Happy TENTH Anniversary to the Mars rover Opportunity!

On July 7, 2003, tucked into a Delta 2 rocket, the rover Opportunity blasted into space headed to Mars.

On January 24, 2004 PST (Jan. 25 Universal Time), the rover was dropped onto the surface of Mars wrapped in airbags, where it bounced 26 times before coming to rest in a crater.  This little rover, about the size of golf cart, was designed for the three-month mission to find signs of past water on Mars. 

Tomorrow marks the 10-year anniversary of Opportunity’s mission on Mars. TEN YEARS!!! HURRAH! WHOOT WHOOT! I MEAN, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT PEOPLE??? TEN YEARS!!! It was a three-month mission and this little robot, which was not designed to survive even one Martian winter, is STILL EXPLORING MARS TEN YEARS LATER! It is a miracle. This is perhaps the most successful space mission EVER!

I don’t get to write like this, in all caps and with multiple exclamation points, in my books for children, but this is how I feel about this mission and this rover. I am astounded. I am in awe. I cannot believe that a dream and the work of a bunch of scientists and engineers have given us a ten- year tour of another planet.

Opportunity was designed to only travel on flat terrain but has explored crater after crater after crater and is currently climbing the tallest hill of its mission. This is where Opportunity has traveled so far:

 

Opportunity is currently exploring the rim of Endeavour Crater, near an outcrop that may contain clay laid down in a watery past. Signs of past water have been found before, but evidence suggests that unlike the battery-acid-like water present on other parts of the planet, the water here may have been neutral enough to have once sustained life.  LIFE!

I hope you can find a little time to celebrate the incredible success of this mission, especially with your children and students. You can:

Watch a live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory today Thursday, Jan. 23, 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) which will include appearances of two of the heroes from my book The Mighty Mars Rovers, Steve Squyres and John Callas. (Webcast live at http://ustream.tv/NASAJPL and on NASA TV streaming at http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv.)

See Space.com’s slide show of the top ten discoveries from Spirit and Opportunity’s mission.

Enjoy these stunning photos from a decade of exploration.

Check out a slideshow about why the rover lasted so long, at NASA’s 10-year anniversary page. 

Print out free posters, calendars and stickers.

Read the story of girl who was in eighth grade when Opportunity landed on Mars and is now an engineer on the mission.

Teachers, there is so much this mission offers to inspire your students. As the mission continues to unfold, Opportunity gives you an incredible opportunity to connect reading, writing, science, history, news, books, videos, and primary source material easily available on the internet. A teachers’ guide to my book The Mighty Mars Rovers offers discussion questions, hands-on activities, and resources. You can also find good ideas in two Common Core guides, one short  and one long.

When I started writing The Mighty Mars Rovers, my husband bought me a little scale model rover to keep on my desk as inspiration. But my model kept falling off my desk and breaking.

Perhaps my desk is a more hazardous place than Mars. 

Or perhaps we humans are capable of much more than we can even imagine.

Long live Opportunity!

Elizabeth Rusch

Images courtesy of NASA/JPL, except for the last one, which I took myself.

Welcome to the Wild World of Enhanced E-Books

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of my book The Mighty Mars Rovers: The incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity just released enhanced e-book versions of my book and three other Scientists in the Field titles. And I have to say, they are pretty dang cool. Here’s a short video that shows how they work:

If you have trouble viewing the video click here.

I’m a pretty low-tech person (lucky to be married to a high-tech hubby and raising a high-tech tweener) and I still read books the old fashioned way – printed on paper and bound with a cover.  But iPads and the like can do something that print books cannot. They can show video.

