My friend, the terrific author Janni Lee Simner janni, is offering prizes in connection with the paperback release of her YA novel Faerie Winter.


Faerie Winter is the sequel to Jannie's novel Bones of Faerie. These are the first two books in her Bones of Faerie trilogy. Bones of Faerie is a great book with one of the best opening chapters I've ever had the pleasure to read. While I haven't yet read Faerie Winter, I'm sure it meets the same high standards as the first in the series. Janni Lee Simner's Bones of Faerie series has received high praise from many distinguished authors and reviewers.

I highly recommend you read these books.

The Rules (as posted at http://janni.livejournal.com/780608.html)

- Mention in a blog post, fb post, tweet, tumblr, and/or anywhere else online and publicly visible that Faerie Winter comes out in paperback on April 10 and that it's the sequel to Bones of Faerie (or, alternately, book 2 in the Bones of Faerie trilogy). If you want to say something more about either of the Faerie books, that'd be lovely, though not required.

- Link to the Faerie Winter website

- Come back to [Janni's] post and link to the places you did both of the above

- (optional, for blog entries) Copy these rules (including this one :-)) to your post, and encourage your readers to enter this contest by doing all of the above in turn, and telling them to then to come back to your blog and link to their mention or mentions

- Deadline is April 20 (at midnight Pacific Daylight Time) and [Janni will] ship anywhere. This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

Censorship affects us all.

Today, blogs and sites across America, Canada, and the world are blacked out in protest of two legislative bills proposed in Congress: SOPA and PIPA. These two bills, which Congress claims are intended to stop online piracy, would have disastrous consequences for free speech, online communication, and online commerce.

"Online commerce?" you ask. Yes, online commerce. SOPA and PIPA would overwhelmingly favor big business over small business, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for independent creatives (authors, artists, musicians) to do business online. For an excellent overview of why this is so, read author and reviewer Cheryl Morgan's analysis.

Related articles

• Why We've Censored Wired.com (wired.com)


• STOP SOPA (cyberlaw.stanford.edu)


• SOPA and PIPA (blogs.discovermagazine.com)


• BlackoutSOPA.org - Change your profile picture to protest SOPA! (darioalvarez.net)


• Google Protests SOPA And PIPA By Censoring Logo, Offering Information And A Petition (inquisitr.com)


• What SOPA means around the world - literally (thenextweb.com)

Websites go dark at start of SOPA/PIPA protest (digitaltrends.com)

This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

I'm in the process of building an Etsy store, so I've been spending a fair amount of time on the site learning my way around and delightedly favoriting items I find charming, original, beautiful, or just plain strange.

I've also discovered the Etsy blog, which provides an eclectic window into a diverse range of subjects. Today, I found "Inventing the Cardboard Box,"  by chaps676. I love being able to collect such tidbits of esoterica; they charm my magpie soul with bright and shiny new bits of information and soothe my frustrated pragmatist with the hopeful promise of potential usefulness. This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

I just stumbled upon this year-old blog post and learned that today is World Vegetarian Day and the first day of Vegetarian Awareness Month. Sadly, the blog itself, which was well-written and entertaining, does not seem to be being updated anymore—but, back to the actual point of this post.

Several years ago, my husband decided to give up eating meat. Both of us had previously experimented with vegetarianism—I used to practice what I called "Vegetarian for a Week," figuring that one week out of the month was a moderate approach—so, this was fine with me. Especially, since my husband, who has cooked professionally and for whom food, good food, is a passion, does most of the cooking along with his sons.

Yet, I didn't consider myself a vegetarian at the time. Initially, I kept a little stash of meat products in the fridge for my personal use, but that practice gradually faded away as I found our meatless meals more and more satisfying. Also, at restaurants or when visiting friends, I didn't hesitate to eat animal products. Now, I rarely choose to eat beef or fowl, and find that on those rare occasions when I do indulge, my body protests this invasion. (Factoid: Just as we have special enzymes for digesting milk, we also have enzymes for digesting meat; stop eating meat, and your body will stop producing the enzymes.) The remaining set of creatures I will still eat is seafood; I will, given the opportunity, eat fish, shrimp, and shellfish.

While my husband, who loves animals, chose to become a vegetarian out of a reluctance to contribute any more than is possible to the suffering and death of living creatures, I initially held fast to the belief that, as an omnivore, meat was a normal part of my diet, something which I'd evolved to eat. But, since then, I've realized that I don't need meat to be healthy—in fact, I'm healthier without it—so, my reluctance to give up meat has been a form of denial.

