Author Archives: lydias

About lydias

I'm a sci-fi writer who loves lifting weights and hates eating Brussels sprouts.
January 7, 2017 · 8:15 am

Suggestion Saturday: January 7, 2017

Here is this week’s list of comic strips, short stories, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

Real Estate and Time. There’s a lot of truth to this.

Learning Japanese via Krista_Quintana. What an interesting phenomenon. I wonder how common it is?

Is Seasonal Affective Disorder a Real Thing? How to Slay the SAD Beast. All of the advice in this article was excellent.

Scrooge Through the Ages. Now I want to go reread some books to see if I still get the same messages from them.

Jump Scares (Scared of Being Scared) via SGraves612. I’m neutral on the topic of jump scares. If they’re done well, I enjoy them.  What I found interesting about this post was how much thought the author put into what we find frightening and why some people enjoy getting scared.

Embrace 2017 with Positivity via ef1919. I liked this.

From I Remember the Future:

I remember the future.

The future was glorious once. It was filled with sleek silver spaceships, lunar colonies, and galactic empires. The horizon seemed within reach; we could almost grasp the stars if we would but try.

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January 5, 2017 · 1:00 am

Rest Days Aren’t Optional

It’s been a few weeks since I blogged about fitness. I stuck to my exercise routine pretty well during the holidays. (My diet, though, definitely had more treats included it than normal).

On a recent rest day, I thought about an experiment I did last summer that turned out to be a bad idea.

The Experiment 

You see, I wasn’t satisfied with my progress last summer. I wanted to grow stronger more quickly.

The idea I came up with was to work a different part of my body every day of the week without taking any days off. I thought I might be able to rest my arms while doing bodyweight and free weight exercises to strengthen my legs. If it was successful, it could have been a way for me to build muscle faster than I was currently doing.

It lasted about a week before I ended up pulling a muscle in my back and needing to take time off to recuperate. Luckily, it was a minor injury that only needed time to heal.

Spoiler alert: pulled muscles aren’t fun! Boy, was that a silly thing to do. Instead of growing stronger, I had to stop lifting weights altogether for a week or two while I healed.

Bodies Need to Rest

What I didn’t think about was the fact that weightlifting doesn’t only exercise the one set of muscles that you’re focusing on for a particular workout.

Your legs still need to keep you upright, and your core muscles still need to help you maintain the right form in order to prevent injury and to help you get the most out of your workout. Often your arms also still need to hold the weights or prop up a certain part of your body as well depending on what kind of routine you’re doing.

It is so important to give all of these muscle groups enough time to rest and recover. If one of them is injured or overworked, your entire body will feel the effects of that.

Minds Also Need to Rest

The other thing I noticed during my experience was how mentally tiring it was to lift weights every single day. It was a more subtle effect, but it is something that bothered me a little as I woke up every morning and realized that I needed to strengthen another part of my body.

One of the most interesting things about this effect was that it wasn’t something I’d expected to happen. I was prepared for the possibly that my body wouldn’t like this change for any number of reasons, but I never would have guessed that my mind would also find it difficult.

It turns out that rest days aren’t optional after all. Everyone needs them!

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January 2, 2017 · 1:00 am

What I Read in 2016

booksI’ve been keeping track of every book I read for the last four years. Over half of the books I read were for a review site that I volunteer at under a pseudonym, so I omitted their titles from this post for privacy reasons.

The number of books I read overall was somewhat smaller than usual. I started plenty of them, but I didn’t finish as many as I normally do.

The number of biographies I read increased dramatically. It’s fascinating to read about how other people lived their lives. I was especially interested in how they handled failure and other life challenges. You can learn a lot about someone by seeing how they fixed problems in their lives that seemed insurmountable.

My poetry numbers were down. I normally love this genre, but I had a lot of trouble finding good stuff to read in it this year.

Everything else seemed to stay roughly even. They vary a little every year, of course, but they felt pretty constant to me.

Here is the final list:

Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs
“A Girl from Yamhill” by Beverly Cleary
“Sins of the Family” by Felicity Davis
“Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some” by Chris Edwards
“Hidden Lives” by Margaret Forster
“Beautiful Child” by Tory Hayden
“Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things” by Jenny Lawson
“A Child Called Hope” by Mia Marconi
“Empty Hands” by Sister Abigail Ntleko
“Mary Janeway” by Mary Pettit
“Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” by Doris Pilkington
“Writing My Wrongs” by Shaka Senghor
“Unsweetined” by Jody Sweetin
“The Game Changer: A Memoir of Disruptive Love” by Franklin Veaux
“Raising Ryland” by Hillary Whittington
“A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles” by Mary Elizabeth Williams
History
“The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson
“The Day the World Came to Town”  by Jim Defede
“How to Be a Victorian” by Ruth Goodman
“The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson” by Gregory Klages
“The Indifference of Tumbleweed” by Rebecca Tope
Mainstream Fiction
“Midden-rammers” by John Bart
“Christmas Rose” by Marjorie Farrell
“My Notorious Life: A Novel” by Kate Manning
“I Will Send Rain” by Rae Meadows
“Noah’s Child” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Poetry
“Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot
Science Fiction and Fantasy
“MaddAdamm” by by Margaret Atwood
“Troll Bridge” by Neil Gaiman
“Woman on the Edge of Time” by Marge Piercy
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling
“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J.K. Rowling
“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling
“The Martian: A Novel” by Andy Weir
Science and Medicine
“Too Much of a Good Thing” by Lee Goldman
“A Life Everlasting” by Sarah Gray
“The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health” by David R. Montgomery
“How to Clone a Mammoth” by Beth Shapiro
“Push Back” by Amy Tuteur
Sociology and Psychology
“Our Iceberg is Melting” by John Kotter
“Fast Food” by Andrew F. Smith
“Hair” by Kurt Stenn
“The Novia Scotia Home for Coloured Children” by Wanda Taylor

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December 31, 2016 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: December 31, 2016

Suggestion Saturday Dec. 31Happy New Year!

Here is this week’s list of poems, comic strips, essays, and other stuff from my favourite corners of the web.

Just like last week’s Suggestion Saturday, this one is bigger than usual. I couldn’t narrow it down any more than I already have, and several of the links are to things that only take a short amount of time to read anyway.

Cozy, Cozier, Coziest. Welcome to winter.

The Death of a Silvery Blue Spruce via jdubqca. It’s that time of year again when the curbs are filled with forgotten Christmas trees. It always makes me a little sad to see them sitting there.

A New Year’s Eve in Wartime. This was written during World War I, but it somehow feels fresh and new to me.

Happiness. I couldn’t stop giggling at this.

Ways Animals Cope with the Cold. Who else has wondered how wild animals deal with bitterly cold temperatures at this time of year? I thought this article was fascinating.

Best Books I Read in 2016 via ajh_books. This was such a great list of recommendations. I’ve added a lot of these books to my list of things to read in 2017, but I do agree with this blogger that “The New Jim Crow” is a must-read.

Flurries via SylvesterPoetry‬. I can’t think of a better way to end a long day than to do something like this.

New Year’s Resolution Generator. Which resolution from this list will you pick?

Coping with Trump’s Win: A Psychotherapist’s Guide. This was excellent.

Toni Morrison: Fear of Losing White Privilege Led to Trump’s Election. As was this.

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December 29, 2016 · 1:00 am

The Cupboard Mice: A Parable

Mice_(1)

A family of mice once lived in a drafty old farmhouse.

“They’re going to set a trap and we’re all going to die!” the oldest mouse squeaked every time someone forgot the rules: no squeaking, don’t leave droppings on the dishes, and never capture the cat’s attention. No one remembered what a trap was any longer, only that it was something terrible people did when they noticed mice.

As the family grew it became more difficult to follow the rules.

