Top tips for young writers – from past winners of the young writer award
How do you get started on a writing career?
Read more here.
How a Reader Turns Into a Writer
What turns a reader into a writer?
We must understand that all writers are, and will always be, a reader first.
Read more here.
Real (historic) people
Serenissima made me consider if there is a historic character I (might) want to get involved with. It struck me that it’s really hard to tell, even if I’m sure no one will show up and demand I actually get involved with the guy in question. Haha.
Actually, it’s probably about the same with some real life celebrity. How can I tell if he’s actually as great in real life as he seems to be in the media?
I did come to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t want to be involved with Shakespeare, at least not judging by the famous portrait. Not really my type.
In fact, it would probably be easier to simply consider if I would like to meet one of these characters in real life. Just to talk to. Or even just to see from a bit of distance. That would be a little easier. If so, Shakespeare would be on my list, I think. I’ll add the Roman emperor Trajan too, I think (though the culture shock would probably be enormous). Then Raoul Wallenberg, just because I happened to think of him. Even this is really hard to tell. Who would be interesting to meet?
And since it’s just a matter of meeting and talking or even seeing someone from a distance, I’ll have to add women too. Why not?
So maybe Anne Frank, though I’ve read that she might not have been the sort of girl I’d like to get to know. A bit too outgoing for my taste.
Maybe Jane Austen. George Bernard Shaw. Possibly Christine de Pizan. If I’m looking this far back in time, I’ll say Corinna too, since that’s one of my ‘idols’ too. LOL. Maybe Joe Hill. I hear he was very handsome. But maybe he was a bastard to women. And maybe even if we for some magical mysterious reason were to find ourselves in the same time, he’d probably never look at me twice.
Serenissima by Erica Jong
I can’t believe I’ve forgotten about this book. Of course it’s been ages since I read it, but today I suddenly remembered and looked it up on Goodreads. As so often happens, there were mixed reviews. What I remember of this book was great. I loved it. Most people seemed to find it really awful. I wonder why.
I loved the time travel. The erotic content was ok, but since then I’ve read a lot of fan fiction and slash so I think if I read it again I might find it rather tame. Or not. I really need to find the book and try again.
This isn’t really a review, more a sort of brief note to myself. If I find the book I’ll definitely read it again and then I’ll probably write a proper review.
Oh and the edition I posted on Booklikes and Leafmarks is not the actual edition I read. Mine was translated into Swedish and I think it came as a freebie on the big annual book fair. When I was a kid, we got actual printed books as freebies sometimes. 
Post on Wattpad or not?
I’m still considering posting more of my original fiction on Wattpad. The two main drawbacks are getting cover images for all the stories and the fact that I’m having trouble getting my new account to work. I still can’t figure out how a story could go from having six readers to just one without ‘unpublishing’ in between. Oh, well. The mysteries of the internet. I’m sure there’s a ‘secret’ to how you get people to read your stories on Wattpad (apart from the advice the support page gives you). Surely it can’t just be that the people who get many readers have many friends?
My sister tells me that she’s posted her stories on G+ many times, but no one even reads them. When someone else among her circles (?) says he’s maybe going to write a story some time everyone starts commenting that they would love to read it and buy it when it becomes available (or rather if it becomes available). I don’t really get that. When I decide to read something it’s because I think I’ll enjoy reading it, not because I want to stay on the good side of someone I know. Or am I the weird one here? I mean, sure, if a very good friend asked me to beta read something she/he had written, I’d love to help out, but I think that’s different.
Actually, I’m also wondering if I will get any more readers of these stories just because I post them on Wattpad as well as on my own site. Most people who come to my fan fiction (which is also my more ‘adult’) site, seem to be interested in fan fiction, not original fiction. They don’t give any feedback there though. The only feedback I’ve had over the years have been on fan fiction archives like AO3. It’s possible to leave comments on my wordpress homepage so I don’t see why people don’t. I’ve had that site for many more years than I’ve had my account on AO3. Nowadays, people can also ‘like’ posts and pages on my homepage. It’s just that people don’t seem to consider that option at all. Not that they have to. I’m just wondering.
NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks
Satellite photographs from 430 miles above Kazakhstan reveal colossal geometric figures that remain puzzling and largely unknown.
Read more here.
Ice Age engravings found at Jersey archaeological site
A dig in Jersey yields a stash of hunter-gatherer artefacts, including engraved stones which may pre-date all known ancient art in the British Isles.
Read more here.
Science fiction predicting future technology…
Hardly anyone can have missed all the articles that check off the hits and misses when it comes to predictions about technology from Back to the Future.
That started me thinking about books I’ve read and how many of those, or rather how few, that have relatively accurately predicted the time we live in today.
Since I grew up with a major sf fan I have inherited as many of dad’s old sf books as I wanted. Many of those are from the 1950’s and on.
Surprisingly many of all these books got most of today’s technology wrong.
A big exception is Arthur C Clarke who apparently has predicted so many things – not necessarily the things we use from day to day, but still, quite a bit.
I can’t say how many books supposedly set in the ‘future’, ie the 21th century, have completely missed the evolution of the personal computer, cell phones and the internet, many of them also television. Also, family structure is still stuck in the 1950’s. I found it quite funny that space ships were run by a big ship’s computer, but there was nothing else remotely ‘computerized’. There was also just one expert aboard the ship who could handle that computer – the astrogator, I think he was called. And of course it was always a ‘he’.
You’d think they would have been able to think of anything related to computers, but apparently not. There are references to ‘the cold sleep’ or ‘the long sleep’ (some kind of stasis or suspended animation), FTL-ships, all kinds of robots, clones, time travel and so on, but not computers, internet or cell phones.
However, there’s a big exception that I found really interesting. My dad had two sf books by a Russian-Swedish author named Vladimir Semitjov. He came to Sweden in 1923, so either his books were quite old when dad got his hands on them or he wrote them quite late in life – or maybe both. Anyway, they contain references to ‘video phones’ that people carry in their pockets and that is about the only time I’ve ever read anything like it in the sf classics.
I can’t say for sure if anyone has got the PC and the internet right – not out of all those older books, I think. Books written from the 1980’s and on do better, but of course that’s not all that surprising.
Skeleton of ancient warrior and hoard of treasure found in 3,500-year-old tomb
US archeologists found the wooden coffin of the unknown soldier on the Peloponnese peninsula, with jewellery, a bronze sword and ivory combs inside.
