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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Lights Over Emerald Creek by @ShelleyDavidow #AmReading #SciFi #YA

Three of the true life mysteries behind Lights Over Emerald Creek – 524

When Lucy investigates strange lights over the creek at the bottom of the property, she discovers a mystery that links the lights to the science of cymatics, Scotland’s ancient Rosslyn Chapel, and Saturn’s mysterious hexagonal storm. But just what are the real life mysteries behind Lights Over Emerald Creek.

The Hexagonal Storm on Saturn’s North Pole

For the past 29 years, the planet Saturn has had its north pole in darkness, as it moved through its very long night. Then, as the polar region emerged into day light, the Cassini craft flew by and, in 2007, took stunning photographs of a bizarre hexagonal storm above Saturn’s north pole. The storm is about 29,000 kilometers in diameter, and although no one knows the cause of this storm, NASA says this:
The six-sided shape remains a mystery. Scientists think the hexagon is a meandering jet stream at 77 degrees north latitude, but they don’t know what controls the path the stream takes. These images also show new phenomena for scientists to decipher…
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, or to see images, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Cymatics. Music creates Geometric Shapes

Cymatics is the name used to describe the intricate geometric forms that arise when salt is sprinkled on a copper plate and exposed to sound vibrations. Each musical note is a frequency that results in varying geometric forms. Galileo Galilei apparently first wrote about it in 1632. In 1680 Robert Hook ran a violin bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour and noticed amazing geometric patterns. In 1787 Ernst Chladni was the person who exposed this knowledge to the public when he published ‘Discoveries in the Theories of Sound.’ The word ‘Cymatics’ comes from the Greek ta kymatika meaning ‘matters pertaining to waves. Each musical note has a representative geometric form.
For more information on Cymatics, look at: Hans Jenny Cymatics http://www.rexresearch.com/cymatics/cymatics.htm

A Real Secret Code in Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel

In 2007, in Scotland, musicologists Stuart Mitchell and his father David, cracked a weird ‘code’ that was embedded in the relief carvings inside Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel. Strange cubes with geometric patterns carved into the structure of the chapel, combined with a stave angel with its fingers pointing to musical notes finally made sense to the father and son who had been working on this puzzle for years: the geometric patterns were musical notes, ‘frozen music’, or images of Cymatics patterns carved into the walls of the chapel hundreds of years ago. When the musicologists established which notes were portrayed, they played them. Out of that came a piece of music they’ve called the ‘Rosslyn Motet’. It can be heard on: http://www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/saturnvideo/rossmotet.mp3
And … Stuart Mitchell believes that the pattern on Saturn is a actually a giant version of Cymatics, and that the planet is generating the equivalent of a musical score. Radio waves recorded from Saturn and translated into sound can be heard here: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/cassini/SKR2/casskrtrig04207a.wav

And though this may be a co-incidence, if you play the Rosslyn motet together with the radio-waves from Saturn, you hear something really interesting: http://www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/saturnvideo/signalross.mp3

LightsOverEmeraldCreek

Lucy Wright, sixteen and a paraplegic after a recent car accident that took her mother's life, lives in Queensland on a 10,000 acre farm with her father. When Lucy investigates strange lights over the creek at the bottom of the property, she discovers a mystery that links the lights to the science of cymatics and Scotland’s ancient Rosslyn Chapel.

But beyond the chapel is an even larger mystery. One that links the music the chapel contains to Norway’s mysterious Hessdalen lights, and beyond that to Saturn and to the stars. Lucy’s discoveries catapult her into a parallel universe connected to our own by means of resonance and sound, where a newly emerging world trembles on the edge of disaster. As realities divide, her mission in this new world is revealed and she finds herself part of a love story that will span the galaxy.

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Genre - Young Adult SF
Rating - PG
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Connect with Shelley Davidow on Facebook & Twitter

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The Curse Giver by @DoraMachado #Fantasy #Paranormal #AmReading

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE LOST to Lusielle. Her life was a jumbled sequence of snippets, blurry images breaking up long periods of dense darkness, triggered by a sudden jostle or a twinge of pain, cold, heat or thirst. She spotted glimpses of a gray sky, spitting out rain, and campfires burning deep in the woods. There was more rain, and a face—his face—hovering just beyond reach.

Occasionally, sound trickled into her muffled world from a distant place. The wind rustled through the trees. The horses’ hooves pounded on dirt, gravel, and mud. Men spoke, snorted, muttered and snored. A low, measured voice—his voice—echoed very near, urging her to drink, eat or sleep, accompanied by the pervasive masculine scent that was her constant companion.

There were times when she came to just enough to realize that she existed in the world in-between, where gods and mortals met in dreams, where dreams and reality were one and the same. In those moments, she realized that she survived only because of someone else’s will, that if she wanted a future, she had to wake up and seize it. She kept trying, even though it required great effort, like swimming against a colossal tide.

“This way,” the voice said.

She felt listless as a corpse, but she grabbed on to that voice and followed it to a semblance of consciousness. Fighting her heavy eyelids, she managed to glimpse the man’s stern face, outlined against a background of pewter clouds.

Brennus.

She rode with him on his horse, wrapped in an oiled mantle, mostly protected from the rain. His strong arms kept her from slipping off the massive beast. His armored chest offered a hard but steady pillow. The beat of his heart echoed through the copper plates, strong, vibrant, and enthralling.

He must have realized that she was awake, because his stare swooped down on her like a hawk on the prowl, even though his voice was gentle. “Hush,” he said. “We won’t be too much longer on the road today.”