When I was researching and writing The Mighty Mars Rovers, I discovered a treasure trove of cool videos and animations produced by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, available for free to the public. They showed Spirit and Opportunity’s launches (impressive billowing smoke at take-off), the sequence of their landings (parachutes deploying, retrorockets shooting, air-bag-wrapped landers bouncing to a stop), and how their robotic arms move. Several videos strung together photos taken by the rovers so you could watch their journeys across the red planet as if you were rolling in their tracks. And update videos showed scientists and engineers talking about their work on the mission – their hopes and dreams, their disappointments and triumphs.  I loved watching the videos while researching and I remember wishing my readers could watch them, too.  But how would kids ever find them and would they take the time to wade through the archives to find the best ones?  I linked to a few of my favorites on my website, but I really wished readers could see the robotic arm in action while reading about the robotic arm.

And now there they are (among other enhancements). As you flip through the pages, small video icons show where to click to view a short video on the topic discussed. My daughter, who has read the book, spent several hours watching all the videos – some of them multiple times. And I think she got more from the book as a result.

But what if kids simply flip through and only watch the videos? Would that undermine the purpose of the book? From viewing the videos, kids would learn a lot about rovers, about Mars and about the scientific process. Some might be inspired to consider a vocation in science. Others might be inspired to work a little harder to overcome obstacles to follow their dreams. But I wonder: Will some kids be inspired to read a book they might otherwise have passed up? That’s something I’d really like to know. Will the enhancements become a substitute for the written word or a way to pull kids in or lead them to a deeper understanding?

What do you think about interactive enhancements in ebooks? What are the possibilities? What might be the drawbacks? Writers: What have been your experiences with enhanced versions of your ebooks? Teacher, librarians, parents and kids: Have you had any interesting encounters with enhanced ebooks?  What was it like? Did it change the way you approached the book? We are entering a brave new world full of pitfalls and possibilities. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Elizabeth Rusch

Second Chances (Sort Of)

 

I was delighted that Bloomsbury asked me to revise my 2008 book, See How They Run: Campaign Dreams, Election Schemes, and the Race to the White House for the 2012 presidential elections. The idea of a do-over of one of your books is intriguing, sort of like going back in time to right wrongs. In preparation I read through the book, occasionally patting myself on the back, sometimes seeing a paragraph or section that could have been better and, worst, seeing something that simply should have been better.

Quickly, however, I learned that economics rules revision as it does just about everything else.  The more pages you change, the more it costs. So nobody’s looking to opt for a better verb on page 13, let alone something you feel more strongly about.  Unless you feel very, very strongly!

My editor Michelle Nagler read through the book and studded it with Post-it questions and thoughts.  I did the same, plus a good amount of research. Then we confabbed.

What got changed?  Here are just a few categories and examples:

Factual changes  After losing two elections for the Virginia state legislature, George Washington learned his lesson, treated voters to 160 gallons of alcohol in 1758 and got elected.  That was true in 2008 and true now.  But every “in the now” type fact got rechecked before we went back to press.

--For example, page 21’s sidebar, “Party Favors,” discussed party corruption, mentioning that, after the Civil War, judgeships cost about a $15,000 contribution to the Republican party, a bit more than $200,000 in today’s money.  When I checked the conversion charts that track US inflation, I found the sum close enough to current value to keep as is, perhaps the only reason to be grateful for the Great Recession.

--On the other hand, page 51 was changed to say that nowadays only two states allow prisoners to vote.  In the original edition, there weren’t any.

Updates  Even though factual changes are updates; to me, this category contains the kind of updates that justify a new edition.

--The most obvious one is that we elected the 44^th president of the US and the first African American.  References to Obama’s campaign and presidency were inserted when relevant: p. 31, for example, which talked about the campaign tactics of candidates who have something to overcome; Michelle and Barack’s dancing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show as an example of the current trend of “getting to know candidates as people;” Obama’s bio in the back, which mentions he has read all the Harry Potter books, etc. 

--An Obama update I could have and perhaps should have used, but did not.  In my first edition, I depicted the unbelievably elaborate security for George W. Bush’s second inauguration held after 9/11.  I didn’t have the heart to trump that description with the protection used for Obama’s.  