Having acknowledged that I've been in denial about the importance of meat in my diet, the logical next step is, or should be, to resolve that I will never eat meat again. Logical, but not entirely realistic. I know myself too well to feel that I can honestly expect myself to never, ever, ever eat meat for the rest of my life. Still, I won't be eating meat today, or for the next month. If I do eat meat, it will be rarely, with full awareness of the physical consequences for myself, and with the realization that somewhere an animal died, most likely in pain and fear, so that I could have a few moments of gustatory satisfaction.

So, to all you vegetarians, vegans, plant-based diet fans, and, well, yes, to those who still eat meat, Happy World Vegetarian Day!

This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

Today, I've read three blog posts about prejudice back-to-back. The first is a first-hand narrative of an American woman of Arab and Jewish descent, Shoshana Hebshi, who, along with two Indian men, was detained and held by police yesterday. All three were strangers who happened to be seated next to each other on a flight to Detroit, and someone on the plane reported the three individuals as suspicious. The second describes the difficulties authors Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown have faced in their attempts to find representation for their collaboration, which has as one of its characters a young man who is gay, and links to yet another case in which author Jessica Verday was told that her story would be published in an anthology only if she changed the sex of one of the characters, so that a relationship involving that character would be between a male and female, instead of between two males.

Ms. Hebshi's post, Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit, on her blog Stories from the Heartland, is quite upsetting. So far as I can tell from her description of the incident, the police and Homeland Security (I HATE the name of that department!) personnel did what they were required to do without excessive force or deliberate prejudice, but it was clearly prejudice that brought their attention to Ms. Hebshi and the two other passengers who were detained. You can contrast Ms. Hebshi's story with articles detailing the incident in which she was involved and a similar incident on another plane at No charges against 3 detained at Detroit airport and Military jets safely escort NYC, Detroit flights.

It makes me sad and angry to know that ten years after the attack on the Twin Towers, many Americans are not only still living in fear, but with such a strong level of prejudice that they feel the need to see suspicious activity where there isn't any. This is such a sad commentary on what has become of our nation in the last decade. We need to fight prejudice, not imaginary enemies.

In Rachel Manija Brown's and Sherwood Smith's account of censorship regarding LGBTQ characters in a YA novel, one statement jumped out at me: "silence, however well-motivated and reasonable […] allows the problem to flourish." One of those authors, Sherwood Smith, has been a LiveJournal friend of mine for some years. Her posts, often about writing, have consistently been thoughtful and thought-provoking.

It seems crazy to me that now, when we've known for decades that homosexuality is genetic and natural—it is also found in many other species from birds to primates, when people are finally beginning (again, the history is really interesting) to have the legal right to marry, when it's been well-publicized that homosexual teens are at high risk for suicide due to their feelings of isolation and rejection, when electronic books and self-publishing are threatening traditional publishing (so, limiting your books to "safe" books means cutting out yet another chunk of the market), that anyone in the publishing industry thinks they need to censor the sexual orientation of teens. People, get a clue! Homosexuality is neither a character flaw, nor a disease. Kids won't change their orientation, just because they read about characters with a different orientation in a book or story. They won't "catch" a different orientation, just because they read about it.

But, reading books with LGBTQ characters can help LGBTQ teens feel less alone. And, reading books with LGBTQ characters can help straight teens recognize that being gay is neither wrong, nor dangerous. Maybe, just maybe, reading books with LGBTQ characters will save someone's life.

Prejudice. We all experience it; that's part of being human. Treating people right? That's also part of being human, or it should be, and I hope that we, all of us, every single one of my cousins on this planet—and that's all of you, can learn to overcome the impulse to prejudice, and replace that with actions that reflect kindness and respect for everyone.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

Filmaker Astra Taylor was unschooled at home, until she chose to attend high school and college. Here, in her first speech, she discusses what it means to be unschooled, the advantages and disadvantages for individuals, and the consequences for our society of schooling and unschooling.

This video, part of the Walker Art Center Artist Talk series, is quite long, an hour and fifteen minutes, but Astra makes some interesting and astute points about education in and out of formal institutions. Oh, and you can safely skip most of the long introduction by the announcer; the actual talk starts at 0:03:45.

This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

I just ran across the article Hacking science: the intersection of web geeks and science geeks, by Ariel Waldman, on the Scientific American Guest Blog, thanks to someone on Google+ mentioning another article on the blog.

