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Annie and Gudrun have been heavily absorbed in book preparation, and have sorrowfully neglected to keep their cyber friends up to date. They send many apologies and promises to return Friday with fresh posts and new directions. Until then, if you’re needing a fish-fix, read about the filter-feeding Prehistoric Megafish discovery, reported on by National Public Radio.  source: www.paleocreations.com  photo by Dolmang A Toronto based group plans to lease the bottom seven floors of a brand new office building in Times Square. They want to build a public aquarium, as well as a museum about pirates. The lease would be for 25 years, and the aquarium could open as soon as 2011. There has not been a public aquarium in Manhattan since 1941. I wonder if it will be as good as the Churaumi Aquarium (Okinawa, Japan), shown in the photo. That’s a whale shark, if you’re wondering.
I went through stages of “I’m not good enough,” “the story’s not good enough,” “why did I ever think I could write a book, everyone in the WORLD wants to write a book, the competition is too high,” and other familiar feelings of inadequacy and self loathing. This went to the point of keeping me, and consequently my husband, awake at night fretting. But, as anyone in their right mind knows, there’s no way out of this kind of situation but to dive in and do the work. Nobody’s going to do it for me, and if I let it scare me stiff, it will never change to something less scary, and it will never get done. So this morning, cue the Rocky soundtrack fanfare (which is easy to do as they’re playing the newest Rocky movie, the one where he’s old, on French TV this weekend, thus lots of commercials), I cleaned off my desk. I put all the unfinished paperwork, uh, somewhere else (don’t look at the desk behind me), I moved my standing file folder that stares at me saying “you should be job hunting, you should work on your illustration portfolio, you should finish this other book you started writing a few years ago, the manuscript’s right here” to a different shelf, out of eyesight. In its place, I put the flowers I received for Valentine’s day and my lucky Day of the Dead skull with bright pink flowers in the eye sockets and turquoise curly-cues on the cranium. I cleared my schedule, whipped up a raspberry Emercen-c, and I’m gonna do it. Lake Tanganyika cichlids in the news! A recent study performed by Thomas Stewart and Craig Albertson discusses the strange skeletal anatomy of the Perissodini cichlids, who feed themselves by biting the scales off other fish. These fish often have a mouth that is shifted to one side to make it easier to remove scales from their prey. The study suggests that this evolution comes from how these fish hunt and where they live, and not every Perissodini is born with a mouth off to one side. The scientists wonder whether the shape of the fish’s face changes over its lifetime, or if the fish with centered mouths just die off because they are not as effective at hunting as the fish with the lopsided mouths. They believe further research into the Perissodini fishes will help them better understand the Perissodini, and ‘handed-ness’ among vertebrates in general.
It’s an hour and a half long flight from Paris, and there will be a day long conference put on by SCBWI before the fair starts. I’m picturing something like Comicon, but more kid-friendly. It’s supposed to be one of the better fairs for artists, giving them more opportunities for exposure than other children’s book fairs, and the art directors and buyers are perhaps more approachable. This is where my double status as writer and artist confuses me, I’m not sure how to brand myself when I get there. Do I try to get someone to look at a few drawings for the book, or see if they’ll read a few pages of manuscript? Thanks to Ernessa at Fierce and Nerdy, where I write a bi-weekly column about life as an expat, I have a book teaching me all about self promoting before the book is published or even sold. No doubt my best bet is to study that then get over the stage fright of talking up my project. As a writer and artist, I work in my quiet little space and forget that other people exist while I’m working. It’s a big transition to come out and talk to strangers about what I’ve been doing. An important hurdle I’ll have to overcome.
This is happening right now in the United States, and the government is fighting back. On February 8, 2010, Federal officials announced a plan to stop the Asian carp invasion. Scientists are afraid that if these fish get into the U.S. Great Lakes, they could destroy the region’s fishing industry because they eat the same food perch and salmon do, and they have no known predators. All other efforts to control the species have failed. This new plan will cost $78.5 million, and involves 25 short and long term actions that Federal, state and local groups will work together on. It’s almost like a space invasion movie, as military and government groups are working together to fight the aliens. The four kinds of Asian Carp are huge. They weigh as much as a large dog, 40-80 pounds, and can eat up to 60% of their own weight. The silver carp often jumps into the air when startled, which can cause harm to people fishing or waterskiing, and maybe even to the fish they land on when they come back down. Drastic measure are being taken. Watch this story from CBS news to learn more. |
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As the author of this blog and the book Annie’s Fish, I am in preparation mode for the 