Traumatizing children

--In the original edition, I started the section about qualifications for presidential candidates by saying “You know how they say anyone can grow up to be president?  Sorry, another myth bites the dust.  (PS. There’s no such thing as the tooth fairy, either.)”  With a book that numbered 96 pages and an audience I guestimated at 9 years old and mostly older, I didn’t think much about that.  Until I got an email from a mother that said: “Thanks for outing the tooth fairy to my kid.”  Another writer friend of mine said that any nine-year-old who still believed in the tooth fairy was either bilking his or her parents or deserves to know the truth.  I, on the other hand, felt traumatized myself having stolen someone's innocence; so in 2012, I said I must change this.  But to what?  Who are you going to “out?” Unicorns?  Fairies?  Ultimately, I took the hit for my hometown of Boston and made it leprechauns. 

There’s a puzzle to this revising exercise—you can’t add pages and must change as few as possible for economic rules mentioned above.  So, what happens to a logically laid out page when you have to add something important that takes some explaining as well?  Some worked out well by snipping words and widows to create room, sometimes even a whole example.  Others plague me, still. I had to discuss Obama’s use of the media as a campaign game-changer, had to.  It required a lengthy paragraph and cost a seamless argument.  If I get to write a new 2016 version…

P.S. If anyone is interest in looking at information about See How They Run’s revised edition, use my web site and its links to the IndieBound or Amazon sites.  I don’t make any extra money if you buy the book this way, but there are some Amazon snafus that make this updated book almost impossible to find (except for some weird $123 version).

Exploring The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau with Michelle Markel

One of the perks of writing for INK is that you get to interview authors about their cool new books. Michelle Markel is on a roll these days with her picture book biographies.  Her latest, The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau (Eerdman) has got three stars and counting: Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, and Booklist. Here’s what they say:

“The career of artist Henri Rousseau gets a wonderfully child-friendly treatment in a book that captures both his personality and the essence of his pictures. … Markel’s text has a sweetness and simplicity that allows children to understand the story’s underpinnings, giving them someone to root for.” BOOKLIST

“Markel’s account of Rousseau’s humility and amateur passion for art strikes just the right tone—it’s jaunty, confiding, and affectionate.” PW

“Markel’s well-chosen episodes begin with the purchase of his first paints and brushes–at age 40. Compact sentences convey this self-taught artist’s rocky journey, leaving room for [illustrator Amanda] Hall’s interpretation.” SLJ

Why did you choose Henri Rousseau as your subject?  What’s your connection to his art and/or his story?

I chose Rousseau because of his child friendly jungle paintings and his perseverance in the face of daunting obstacles- especially the mockery of the art critics. They wrote things like “It looks like he closed his eyes and painted with his feet.” I found it incredibly moving that Rousseau could pick up his paintbrush after reading something like that.  Many children get teased about their drawings, so I thought they’d relate, and be touched by Rousseau’s ultimate triumph. Of course his story resonates with grownups too, as some reviewers of the book have pointed out. Who hasn’t felt the sting of rejection? Don’t we all want to be validated?

I also connected to Rousseau because both of us began to pursue our creative impulses later in life. And I have a love of French art and literature. I majored in French in both undergrad and graduate school.

Tell me about your research.  

I viewed his paintings (most recently, “Exotic Landscape”) and read a lot of material in the original French- his letters to Apollinaire,  accounts by contemporaries, those nasty reviews. The Getty Research library was a great resource. My past trips to Paris (where I lived for a few months during my Junior Year abroad) helped me visualize the setting.

Why do your choose the picture book genre for your biographies? 

I remember it clearly- the day it all began.  I took my young daughters to our local library and found Diego by Jonah Winter, mistakenly shelved with fiction. It read like a magical tale about a little boy with artistic tendencies. I didn’t realize the story was about Diego Rivera until I got to the part about the striking workers. I thought that was brilliant- to bring literary techniques and a sense of wonder to picture book biography. I’ve wanted to do the same, ever since.

