The Next Big Thing Meme

I have so many prescheduled blogging topics--BRoP Mondays, science links Fridays, and Blog Chain alternate Tuesdays--that some weeks I don't even come up with my own idea for a post. This is why I tend to avoid participating in blogging memes. However, I've been approached three times now for this meme by Dean Rich, Sandy Appleyard, and Heidi Garrett. Since three is a magic number, I figure I should go ahead and do it, even if that means adding an extra post to my schedule. (No one minds that, right? Um, don't answer if you disagree.)

What is the [working] title of your next book?
Twinned Universes (Catalyst Chronicles, Book Two)

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Twinned Universes is a sequel to Lyon's Legacy, which is about a scientist forced on a mission to clone her hated rock star ancestor. The clone himself takes center stage here; he insisted on meeting the man he was cloned from. ;)

What genre does your book fall under?
Science fiction involving time travel and alternate universes.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I have no time to watch TV or movies (other than what my son watches over and over and over), so I'm unable to answer this question. However, I have a Pinterest board with images of how I picture some of the characters, so please check that out.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
To solve one murder and stop another, the clone of a TwenCen (20th century) rock star must use a talent he never knew he had.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I plan to self-publish it as a paperback and e-book in 2013. I'm not sure of exactly when it will be published, as I'm still working with the cover artist and editor.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I wrote it well over a decade ago; the original draft was published on a friend's website as To Thine Own Self Be True. I don't remember how long the first draft took, but it was probably less than a year. I've come back to it between other projects.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Tough question. I would say Glimpses and Summer of Love for the time travel and music connection.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The Beatles, particularly John Lennon. I also owe thanks to Aviva Rothschild and Susan Ryan for introducing me to Beatles fan fiction. In fact, a scene from one of Susan's stories inspired Lyon's Legacy, which in turn demanded the sequel.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
The rock star ancestor, Sean Lyon, is similar to John Lennon in some respects. There are several parallels to Hamlet. Most of the story is told from the POV of Paul Harrison, Sean's clone, and his friends, all of whom have grown up on board a spaceship and have limited experience with Earth, let alone the TwenCen. They may not always get along, but they care deeply for each other.


As a rebel, I'm not tagging anyone; I know many bloggers have already participated in this meme anyway. But if you haven't and want to, feel free to consider yourself tagged.

2009 High Fives

I was nominated for an award last night over at Inkpots n'Quills: the 2009 High Fives. If I understand this correctly, I'm supposed to list five accomplishments from last year and nominate five more blogs. This took some thought, but here are my accomplishments:

IFT

IFT stands for Institute of Food Technology, a professional organization. They hold a convention every year; food companies give out samples, and scientists present their food-related research. Last June, I flew out to California to present some of the research I'd done for my company at a poster session. Although it's relatively easy to have a poster accepted, it was still the first time I'd done something like this. Overall, the poster session went well, and we made some new business contacts.

JAPAN

Since I was transferred last year from research to Quality Control, I was sent to Japan for two weeks to our parent company for training. (There are a series of posts discussing my trip, which was in late September-early October.) I'm still trying to perfect the assays I need to do, but considering I don't speak Japanese and not all of the QC people spoke English very well, I'm glad it went as well as it did. They praised me for my ability to use chopsticks, and I made it to the lab in the aftermath of a typhoon. I also got to see the John Lennon Museum near Tokyo.

Parenting

One of the hardest parts about my business trips last year was leaving my family, especially my toddler son. Last year, we finally got him to fall asleep on his own and in his crib, instead of on us or with us in his room. We had to force him to cry it out, which was hard for all of us, but now everyone sleeps better. (Except for me, but I'm at the point where I need medical help to cure my insomnia.) I'm also pleased to report that while Alex isn't completely toilet training, he does use his potty. I think being in daycare and seeing the other kids use the toilet got him interested in it.

Writing

I didn't finish revising my current project as I'd resolved to, but at least my opening survived a public flogging.

WisCon

I was part of three panels at WisCon last year. The topics were keeping up with science, the science of time travel, and keeping science in science fiction. I contributed more to the first and last panel than I did to the one on time travel. That was a busy time of year for me, as we also had to plan for Alex's second birthday party and my trip to IFT. Adding preparation for the WisCon panels on top of that made things stressful. I'm glad they went well, but I think I won't sign up for so many this year.


