A single word?

Asking a writer for a single word is like asking the clouds to produce a single drop of rain, or the lawn to grow a single blade of grass, Mark Medley muses at The National Post.
“That didn’t stop the editors of the new anthology The Novelist’s Lexicon from asking 37 writers to do just that: choose one word — a password, if you will — that opens the door to their work.”
Colum McCann chose “anonymity;” Jonathan Lethem wrote about “furniture;” Drew Hayden Taylor chose “DBAAJIMOWEONINI”, which means storyteller.
I wasn’t one of the 37, but if I had been…? Describe my novels in one word? ONE!?!
OK, enough with the questions. My answer would be —
Passion.
Despite the fact that no two of my novels are alike, in some ways they are all driven by that word. My characters have a passionate conviction, a belief, something at their core which defines them and drives every thought they think, everything they do, everything they say.
It is the passion that gives them their fears, their triumphs, it is the passion that gets them through their failures and their tragedies. Without the passion, they would not exist, they would not be themselves.
Passion is the password for the reader, too, to come inside my words and to think, and to feel. The reader’s passion does not have to be for the same things as the novel’s protagonist’s – but if the reader has the capacity for passion, there will be a meeting of
minds. And that is what matters.
Read about all the writers’ words HERE
~~~~~
No cameras, just draw!Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam, recently launched a new campaign called “The Big Draw.” It’s an effort to get museum visitors to ditch cameras and simple snapshots in favor of drawing the artworks.
The tagline of the campaign is “You See More When You Draw,”
Read the whole PetaPixel story HERE
~~~~~
The incredible secret in the attic
Rudi Schlattner was just a young man when he and his family were uprooted from their home in Czechoslovakia after WW2, Jake Brannon writes at Wimp. 70 years later he returned to the home, now a kindergarten, to look for a collection of valuables his father had hidden in the attic.
They were still there, still hidden.
Read the whole story HERE
~~~~~
Speaking of lost things…
Stunning 2200-Year-Old Mosaics DiscoveredThree new mosaics were recently discovered in the ancient Greek city of Zeugma, located in southern Turkey, an article in the Twisted Swifter reports.
The incredibly well-preserved mosaics date back to 2nd century BC. Zeugma was considered one of the most important centers of the Eastern Roman Empire and the ancient city has provided a treasure trove of discoveries with 2000-3000 houses in remarkably good condition.
Read the whole story HERE
~~~~~
A huge chunk of a tardigrade’s genome comes from foreign DNA
A light micrograph of a tardigrade. Credit: Sinclair Stammers –
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have sequenced the genome of the nearly indestructible tardigrade, the only animal known to survive the extreme environment of outer space, and found something they never expected: that they get a huge chunk of their genome – nearly one-sixth or 17.5 percent – from foreign DNA.
“We had no idea that an animal genome could be composed of so much foreign DNA,” d co-author Bob Goldstein wrote.
Foreign DNA? So that would be, like, maybe, genetically predisposed to be something else – or something else AS WELL AS.
This is starting to sound rather like my The Were Chronicles genetics, in “Wolf” and “Shifter.” Maybe I should go all the way and posit that Were creatures are naturally well disposed to going into space (on the basis of the tardigrade experience extrapolation…)
Read the whole story HERE
~~~~~
Circuit Board Tattoos That  Work Bring Your Cyborg Fantasies To Life

At Gizmodo, Andrew Liszewski reports on Tech Tats, tattoos that will certainly take your cyborg cosplay to a whole new level.
But Chaotic Moon Studios actually developed them for medical monitoring purposes. Instead of wearing a temporary (and cumbersome) chest strap or arm cuff to monitor a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, or other vitals, a circuit board tattoo could be applied to their arm that would wirelessly communicate with a smartphone app to keep tabs on them.
Read the whole story HERE
~~~~~
THIS ‘n THATVideo Game ‘Fallout 4’ Has Players Returning Overdue Library Books For Prizes
~~~~~
Quote of the DayPoint taken.
~~~~~
Alma Alexander      My books      Email me
If you found this blog post interesting, amusing or helpful, then please use the icons below to share it with other writers, readers or the guy next to you on the subway.