What do you think of the illustrations for your book? Did you see sketches?  Did you have any input?

I did see pencil sketches, but my input was unnecessary. Amanda did her own extensive research (which enabled her to draw portraits of Rousseau through the years, as well as likenesses of Picasso and other avant garde acquaintances). She also asked me questions through our editor. When I saw the final pictures, I was thrilled. Her paintings are emotional and luminous. It’s like the text and art are soul mates.

You’ve published with big east coast publishing houses and small regional presses.  How would you compare the experiences?

I can’t emphasize what a pleasure it’s been to work with a small press this time. Eerdmans has a reputation for fine picture book biographies; they knew exactly what to do with this book. It started with choosing the right artist, and continued with the marketing support- making beautiful postcards, a trailer, and being responsive to every email I send them. I haven’t had this experience with other publishing houses.

Henri Rousseau is about 900 words.  We hear these days that fewer words are better for picture books.  What do you think about this? Do you aim for a particular word count?

I think children should be exposed to all kinds of writing, from short and punchy to long and leisurely. Some authors, like the genius William Steig, excel at crafting elegant leisurely passages. Children need to hear the verbal richness of books like Amos and Boris, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Less is not always more.

That said, I try to tell my stories in the fewest words possible, which for me is usually around 900. Once the research is done, there’s always a tension between the desire to include amusing or poignant details, and the demands of uncluttered storytelling. It’s very difficult, but rewarding work.

You’ve also written biographies of artist Marc Chagall and labor organizer Clara Lemlich. How do you choose your subjects?

Certain figures and historical periods capture my imagination. I also look for narratives that would resonate with children. Clara Lemlich was young, small in stature, and was treated unjustly. I think kids can picture themselves in that situation. They have a keen sense of fairness.

There comes a point, while researching a potential subject, when the story just reaches in and grabs my heart. I’m overwhelmed with affection and admiration for this person.  I want to express that as lyrically or joyfully as possible, as a tribute to them, and a means of inspiring young people. That’s the ideal.

Will we see more picture book biographies from you?

I have two more picture book bios in the works, with Chronicle Books. It’s a great time to be writing nonfiction!

The Story Continues

In 2008, when I began submitting to publishers my children’s book on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, I got a number of rejections that basically said: We love the idea, love the writing, love the story, but we don’t think there will be interest in the market as the mission will be long over by the time the book comes out. Now, rejections are never fun to get, but these made me want to scream: This story is never over! This is the on-going story of our exploration of our solar system.

One of my beefs with the way science is often taught in school and presented in textbooks and even in many trade nonfiction children’s books is that science is portrayed as a category of facts that kids need to learn rather than an ongoing, ever-changing set of questions people have about the world around them.

That’s why I was SO pleased when my book The Mighty Mars Rovers: The incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity was published as part of Houghton Mifflin’s Scientists in the Field series this June, just two months before the next Mars rover Curiosity was scheduled to land on the red planet. 

There are so many connections between Spirit and Opportunity's and Curiosity’s missions that it’s nearly impossible to miss that Mars exploration is an on-going question, on-going story. Many of the same people have been involved in both missions, from the main subject of my book, Steve Squyres, the principal science investigator for Spirit and Opportunity who is also involved in the science of the new mission, to Pete Theisinger and Rob Manning, lead engineers on both missions, to Jennifer Trosper, a mission manager for both missions, and Joy Crisp, a project scientist for both missions. Watching mission control during the nail-biting landing of Curiosity was like re-living the landings of Spirit and Opportunity – the familiar faces, the tension, the worries, the hopes, the awe. (If you missed the landing, you’ve got to see this cool 3-minute video that melds footage from mission control and launch parties across the country with simulations of the landing process.)

