Here is a collage of images from this past year's short stories.
To see the individual stories or read more of the post, please visit the link. love and light for the new year!
-Robert Trujillo
Link: https://bitly.com/yeczAu
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It's up to US to share stories about ourselves other than as athletes and entertainers. I have no problems paying money to watch them, but the scientists, engineers and speculative fiction writers are what "makes the world go around," and our kids need to see themselves in these needed roles.
A pod cast of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Worth a listen...
James R. Andrade, PhD is fascinated by people. He doesn't just watch them, he methodically studies them to understand why they do what they do and, especially, why they eat what they eat. As senior director of research for Kraft Foods North America, Dr. Andrade helps develop the next generation of food products that nurture us, satisfy us, and even entertain us.
Lazy photons, leptoquarks and string balls were just some of the exotic no-shows at the world's largest particle smasher. It was the most comprehensive particle roll call to date.
I am proud to announce that "Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau" is now available at http://www.lulu.com. The novel is the sequel to "Dossouye." It's another superlative effort by Sword & Soul Media publisher Brother Uraeus. And the cover art by Mshindo Kuumba is breathtaking. I'd say that even if this were not my novel. Dossouye is back, and she's as tough as ever. She and her war-bull, Gbo, are in a new environment, facing dangers different from the ones she has already overcome. The odds are steep ... but never count out a woman and her war-bull. I hope you enjoy this new installment of Dossouye's adventures.
From Letters of Note - Letters Salvaged from History
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according tonewspapers at the time, he dictated).
Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.
(Source: The Freedmen's Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
Here’s one way to become a better writer. Listen to the advice of writers who earn their daily bread with their pens. During the past week, lists of writing commandments by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard (above) and William Safire have buzzed around Twitter. (Find our Twitter stream here.) So we decided to collect them and add tips from a few other veterans — namely, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, and Neil Gaiman.
Here we go:
Henry Miller (from Henry Miller on Writing)
1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to the program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people; go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it–but go back to it the next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
George Orwell (From Why I Write)
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Margaret Atwood (originally appeared in The Guardian)
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4. If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6. Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7. You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
8. You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9. Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10. Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
Neil Gaiman (read his free short stories here)
1. Write.
2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7. Laugh at your own jokes.
8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
William Safire (the author of the New York Times Magazine column “On Language”)
1. Remember to never split an infinitive.
2. The passive voice should never be used.
3. Do not put statements in the negative form.
4. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
5. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
6. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be reduced by rereading and editing.
7. A writer must not shift your point of view.
8. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
9. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
10. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
11. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
12. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
13. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
14. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
15. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
16. Always pick on the correct idiom.
17. The adverb always follows the verb.
18. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
Yeah, well, let's just say I took an extended sabbatical. Still catching up. Still walking around and breathing, so it's not hopeless yet. ;) PES will show up with its own website sometime this year (I hope), when I have other things done and out the door. Wish me luck.
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| Newsone - African American Scientists |
Below is a repost for the month of February and related embed...I will follow up each day with posts appropriate for the month and respect to history and contributions of minorities in science and engineering. Though the link pertains to medical students and the bias African American researchers encounter with grants, two quotes are instructive:
Newsone: “While the results of the current study are disheartening, this study will likely have positive impacts on future PhDs and MD/PhDs,” he says.
“Some members of the scientific community are aware of the issues associated with racial and ethnic diversity, [but] others are likely completely unaware of the intrinsic biases in the system,” Beck adds. “Improvement is impossible without quantifiable outcomes.”
Toliver says the first step is for the NIH to ethnically diversify its review committees to increase the chances of fairness.”
TheGrio: In exchange, we have to work on our end and start pushing our students who are interested in science for even higher goals. It is not enough to earn the bachelor's or the master's or even the doctorate. They need mentors to help mold them into stellar scientists, while preparing them for the biases they may face.
Physics4thecool: Einstein, Darwin and the 21st Century
Skinny strength: This carbon nanotube yarn, which has a diameter of 3.8 micrometers, twists when connected to an electrode and immersed in conductive liquid. Credit: Courtesy of UT Dallas.
Don Cornelius, the producer and television host who created the dance show “Soul Train,” was found shot dead in his Los Angeles home early Wednesday morning in what appears to be a suicide, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county coroner’s office said. He was 75 years old.
You might want to consider First Cause: A Novel About Human Possibility.
The main protagonist, Adam Grey, is Caribbean-American, and ne of the central themes in the book is that human advancement would inviove the species' gradual browning and the eradication of its imaginary boundaries.
Moreover, it's a compelling, page-turning read, and hopefully will provide food for thought on other topics of interest to the human condition.
For your Kindle device, you can pick it up on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/First-Cause-Possibility-Terranaut-ebook/dp/B004XQV7ZE/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1
And for different formats, you can get it on Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/118368
Everything we know is until we find out otherwise...check out First Cause today, and spread the word!
PW
I've blogged about manufacturing and jobs before, the iEconomy and NAFTA birthed Occupy Wall Street when white suburban kids suddenly realized that the guarantee of employment wasn't guaranteed. I salute their efforts, but we need to do something outside of the system that doesn't require their sponsorship, or their approval.
