I stayed up until 1am last night finishing reading Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey — a rousing pirate romp about a girl pirate with a touch of magic negotiating through the crooked paths of stolen ships and untrustworthy shipmates.
I don’t get to read a lot of books…all my extra time is spent with the kids, writing, or sleeping…but I took out the time to read this one and really enjoyed it. The book was lots of fun. I recommend it strongly.
What amused me most about the experience; however, was that when I was done, I was able to write a whole sentence describing the heroine, the hero, and the plot that could describe either Mad Kestrel or my Prospero Books equally well. I won’t reproduce the sentence here because it contains spoilers for Mad Kestrel, though I don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that both our heroines have to deal with gorgeous men they don’t trust whose eyes change color — what are the chances of that.
I’ve noticed this phenomena, story ideas, or scientific ones, showing up simultaneously in different places. Makes me wonder if, once we finally break the barrier between ourselves and the world of Imagination — where inspiration comes from — if we won’t find that they send ideas down by loud speaker…allowing a whole number of people to hear them at once in the hopes that at least one will pick it up.
Wonder to what purpose the muses hoped to put multiple books with color changing eyes?
There is a whole theory about that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_field
http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/
This belongs to the wider field of Goethean science:
http://www.kheper.net/metamorphosis/Goethean.html
http://southerncrossreview.org/6/goethe.htm
It was very important in XIX century. Eg the idea of evolution appeared first amongs Romantic writers and philosphers (eg Hegel) as spiritual evolution, much later as scientific evolution of Darwin.
Ah, good old Morphic Fields! John and I are always blaming things on Morphic Fields. ;-)
I blame the subliminal meme transmissions that are spread by reading the same books and watching the same movies. :)
Salvador Dali apparently pitched a major hissy fit once at a surrealist collage movie screening. Indeed, he attacked the filmmaker — because that was the kind of movie he’d been dreaming of making!
Btw — I saw on your husband’s blog a comment about Gaiman winning the Newbery Award. Alas, it isn’t true that Newbery Award books will remain on the shelves and be reprinted forever. Indeed, the public domain folks have found out that a great many of Newbery Award winners are out of print and out of copyright, and some appear to be pure unobtainium.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/prize.html
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
True many of the older ones are forgotten, from before it became a big thing. They may remain unobtainable until the copyright date finally moves forward again. (It would have been 1951, if they hadn’t changed the law! As it is, we have to wait until 2018 or something for the date to move off 1923…but it will happen.)
If they are out of copyright — they weren’t renewed — that’s fine. So long as they can find a copy, they can print it. It is the ones written after 1923 and renewed, but whom one cannot find an owner for that are the sad ones.
But the more modern ones are now displayed quite prominantly in many places…and the older ones at least exist as a name on the list, when many of their fellows have been completely forgotten.
There is a whole theory about that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphic_field
http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/
This belongs to the wider field of Goethean science:
http://www.kheper.net/metamorphosis/Goethean.html
http://southerncrossreview.org/6/goethe.htm
It was very important in XIX century. Eg the idea of evolution appeared first amongs Romantic writers and philosphers (eg Hegel) as spiritual evolution, much later as scientific evolution of Darwin.
Ah, good old Morphic Fields! John and I are always blaming things on Morphic Fields. ;-)
I blame the subliminal meme transmissions that are spread by reading the same books and watching the same movies. :)
Salvador Dali apparently pitched a major hissy fit once at a surrealist collage movie screening. Indeed, he attacked the filmmaker — because that was the kind of movie he’d been dreaming of making!
Btw — I saw on your husband’s blog a comment about Gaiman winning the Newbery Award. Alas, it isn’t true that Newbery Award books will remain on the shelves and be reprinted forever. Indeed, the public domain folks have found out that a great many of Newbery Award winners are out of print and out of copyright, and some appear to be pure unobtainium.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/prize.html
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
True many of the older ones are forgotten, from before it became a big thing. They may remain unobtainable until the copyright date finally moves forward again. (It would have been 1951, if they hadn’t changed the law! As it is, we have to wait until 2018 or something for the date to move off 1923…but it will happen.)
If they are out of copyright — they weren’t renewed — that’s fine. So long as they can find a copy, they can print it. It is the ones written after 1923 and renewed, but whom one cannot find an owner for that are the sad ones.
But the more modern ones are now displayed quite prominantly in many places…and the older ones at least exist as a name on the list, when many of their fellows have been completely forgotten.