Lydia Schoch

ONE MAN’S LOSS from Philip Sansom on Vimeo.

The less you know about this story in advance the more I suspect you’ll enjoy it.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

put an egg on your table / / if it doesn’t shake you may be safe or –  via cmschoenfeld. I know I’ve been sharing a lot of poetry on Suggestion Saturday lately, but I keep running into such great ones. The imagery in this poem is fantastic.

This Little House of Mine. This a series of short essays about the difference between Laura Ingalls Wilder’s real life and stories she included in the Little House books. I was such a big fan of her work as a child that my parents set aside an entire day out of one of our family vacations to visit her house/museum in Missouri. Reading about how much certain aspects of her life were tamed down, omitted, barely hinted at, and possibly even fabricated altogether makes me want to reread all of her books. It would be interesting to experience her adventures again as an adult whose knowledge of late 19th century history is much broader than it was my first time through them.

Who Were the First Teenagers? I really enjoy this kind of historical analysis.

What’s the Evidence on Using Rational Argument to Change People’s Minds? via lilithsaintcrow. There’s some really fascinating information about how all of us behave in this essay. It’s important to acknowledge that no one is immune from these things.

I Did a Bad, Bad Thing via dlboonstra. A touching post about the importance of having compassion for yourself.

From The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show:

When you’re young, you emulate people you think are cool (particularly, people who look like you), and this game of pretend ultimately shapes your aesthetic and values, if you find a shape that fits.

Combat Doctor is the memoir of an ER doctor’s experiences working for the Canadian military in Kandahar. It’s a highly stressful job due to the large volume of patients and the horrific injuries both soldiers and civilians suffer.

One of the most memorable stories involves an extended family that suffers terrible injuries when they stopped to get a drink while travelling together in what they thought was a safe area. It’s hard to say much more about what happens to them without giving away spoilers, but I really enjoyed the detailed descriptions of what it takes to keep a badly wounded person alive. This is not for the faint-hearted, but it is something I’d recommend to anyone who likes reading about what goes on behind the scenes in medical settings.

What have you been reading?

My new short story, Tumble, is now free to download from Kobo. I plan to publish to Kindle and iBooks in the future as well, but they both require a bunch of tax information that will take some time to collect so I’m starting with Kobo, which is also a great ebook option (aside from some technical difficulties with the actual publishing process, apparently). If you haven’t used Kobo before, you can install it for free on nearly any device (iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, PC, etc.). You can also purchase a dedicated Kobo eReader if you prefer an actual physical eReader.

The formatting of the title page may look a little off if you’re reading it on a smaller screen (such as a smartphone). We fixed all of the other bugs but weren’t able to take care of this one (well, not if I wanted to get it published this week anyway). The entire story is there, though!

Tumble is DRM-free, so you should be able to upload it to most ebook devices (definitely to any Kobo-compatible devices). I’d like to thank Daphne Purpus and Drew Costen for reading early drafts of my story,  giving such helpful suggestions, and other editing contributions.

One of my favourite things about reading science fiction short stories is learning about the experiences that sparked such creativity in these authors.

When I was a teenager, my family moved into a beautiful old house that was about a hundred years old. My bedroom was on the second story. Like Elle’s room, it faced a small backyard that we quickly converted into a garden.

A loud boom startled me in the middle of the night. It took me a long time to get back to sleep after that happened, and in the morning I walked out into the garden to see if anything had been damaged. Everything looked strangely normal, although I did find a little, green marble nestled in the soil.  I brought it inside and washed it off (and still own it to this day).

It hadn’t been there the day before, and by this point my younger brothers were a little too old for toys.

The mysterious marble I found

Such an old house had probably watched dozens of children grow up in it. The most rational answer is that one of them lost his or her marbles in the backyard years earlier and surfaced as a result of my parents digging around to make a garden.

What if that wasn’t what actually happened though?

Download Tumble for free from Kobo

Photo by Chaojoker.

Cross your fingers! We think we have all of the bugs worked out with the publishing site.

I just resubmitted Tumble to it. I won’t make any promises about the turnaround time, but I’ll share a link to the story as soon as it’s ready.

All we need to do in the meantime is hunker down with a fluffy friend and hope everything comes out ok. 🙂

I’ll share the next eBook update this evening. In the meantime, this is a fascinating TED talk about why it’s so important to have compassion for yourself.

It’s just as important as having compassion for other people.

Photo by Keraj1976.

I’ve decided to share daily updates until Tumble is actually available for download. This is a frustrating situation, but I’m making the best of it with cute bunnies. 🙂

We’ve figured out that the problem is due to a glitch in the publishing site I’m using. The first workaround didn’t work entirely, but the techs are busy helping us figure out what to try next. The good news is that the turnaround time for their responses has been excellent.

I hope tomorrow’s update will have more information for everyone!

The tech support people I’ve been talking to have been very helpful. I won’t promise anything until I know for sure, but it looks like Tumble will be released in the next few days.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this eager little bunny who can’t wait to read it. 😉

Bunny via technohell and lovelylops.

Due to technical difficulties with the ebook system I was planning to publish with, my ebook Tumble has been temporarily delayed.

Drew and I spent a big chunk of yesterday afternoon working on trying to get it published, but for some reason the online system didn’t seem to want to do anything when we hit the Publish button. Drew has spoken with their first level customer service department, but it was a Sunday so we probably won’t hear anything from someone who knows what’s going on until later today or tomorrow at the soonest.

Hopefully it’s just a simple glitch and they can hit the Publish button behind the scenes for us. If so, it may still get released today. I’ll share updates as soon as I have them. I’m sorry for the delay.

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

The Needs of the Many via NatashaA_Author. What I find most interesting about this post is how few questions it answers. Sometimes there isn’t a good answer yet. It takes courage to admit that.

Hello, My Name Is… A creative post in which each one of Ruth’s pets describe how they came to live with her. Some of their stories are sad, but they made me wish I wasn’t allergic to dogs and cats. There are so many animals out there who need families.

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. Gabriel Garcia Marquez died last week. This is my favourite story from him.

So, You’re Going to Die. Morality and death for non-theists.

Empty Nests via JAHesch. I love the imagery in this poem.

From OOTT via KarenPilarski:

That day in the kitchen I asked her about the appointment. “It was a total waste of time” she lamented. The doctor had killed her afternoon. “Well, so you don’t have a new allergy that is making your hand swell?” I was trying to comprehend the doctor’s voice of reason.

“Ugh, he said it was OOTT.” She said in an annoyed tone. Huh? I wondered if it was an acronym for a weird disease that effects moody teens. “He said one of those things, that is what OOTT stands for” she explained.

The author of today’s book recommendation is giving away free copies of it until Mother’s Day.

I Wonder is a beautifully illustrated children’s book about not having all of the answers in life. I hadn’t heard of Annaka Harris’ work before stumbling across this offer, but I like her smooth writing style and ability to admit when she doesn’t know something.

What have you been reading?

I have an exciting announcement to make today.

Do you remember all of those science fiction stories I’ve mentioned working on in previous posts? The first one, “Tumble,” will be published on April 28.

I’ll be giving it away for free to say thank you to all of my amazing readers. On Monday I’ll tell you where to get it and share a few other pertinent details.

In the meantime, check out the blurb:

Between growing up in the middle of nowhere and being homeschooled by her reclusive father, Elle has lead an incredibly sheltered life.

Little has changed in her life now that she’s officially an adult. The mystery of what, exactly, her dad does for a living has never been solved, and neither has his strong preference to keep both of them in almost total isolation.

Her life changes when she discovers something peculiar in the dirt while working in their garden, yet her father’s disinterested reaction to it is as puzzling as his insistence that she forget she ever found it.

The truth is out there. Can Elle find it?