“The words you choose effect your space and the one you are speaking to. Immortality is truly a household word." - DjaDja - Weben Em Ehker - Rise In Excellence.
Chapter Awakening from Renpet The Sci-Fi Novel www.renpetscifi.com -
'Once in the center of the chamber, I eased my body into the Ma'at posture. As I spread my arms a finely knit web of energy draped down from the underside of my arms. I see that my diligent practice of this posture has served me well. The counsel formed a circle around me with their hands outstretched in the Ka pose. They began chanting the words of power, getting lower and lower in tone as they continued. Their voices fluctuated all about my body, entering my cells and filling them with sweet words of Hekau. .'
Chapter Awakening from Renpet The Sci-Fi Novel www.renpetscifi.com
The State of Black Sci-Fi 2012: Why is it Important to Show Race, Culture, Minority Politics or Ethnicity in Sci-Fi?
To me showing race is science fiction is as important and the story itself. I will sum it up in this quote. “Black Science Fiction is of the utmost importance. Our children as well as other races need to see black people in a positive light. Everyone is mis-educated when all anyone
gets to see is negative images of black people. It’s not accurate and just not right, period. The children alive today will be the ones running the planet when we are old. We owe it to ourselves and them to lead and help develop them. We can’t do that by continuing to let misrepresentations dominate the media we feed them.
I would like to add that today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.
All races need to be part of the development of those facts.
Jarvis Sheffield, M.Ed. – is owner & operator of TheDigitalBrothers.com, BlackScienceFictionSociety.com & BlackCommunityEntertainment.com.
Visit him:
http://www.blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blog/list?user=2stjwb1h216fd
http://blacksciencefiction.wordpress.com/
Check out the other members of this Online Black History Month Event:
L. M. Davis, Author–began her love affair with fantasy in the second grade. Her first novel,Interlopers: A Shifters Novel, was released in 2010, and the follow-up Posers: A Shifters Novel will be released this spring. For more information visit her blog http://shiftersseries.wordpress.com/ or her website www.shiftersnovelseries.com.
Milton Davis, Author – Milton Davis is owner/publisher of MVmedia, LLC . As an author he specializes in science fiction and fantasy and is the author of Meji Book One, Meji Book Two and Changa’s Safari. Visit him: www.mvmediaatl.comand http://www.mvmediaatl.com/Wagadu/
Margaret Fieland, Author– lives and writes in the suburbs west of Boston, MA with her partner and five dogs. She is one of the Poetic Muselings. Their poetry anthology, Lifelines http://tinyurl.com/LifelinesPoetry/is available from Amazon.com Her book, “Relocated,” will be available from MuseItUp Publishing in July, 2012. The Angry Little Boy,” will be published by 4RV publishing in early 2013. You may visit her website,http://www.margaretfieland.com.
Valjeanne Jeffers, Author – is an editor and the author of the SF/fantasy novels: Immortal, Immortal II: The Time of Legend and Immortal III: Stealer of Souls. Her fourth and fifth novels: Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds and The Switch: Clockwork will be released this spring. Visit her at:http://valjeanne.wordpress.com andhttp://qandvaffordableediting.blogspot.com/
Alicia McCalla, Author- writes for both young adults and adults with her brand of multicultural science fiction, urban fantasy, and futurism. Her debut novel,Breaking Free will be available February 1, 2012. The Breaking Free theme song created by Asante McCalla is available for immediate download on itunes and Amazon. Visit her at: http://www.aliciamccalla.com
Carole McDonnell, Author–She writes Christian, speculative fiction, and multicultural stories. Her first novel is Wind Follower. Her short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and have been collected in an ebook, Spirit Fruit: Collected Speculative Fiction. Visit Carole: http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/ orhttp://writersofcolorblogtour.blogspot.com/
Rasheedah Phillips,Author–is the creator of The AfroFuturist Affair in Philly. She plans to debut her first spec/sci-fic novel Recurrence Plot in Spring 2012. You may catch her ruminating from time to time on her blog, AstroMythoLosophy.com.
Nicole Sconiers, Author-is also a screenwriter living in the sunny jungle of L.A. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she recently published Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage. Visit her:http://nicolesconiers.com/index.html
Jarvis Sheffield, M.Ed. is owner & operator of TheDigitalBrothers.com, BlackScienceFictionSociety.com & BlackCommunityEntertainment.com. Visit him:http://www.blacksciencefictionsociety.com/profiles/blog/list?user=2stjwb1h216fd
Garbage as green tech...pull my finger!
I am not debating Revelation: this post primarily is to fight ignorance, especially this being "2012" of thriller movie fame.
Honestly, when I say that ancient people had as much fear of the winter solstice as they did a lunar eclipse, when I say that maybe the Mayan people, for whatever reason, stopped making calendars, I get the "how do YOUknow?" as if I'm not "supposed" to. I then tell them to solve the followng problem, then get back with me:
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. McNair as an undergraduate at North Carolina A&T State University (we had the same major: Engineering Physics). I share several post/mentions of him from my physics blog. He was a personal hero of mine:
