The Seven-Petaled Shield: I haz author happy smile!

Barb Caffrey of Shiny Book Reviews had glowing praise for The Seven-Petaled Shield.

THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD is spiritually deep in a way I rarely see in fantasy. Ms. Ross did an outstanding job in rendering a strong and quiet woman who takes comfort in books, and shows just how relevant such a heroine can be. (I could live without Zevaron, quite frankly, but I know he’s needed for the sequels.)

Bottom line? THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD is an exceptional epic fantasy, one that’s deep and broad in ways that I’ve rarely seen. More epic fantasy should be like this. Highly recommended!

Buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells, or your local bookseller. 

[link] Art Holcomb on Steps Toward Becoming a Professional Writer

I knew Art Holcomb decades ago -- gosh, have we been around that long? -- and always respected his insight into writing and publishing. He's a guest blogger over at Larry Brooks's "Storyfix" and has some interesting things to say. He doesn't address how to write, but rather the equally important question of what attitudes and habits comprise a professional attitude.

My favorite is Don't Wait For Perfect. Perfect is the enemy of done. And it's also toxic to the creative space so many of us need -- the self-confidence to try new things, but the insecurity to look critically at what we've done. Being a writer (for me, anyway) is a high-wire act, holding that paradox. Perfectionism slams me into paralysis. I have to be willing to be incredibly imperfect in order to take the risks to be great.

Short #BookReviews: The Shop of Lost Things

Lost in the Moment and Found, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

When her father dies, Antsy—too young and playful for her full name, Antoinette—faces a grim choice: to risk the increasingly creepy attentions of her stepfather, or to run away. Chance and fear drive her through a mysterious door—excuse me, Door—to a Shop of Lost Things. It’s a wondrous place, the epitome of the magical antique store, filled with strange objects from magical lands. Soon Antsy herself is visiting those places, beginning with a market where blue-furred people trade in luscious pastries. Soon Antsy suspects all is not benign in the Shop as she ages prematurely. There is a cost to going through a magical Door, a cost in time she can never get back.

With masterful skill, Seanan McGuire takes us on a point-of-view evolution from a bewildered young girl, struggling to come to terms with the loss of the father she adored and the increasingly creepy advances of her new stepfather; to the child adventurer, thrilled by the adventures and mysteries unfolding before her; to the too-soon-grownup, grappling with the loss of innocence and the impossibility of ever going home again. The continuity of voice comes across in perfect balance to its maturation. As usual, McGuire imbues her story with compassion, understanding, and rip-roaring action. And the twist at the end had me both teary-eyed and cheering.

Cheering Each Other On

"When someone does something good, applaud!" said Samuel Goldwyn. "You will make two people happy."

The past few years in the science fiction and fantasy communities (no slight to you horror fans, you can have your share) have been rife with insults, denigration of one another's work, and -- not to put too fine a point on it -- downright nastiness. More than once I have wondered why folks who think that tearing down someone else's book will somehow make theirs better. This is not to say there is no place for literary criticism or personal taste. Not every book that's published qualifies as great literature. I've done my share of scratching my head, clueless as to why a book that did nothing for me has made best seller lists. And there are authors I won't read because I find their public statements, actions, or subtext abhorrent. (When Mein Kampf goes off copyright anon, I doubt I'll purchase a copy.) So the discourse about negative reactions to authors and specific books is complex.

I find the reverse to be quite simple. If I enjoyed a book, I like to praise it. Or a movie, or a piece of music, or a painting, or a dance, or any of the thousand other things that light up my day. It might not be perfect, but a thing doesn't have to be flawless to be enjoyable. When I share my private delight with others, I find it makes me even happier. If the other person also loved whatever it is I'm applauding, that's even better. Curious, how human nature works. We all smile together. Our hearts lift.

And of course, whoever created the thing I'm applauding is happy, too. I've been on both sides -- giving and getting applause. How great is that?

The thing about writing is that so much of it is done in solitude, where our fears and self-doubts multiply in the dark. No matter how thick-skinned we tell ourselves we are, we are not immune to gloom. So instead of looking at another writer's success and thinking, "I suck, I'll never be that good" or "There goes my readership" (or reeling under a review or a rejection letter that compared my work unfavorably to a piece by A Bigger Name -- don't laugh, both have happened to me), I remind myself that no matter who wrote it, the world is a better place with this story in it. I'm a happier reader for having found it. Some day, I'll write a story that makes other people this happy. The other author's success shows me that mine is possible. It gives me hope, as well as something to aim for.

Short #BookReviews: Four Girls in a Majorly Creepy Town

Where Darkness Blooms, by Andrea Hannah (St. Martins/Wednesday)

Bishop, Kansas, appears to be a classic Midwest town, with fields of sunflowers and wind storms that keep everyone hunkered down. But Bishop is no ordinary place, and darker secrets lie beneath. Literally beneath. As in the soil itself, which manifested a lust for human blood a century ago. Since then, raging wind storms keep the town’s population from venturing far afield, those fields being endless stretches of sunflowers that seem to be watching everything that happens.

