Ada Lovelace Day

I have only just found out that today, October 16, is Ada Lovelace Day, in which we're encouraged to celebrate a woman of science.

Nothing wrong with this one. My second book for children, Potions To Pulsars: Women doing science, featured a chapter about her. I have a lot of favourite women of science, including some modern ones, who were kind enough to check the chapters about themselves. I'll do a full post about that and the research I did another day, but just a few lines about Ada,for whom the day is named.

She was born in 1815, the daughter of Lord Byron - yes, that Byron, colourful character, amazing poet and, in the words of a woman in his life,"mad, bad and dangerous to know", who has turned up in at least one novel as a vampire. He and his wife Annabella divorced, he left England and Ada never got to know him. 

Charles Babbage,"father of the computer"

Poor Ada didn't have much of a relationship with her mother either, it seems, but her mother did one thing for her that changed her life and probably the world: she had her taught mathematics. Ada, who was introduced to Charles Babbage,  known as the "father of the computer", became the word's first computer programmer. She translated some mathematical papers from Italian for him and added plenty of notes of her own, including what is the first computer program.

 Analytical Engine, the world's first computer

What if her parents had stayed married? Or if she'd left England with her father? How different might the world have been if, perhaps, she'd become a poet like him instead of studying maths and science with the likes of science writer Mary Somerville? Anyone want to write an alternative universe story about this?

Unfortunately, one of the things Ada used her maths skills for was to design a betting system for the races. Of course, she ended up in huge debt. She died when she was only 36, of cancer.

Thing is, she was a female mathematical genius in a time when nice girls didn't do that sort of thing. Actually, judging from some of the crazy things she did in her lifetime, she was probably regarded as anything but a nice girl! But I have always had a soft spot for her.

So let's raise our glasses in a toast to Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace!

Reading Matters - Back From the Con!

I had to get up almost as early for this event as to go to work. I was taking some things to show around and some bookmarks to hand out and needed a good breakfast before leaving home. At least I didn't have to make lunch! I made sure I was wearing my Wolfborn t-shirt, of course. It was a good event for me as a teacher-librarian, but I also meant to make sure I promoted my books.

When I reached the venue, RMIT's Storey Hall, which is a strange building with some decorative green lumps on the roof, I found that the booksellers had ten copies of Wolfborn. They took three of my Notable stickers in case they had to send back the rest. In the end, they sold nearly all the books! :-)

The first presentation was Markus Zusak's, including a performance from his novel The Book Thief. I remember coming across a book trailer for that, which won the Random House teen competition a few years back. It was terribly elaborate and sophisticated, with live action. Never mind, it doesn't have to be live action to be wonderful!

Markus Zusak spoke and read from his newest book, that he's still working on, warning that he's the worst reader ever (he was okay!). I haven't ever been able to get into his books, but I might have a go now. He looked about sixteen at the first SLAV/Viewpoint conference I saw him at, and still looks pretty young.

This was followed by some panels by other guests such as Lucy Christopher, Karen Healey, Kirsty Eagar and Brenton McKenna, whose graphic novel Ubby's Underdogs. is set in Broome in the 1940s and whose heroine, Ubby, is based on his own grandmother.

We were all given free copies of Karen Healey's new book, The Shattering, which I'm enjoying so far, and will review before donating it to my library.

After lunch, we had another panel, which included Markus and Cassandra Clare and Melina Marchetta, who is apparently writing a sequel to Finnikin of the Rock, her fantasy novel about the refugee experience - damn. I'd always thought it was a perfectly good stand-alone novel that had made its point first time around and had a happy ending. Possibly, she'll throw her heroes into more angst. Oh, well.

There were a lot of good offerings over the weekend, but so many I'll just mention some that were highlights for me.

Cassandra Clare was a jolly American lady who did a very entertaining talk that made me want to read at least her first book in the angel series. It was interesting to hear Rebecca Stead, who told us all the autobiographical elements that went into her time travel novel When You Reach Me, which was set in New York City during her own childhood.

I ran into Kirsty Eagar during the morning tea and she asked me if we knew each other, she'd swear she had met me. I said I hadn't met her, but had loved Saltwater Vampires, with its nasty vamps and its Batavia incident background. I gave her my card so she could look up my review.

There was an enjoyable panel on the subject of book design, with a panel of artists who had been given a brief to design a cover for a new book. When they had shown their own designs, explaining their thoughts on the matter, there was a panel of "experts" to comment on them - a librarian, a bookseller and a boy from Melbourne High, who was apparently "Captain of the Book Club", whatever that is. Hmm, wonder if any of my book clubbers would like to be captain? I thought perhaps it might have been better to get an ordinary student who didn't go to a selective high school, because his thoughts on the matter didn't mesh with what I know from our students that they like. Still, it was good to see some of the work behind book design.

There was a very fine panel by Cath Crowley (Graffiti Moon, her latest) and Leanne Hall, talking about how they researched the urban bits behind their new novels, complete with breathtaking photos they took of night time Melbourne, to go with their night-themed novels.

