Versatile Blogger Award!

Versatile Blogger Award

This award was bestowed to me (a million years ago?) by fellow writer, Elisa Michelle.

*tears* I’m … so … happy! I’d like to thank– *orchestra music cuts speech off*

Haha! Of course, I’d like to thank Elisa for selecting me for this award. I stumbled upon her blog a few months ago and was hooked by her down-to-earth experiences with writing and life. Her short-stories are nothing short of amazing (my favorite so far is Fire Angers Water). We also share a similar “flavor” of Christianity, which is cool, too (see comments to my post, Rhys and the Morality Police).

Elisa is currently editing her science-fiction novella, titled Dominant Race, and is working on the sequel, New Fate.

Go check out her blog (after you’ve read the rest of this post, of course)!

The Versatile Blogger Award, explained by Elisa Michelle:

Here is how the award works:

• Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them [RNR: done]

• Tell your readers 7 things about yourself.
• Give this award to 15 recently discovered bloggers
• Contact those bloggers and let them in on the news.

4 (Random) Things About Myself (I’m rebelling–I’m not that interesting, haha):

1. My first story was about a little wren who becomes separated from her family in a storm. Nine years old, I wrote and illustrated this story during free time in the fourth grade.  Sadly, I lost the notebook back in the Caribbean years ago. I also made a short comic called “Lazer Girl”  (later changed to “Laser Girl”, haha), about a superhuman girl. I lost that one, too.

2. I wish there was more ethnic diversity in fantasy AND less racism in fandom. Well, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably read my rants. When I first entered fantasy, this didn’t bother me so much. In the last few years, annoyance gradually grew into rock-solid GAH. Literature, art, gaming, films, TV–can we please diversify?

3. If I was forced to give up my love of writing for another artistic trait (and had no way of escape), I would choose the visual arts. I wish I could design concept art. I used to draw, but tossed it aside, figuring that I should dedicate that time to writing, which was better than my artwork, in my opinion.

4. I love MMORPGs. I don’t play as much as I used to–due to school and, you know, writing, but when I do, I play F2P (free-to-play–I’m a broke college student). I was overjoyed at the existence of MMOs, since I have no game console (1. I have no spare funds to purchase one, 2. My parents thought gaming was the Capital D Devil, Destroyer of Academic Excellence, so I never got one for Christmas).

Vindictus is my thing right now. Though it has bugs like the Ninth Circle of Hell at times (Lagggg! So much laggg!), I love the in-game physics and the bosses ^.^ The story-line is cool, too (though, I think I know what is going to happen to a certain NPC).

I play a Fiona (not going to tell you my in-game name, though ;)).

I don’t have 15 bloggers, since I’ve been blogging for only a few months. I do have an award-recipient in mind, though!

I hereby bestow this award to:

**Drum roll please**

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Tiyana Marie White

I don’t quite remember how I stumbled across Tiyana’s blog (I do believe I did through her post, Worldbuilding: Settings & Maps), but I’m glad I did. A fellow speculative-fiction writer, Tiyana is a steampunk (edit: dieselpunk!) enthusiast to the millionth power, IMO, hehe. Her posts on this subgenre and on elements of writing are detailed, informative, and fun to read, and her short-stories are fantastic and engaging (see Seduction).

Tiyana is in the process of editing her dieselpunk-infused, fantasy novel, titled Element 7.

Congrats, Tiyana! =)

You should check out her blog, Seven & a Half First Drafts (click the link on her name above).

Overmusing on Twitter: Seasons in Westeros & Kepler’s Three Laws

I danced in the city’s neon lights, forever too soon. The man in black caught my eye. He tapped his watch and smirked.

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She slid her resignation under the Dr.’s door and half-dragged R12U-8 from the lab to her SUV. The man did not stir.

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The sky was unusually bright–a stark white. That could only mean one thing: the Alliance had arrived. Time to split.

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[Recent microfic]

Shoutout to Elisa Michelle! This fellow writer decided to join in on the #microfic challenge. Yeah-yuh! *confetti and fireworks* Recent shorts are posted on her fiction blog, ElisaMichelleStories, and she posts updates on Tastes Like Spaghetti, her Tumblr account. Go check them out!

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By the way–Happy Autumnal Equinox for you Northern Hemis and a Great Vernal Equinox for you Southern Hemis! (Someone’s having fun in Stellar Astronomy class. ;))

200+ tweets in so far on my new Twitter account, rowannhai. It’s been an interesting endeavor so far, but I really hope I’m not spamming followers with my thoughts … Let’s say that for a few minutes a day, I may go into a musing-lapse. Like today.

Post-Spoiler: I completely forgot that summers and winters on Westeros vary in length (so no, summers are not “shorter” than winters), but I’ll just clarify what I had thought (since I only had 140 characters for each post to explain):

[Read from bottom to top]

(Read from bottom to top)

Johannes Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion, if you’d like to know more.

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, summers and winters can last for years at a time. Why is that?

I jumped ahead and assumed that Westeros is on a planet (it has day and night) and it is part of a solar system like our own so that Kep’s Laws could apply (as far as we know, Kep’s may only apply to our system and no other).

Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion States that p^2 = a^3.  In simpler terms, that means that the longer the orbital period (time it takes for a planet to orbit its sun-star, the longer its distance from its sun-star. For example, Jupiter’s distance from the sun is greater than Earth’s distance, which means that it has a longer orbital period than Earth’s orbital period of one year (this law seems sorta obvious to us, today).

Seasons are caused by the planet’s tilt (such as Earth’s 23.5 degree tilt). As the tilted planet orbits its sun-star its hemispheres receive least/most amounts of sunlight, like below:

Courtesy of HowStuffWorks.Com

But alas. One thing I absolutely forgot to put into account–which shatters my ideas, anyway–is that the length of summers and winters vary in Westeros. Sorta hit me when I took a break from this post and returned. Argh. For the length of seasons to abnormally change, I guess the orbit would have to be unstable … I dunno!

Perhaps it’s fantasy, hahaha! Le gasp, Batman!

I’m only a newbie to Astronomy. *shrug* Yeah, yeah, everybody’s splurging out on A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones) these days, but I was tempted to add some thoughts as to why summer and winter are so friggin’ long in Westeros. How do they measure time outside of days, anyway, if winters and summers vary? I believe that I read that age is measured in winters (or summers?), if I remember correctly …

Ok, ok, it’s fantasy. But sometimes I want to wrap my head around things, you know? I guess all this astronomical analysis puts things into perspective as I work on my WIPs. Verdigar of SoM has a few “scientific” things to iron out.