His eyes were lined with worry and exhaustion. So were the faces of the other men who rode with him. All of them were wet, tired and miserable, picking their way up a steep mountain track as the relentless rain continued to pelt them. That same rain was dripping from Brennus’s face, drenching his hair and trickling down his neck.

“The rain,” she whispered. “It’s making you wet.” She reached out to dry the water from his face, but the wound on her back protested with a pang of pain.

He caught her hand and tucked it back into the blanket. “It’s no use,” he said. “You can’t keep me dry.”

“One can try,” she said.

And he actually smiled.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“South of nowhere and north of wherever,” he said. “Far from the usual routes. We’re seven days out.”

Seven days was an awful long time to be senseless among strangers.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Riva’s not going to find us.”

She winced when the horse missed a step.

“Hato!” Brennus called.

Why was he barking like that?

There was splashing, the sound of hooves clattering and then, “My lord?”

“We’ve got to stop. The fever’s back and she’s hurting again.”

“No place to stop around here, my lord,” the other man said.

“Send Severo and Cirillo ahead,” he said. “Tell them to find a decent camp and get a fire going. She’s got to rest.”

“My lord,” he said, “we have pressing business. We can’t slow down to accommodate her comfort—”

“Do you want her alive or not?”

The other man sighed. “As you wish, my lord.” He rode away.

She tried to tell him that she was fine, but ended up whimpering instead.

“Shush,” he whispered in her ear. “You need to sleep.”

And by the Thousand Gods, off she went, at his command, into the darkness again, following his heart’s steady rhythm as it sang a lullaby to her heart.

Curse Giver

Award-Winning Finalist in the fantasy category of The 2013 USA Best Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News

Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Fantasy/Dark Fantasy
Rating – PG-18
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Tuesday, July 8, 2014

@ScottMoonWriter Dissects Pseudonyms & Writing #SciFi #AmWriting #WriteTip

Three reasons authors use pen names:
1)      To avoid embarrassment
2)      To try something new
3)      To avoid genre confusion
Points two and three are related, and in this case, using a pen name is probably a good idea. The readers of your bestselling spy thriller might not be interested in your young adult novel. And it might be hard to promote a story book for kids and the next 50 Shades of Gray on the same web site. Establishing a pen name for each genre you choose to write could be a good idea.
Danger:
Facebook and Google have strong prohibitions against multiple identities, and frankly, it isn’t easy to create multiple profiles. I looked into it, and found the process beyond my moderate computer skills and the warning flags scared the daylight out of me. Could an independent author succeed after being banned from both Facebook and Google?
Not likely.
Goodbye social media. Goodbye author platform.
But if you must:
Kindle Direct Publishing allows the use of pen names. I researched this option because I write Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Crime Thrillers. Like many writers, I mix and match with pretentions to try about anything that can be made with words, including Romance, Steampunk, Historical Fiction, and various hybrid genres no one is likely to ever read.
Call me a daydreamer who writes, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
It is easy to create Twitter profiles and blogs, but I always worry that an internet user with more skill than I’ll ever have will immediately see that all the profiles are the same person. My decision not to use a pen name comes down to time management. I’d rather write than decipher Facebook.
A good argument against pen names:
One of the keys to selling books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords is the ever-popular backlist. Simply put, the more books you publish, the more they promote each other. Search engines find your name and your work more frequently. Loyal readers try other things you have written.
It’s a veritable paradise of indie-publishing glory.
Okay, it’s a lot harder than the Instantly Sell Millions of Books in your Spare Time and Never Work Again books make it seem. Developing an author platform is hard work. It takes time to write the books, fiction or nonfiction, and more time to market them.
Why diffuse your efforts using multiple pen names?
I believe using pen names in a smart, responsible way is a viable strategy for both indie and traditional authors. My advice is to proceed with caution.
What’s your advice?
I read more blogs than I write. If you have thoughts on pen names, or recommended articles, please let me know. This is a topic I’ve considered deeply and researched to the best of my knowledge, which is to say, I’m a student a welcome your advice.

Lost Hero

Changed by captivity and torture, hunted by the Reapers of Hellsbreach and wanted by Earth Fleet, Kin Roland hides on a lost planet near an unstable wormhole.

When a distant space battle propels a ravaged Earth Fleet Armada through the same wormhole, a Reaper follows, hunting for the man who burned his home world. Kin fights to save a mysterious native of Crashdown from the Reaper and learns there are worse things in the galaxy than the nightmare hunting him. The end is coming and he is about to pay for a sin that will change the galaxy forever. 

Books

Enemy of Man: Book One in the Chronicles of Kin Roland was written for fans of military science fiction and science fiction adventure. Readers who enjoyed Starship Troopers or Space Marines will appreciate this genre variation. Powered armor only gets a soldier so far. Battlefield experience, guts, and loyal friends make Armageddon fun. 

Movies

If you love movies like Aliens, Predator, The Chronicles of Riddick, or Serenity, then you might find the heroes and creatures in Enemy of Man dangerous, determined, and ready to risk it all. It’s all about action and suspense, with a dash of romance—or perhaps flash romance. 

From the Author

Thanks for your interest in my novel, Enemy of Man. I hope you chose to read the book and enjoy every page. 

If you have already read Enemy of Man, how was it? Reviews are appreciated! 

Have a great day and be safe.
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Science Fiction
Rating – R
More details about the author
 Connect with Scott Moon on Facebook & Twitter