There’s something else in the news these days that drives home the point that space exploration and science is an on-going quest. Astronaut Neil Armstrong died on August 25, 2012. The connection? Chapter one of The Mighty Mars Rovers opens on July 20, 1969, as a thirteen-year-old boy named Steve Squyres watched in wonder as the Apollo mission put people on the moon. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did something (walking on the moon) that ultimately inspired a young boy to dream of sending rolling geologists to Mars. Steve Squyres and hundreds of thousands of other scientists and engineers safely landed Spirit and Opportunity on the red planet for a mission so successful that it essentially answered the question: Was there enough water on Mars to support life? (Yes!) With that question solidly answered, and with everything else we learned from Spirit and Opportunity’s mission, today, the next Mars rover Curiosity can focus on searching for other building blocks of life. THIS is science.

The Mighty Mars Rovers and many books written by my INK colleagues and others can be used to show kids that science is an on-going quest, an on-going story. With the help of the internet, readers can be guided to see the connections between a book they read on a science topic (The Mighty Mars Rovers) and what is happening in that field today. (Check NASA's website for the latest on Curiosity’s explorations of Mars, including other great videos.) Readers of The Mighty Mars Rovers who follow Curiosity’s current mission can’t help but notice many parallels and connections. Teacher can also encourage readers to make these connections by asking: 

• How are the missions the same? 
• How are they different? 
• How has rover design, launch, and landing changed? 
• What are the biggest challenges of the missions? 
• How were they overcome? 
• What questions are the missions designed to answer? 
• What tools do the rovers and scientists have to answers those questions? 
• And maybe most importantly: What questions might come next?

Discussion questions like these help students experience the connection between science books and what is happening in the field right now – and inspire readers to imagine science they may want to do – questions they might want to try to answer—when they grow up.

Oh, and one more thing. All those editors who rejected my book because of timing were wrong. Not just in a philosophical sense but in a literal sense. The mission I wrote about in The Mighty Mars Rovers is not over. Defying all expectations, Opportunity, expected to last a bit over three months in the harsh, frigid Martian environment, is STILL roving the red planet, sending back photos and information about our neighboring planet more than eight years later. That little rover is like the Indiana Jones of space exploration. You, your students, and your kids can catch up on Opportunity’s most recent discoveries and see new photos sent back from Mars anytime you want. 

The story continues…

Elizabeth Rusch

* A complete teachers’ guide to The Mighty Mars Rovers, including discussion questions and hands-on activities, can be downloaded for free here. 

A Brave Not-So-New World

As I wrote in a post last March, I have three books coming out this year and another one in early 2013, due to the vagaries of publishing rather than my own writing schedule.  An embarrassment of riches, I’m not complaining.  Nor (at this moment, at least) am I whining about how this traffic jam caused an unanticipated drought of publications for the last four years.  Right now I’m thinking about how these past few years have given me time to take some steps toward the Brave Not-So-New World of author self-promotion.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t live in a glass bubble.  I’ve had a website for a million years; after all, it’s the modern equivalent of a business card.  I’ve always been willing and able to help promote my books.  As a former magazine writer, I had contacts and used them.  Four years ago, I was already blogging here at I.N.K. and knew all about Facebook, even though I had no interest in signing up.

So what's different now?  Many things, for me and for most  authors.  There are a lot fewer magazines and newspapers, for example.  Furthermore their decreasing advertising revenue have shrunk “less necessary” features about authors or their books. 

Four years ago my publishers did some promotion for my books coming out, and they are this year as well.  Yet more than ever, it’s so clear that even more of the responsibility for promotion has shifted to the author.  New and midlist authors certainly.  Yet I also have a friend, very well known, who has been firmly told she should post on her blog at least three times a week.

Most of the publishers I work with have sites or pr brochures that encourage us to promote.  The Random House Author Portal, for example, lets you track your book sales and subrights online.  But before you get to those weekly updates, you are invited to click on the “Connect with Readers” link or the “Monthly Marketing Tip.” Facebook, websites, blogs, twitter, of course.  Then there’s the world of Pinterest that our own Melissa Stewart uses so cleverly, Infographics, virtual reader communities (Goodreads, LibraryThing, and JacketFlap being just the beginning), and Linked-In as a social medium—not job hunting—which I still haven’t figured out.  It’s mindbloggling, but one ignores it at her peril.

