A Great Loss to the Blogging Community: Tina Downey

       The sad announcement of the passing of Tina Downey appears on her blog Life Is Good today.

        Tina has been an integral part of the A to Z Team for many years and has been the motivator and scheduler on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge Blog.  

          We will post a tribute to Tina here later in the week.    For the time being we hope you will leave a message for her family at Life Is Good.

 
            We all love you Tina!   You will be missed.

Does Weather Affect Your Stories?

Being a California native, I’ve always had to take trips to experience “weather” in the sense of really hot and humid (Southeast Asia) or really cold (Alaska).  Most of the weather we get is of the medium variety (50-70 degrees) with a rare freeze and sometimes a few days in the hundreds during August. And boy do we complain when any of those "extreme" days happen. I think we’re weather sissies.

When I thought about how the weather affected my writing, I had to scratch my brain a bit to come up with something. Then I went to my journal and thumbed through a few entries. What I found was I become more prolific on either really stormy days (usually about day three) or on really sunny, sparkly days. And I know this because I have pages that remark on exactly these weather conditions.


I did discover that any settings I write about during those wintery times have a lot of clouds and windy electrifying scenes.  Here's some wintery day writing.

The first time Marian met Justin Kane, he stood at the center of the burned out lot, making notes on a yellow legal pad while trying to stay dry under his oversized black umbrella.  The unexpected September rain had started early that morning and gave no sign of stopping.  Now with thunder promising an electric sky, the wind picked up and whipped at her jacket, blowing sharp, cold drops against her cheeks. 

There are several summer notes that involve toasty park benches with fountains playing in the background. 

The sun hung in the window, filtering light through the old glass and tinting everything amber inside the kitchen. Outside the fountain sprinkled into the pond, teasing fish to the surface. 

Since I like to write in different locations, when the rain keeps me inside I often roam to different rooms with a clipboard. I do this roaming after I put in a morning (between 4 and 8 is my usual stint) at my desk, pounding on my computer keys. Those spring and summer days allow me to be in the garden or on a hike with my journal tucked into my backpack. I can always spot entries I’ve made outside. They’re smudged with dirt and sometimes a leaf falls out when I flip the page--a small token of a day I’ve lived and written about.

One other thing I discovered, thanks to having thought about weather and writing at the same time, is that I’ve made so many notes about the sounds and textures of what I’m surrounded by, that I have tons of weather to include in almost any book I write that takes place above ground level. 

I keep thinking that Poe must have had a lot of bad weather. Dicken’s, too. I mean all of that snow and British fog had to have some effect on those stories. I’ll bet Miss Haversham wouldn’t have lived in that dark house with the moldy wedding feast if Dicken’s had written his story in, say, Hawaii.

How about the rest of you? Does weather affect your characters and your setting? Ever thought about it? 

Cryogenics: Can We Live Again in the Future?

Robert Ettinger

Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryogenics movement, has died (at least for now) about eighteen months ago at the age of 92. Cryogenics is the process of freezing your head or your entire body in hopes science will one day figure out a way to bring you back from the dead. Ettinger will join his two wives (what was he thinking???) and his mother in frozen limbo. 

The facility is in Clinton Township, Michigan. Over 100 human corpses are floating in the gentle giant capsules filled with liquid nitrogen in hope
s of one day living again. Nobody knows for sure whether we can ever restore consciousness frozen bodies, but cryopreservation is a phenomenon present in the animal kingdom and effective medical technology. 

Many livestock have developed tricks to survive temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, accounting and after periods of paralysis caused by frost. And scientists have made important progress in freezing living tissue and even of whole organs for medical purposes. 

The minimum price that the airline claims for his services is 28,000 dollars. Other organizations charge for customers and amounts up to $ 200,000 and offers the possibility of "neuroprezervării" instead of full body freeze, freezing heads may require only interested in the idea that personality and memories are stored in the brain and loaded into a computer or an artificial body in the future. 

One obstacle to overcome is frozen ice crystals within the bloodstream are very sharp. They can actually cut tissue and blood vessels, causing sever damage that make it difficult preserving vital parts of the human body. 

Question: Do you think this process of cryogenics is actually a possibility? Can we freeze our heads or bodies in hopes that one day technology will enable us to one day live again? 

Stephen Tremp, author of the BREAKTHROUGH series, has a B.A. in information systems and an MBA degree in global management. Stephen has a background in information systems, management, and finance and draws from this varied and complex experiential knowledge to write one-of-a-kind thrillers. His novels are enhanced by current events at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and other scientific research facilities around the world. These potential advances have the ability to change the way we perceive our universe and our place in it! 

You can visit Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs. 

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