“We’ll be safe in this house if we teach the young mice that cheese is forbidden,” the oldest mouse insisted every time the humans shuffled into the kitchen. They’d lived in this farmhouse for decades and had begun to have trouble moving around.

A young mouse asked, “What makes you think there’s any danger? The humans don’t even seem to know we exists.”

“Not yet,” said the oldest mouse. “But the cat can smell us. Why do you think we avoid his territory?”

The young mouse wasn’t sure she believed it was that dangerous and decided to explore the rest of the house. The cat in question was old and docile.

“You’re all going to die!” insisted the oldest mouse as the rest of her nestlings slowly moved out of the kitchen and closer to the radiators. The humans had grown accustomed to leaving dirty plates on the floor and so the wanderers had food and a warm place to sleep during the long winter. Soon she was the only mouse left in the kitchen.

Every week or two the younger mice came to visit. She always made sure they knew how dangerous their lives had become since moving away. Some of her visitors smiled politely and nibbled the stale crackers she provided, others tried to gently reason with her. No one could change her mind, though, and she died at the first flush of spring without any of her warnings coming to pass.

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December 26, 2016 · 1:00 am

Why You Should Read Books Outside of Your Favourite Genres

pexels-photo

My first literary love is the science fiction and fantasy genre, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing I ever read.

Today I wanted to talk about why it’s such a good idea to read books from a wide range of genres.

It Introduces You to New Ideas

Non-fiction is a wonderful example of this. One of the reasons why I read so much of it is that it spends a lot of time exploring why and how people can change the way a society operates.

For example, a history of a specific war may talk about difficult decisions government officials made that either helped or hurt their cause. Smart, rational people make terrible and wonderful choices for all kinds of complex reasons that can’t be boiled down to a pithy paragraph or two.

I’ve often thought about the dilemmas those historical figures while I’m working on my own stories or when I’m trying to figure out a problem in my personal life. You can learn a lot about life and how humans behave by paying attention to how people solved problems in the past.

It Changes the Way You Look at the World

Reading a wide variety of books gives you glimpses of all kinds of things that you’ll never experience in your daily life, from what life was like ten thousand years ago to how people live on the other side of this planet.

Life is also rarely a black-and-white experience. My favourite part of jumping from one genre to the next is how it changes the way I look the exact same scene depending on which literary lens I just finished wearing.

A sunny meadow could be the site of a amorous picnic in a romance novel, the final resting place of the bad guy in a horror novel, or the setting for a groundbreaking archeological discovery in a memoir.

The more genres you read, the more possibilities you’ll be aware of the next time you happen to walk past a pretty field of flowers and wonder what’s happened there in the past.

booksIt Helps You Find Hidden Gems

There have been multiple times when I happened to pick up a book from a genre I don’t usually read and was surprised by how much I loved it.

Had I made a strict rule about never reading about X, I would have spent my whole life not knowing what I was missing.

For example,  I read Robin Mather’s “The Feast Nearby: How I Lost My Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found My Way By Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)” several years ago after a friend recommended it.

I am not the kind of person who is into farming, eating organic food, or raising livestock, but I still deeply enjoyed this author’s stories about all of the struggles she faced as she adapted to her new lifestyle. Some of her stories were seriously hilarious! I found myself rooting for her to find a happy ending even as I chuckled at the mistakes she made along the way.

It Gives Your Brain a Workout

I’ve been reading science fiction for so long now that I can usually predict where a storyline is going long before the characters have any clue what’s happening to them. There are certain plot devices that are used so regularly in this genre that it’s pretty easy to spot them once you’ve read a enough books that happen to include them.

The nice thing about dabbling in other genres is that you generally aren’t as familiar with the tropes or other plot devices that they use. When I first started reading mysteries, for example, I’d often overlook small but important clues in the first scene because I wasn’t used to needing to pay such close attention to little details like whether the butler was right or left-handed or what time of day the neighbour said she’d seen the suspect leaving the victim’s house.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to give another genre a try the next time you’re rummaging around at the bookstore or library and trying to figure out what to read next. There are so many amazing stories out there waiting to be discovered!