The bad news, I now figure, is these tools have been put in our hands.  And the good news is—these tools have been put in our hands.  We have the potential of creating word of mouth ourselves in a way authors couldn’t have dreamt of even a decade before. 

Do we want to?  I have to say that the experience of building the guts of my new Wordpress website,  (individual pages, sidebars, etc.) while hiring a professional designer for the customized frame has made me much more confident.  And much less likely to glaze over or shrink away when considering my Brave New World.

These are the first new things I’m trying.  To paraphrase the late Neil Armstrong:  A small step for mankind, a giant step for me.  If you find anything new and useful for you, grab it. 

Facebook.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don’t even like answering my email.

A Facebook Author Page  This I like better, but try not to post 3 times a week because it feels a little spammy to me.  Am I being too retro?  I frankly don’t know.

A trailer for my new book, It’s a Dog’s Life.  And trying to find more ways to use it than just my own and my publisher’s website.

Again, for It’s a Dog’s Life, a monthly contest on my site showing a photo of a dog in action, which asks, “What is this dog doing?”  Kids and adults can email in their responses.  At contest’s end, the person who best explains the behavior and the one who makes me laugh hardest each receive a free book.  To me, this is a win-win situation.  I get website traffic and people get free books.  It’s actually win-win-win-win.  Teachers can use it for a fun literary activity and dog, mom, or book bloggers can run it as an easy post that will interest their readers.

Am I reinventing the wheel?  Sure, but how else am I going to understand it?

CHASING WINDMILLS: The Sequel

I just sent in the final photos, graphs, and manuscript for the second edition of The Wind at Work, due out in March 2013, and to celebrate I’m rerunning my blog on writing the book -- pre- and post-internet.

Back in 1995 I wrote my first book The Wind At Work, a history of wind energy, and sent it to Chicago Review Press.  They liked it, but replied that all their children’s books include activities. Would I be willing to write some?  Would I!

Creating activities was fun, relating windmills to science, creative writing, drawing and painting, sewing, cooking, singing, environmental research, and community action.  Who knew? 

All this took place back in the Dark Ages, aka 1990s, aka pre–internet.

RESEARCHING WAY BACK THEN

To research the book I read books and more books, using public and university libraries, interlibrary loans, and used bookstores. I traveled to the Netherlands, the American Midwest, and a wind turbine factory in Tehachapi, California. To find photographs, paintings, etchings, and the like I searched through books. I visited and/or wrote to historical societies, the Library of Congress, tourist sites, and libraries. I received originals and photocopies and then sent purchase and permission letters, all by snail mail. And finally I sent off packages of photographs, slides, drawings, etc. to the publisher, all printed on paper!

I spent a small fortune on long distance telephone calls interviewing windmill people and trying to locate the addresses and phone numbers of restored windmills in small towns all around the US and Canada – this in pre-free-long-distance-phone-plan days.

Then in 1997, it all came together in The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills.  Like my first love, this book holds a special place in my heart. Yes, I went on to others, leaving it behind, making longer commitments, but the memory of that my first kiss on my name on my book lingers on…..

Aside: The Wind at Work  has stayed in print for nearly fifteen years.  Let’s put our hands together for small presses in general, and Chicago Review Press in particular.  I visited their offices in 1997 and again last summer. They have expanded from one floor to an entire building in downtown Chicago, and are doing very well, thank you. I plan to interview CRP publisher, Cynthia Sherry, in a future blog. [July, 2012 – I’m still planning to.]

FAST FORWARD TO 2011

I’d been thinking of doing an updated version of The Wind at Work for a while, for the contemporary section on wind turbines was woefully out of date. Last spring (2011,) following the earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan, I emailed Cynthia and….. the warehouse was low on stock. Could I do a new edition for 2012 publication? Could I!

