumed into a technically advanced and culturally different galactic empire. To try and convey some of what my characters feel I’ve drawn on some of my own experiences, both of visiting other countries and actually having emigrated. I’ve already discussed the language difference between the UK and the US and you can read that post here (thankfully everyone in the empire has translator implants), but it goes deeper than that. Considering how close the US and the UK (and other countries) seem to be, there are still vast differences between the two countries.

Food is a good example to begin with. The US tends to put more sugar and salt in a lot of its processed foods, making everything far sweeter for my tastes; bread is a particular problem for me. Then there are many, many regional food variations in the US due to the size of the country. My preferred fish is cod; something commonly available in the UK but generally only available as processed food here in Arizona. Of course, the state is a desert so perhaps that’s not too surprising.  But lest people think I’m picking on the US, that’s not the case. I once visited a chinese restaurant in Canada and ordered a dish of Kung Pao Chicken and was surprised when it came with peanuts in it. When i got back to the UK I asked my local chinese restaurant manager about it and he told me that it’s how the dish is traditionally served, but as that version is unpopular in the UK, they serve it without nuts there. In the Netherlands, i ordered a club sandwich and was puzzled when I found it had slices of boiled egg in it. A local told me that most of their sandwiches have egg. Also the common accompaniment to french fries there is mayonnaise, not ketchup. This of course, ignores regional and national delicacies such as haggis, jellied eels, frog legs, 1,000 year old eggs… the list is large, but these examples serve to show that eating in a completely new environment can be problematic in the least. Of course, my galactic empire has replicators that allow someone to choose from a wide array of food types, so in this instance the traveler is less limited by local preferences, but should still take care in their choices.

The next area of difference is politics. I’ve been amazed at how right wing US politics seems to me and how it filters down through society. I’m used to a system that is more left wing in origin, and that’s even considering the Labour Party’s (read Democrat) swing to the right in the last two decades. There are more social safety nets in the UK (and in Europe in general) than in the US and it’s interesting how uncomfortable it makes me feel. My wife, who was born here in the US, doesn’t really notice this as it’s the system she has grown up with. And here, once again, there is a language discrepancy, where to most US citizens the word socialism mean communist Russia style dictatorship and is used to defame any idea that the right wing in US feels would undermine capitalism. I won’t touch on the gun control issue or the healthcare systems in the US as opposed to the UK, as they are too big a can of worms entirely. But suffice it to say that political systems, even when they are democracies, can have a totally different feel to them. The galactic empire I created is ruled by an hereditary emperor/empress and the worlds each have a governor that is also hereditary. These governors can be removed by imperial decree and are advised by democratically elected councilors. The feel of the empire, politically, is therefore very mixed and open to abuse; again, one of the main themes of the books.

Lastly, there is the issue of morality. This is an equally wrenching aspect of life. Morality differences are less jarring between the US and UK but there are still some. I’m amazed to find strip clubs not an uncommon sight here in the US, where in the UK they tend to be very rare, venues more likely to stage strip shows as a special event rather than have bespoke clubs. The age of consent for various things is also baffling. Alcohol in the US is generally 21 (but there are some variations) In the UK, it’s 18. Sexual consent is even broader. The US is 18, the UK is 16, France 15, Italy 14 ~scratches head~ And all of this among similar style western democracies. Around the world the range of acceptable behavior is even even wider and a wise traveler needs to be aware of local customs when abroad. Most of our contemporary morality is based on various religious precepts, although that is changing more and more in western societies. The galactic empire has no religion and therefore it’s morals are very different. it’s more accepting of freedom of choice and harshly deals with those who seek to impose their opinions on others. It’s an interesting balancing act and having characters from Earth exposed to this new morality is a fascinating way to explore how it works. The more conservative characters have a hard time and the more liberal characters somewhat easier, even though they are still shocked on occasions.

I hope this piece has proved enlightening to people and demonstrated the problems adapting to a new culture can cause; even when those cultures seem superficially similar. Certainly life in the US has been a learning experience for me and I would encourage people to travel to broaden their horizons as it’s far too easy to become close minded.

Today is going to be a science post following an interesting day out. Brenda and I thought we’d take a trip to Biosphere 2, a scientific project, run by the University of Arizona, just a few miles up the road from us. It’s a huge, enclosed structure that studies the effects of environment on plant life, and the scale of the project is immense.

Front of the main greenhouse

The structure is nearly 100 ft high at the peak and extends the length of 3 football fields. Originally it was designed to be completely sealed from the world and there are airlock doors everywhere. It’s a truly amazing project and one I felt was worthy of including in a blog considering the science nature of my writings (and yes there is a even a space link). We started our day with a 90 minute tour of the main greenhouse area, seeing the various habitats they have created to study the effects of heat, humidity and water availability on plant life. From there we went down into the bowels of the structure to see the amazing machinery that controls and maintains the conditions in each section. At the end of this part came the big WOW! moment of the day for me. Going inside one of the ‘lungs’ of the building. Basic science lesson here. As air heats up, it expands and as it cools, it contracts. And remember I said that the building was designed to be completely sealed. You can see from the above picture how big the structure is and the volume of air involved. So without a way to regulate the air pressure, when the temperature inside rises, the glass panels would explode, when it cools, they would implode. And so to the ‘lung’, It’s a circular chamber with a  40 ft diameter rubber membrane in the ceiling that supports a 20 ft diameter steel plate in the center. The plate and membrane together weigh about 20 tons. The plate sits about 15 ft in the air, supported by nothing more than air pressure. It’s an amazing sight to see this thing and realize that it’s literally ‘floating on air’.