Today, four girls have banded together, sharing a dusty, broken-down house after their mothers mysteriously disappear. In addition, equally mysterious deaths—always women—including the girlfriend of Whitney, one of the girls. The friends have their own secrets: Jude, Whitney’s sister, had a fling with her friend Delilah’s boyfriend; Delilah can’t stand anyone’s touch, including the boyfriend’s; and Bo’s perpetual anger hides a trauma she can’t speak of. During the memorial for the missing mothers, the storm reveals a terrible secret that sets the girls off on a mission to discover what’s really going on.

With the exception of the (very brief) prolog that establishes the thirst of the soil for blood, the story kept me turning pages, engaged with the characters, alternately terrified for them, rejoicing in their strength and insights, hoping that at least one of them gets a happy ending, and ready to strangle the men than keep them in windy chains. All in all, this was a great read. I’ll be looking out for the author’s next.

[reprint] Mass extinction and the rise of the dinosaurs

 Growing quickly helped the earliest dinosaurs and other ancient reptiles flourish in the aftermath of mass extinction

Eoraptor lunensis lived roughly 230 million years ago, at a time when dinosaurs were small and rare. Jordan Harris courtesy of Kristi Curry Rogers, CC BY-SA

Kristi Curry Rogers, Macalester College

It may be hard to imagine, but once upon a time, dinosaurs didn’t dominate their world. When they first originated, they were just small, two-legged carnivores overshadowed by a diverse array of other reptiles.

How did they come to rule?

My colleagues and I recently studied the fossilized bones of the earliest known dinosaurs and their nondinosaur rivals to compare their growth rates. We wanted to find out whether early dinosaurs were somehow special in the way they grew – and if this may have given them a leg up in their rapidly changing world.

Before dinosaurs – the Great Dying

Life on Earth was flourishing 250 million years ago. Dinosaurs had yet to evolve. Instead, giant amphibians and sail-backed reptiles called therapsids thrived.

But within a blink of geologic time, in a span of about 60,000 years, scientists estimate 95% of all living things went extinct. Known as the Permian extinction or the Great Dying, it is the largest of the five known mass extinction events on Earth.

Most scientists agree this near total die-off was caused by extensive volcanic activity in modern-day Siberia, which covered millions of square miles with lava. The resulting noxious gases and heat combined to push global temperatures dramatically upward, eventually leading to ocean acidification, a loss of oxygen in ocean waters and a profound ecosystem collapse, both on land and in the ocean.

Only a few lucky survivors made it through.

The survivors and their descendants

In the ecological vacuum after the mass extinction event, on the stage of a healing Earth, the ancestors of dinosaurs first evolved – along with the ancestors of today’s frogs, salamanders, lizards, turtles and mammals. It was the dawn of the Triassic Period, which lasted from 252 million years ago to 201 million years ago.

Collectively, the creatures that survived the Great Dying were not particularly remarkable. One animal group, known as Archosauria, started off with relatively small and simple body plans. They were flexible eaters and could live in a wide variety of environmental conditions.

Archosaurs eventually split into two tribes – one group including modern crocodiles and their ancient relatives and a second including modern birds, along with their dinosaur ancestors.

This second group walked on their tiptoes and had big leg muscles. They also had extra connections between their back bones and hip bones that allowed them to move efficiently in their new world.

Instead of directly competing with other archosaurs, it seems this group of dinosaur ancestors exploited different ecological niches – maybe by eating different foods or living in slightly different geographical areas. But early on, the dinosaurlike archosaurs were far less diverse than the crocodile ancestors they lived alongside.

Slowly, the dinosaur lineage continued to evolve. It took tens of millions of years before dinosaurs became abundant enough for their skeletons to show up in the fossil record.

The Ischigualasto Provincial Park in San Juan Province, Argentina, where the earliest dinosaur fossils have been discovered. Kristi Curry Rogers, CC BY-SA

The oldest known dinosaur fossils come from an area in Argentina now called Ischigualasto Provincial Park. Rocks there date back to roughly 230 million years ago.

The Ischigualasto dinosaurs include all three dinosaur groups: the meat-eating theropods, the ancestors of giant sauropods and the plant-eating ornithischians. They include Herrerasaurus, Sanjuansaurus, Eodromaeus, Eoraptor, Chromogisaurus, Panphagia and Pisanosaurus.

These early dinosaurs represent only a small fraction of animals found from that time period. In this ancient world, the crocodilelike archosaurs were on top. They had a wider array of body shapes, sizes and lifestyles, easily outpacing early dinosaurs in the diversity race.