I spent the summer reading, interviewing people, and searching for new photos, graphs, and charts. But I neither sent not received one letter by snail mail, visited no libraries, and read not one book.  I did 100% of my research online.  Why? Because that’s where the information lives. 

I browsed 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report that won the Nobel prize; material from American, Canadian, and Europeans Wind Energy Associations, Global Wind Energy Council, American Lung Association, U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Audubon Society, and many more sources. I watched videos and read reports, scientific studies, congressional hearing statements, newspaper stories from around the world, and more – all at my computer.  I’ve created some new activities for the new book. These and some of the old activities also use internet resources.

As for new illustrations – all online.  Not only contemporary material, but historical photos as well.  Since I wrote the first book, Steve Jacobs a scion of the Jacobs Wind Electric Plant Company, found photos as far back as the 1920s and put them on their website, and on Flickr. A piece of history I could only describe in words in 1997, I can illustrate in 2012. Here’s a Jacobs ‘wind plant’ spinning in Antarctica in 1933!

As for “Where to Find a Windmill.” I didn’t make one phone call, I just googled them all.

Aside: As I began my photo research, I unearthed old paper files from a box in a closet. I found the manila file marked “picture permissions.” With trembling hands, I plucked a letter from dozens nestled there. I let out a cheer when I saw the words “I hereby grant Gretchen Woelfle…. license to reproduce in all editions of the book…” Those six precious words saved me days and weeks of work. I sent a silent blessing to the forgotten hero who helped me compose that permission letter back in 1997.

HOW ON EARTH…..

As I worked on the new The Wind at Work, I wondered – rather rhetorically and not for the first time – how I, and others, ever wrote books without the internet.

Despite all the above, I am writing a paper book – one that Chicago Review Press will publish in three electronic formats as well: kindle, e-pub, and pdf files. Of what use will my book be, as it begins to go out of date as soon as it’s published? An example, I hope. I read, analyzed, and interpreted the raw material on the web, and I hope to encourage students to do the same as the wind energy field changes week by week – using my book, along with the amazing electronic library we have at our fingertips.

Happy Summer Reading - whichever device you use!

Time to Say Goodbye

No, not to INK. I mean, to the piles of books on and around and under my desk.

This happens with every book I work on, and I’m sure others can relate. As I research and write and revise, I gather growing piles of books – real, dusty, old-fashioned books. I keep thinking I’m done researching, but then I come across another obscure source I’ve just got to have. So the piles keep growing.

But eventually, when all the revising is done, and my editor assures me I can no longer alter so much as a comma, there comes this slightly sad moment when I realize I don’t need to keep the books at my desk anymore. That’s what happened this weekend with my upcoming book, BOMB. The advanced reader copies have gone out, and at this point I don’t even want to look at them, ‘cause I’ll just find things I want to change, and it’s too late.

So why are all of these books I used as sources still lying around my desk? Because we have no bookshelf space left in our house? Yes, that’s part of it. But I think the real reason is that putting the books away feels kind of like turning my back on friends. Every book in the stack is packed with amazing characters, scenes, and details, and I only mined a tiny fraction of the riches. After I put the books away, I’ll move on, and maybe I’ll dip back into them at some future date. Or maybe not. What a terrible friend I am.

In the spirit of thinking aloud, as David Schwarz did so compellingly last week, wouldn’t it be cool if there was an INK library? That is, one central location where we could keep the books we’ve collected over the years, and make them available to curious kids and teens and teachers. I can imagine it would be an incredible storehouse of fascinating and lesser-known true stories and primary sources. And in each book there’d be an inscription by the author who donated it, saying which book he/she used it for. And it would have an online catalog, and even digital versions of some non-copyrighted sources…

Anyway, just something I got to thinking about while I was supposed to be cleaning up my desk. Now, back to work on the next book – and the new stack of sources.