To everyone, my holiday vacation has begun. This time of year is always busy for myself and the cub. We have numerous family functions, a couple of birthdays, and a New Year’s spectacular to prepare.
While I am on vacation, I have some time to write. I do plan on continuing the Darwin’s Doubt work. Other things have taken my time recently. I joined a writing group with some coworkers. I have always loved science fiction and wanted to write a science fiction book. While I can do technology very well, I’m not so good at characterization, or plot, or all that stuff that makes a book worth reading. Two years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to write a book. I maintained a little over 700 words per day for nearly five weeks. At the end, I trashed 95% of what I had written and started over. I worked until mid-March or so and trashed the rest. Then I decided that blogging was more appropriate for me as a writer.
I ran my first blog (here, if you are curious), for about 15 months. Then I was asked (well, I begged piteously) to join Skeptic Ink. This past October was my one-year anniversary with SIN and I couldn’t be happier. I have a pretty well established group of readers (please share my blog) and quite a few weird hits from random keywords. One of the coolest things that has happened is (thanks to Darwin’s Doubt), I’m in a irregular, but interesting conversations with some great scientists.
But, I still haven’t written my book. And that makes me sad. I’d like, someday, to be invited to TAM, or something like, that to speak and a book might help. Anyway, talking with my friends, we got on the subject of anti-vaxxers. And we talked about it and I told them some things and how the anti-vaxx groups used the same tactics that the creationists developed over the last few decades. And my friend (thanks K.) said, “that sounds like a book to me.” And she was right.
So, I’m writing my book. Christopher Hitchens once said, “Everyone has a book inside them. For most people, that’s where it should stay.” (or something close to that). We’ll see where my book comes on that scale of “New York Best Seller” and “My god, what a waste of electrons”. So my goal over the nearly two weeks I have off, is to write about 15,000 words on the book. I’ve got over 6,000 so far.
With all that in mind, the blogging will continue. Because, apparently, I’m insane.
So, the request line is open. If you have a question, I will be more than happy to make up an answer just for you. Snarky questions may receive a sniff and haughty turn of the head, because it takes me a while to think of really good comebacks.
If you guys just want to babble on and make friends, that’s ok too.
First caller, you’re on, go!