My favourite was the panel with Richard Newsome and the delightful Oliver Phomavanh, a double comic act, with Oliver zooming around on his scooter and making his soft toys "speak". Oliver said that his over-the-top teacher in Thai-Riffic! was based on himself - he'd also mentioned this on the student day and showed pictures of himself with his class and some of his bizarre class competitions mentioned in the novel.

Argh, I have a LOT of reading to do! Just as soon as I've prepared classes and cleaned the house and ...

I met several CBCA judges who told me how much they'd enjoyed my novel (even if not enough to short-list it, but you never know, apparently to get on the Notables six judges have to think it should be short-listed and I may have met those judges). One even complimented me on Crime Time, which she thought had been a Notable. I said it hadn't, because I would have known from my publisher, but I checked the list this morning just in case and sure enough it wasn't there. Oh, well. She'd also been on the committee when Potions To Pulsars got a Notable and loved it. A little egoboo now and then is nice and even nicer, though only one person I know personally from Booktalkers asked for a signed copy, they sold pretty much all of the copies of Wolfborn they had at the table. There was only one left of ten copies at the last afternoon tea and for all I know they may have sold that too. They didn't have Crime Time, I'm afraid, but yesterday I was wearing my CT t-shirt and made sure I had bookmarks for both books to hand out. And when I was at the MSFC mini-con the other week, I made sure that every copy of Wolfborn I sold had a CT bookmark in it. ;-)

It was nice that they had at least my latest book; I spoke to Pam Saunders the other day, who said that they'd asked the booksellers to bring books by about six writers, including me, who weren't on the program. I had sent my emails to request it, but you can never be sure whether they'll do it or ignore you.

Afterwards, I had a lovely chat with one of the CBCA judges and she, like me, loves reading over-the-top non-fiction and adores Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliff. We hoped that the movie of Eagle Of The Ninth, which still hasn't turned up here, will get more children and teens into reading her books - some at my school are already re-discovering her.

I'm just going to add a photo of myself with Kevin Lee, a gentleman who works in a bank, but is passionate about YA literature, whom I know from many a Booktalkers event, and then go off to breakfast. My smoke alarm has warned me that the egg i put on to poach has started to burn! Looks like it's fried now.

Writing, small press and technology

I seem to have gotten into such a nice discussion with Adelaide about technology, I thought it might be better to do a post than continue with the comments chatter.

Recently, I did a panel on small press at the Continuum 5 SF convention. On my way to the panel, I found a lot of tables in the dealers' room, all selling small press science fiction books. That, of course, included my own, the Andromeda table.

Small press has been around for a very long time,as I remember from my early days in SF fandom. In Australia we had several, over the years - Norstrilia, Aphelion, Corey and Collins to name just a few off the top of my head. And those are just the ones that did books.

They worked hard and got their stuff printed and they published writers and artists who went on to become famous. Sean Tan, who did art for Aurealis when he was very young, has become an award-winner with many books under his belt.

But since computers became available to everyone who wanted them and then the Internet arrived, it has become a lot easier to publish. There's do-it-yourself desktop publishing that lets you do something that looks good without worrying about hiring someone to do the layout, and publishing on-line and artists can submit their work overseas if they want, by email; we commission plenty of overseas artists to do work for Andromeda Spaceways, both covers and internals, and we don't have to wait days and days for it to arrive and worry about whether it might have been damaged on the way. I remember the wonderful Marilyn Pride telling me once that she couldn't send her work overseas because publishers had tight deadlines. Well, Andromeda is done entirely on-line, until the printer gets the hard-copy to us. We meet on-line, slush on-line, edit and receive the finished product on-line; I've never even met most of the Andromeda co-op members.

Technologically, it is a wonderful time for small press to flourish. And technology means I no longer have to re-type entire manuscripts. Mind you, I do copy and paste into a new file when I am going to edit, so any future university academic who wants to do a PhD on the works of Sue Bursztynski - if any - will have no problem accessing my original MSS.

My last few books have been done almost entirely on computer, the editing done by email. I do like to meet editors, but there are some I have never met at all. My second editor, Sarah Brenan, was just a voice on the phone to me till after I had handed in the full manuscript of Potions To Pulsars: Women Doing Science, although I must admit it was a little before the time of email for me; we exchanged letters.

Research has become easier for me since the Internet. I do still use plenty of books, but because I am a librarian I can understand the difference between a good site and one that isn't likely to be of use, and it's amazing what you can find on the web. My book Rolling Right Along, a history of the wheel, included a chapter on the Ferris wheel, with a description of what the builder's wife was wearing at the launch. "Are you sure?" asked my editor. I was fairly sure, because my Internet research had unearthed a newspaper article written at the time by someone who was there. The World Wide Web is, for me, a massive library on the other side of the screen, just waiting for good researchers to use it properly.

For my book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, I did research in books, web sites and newspapers. Many of those newspapers were on-line archives. Only a few years ago, I would have had to go to the State Library and spend the evening hunting through microfilm - and I would have had to know exactly what I was looking for and when it happened before starting. Now I just need some keywords - well, duh - librarian! Pity the newspapers are planning to start charging to view their sites.

Now I'm off to do something a bit less technological - I am spending the rest of the day researching guitars for a possible book on musical instruments, and reading photocopies and printouts somewhere quiet with coffee...