It wouldn’t be until closer to the end of the Triassic Period, when another volcanism-induced mass extinction event occurred, that dinosaurs got their lucky break.

The late Triassic extinction event killed 75% of life on Earth. It decimated the crocodilelike archosaurs but left early dinosaurs relatively untouched, paving the way for their rise to dominance.

Before long, dinosaurs went from representing less than 5% of animals on Earth to constituting more than 90%.

Bones tell the story of growth

My collaborators from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina, and I wondered whether the rise of dinosaurs may have been underpinned, in part, by how fast they grew. We know, through microscopic study of fossilized bones, that later dinosaurs had fast growth rates – much faster than that of modern-day reptiles. But we didn’t know whether that was true for the earliest dinosaurs.

We decided to examine the microscopic patterns preserved in thigh bones from five of the earliest known dinosaur species and compare them with those of six nondinosaur reptiles and one early relative of mammals. All the fossils we studied came from the 2-million-year interval within the Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina.

Eoraptor bone tissue under a polarizing light microscope shows evidence of rapid, continuous growth – common to both the earliest dinosaurs and many of their nondinosaur contemporaries. Kristi Curry Rogers, CC BY-ND

Bones are an archive of growth history because, even in fossils, we can see the spaces where blood vessels and cells perforated the mineralized tissue. When we look at these features under a microscope, we can see how they are organized. The more slowly growth occurs, the more organized microscopic features will be. With quicker growth, the more disorganized the microscopic features of the bone look.

We discovered early dinosaurs grew continuously, not stopping until they reached full size. And they did indeed have elevated growth rates, on par with and, at times, even faster than those of their descendants. But so did many of their nondinosaur contemporaries. It appears most animals living in the Ischigualasto ecosystem grew quickly, at rates that are more like those of living mammals and birds than those of living reptiles.

Our data allowed us to see the subtle differences between closely related animals and those occupying similar ecological niches. But most of all, our data shows that fast growth is a great survival strategy in the aftermath of mass destruction.

Scientist still don’t know exactly what made it possible for dinosaurs and their ancient ancestors to survive two of the most extensive extinctions Earth has ever undergone. We are still studying this important interval, looking at details such as legs and bodies built for efficient, upright locomotion, potential changes in the way the earliest dinosaurs may have breathed and the way they grew. We think it’s probably all these factors, combined with luck, that finally allowed dinosaurs to rise and rule.

Kristi Curry Rogers, Professor of Biology and Geology, Macalester College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Book Review: A Tour-de-Force Debut from Emily Tesh

Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom)

After a devastating alien attack destroys Earth, a handful of survivors cling to the hope of revenge on Gaea Station, a satellite cobbled from the few remaining warships. A generation later, young people have been genetically modified and rigorously trained to be “warbreed” fighters, huge, strong, and…obedient. Normal human teens are assigned to other tasks churning out babies to keep humankind going. Warbreed Kyr (Valkyrie) has spent her entire life training to face “the Wisdom,” the reality-shaping alien weapon that doomed Earth. She excels in every physical test, she drives her lesser mess-mates mercilessly, and she has no emotional ties to anyone except her brother. She fully expects to be given a prized post…but Command has other ideas. Instead, her brother is sent on a death mission and she is consigned to the Nursery to bear sons for Gaea Station until she dies an early death.

At first, I found Kyr a highly unsympathetic character. She’s arrogant, entitled, and generally a self-centered bully. She’s unthinkingly cruel to the helpless young alien whose ship is captured. In short, I didn’t like her at all. But I kept reading on the strength of the prose and the hope that she would eventually get her comeuppance. And then the plot spins around in another direction…and yet another…

Refusing her Nursery assignment, Kyr ends up on the run with her brother, the alien, and her brother’s unrequited crush, a brilliant but psychopathic computer whiz (who is also a boy, but queer relationships are forbidden on Gaea Station because of the crushing need to increase the human population.)

Their flight takes them to a planet inhabited by both humans and aliens, where lush green, fresh air, blue skies, and joyful play contrast with the bleak sterility of her previous life. Not only that, she encounters her older sister, who was supposed to be dead, and her nephew, fathered by the autocratic Commander whom Kyr had once worshipped. Faced with the undeniable reality that the universe is vaster and more wonderful than she imagined, Kyr begins to question everything she has been taught, even her own memories. She starts asking who she would be if Earth had not been destroyed or if the Commander had not been a power-hungry tyrant bent on retaliation. If she’d grown up in an enriched, natural environment. If she’d been allowed to love anyone—starting with herself.

By this time, I was thoroughly hooked. With each deviation from the opening scenario, the entire universe changes—and Kyr with it. The author brilliantly takes us inside each iteration of Kyr, the good and the bad, the memories and the blindnesses. It’s a tour-de-force that kept me turning pages and falling in love with a true heroine.