Monday Link Delights

Some delicious things to begin your week:

First, a wonderful story by Rachel Swirsky, to read free online. If you don't know her work, this is a great introduction. Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia on Tor.com. The line between art and magic is a treacherous thing.

Next, another question and answer session on writing with Ursula K. LeGuin at Book View Cafe's blog. To a young writer asking about success, she responds:

I think the word success confuses people. They get recognition mixed up with achievement, and celebrity mixed up with excellence. I rarely use the word – it confuses me. I didn’t want to be a success, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t set out to write successful books. I tried to write good ones. 

Receiving recognition is very important to a young artist, but you may have to settle for achievement with very little recognition for a long time. You ask about me. I wrote and submitted my work to editors for six or seven years without getting anything published except a few poems in poetry magazines – as near invisibility as you can get in print. It kept me going, though. Then I got two short stories accepted within a week, one by a literary quarterly, the other by a commercial genre magazine. From then on I had some sense of where to send the next story, and began to publish more regularly, and finally placed a novel. Each publication added to my self-confidence. Growing recognition added more. But the truth is, I always had confidence in myself as a writer – I had arrogance, even. Yet I had endless times of self-doubt. I think what carried me through was simply commitment to the job. I wanted to do it. 

Talent is no good without commitment. I’ve had students who wrote very well, but weren’t willing to commit to write, to go on writing, and to go on writing better. But that’s what it takes. 

“Feeling successful” – well, that’s something you have to work out for yourself, what it means to you, how important it is. You’re quite right that very good and highly celebrated writers may not feel “successful.” Maybe they have unhappy natures, and the Nobel Prize would just depress them. Or maybe they aren’t fully satisfied with what they’ve done so far, don’t feel they’ve yet written the best book they could write. But they have the commitment that keeps them trying to do it. 

Hang in there. And don’t push it. No hurry! Writing is a lifetime job.

What is a day without a beautiful galaxy to admire?

Like other flocculent galaxies, this spectacular galaxy lacks the clearly defined, arcing structure to its spiral arms that shows up in galaxies such as Messier 101, which are called grand design spirals. ... In flocculent spirals, fluffy patches of stars and dust show up here and there throughout their discs. ... Sometimes the tufts of stars are arranged in a generally spiraling form, as with this galaxy, but illuminated star-filled regions can also appear as short or discontinuous spiral arms.

Thunderlord news

Today I clicked the Send key and Thunderlord is off to my agent and thence to DAW!

The publication date is tentatively set at August 2016.

Cataract Journey: Post-Op #2

By the time of my second cataract surgery, I was readier-than-ready. I was so tired of not being able to see clearly out of both eyes, which made depth perception – necessary for driving, pouring water from a pitcher, etc. -- impossible. I was excited rather than anxious, an interesting way to approach eye surgery. My first surgery had been quick, painless, and even a little bit fun, especially the psychedelic lights during the femtolaser portion. The gap was only two weeks, so all the surgery prep was still fresh in my mind. By prep, I mean chatting with the anesthesiologist, starting antibiotic and steroid eye drops several days before, fasting the night before. I strongly dislike sedation and had asked to not be sedated the first time. In the past, it’s taken me a solid week to feel really clear-headed after receiving the drug they use. This time, I was able to tell the second anesthesiologist (a different one) how well it had gone and to reiterate my preference. Very often, patients don’t realize their opinions and prior experiences matter, especially when it comes to medication. Just because the “usual” protocol includes a specific drug doesn’t mean it is required. Often, there are alternatives with fewer of the obnoxious side effects.

The second surgery went just as smoothly as the first and I was soon home, sleeping it off. I was struck, as I have many times in the past, at how powerful sleep is in recovery, whether it’s from surgery, an injury, or an illness. Lying quietly is more effective than sitting up, but there is something about sleeping that is even more potent a restorative.

9/11/2015 - A Personal Grief

At this time of year, I often feel out of step with the rest of the country, at least as portrayed by the media and demonstrated by election results. Like just about everyone else I know who's old enough to remember the events of 9/11, I have a vivid memory of how I learned about them. I was driving my younger daughter to high school and we were listening to the news on the car radio. We heard the announcer cry, "The second Tower is down!" and the rest of the story tumbled out. The way the events unfolded reminded me poignantly of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I was in high school in 1963, just about the same age my daughter was on September 11. Listening to the news broadcast with her, I experienced a parallel of my own youthful experience. Once again, the world became to be a dangerous and unpredictable place, but for me it was not the first time. I too responded with a feeling that the world has changed forever, but I also had the memory of having walked through this before -- and not just the Presidential assassination.

For me, Septembers will never be solely about 9/11. Twenty-nine years ago this month, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a neighbor kid on drugs. It was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but only part of a larger tragedy, for his own family had suffered the murder of his older brother by a serial killer some years before. My body knows when the anniversary is approaching, even when my thoughts are distracted. The shift in the quality of the light at summer's end reaches deep into my nervous system. The scar tissue on my heart aches. The ghosts of things that once held the power to drive me crazy stir in the darkness. My sleep becomes fragile, even though I no longer have nightmares. It's a hard time, an intensely personal time.

River Dolphins and Other Amazing Things

Fossil River Dolphins!

Smithsonian scientists have discovered the fossils of a new species of river dolphin that lived more than 5.8 million years ago."While whales and dolphins long ago evolved from terrestrial ancestors to fully marine mammals, river dolphins represent a reverse movement by returning inland to freshwater ecosystems," said study co-author Aaron O'Dea in a statement. "As such, fossil specimens may tell stories not just of the evolution [of] these aquatic animals, but also of the changing geographies and ecosystems of the past."

Pluto in "Enhanced Color"!

The light-colored heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio on the lower right is clearly shown here to be divisible into two regions that are geologically different, with the leftmost lobe Sputnik Planum also appearing unusually smooth.

Nebulae have a lot of funny names. Here's the Prawn Nebula:

A large portion of the ionization in the nebula is done by two O-type stars, which are hot blue-white stars, also known as blue giants. This type of star is very rare as the very large mass of blue giants means that they do not live for long. After only roughly a million years these stars will collapse in on themselves and end their lives as supernovae, as will many of the other massive stars within the nebula.