I also have to nominate five other blogs for this award, so here we go:

Deathday Letters
Don't Think Twice

H. L. Dyer's Weblog
Mindless Musings
Working My Muse

Five Random Things

Christina Fonseca posted this meme on her blog, and it looked interesting enough for me to follow suit. If you'd like to play along too, please feel free to do so in either a comment below or on your own blog. If you post it on your blog, please link to it so I can see what you said.

1) Most unusual or interesting job I’ve had…

My previous job in Research and Development for an enzyme company (I was transferred to QC last year). I had the opportunity to choose some of my own projects. Sometimes I'd go shopping at the grocery store and bring back different types of food to experiment on. Of course, that meant I had to taste-test the results, and they weren't always good!

2) Childhood Memory related to writing…

When I was in middle school, I studied German. It wasn't very popular, so when we held our Foreign Language Fair, we didn't get to perform the way the French and Spanish students did. I tried to change that by writing a short play called "A Little Demonstration of German." It was a couple of short scenes with German phrases. Nothing too fancy, as my German wasn't up to much--and I've forgotten a lot of it since! We didn't get to perform it, but my teacher gave me a special certificate that year.

3) Things I collect

I collect postcards whenever I travel. It started when I visited Germany as a teenager. I even taped them to the wall of my dorm room in undergrad. I don't display them any more, but I still buy them.

I also like to collect books and magazines about the Beatles. For a while, I used to buy Time's special Year in Review issue, but I've let that slide.

4) Obsessions

My pet dragons on Facebook. Sometimes if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'll log in to check on a battle. Heck, perhaps they're why I can no longer sleep more than six hours at a stretch. Yes, I'm strange.

5) Unusual “talents”

I'm not sure what to put here. I can crochet. There's nothing unusual about that--except I do it with my "weak" hand. I'm left-handed, but crochet patterns are written for right-handed people. It was easier to learn to crochet right-handed than to keep reversing the directions.

I'm It?

Apparently I am. People are fighting to tag me in the latest meme to infect our blog chain. Heather meant to get me first, but Michelle beat her to it. So I guess I'd better post my answers:

Four goals I have in the next 5 years:
Get a novel published and in bookstores
Go on a cruise to celebrate our 5th anniversary
Finish with pregnancy/childbirth--either by having another child or deciding that we're done
Add a deck or patio to our house

Four places I will visit someday:
Liverpool, the Mecca for Beatle fans
The Philippines
Ireland
Vienna, Austria

Four of my favorite foods:
Pizza
Macaroni and cheese
Chocolate
Shrimp


Four jobs I've had:
Crew person at McDonald's
Maid
Teaching assistant in grad school (in the English Department)
Technical writer

Two places I've lived:
Delavan, WI
Rockville, MD


Two places I'd like to live:
Madison, WI
London

Four things I'd do with my spare time (if I had any):

Read
Sleep
Write
Exercise

I will inflict this meme on Russ, Sara, and Maria. Enjoy!

More Memes: Books I've Read

I just saw this meme on Sara's blog. My memory is hazy on some of them, but I thought I'd give this a whirl anyway.

This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked unread by LibraryThing users.

bold = ones I've actually completed.
italic = ones I've started and never finished
plain text = ones that I've never read
underline = ones you had to read for school.
CAPS = ones that I really really WANT to read. (what do I do for a maybe read?)


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (might like to read)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses (maybe read)
Madame Bovary (not sure if I finished it or not)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel (great book!)
War and Peace (I read this over a week while I was sick)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife (great book!)
The Iliad
Emma (can't remember if I read this one)
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway (I think I read this one, but I'm not sure)
Great Expectations
American Gods
ATLAS SHRUGGED
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (I may have read this one)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
THE FOUNTAINHEAD
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons (one I never want to read!)
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels (I wrote a term paper on the final section)
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere (I may have read this one)
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
DUBLINERS
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (good book)
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
FREAKONOMICS
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (one of my all-time favorites)
The Aeneid
Watership Down
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers