Stuff! It has happened!

So I've wound up renewing my learner's permit yet again (this makes time number three). You know you're behind the ball when the nice lady at the local DMV looks over the counter at you and tells you you should just take the test sooner rather than later. 

Other than that, I've been doing fieldwork and labwork (insert "Yeah, Isobelle, what's new about that?" comment here)--lots of swabbing tiny organisms that strenuously object. And then there's been writing. I've gotten distracted by about three different projects, and all of them are way too much fun. 

And I need to write the weekly book review. Heh, about that... Honestly, we'll be lucky if I manage to write it about something other than the California Driver's Handbook. (Informative but dry. The authors displayed a masterful sense of the pure idiocy of the human species--oops did I just type that?) 

Grumping aside, things have been a lot of fun. I managed to go off and see Pacific Rim and absolutely adored it. It's a smart giant robot movie. Can Del Toro please please please direct the Transformers franchise from here on out? Mako is the best female character I've encountered in mainstream cinema in a long time, and I am fully intending on going to go see it again with my mother as soon as possible. 

Chez Winter has also been the stage for an excellent rotation of houseguests. As the only home with an actual bed available, we've become the popular stopping place for all of our friends coming up to visit during the summer. Much food and delight has been had. 

And with that ridiculously mundane blog post, I take my leave. The writing calls to me. (Mostly calling me a slacker, let's be honest...)

The Writing Process

...because I hear this is a common question.

Never actually been asked it, but I hear about it a lot.

I don't have one 'writing process', a routine I sit down and follow every day. I have two: the ideal, and the real.

My ideal writing process would be this: get up at an hour that makes my parents and housemates cringe, have something tasty for breakfast, make a pot of tea (black tea, for preference) and arrange it on a tray with milk and sugar and other tea implements, and drag the whole thing back to my room. Then sit and write and have tea all morning, then go off on a bike ride to burn off the remainder of said caffeine before lunch.

My real writing process (during the school year) usually involves getting up at an hour even I think obscene, going to lab or class, running around and doing massively important things for the rest of the day, crawling into bed at something approaching midnight and writing until I fall asleep on the keyboard. It works--I'm far too tired to self-edit, and if we're to be entirely honest, the ideal writing process usually ends in me getting stuck on Tumblr for three hours instead of writing. I have been known to sit in a tree with my computer to get out of range of the router, but that's been an unpleasant prospect ever since the ants took over my favorite orange tree.

...This turned out to be a much sillier post than expected. Oh well. Such is life!

Summer Reviews: Podkayne of Mars, by Robert A. Heinlein

One of my big goals this summer was to become better acquainted with the classic novels in the genres I write. For my fantasy works, this means a lot of Tolkien, historical novels, and Shakespeare. But I have been dabbling of recent in science fiction--which is a long-winded way of making an excuse to read more Heinlein. 

Mom introduced me to Heinlein early on, and I have grown only more fond of his works as I've gotten older. Despite the accusations of misogyny leveled at his works (more on this later), I find them highly enjoyable. It is something to do with his voice. Though he establishes truly alien worlds and future societies, the things people do, think and say are as immediately familiar and understanding as the actions of, say, your next-door neighbor. Perhaps more so; neighbors can be weird. 

Before I progress further into the discussion of sexism in Heinlein, I must also confess that I have not read much of his  later writings, which I am informed are the most problematic. I did indeed have some problems with some of the remarks he made about important jobs women have--but while reading anything, it is important to take into account the world in which it was written. You do not pick up The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the expectation that Esmerelda will pick up a poker and beat the stupid out of Claude Frollo; similarly, you do not expect something written in the 1960s to live up to modern expectations of strong female characters. While I might object to that offspring-raising ought to take precedence especially for women, I love the fact that Podkayne wants to be a spaceship captain, and is accordingly good at math.

Another thing I enjoy about Poddy: while she wants a traditionally masculine career, she also enjoys being girly--dresses and all that. I like this; too often I've seen strong female characters who aren't allowed to enjoy looking female or being proud of being female. I don't like this trope, as it conflates femininity with weakness. Having a character who is cheerfully, enthusiastically fond of dresses and socializing at the same time as being good at math (I'm not and I wish I was!) and determined to succeed in her chosen field? Yes please. We need more of this, thanks. 

And yes, Podkayne hides how smart she is most of the time so she doesn't scare off the men. I understand that this is easily seen as sexist in our modern day and age, but this is less a recommendation that women do this than a depiction of a coping mechanism that a smart women might use in a society that is still sexist--which Poddy's is. Heinlein isn't scared of Poddy's smarts--after all, he wrote her. 

In Podkayne of Mars, Podkayne and her little brother, Clark (a menace to civilization as we know it) join their Uncle Tom on a trip from Mars to Earth with a stop en-route to Venus, a result of Uncle Tom's marvelous abilities in blackmail and a host of unexpected babies. The trip...doesn't go exactly to plan (and I'm not saying more because of spoilers). 

My biggest complaint is that little brother Clark keeps stealing the show. It is Clark who resolves the conflict, rather than Poddy, which I found annoying. Indeed, Clark has a far more active role in the conflict than Poddy, the main character, does, so I cannot say much about the plot, as we, and Podkayne, are largely ignorant of it. 

But there is Podkayne's world to distract us, and here Heinlein shines. Woven into the prose are loving descriptions of how this world works, how spaceships avoid solar storms, how the recycled air while on a spaceship becomes a problem, the necessary inoculations for traveling, different biological reactions to different substances... It is a new world, but one that makes sense, the alienness of it tempered by the very human eyes we see it through. I have found this consistent with other novels by Heinlein, and this is why I love his books so much. To depict the strange in such a way that it is immediately recognizable is a skill I desperately want to learn.

Summer Reviews: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

It being summer, I am trying to get caught up on all those books I wanted to read during the school year, but didn't manage to. And since I've been being dreadfully lazy about posting to my blog of recent I decided I'd better start writing up reviews for said books--that way I can't weasel out of blogging by whining "But I don't know what to blog about!"

The first book I'll review is Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers. I read this some time ago, but it was so delightful that I wanted to write a review of it--especially since many of the reviews on GoodReads claimed it was boring, which it most certainly was not. 

Grave Mercy's backcover copy:

Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.

Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

I picked this book up at random during our annual Christmas Eve run to the local bookstore, tentatively hopeful of a good period piece that was a little dark. I got exactly what I'd hoped for and more.

Grave Mercy was a delight, a deftly woven tapestry of strong characters and complex intrigue. At frirst I was hesitant--it is all too easy for a book handling some of the themes this one does to slip into melodrama--but the elegant and deliberate pacing do not waste time wallowing in angst. The world is meticulously constructed and introduced, and I found myself reading for the worldbuilding almost as much as the characters (I love strong characters--unsurprising that mine run my life...), a rare occurance for me. 

The characters in Grave Mercy are wonderful. I did not like Ismae much at first; her devotion to her convent was irratating at times, though realistic, given her past. But she won me over in the end; her journey from a fanatic follower to an independent force with her own understanding of her relationship with her god was beautifully handled. So too was the romance. I was afraid that we'd get a plot in which the older, wiser hero gentles the fierce and unreasonable heroine. Not so--Ismae is not easily gentled, and when she and her love interest come to an understanding, it is a meeting of equals and based on a deep friendship and hard-earned trust. 

Yes, Grave Mercy is dense and slow, but this is not a bad thing. I enjoyed every moment of it, the complete immersion in a totally different world. When, visiting the bookstore on my birthday, I found Dark Triumph (its sequel), I bought it without hesitation. 

Seattle!

As demanded by familial obligation, we are in Seattle this week visiting relatives. This means lots of interesting food; we've not been in the city twelve hours and already we've found amazing Thai food and gummi candy shaped like lips. 

I also got to hear Grandma Winter's story about how she poured water all over someone who was rude to her, a story that, while I've never heard it before, hardly surprises me. This is, after all, the same Grandma Winter who routinely intimidated entire police stations by knitting. (Yes, really. Go ahead and ask Robin Winter if you doubt me).

Weird thing about being this far north: the days are far longer than expected, and it is really green. As most of this spring has consisted of panic over fires, this is a welcome change. I regret on this trip that I cannot go and explore the city of Seattle proper....but all things in their time. In the present, there is Thai food. 

Even if I am a little scared to try the lips.

Also we have an awesome hotel room...

Summer! Finally!

I have emerged from the hell that was finals week--or, more precisely  the last month of the quarter. It could have been worse, as I wound up dropping Statistics out of sheer desperation, but there was still more than enough to keep me running, including the first few chapters of a new novel (I found an excuse to take a writing class) and moving out of the apartment. 

Which happened today and was far from conducive to peace of mind. Enough on that now. I doubt anyone wants to hear about what we found in the back of the fridge. 

Somewhere in there, Fanime happened. It was the first convention I've gone to with a large group of friends, and the results were both delightful (people to hang out with in the hotel room, dances) and disastrous (coordination, hoo boy...).  I shall post pictures as soon as I can get them off various people, as I left my camera in a drawer at home, and the tablet's camera wasn't quite up to the job.

I spent most of my time at Clockwork Alchemy. There, I finally purchased an Author Hat, which I am inordinately fond of. I had a wonderful time, and returned to school in a much better frame of mind for the explosion of excitement that was the ensuing month. 

Fieldwork has also picked up. I need to go in to lab tomorrow to finish processing the samples that we got yesterday. In the meantime, I'm going to appreciate being home with parents and cats and lots of good food... 

Post-Release update

 Conventions, novel releases, and surprise trips to Colorado have meant that I've gotten behind on my school, and am paying the price. I arrived home this week to a flurry of frantic activity: while I was off adventuring, the rest of the world had moved into the dread and terror that is Midterm Season. And the little part of that world that is my lab had shifted into We Have To Present Our Research HOW SOON? mode, so there was a lot of scrambling. On the plus side, there are now pictures of the research I've been doing for the last year. 

Isn't it adorable?!

So in between photographing urchin larvae and studying for statistics (at least that exam's over now--eeek, math), I am left with only one exam more before I need to start worrying about finals and posters for the grant. 

And then it will be summer. Tolerant Housemate and I had a brief argument about summer yesterday: he insists on not considering it summer until June 21st. I insist on calling it summer now because I've had to resort to hiding in the 15ºC room in lab from the heat. Yay environmental rooms. 

As for the novel? Well, if you go visit my website, you'll see that it's up at a variety of new and exciting places. If you've read it, do please leave a review! You shall make me a very happy author indeed. 

And as more people read the book, I can start posting more about said book, such as how to use a fan in combat...

Launch Day!

Weather is out today!

Julian and his world have been kicking around in my head for the last three years or so, and to finally get the little sneak out of the house and into the real world has always been my goal--while some of my projects were written with the express goal of leaving them to moulder under my bed when I was done, Weather was always intended for publication. At least, so I hoped.

And now I'm a day away from strangers (who aren't being paid to do it!) reading the book. I'm torn between hooting and hollering and having an (illegal) glass of champagne and hiding under the bed going "I hope no one notices the historical inaccuracy of the dirigibles/attitudes/Julian's left nostril, oh god I hope there's not someone ACTUALLY named Julian Lambert..." 

That aside, thank you to everyone who has helped and supported me, to my advisor, who's put up with me being completely scatterbrained over the last two quarters, to my parents, godparents and extended family for encouraging me to pursue both scientific and literary careers, to the various wonderful people I've lived with and been friends with, and to the older and more experienced authors who have been my inspirations and my mentors, whether over the course of years or an hour's conversation at a convention. Oh, and to my current housemates, who have had to put up with me playing the theme from a certain animated TV show on repeat for the last two weeks.


Now to go deal with the fact I can't get one of my marketing tools to work before I get in trouble with the publisher!

Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition

This weekend I got to do my first convention as an author and it was wonderful. I cannot recommend the experience enough! The convention in question was the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition in Santa Clara.

I almost didn't go; my college is a good six hours away by car, seven and a bit by train, and neither I nor my companions had our drivers licenses yet (well, one did, but she had just driven up from San Diego the night before, and so it was less than kind to saddle her with yet another lengthily drive the next day). So we took the train.

I, a train noob, am now convinced that train is the most supremely civilized way to travel. It was quiet and surprisingly fast and, above all, comfortable. And you meet the nicest people. One of my companions wound up talking to her seat partner for the better part of the return trip, to our neglect. And, oh, yes, the views look like this.

Somewhere north of San Luis Obispo

Once we arrived, we had a bit of a scramble, as the registration desk had closed before our train had turned up! The convention staff were very kind, though, and we still managed to get our badges and attend the opening night ball.

Due to the vagaries of class and of trains, we were only able to stay one day. But it was more than worth it. It was my first purely steampunk convention, and a wonderful introduction to the steampunk community as a whole. I was able to talk to both the inestimable Gail Carriger and the brilliant J. Daniel Sawyer about marketing and other authorly issues, and somehow managed to avoid fangirling absurdly at the both of them (at least, I hope). Hopefully, I will one day be able to do for another young author what they have done for me. (In the meantime, I have an awful lot of internet work to do!)

Real world work, too. One of the bits of beaded trim fell apart on me in the middle of the convention!

Weather launches tomorrow. It seems a little unreal now, back in my little apartment with the vegetarian housemate rattling around in the kitchen and the entire place smelling of ant spray (guess what invaded over the weekend?) and a pile of very modern laundry on the bed. I can't wait until next year. Who knows, maybe I'll be marketing book two...

Weather Has a COVER!

Isn't it GLORIOUS?

I'm just going to sit here and squee a little. Terribly unprofessional, probably, but I can't help it. 

Weather releases May 1st!

Sponge cakes and cranky cars

I got my last round of edits for Weather in on Wednesday and then got the next few days off, which meant I finally had time to do the thing I had intended to at the beginning of spring break--work on getting my driver's license. (This endeavor is one that has spanned several years. I am clumsy and get right and left mixed up and the family car has a manual transmission...you can see where this is going, can't you?)

So I went and ran errands with Mom. Now, this would have turned out all fine and dandy, but our car, an aging pickup truck ten years my senior, decided to develop an issue. Namely, every time I put her into neutral, she stalled and the engine died. To those unfamiliar with cars, every time you come to a complete stop, you put the car in neutral by depressing the clutch. Otherwise, you guessed it, the engine dies.

The solution in this case was to race the engine while stopped. So I got a bit of a workout, and doubtless puzzled my fellow drivers. Long story short, the car is going to the mechanic on Monday, and I am looking forward to NEVER having to do that again! I hope.

And then I came home and made a sponge cake. I share this with you because there is nothing sillier than a cooling sponge cake. Observe:

Things for inspiration

For everything I write, I have a small collection of items that I relate to the book. For one novel, a medieval fantasy, I made a mockup of my main character's sword, collected rocks similar to the ones another character needed for his magic, and drew map after map of the world. When I get stuck on something while writing, I go and handle the things I've collected to remind me of the book. It often helps a lot. 

The advantage to writing something historical was that I didn't have to make much of what I needed. I just needed to get creative with scavenging for things in the family attic. Here are the things for Weather. 

The books in the background are two volumes of Wood's Household Medicine. It's from the 1870s, about twenty years too late for the events of Weather, but it was enormously helpful in getting an idea of the approach people would take toward medicine in the period. My main character, Julian, is...well, accident prone. Very accident prone. 

Next down is an inkwell my aunt gave to me several Christmasses ago. Writing with a fountain pen is, I still think, the only acceptable way to write a letter, and I feel rather ill-behaved if I send a letter to one of my pen pals written in boring, everyday pen. 

The fan at the bottom right was from my grandmother. It is perhaps the most useful of all of these things, as the main character uses a fan extensively in the novel. This fan is by far my favorite, and lives at home. I have a few other fans in my apartment at school, so I can stomp around and figure out exactly what the main character would do with his fan to cast various spells (I'd be more specific, but spoilers!). I have yet to alarm the housemates, which says more flattering things about the housemates than about me. 

The pair of golden spectacles I picked up at an antique store in Maine while visiting the same aunt who was responsible for the inkwell. I found them after I had written the first draft of the novel and was absolutely enchanted because they perfectly fit my mental image of another character's spectacles. They also fit me, which was even better. Even if they made me look like someone's grandmother. 

The fat watch in the corner is a turnip watch. Though a bit later in make than the events of the novel, it gave me a good idea of how heavy a gentleman's watch would have been (seriously it weighs more than my cell phone. I can check email on my cell phone. It really puts modern technology in perspective!). 

Cream Puffs and Hobbits

Today, my mother (the estimable Robin Winter) decided to teach me how to make cream puffs. Unfortunately, no photographs remain of this endeavor  as we were much too preoccupied with chucking the flour into the boiling water and butter and stirring it madly to take pictures. 

The first batch turned out terribly. Due to my father's long running battle against cholesterol, we have used a sort of egg that consists only of egg whites in a box, and this and the dough for cream puffs do not coexist. As a result, we wound up with flat cream puffs the first time around and had to run down to the corner store (a rather funky little place full of foods labeled in Cyrillic and German) and get a dozen eggs.

These did the trick, and we've now got a whole bunch of cream puffs, though three fewer than we made. The first two of these we ate. The third...

"He did it!"

Yeah, we should have learned not to do that by now. 

And while we were doing this, we were watching The Hobbit. Now, I'd seen it in theaters  but my mother hadn't, so I fear her recollection of the film will be broken up by timings for cream puffs (Wargs! "oh wait no time to turn the oven down to 350!") It's a lot of fun, but I have rather mixed feelings about it. 

As a Lord of the Rings fan since about the age of ten, I'm very fond of all the books and the appendices, and oh boy did the writers do their research. It's lovely to be so immersed in that world. But...well, I don't like cliffhanging scenes and sometimes it seems that practicality was sacrificed for the sake of the Wow-Factor--some of the action scenes grew tedious because it was all about people swinging on bridges and falling improbable distances. My impulse with those was to sit there and look at the shiny world that'd been created and wait for the plot to reappear. 

As per my earlier remark, the bad parts outweigh the good, and I'll happily line up for the next premier anyway. But there were a few points where the baking was a nice break from the movie! 

The Unintentional Hiatus

Well, that was rather longer than I planned to go without updating! Unfortunately, school had other ideas. I wound up working in another lab, and it's been spectacular fun. The housemates and I had many nice breakfasts (must upload pictures at some point!) and had many panicked evenings of studying. I also got that nasty coughing cold that's been going around and gave it to the Tolerant Housemate, who has cursed me many times as a result. Said coughing cold has refused to move out, which has done just wonders for my productivity. (Sarcastic? Me?)

But now I'm finished with finals, have bade farewell to the housemates, and am relaxing at home with good food and a lot of cats. 

By a lot of cats, I mean three. But they're all rather high-maintenance and very people-oriented (read, demanding) and so sometimes it seems like we have even more cats than we do. 

The cats. 

After living elsewhere for several months, it's rather an adjustment not to be able to leave food out on the counter! Even peapods aren't safe. Neither is cilantro or anything green and leafy. The black cat will even eat cake, and last New Years, got into someone's spilled champagne, and drank enough he was sick under the table. We've had to be very careful with him and alcohol since.

In novel-related news, I'm just about done with the first round of edits. Release date still seems to be May 1st, so here's hoping that doesn't change! 

The dread Synopsis, Blurbs, Back Cover Copy, and their friends

First things first. Here's the (tentative and possibly subject to more edits) back cover blurb for Weather!

Julian Lambert has protected those with supernatural abilities from enslavement and death his entire life. But there is more to Julian than even he suspects, and when his own powers surface, he finds himself as much at risk as his charges. Now he’s no more than a useful tool, with nowhere to hide from the hideous fate that awaits him. He’s saved others, but can he save himself?

I hate writing the synopsis for a novel. Hell, I don't even know what the proper pluralization for synopsis is. But I hate writing them. By synopsis, of course, I mean the document in which you are supposed to relate all the major plot points and the resolution of the novel in an engaging and witty way so that whomever you're pitching it to can get a good idea of what happens in your novel without actually reading it. Actually, it's at the point where I'm pretty sure I've never written a synopsis that's made it out of the house. 

Blurbs/Back Cover Copy are easier. They're the little description that goes on the back cover of the book. These can actually be fun. Writing one is as close as I ever get to outlining. (I'm one of those awful people who sits down in front of the computer and just types). The way I get ideas for this varies. Two of my favorite inspirations are trailers and anime opening sequences. 

A blurb is more or less a trailer for your book. You stick all the exciting things in it, add a bit of deception, and release it into the wilds in the hopes that it'll make people want to go see it or at least go, "Well, the special effects seem okay..." 

As for anime opening sequences, I find it helpful to think about what an opening sequence for one of my stories would look like. (I have, many times, burst out giggling upon envisioning my characters in one of those slice-of-life type high school dramas, but that fact is neither here nor there...) It helps me figure out which characters I should focus on 'pitching' to my audience, and lets me find a way to make all of them as heroic and exciting as possible. Since a number of my characters fall on the 'sullen and snarky' side of the line, this is important. 

Also they're shiny and flashy. I like shiny and flashy things way too much. 

*Ahem* In any case, blurbs are important, even if they are hugely annoying to write. And since one of my friends has given me a cold, I am going to go drink massive quantities of hot lemon and honey and hope this post made some sort of sense. 

Food, glorious food!

I have been rather ill behaved of late with sporadic posting, but I have an excellent excuse for that, which is midterms. Yay midterms! Also getting things in on time to the publisher, which is just as much of a thing. 

This weekend, facing two imminent midterms and writing-related-work, I kind of...froze. I sat there in front of my computer and decided that not only could I not take another moment of trying to memorize exactly what Romanus IV was doing in 1011 (answer, getting his butt handed to him by Alp Arselan at the Battle of Manzikert because he had left his reinforcements in the hands of an uncle of the child-emperor he was determined to depose), but if I had to puzzle over the exact weight of my main character again I would either scream or crawl under the bed and never come out.

So seizing my tolerant housemate by the arm, I went to the grocery store and then raided the cookbook shelf (my parents, convinced that I would starve without suitable instruction, have given me more cookbooks for my apartment than most people see in a lifetime). 

I then proceeded to go through all of the dozen eggs I'd just bought. The products of this were rewarding, to say the least. 

I must confess, though, I did not make this first one. These are the tolerant housemate's lemon bars, which may have won the award as the best lemon bars ever, even over my mother's! (Sorry mom!)

We baked them in a pie dish, since we do not actually own a small, deep sided pan suitable for lemon bars, brownies, or other such delights (a thing that must be remedied soon. I got another dozen eggs on Tuesday). 

These are cinnamon chocolate chip muffins. Though the flavor was lovely, I have somehow mastered the technique of making the tops of the muffins perfectly tender and their bottoms something akin to cardboard. I blame the fact that I left the wet ingredients in the fridge and the butter congealed and made the dough a funny texture. Moving on. 

 Here are the lemon bars, freed from the wax paper and the pie dish. In future, the wax paper will be omitted. It was...difficult. 

This last one, I cannot take much credit for, as it came from a box. It's an almond sweet bread--think a giant cinnamon roll except with crushed almonds and almond icing. The tolerant housemate loathes almonds, but I love them. (So does my main character in Weather, one of the few things we agree on!) I also added caramel to the center, which was a success, though it did make the bread ooze a little in the oven. 

So now, dear reader, you know how I retained my sanity this weekend. After all the baking, I went back to studying and working on other projects quite happily. It might have been something to do with the lemon bar I was munching. 

Irrelevant reflections before class

...isn't it interesting how, the instant you need to do something requiring the dormitory internet, it goes on the blink? That was last night. It was fun! And by that I mean I went "Stuff this!" and went to sleep instead. 

Or consider socks. I don't know if this is common, but I live in a state of constantly needing new socks. I'm not sure how I do this; I buy enormous quantities of the things, but somehow I never have enough, and all of them have holes in the toes. It's tempting to propose shoe-monsters living in the toes of my sneakers as the culprits. 

Or how the amount of work you get done on a given day is inversely proportionate to the amount of time you have free to get said work done. That's loads of fun too! 

In other words, things are proceeding as crazily as usual and I really ought to be going to class. 

Things to do rather than fret

I've just sent in the first draft of Weather to the editor, and of course I'm now sitting down and realizing all the things I want to fix in it (and would be absolutely mortified for other people to find!). But that's not very useful so I've been doing homework to take my mind off of fretting. 

And lab work. I spent most of this morning in the laboratory with a handlens and huge quantities of enormous bullfrog tadpoles, examining mouthparts and trying to determine the extent of bleaching to said mouthparts. The lab I work in is a lot of fun, as the professor who runs it will turn up every so often with a mess of salamanders or toads and there are turtles absolutely everywhere all the time. I started out working with insects in my first lab, and sea urchins in my second and it's a delight to meet actual vertebrates while doing research. I'm only handling dead critters at this point, though. 

I had lab meeting soon after that, which was full of math but still interesting. I snuck out early when it hit the awkward silence stage as everyone stared at the paper and tried to think up comments about it or made a last minute attempt on the hummus before all of it disappeared. The lab meetings are very well provided for in the food department. 

Then there was home and homework and last minute dinners because we'd expected to go shopping and get dinner out and then didn't (long story). So in the end, I distracted myself fairly well from worrying about whether my manuscript is a complete embarrassment. 

Well, until now. 

Stuff it, I'm going to go play video games. 

Hello!

I'm Isobelle Winter, a student and writer. I've just placed my first book, Weather, a steampunk young adult fantasy novel with Eternal Press, and so have had to dive into the weird and whacky world of online marketing. This seems to involve creating more online accounts than I can shake a stick at, and so the keen observer, peering at the sidebar of my blog, should be able to discern links to terribly fascinating places such as Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook, where one may see the shenanigans I get up to when I ought to be editing, studying, working in the laboratory, or all three.

I like hedgehogs and caramel, the former because they are absurdly cute, the latter because it is delicious. I'm fond of food in general, so I ought to be talking about that a lot. I also hope to post bits and pieces about the whole 'getting published' thing, as soon as I sort my brains out from the surprise of it all!