The space travel part of the day comes with the LEO Project (Landscape Evolution Observatory) where they are studying where water goes once it enters the ecosystem. Part of the study also looks at how to grow plants from bare rock material that has been ground up to produce an inert soil. This, of course, has implications on how we might provide growing areas out of moon rock or perhaps martian soil. So the project has a link to our possible expansion into the solar system and beyond.

After a light lunch we returned to the main building for a marine/beach tour where we got to see the ocean habitat close up and even participate in the work to rebuild this section. The waters of the habitat have become clogged with algae and today the scientists were taking another step to clean up this area as part of a revamp. The cleaning method? Release 5,000 hermit crabs into the water and let them eat the algae. Of course, they’ll also do studies on the migration patterns of the crabs in the tank as well as their eating habits. The link to this project is here Build An Ocean In The Desert  and is well worth a look. Our part of the project today? Taking some of the crabs and releasing them into the water.

As far as thrilling days go, it’s certainly not a roller-coaster, but it was fun and highly educational. So if you’re in Southern Arizona and have a few hours to spare it’s certainly worth a look.

 

Originally posted on Ray L Jennings:

Having slacked off the blog last week whilst getting book 2 ready for CreateSpace, I’m back on track this week with a look at the English language and it’s use in my writings. At first glance it doesn’t appear to be too much of an issue I suppose, but believe me, it’s caused some headaches. To put the problem in perspective, let’s have a quick recap of my background. After being born in England and living there for nearly forty-five years, I moved to the US and have been living here for the last five years and despite speaking the same language, my accent and word usage still defeats some of the locals; trying to get them to understand my order at a drive-through can be tricky at best. I’m also surprised how many Americans think I’m from Australia ~scratches head~. Funny accents aside, however, I ran into three problems…

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Having slacked off the blog last week whilst getting book 2 ready for CreateSpace, I’m back on track this week with a look at the English language and its use in my writings. At first glance it doesn’t appear to be too much of an issue I suppose, but believe me, it’s caused some headaches. To put the problem in perspective, let’s have a quick recap of my background. After being born in England and living there for nearly forty-five years, I moved to the US and have been living here for the last five years and despite speaking the same language, my accent and word usage still defeats some of the locals; trying to get them to understand my order at a drive-through can be tricky at best. I’m also surprised how many Americans think I’m from Australia ~scratches head~. Funny accents aside, however, I ran into three problems when writing these books. The first is the meaning of some words the second is spelling and the third is general usage. Now word meaning isn’t a new problem for me. I’ve been playing online games for over a decade and thus learning US English through all of that time talking with people in the US. In England we call a pavement what the US calls a sidewalk, UK crisps are chips in the US and UK chips are fries. Some of the alternate meanings do produce some funny moments though, such as when one of my US friends emoted in game that she was ‘patting my fanny’. I tried to explain to her that i didn’t have one. Suffice it to say that the word ‘fanny’ means something completely different in the UK to what it means in the US. Another good example is when I was telling my US friends that I was having faggots and peas for dinner. For those who don’t know, a faggot is a pork offal and onion meatball in a rich gravy. My US friends were utterly confounded by my apparent menu choice. The examples of these duplicate meaning words are seemingly endless. Secondly is spelling. there are a number of words that are spelled differently, colour – color, armour – armor, aluminium – aluminum; there are more than a few. And lastly some things that I consider ‘proper’ English that seem to be overly formal and not used in the US. An example here is ‘whilst’; it seems to have fallen out of usage in the US and been replaced by while.

So given all of these problems, how do they affect my writing? Surely it’s easy? Pick a language version and stick with it, right? Well, not so much. It was easy to see that my largest target audience would be american and so it seems obvious to write the books in that style. Which is what i did. So when referring to parts of a car or flyer, i use words like ‘trunk’ and ‘fender’ instead of ‘boot’ and ‘bumper’. and I used the US spelling of words. To be honest it’s easier that way because Microsoft doesn’t seem to have discovered the Oxford English Dictionary for its spell checker yet. There is, of course, a ‘but’. My two lead characters are English. Now it frustrates the heck out of me when i see Hollywood have supposedly English characters speak in US vernacular and there was no way I wanted to do that with Crineal, Cyndora and the other English based characters in my books. And so i have to be very conscious of correct word usage whenever they speak. I have to mentally swap back to UK English. As an additional problem, I was surprised how many swear words are religious based. In these stories, my galactic civilization doesn’t have religion and so cursing had to be completely devoid of religious connections, so things like ‘oh hell’ became a no-no for my galactic citizens. Of course my Earthers could use them, but that still entailed a lot of mental gymnastics as I wrote, swapping back and forth between UK, US and Galactic English. I swear writers need to be slightly schizophrenic. Thank heavens for Kay, my trusty proofer/editor who was able to haul me up short when she became confused by some words or phrases that aren’t used or used differently in the US. I’m sure that these books have been a learning experience for both of us. I like to joke to people here that i’m bi-lingual; I speak both English and American. As George Bernard Shaw said: England and America are two countries separated by a common language. There’s certainly a fair amount of truth in that.