The brain storm of Jeremy Keith, Science Hack Day is a 48-hour marathon event intended to motivate adults to: "Get excited and make things with science!" The first of these events was held in London and the second in San Francisco, last year. This year, events are being planned in cities in Europe and across the North American continent.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is offering ten scholarships to people interested in attending this year's event in San Francisco (November 12-13, 2011) and learning how to organize a Science Hack Day for their communities. The application deadline is September 2, 2011. For links to additional information, including the application, check out the article on the Scientific American Guest Blog.

This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

Thanks, Andrea Kuszewski, for your post on Google+, directing your followers to your Science 2.0 blog post, Don't Shelter Your Children: Coping With Stress As A Child Develops Resilience And Emotion Regulation As An Adult.

It's hard to find the right balance between giving our children the freedom to develop confidence and the shelter they need from truly harmful experiences. Beyond that, it's impossible to truly shelter our children. Life is full of stress and many of the experiences that cause stress are entirely out of control. Certainly, I know that my own children had far more stress in their early lives than I would have chosen for them, most of it arising from issues over which I had very little control. That said, I have recognized a pattern of growing protectiveness from generation to generation in our society. Helen Keller once said, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” In general, children growing up in the first half of the twentieth century (my parents' generation) were far less supervised than I was, and my childhood was less supervised than my children's. This trend toward protectiveness, which I believe has moved into overprotectiveness in many ways, has been paralleled by changes in playground equipment and activities. The "normal" bumps and bruises, and even broken bones, of childhood are no longer seen as acceptable. It's rare to see the tetherballs, jungle gyms, merry-go-rounds, and teeter-totters that were in every park and schoolyard when I was a kid. The trampoline classes I took with my brothers at the YMCA summer camp, are getting to be as rare as hen’s teeth, since most schools and activity clubs have eliminated the trampoline from their equipment, due to the expense of insurance. (Ironically, more families than ever have trampolines in the backyard, which means that kids are actually less safe because they probably aren’t getting the right supervision or training.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of broken bones and I required my kids to wear helmets when they rode their bicycles, and helmets, knee, and elbow pads when they skated on the sidewalk in front of our house. Still, sometimes I wonder if all the emphasis on safety is worth it, when it means our children's lives become more and more restricted.

This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.

I would never set a zoo animal free.

Zoo animals do not know how to care for themselves, so releasing one is very likely to result in its injury or death. In addition, many zoo animals could be a danger to humans, so releasing them could place people at risk. In either case, it's irresponsible and cruel to simply release a zoo animal.

Typically, zoo animals are well-cared for, but if I learned that a zoo animal was being mistreated, I would take legal and/or political steps to end the mistreatment and, if necessary, to move the animal to a facility that would care for it appropriately.

The one exception I would make to this, is that if I were working with a legitimate animal rehabilitation and release program, one that was acting responsibly and within the law to return wild animals to original and appropriate habitats, such as one affiliated with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, I would happily work to reintroduce animals to the wild.

Today's libraries are dynamic and offer much, much more than books. We're very lucky, here in Tucson, to have Liz Danforth (G+) on our library staff, where she has acted as a liaison between the more traditional library world and the gaming world.  A self-described "Librarian-Gamer-Geek," she writes the “Games, Gamers, and Gaming” column for Library Journal. Some of you may also know her from the artwork she's done for games (for example, Wizards of the Coast's "Magic the Gathering") and, if you're at GenCon, you can check out her work in the art show, you lucky person, you.

Here's a small sample of what's going on in the Pima County Public Libraries:

Baker's Dozen: get a taste of what's cookin' on the web

I realize that most of you are far, far beyond needing these beginning web classes, but I also suspect you know someone who could benefit, so I figure this isn't completely irrelevant.

Note: I've linked to the About page, because it lists links to each of the tutorials and also lists the tutorials not yet published.

Worlds of Imagination Sci-Fi/Fantasy Art Contest & Workshops

Teen artists may submit their artwork from August 13th through September 24th at any Pima County Public Library branch to enter the Pima County Public Library's annual Fantastic Creations Art Contest. Winning artwork will be displayed at the Joel D. Valdez Main library during October. In previous years (through 2009?), the awards were handed out at our local science fiction convention, TusCon, but this year: "The winners will be honored at an art grand opening on October 9th. The grand prize winner will have the opportunity to design the poster for next year's summer teen rock concert!"

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Art workshops are taught by professional artists on a wide range of topics.

Well, I'm heading off to watch an episode of Buffy ("Once More with Feeling") and then head to sleep. Y'all have fun, now.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth at pameladlloyd. Feel free to respond at either location.