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December 24, 2016 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: December 24, 2016

Suggestion Saturday Dec. 24Here is this week’s list of poems, comic strips, videos, and other stuff from my favourite corners of the web.

Everything in this post is somehow related to Christmas, winter, or the holidays in general. Whatever you’re celebrating at this time of year, I hope it’s a wonderful day for you.

Christmas for One via jdubqca. If this is your idea of a wonderful holiday, I hope you get it this year! There have been times when I’ve loved having a nice, quiet day at home during the holidays.

Santa Came. I remember doing this when I was a kid. It’s hard not to when you’re young and excited.

Krampus: The Christmas Devil of Alpine Folklore via DeeDeeChainey. Okay, this was kind of creepy in a good way. I’d heard of the word Krampus before, but I knew basically nothing about Perchtenlauf or what this festival is supposed to do.

A Christmas Carol of Vitamin D Deficiency. There are two reasons why I’m sharing this with you. The first reason is that I loved the conclusion this author made about what might be wrong with a certain character from a famous Christmas story. The second reason is that I want all of you to take good care of yourselves. Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common in the northern hemisphere, especially at this time of year.

Hints on How to Gather Information at That Holiday Gathering via VHughesAuthor. Do any genealogists follow this site? I’d say these tips are equally useful for anyone who wants to ask potentially sensitive or complicated questions this holiday season.

The First Sleigh Ride. Did you know that the technology to make film existed and was being used in the 1890s? I had no idea it had been around for that long until I saw this clip from 1897. It’s incredible to have this moment of history preserved forever like that.

A Trump Carol via maryjrowen. You can probably guess what this is about before clicking on the link. It was fantastic, though.

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December 22, 2016 · 1:00 am

Writing Influences: J.R.R. Tolkien

One RingThis is the first in a series of posts I’ll be sharing about the authors and books that have influenced my writing style in some way.

When I was a kid, my uncle gave me a copy of The Hobbit as well as copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It took a couple of years for me to grow into The Lord of the Rings, although I loved The Hobbit immediately.

Hobbits seemed like my kind of people. They were peaceful, bookish, and loved even the simplest meal as long as it was hearty and filling. They weren’t particularly interested in glory or in being the centre of attention. I often daydreamed about how much fun it would be to live among them.

What I liked the most about Tolkien’s stories, though, were the details. He’d stop in the middle of a scene to describe the long history of the building the characters were visiting or exactly what the land around them  looked like.

While I’ll admit that this strategy did slow down the pacing of the plot in some places, it also gave me extremely clear mental images of the settings . Even today I can close my eyes and see exactly what those places looked, sounded, and in some cases smelled like. It’s as though I’ve visited them myself instead of read about them in books, and that’s pretty amazing considering how long its been since I’ve read those passages.

As an author, I don’t include as many details about the setting in my stories as Tolkien did. I prefer to let my audience imagine certain details for themselves, although I do try to pick a few specific things to focus on when I’m describing where my characters are. There’s definitely something to be said for taking a moment away from the main conflict of the story to show what the main characters are sensing at that exact point in time. It can be a very powerful way to draw a reader into the conflict and help them empathize with the characters they’ve been following.

This is something I do in real life as well. Some of my strongest memories of certain events exist because I took a minute to emotionally step away from what was happening and absorb all of the sights and sounds around me.  It’s amazing to see what kinds of things you’ll notice when you take the time to pay attention to everything that’s happening around you.

Have you ever tried to drink in every sight and sound around you in a particular moment?

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December 19, 2016 · 1:00 am

Staying Mindful During the Holidays

santa-claus-christmas-beard-celebration-41963We’re quickly sliding into the busiest time of year for retailers and shoppers alike.

I’ve been spending some time watching strangers rush around at the mall lately. If you’re not struggling to find those last few presents, it can be a fascinating way to use up half an hour or so of your time.

There are people who seem to love the thrill of shopping and jumping from one event to the next, people who are unbelievably stressed by all of the things they’re expected to do and to attend, and people who barely give any outward indications of how they feel at all.

If I could gather them all in the same room and talk to them about remaining mindful during what is the busiest time of the year for many people, this is what I would tell them.

It’s Okay to Say No

Several years ago, I unintentionally overheard a woman talking about how tired she was of buying presents for so many different people. She had no idea what to get for any of them and didn’t enjoy the process of searching multiple stores to find something that they might not even end up needing or liking.

I wish someone could have told her that it’s okay to say no to gift exchanges, parties, reunions, and other events if they don’t bring anything positive to your life.

There’s a decent chance that at least one other person in that group feels the same way and is wishing they could find a way to simplify their life. Mentioning how you feel could be doing them a big favour!

Even if you turn out to be the only one who wants to stop or change how things are being done, being honest about what you’re feeling in this exact moment is still a good idea.

Don’t Forget to Breathe

I have a meditation app that prompts me  to stop and focus on my breathing for one minute twice a day.

reflection-water-canal-mirroring-70574Since I started using it, my average resting heart rate has gone down a little bit. I’ve also been feeling more peaceful than I was before I began this habit.

You don’t have to spend a great deal of time meditating in order to benefit from it. While I am definitely planning to get back into longer sessions in 2017, it’s nice to take these short breaks and focus on the moment regardless of where I am or what I’m doing.

I am not a big fan of the huge crowds that form at this time of year. Meditation helps me relax when I’m in a situation where I’m surrounded by them.

Ignore the Hype

One of the other things I dislike the most about this season is how hard advertisers push to convince us that buying stuff is the secret to happiness and family harmony.

While I understand that this is a critical time of year for their bottom lines, ignoring the hype is an important part of staying mindful during the holidays.

Since I don’t have cable, Youtube is where where I see most of the ads in my daily life. A while ago they started forcing viewers to watch at least a portion of them before you could watch certain videos. There are times during the year when I’m willing to watch them, but I’ve been trying to cut down on how much time I spend on that site because I really need a break from advertisements for a while.

The nice thing about reducing the number of ads you see is that it can also reduce your number of must-have items. For example,  I find myself wanting fewer electronic devices and specialty food items when I haven’t given companies a lot of opportunities to market them to me.

Sometimes what you tune out is as important as what you tune into.

May the holiday season be a peaceful and joyful one for all of you!

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December 17, 2016 · 1:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: December 17, 2016

dog-christmas-xmas-bulldog

Here is this week’s list of comic strips and other stuff from my favourite corners of the web. It is larger than normal because I kept finding wonderful links and I couldn’t bear to trim any of them out.

The Surprise. This modern twist on a classic fairytale made me grin.

Tis the Season for…Charity Scams via LenieHokansson. Be careful out there, everyone. Giving is wonderful, but you have to stay alert for swindlers.

Why Gandalf Never Married. I don’t read enough traditional fantasy novels to know if this is still true, but I really enjoyed how much effort Terry Pratchett put into thinking through everything logically and humorously.

The Fever’s Logic. Think of this the next time you get sick. While I hope all of us stay healthy this winter, this is a funny take on why the body responses to certain illnesses the way it does.

Grief and the Holidays via CassidySpringf2.  I hope that none of you are dealing with grief during the holiday season, but this blog post is a wonderful read if you are.

Why Do We Lie to Kids So Much? This is a short but thought-provoking read. My siblings and I didn’t grow up believing in Santa. I married someone who wasn’t raised with that cultural belief either, so the whole idea of lying to a child when he or she begins to ask logical questions about how the North Pole works has always felt weird to me.

It Matters. The final panel was the best one. I couldn’t stop laughing at it.

From Can Reading Save the Human Species? via lisaorchard1:

There are 7.4 billion people on our planet today. Keep in mind we only have one planet. According to experts, our planet’s capacity is 9 billion people. We’re living longer and still reproducing. We need to do something fast. The earth is getting crowded. So what can we do?

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