Relatively Center

I often feel off-center in my universe, like a broken moon just spinning around the brighter blue planets nearby. Maybe you know the feeling.

But here's something interesting: Relativity. Yes, of the Einstein variety. In Relativity, you are the center of the universe. You can't not be the center, because everything you see, everything you experience, absolutely everything you do is relative to your viewpoint - even time. That's pretty big stuff.

So maybe this broken moon isn't broken at all, it just has a uniquely interesting time-born shape. And maybe this brighter blue planet isn't bigger or better or more beautiful, but just as beautiful and unique in its own blue-planety sort of way. Apples aren't oranges and never can be (and I don't think they'd want to be, either). We're all part of our universe. One photon's as important as one galaxy. And whatever shape or size or color or mindset, we can't help but be our own center.

Through a Cinematic Eye

I love a well-filmed movie, and you know the type: not just a collection of scenes that tell a good story, but a moving work of art in which the mood of each scene is controlled by the camera angles, color, lighting and framing. A movie where if you pause it at almost any point, you'll have a still which could be turned into a painting.

Lately, I've been hitting my sketchbook to get a better grasp of composition, and I've found a love for doing quick sketches of movie stills. What a better way to learn cinematic composition and visual storytelling? Each of these sketches are done with India ink and a brush, each about 5-10 minutes. A lovely way to pass an afternoon.

Here are some sketches from Prince Caspian, Mongols, and Return of the King. Reference stills from http://framefilter.blogspot.com/

5 Songs That Rocked My World in 2010

5 Songs that rocked my world this year, and why, and a video so they can rock your world too. :)

1. "Breathe" by Alexi Murdoch - I first heard this song and Alexi Murdoch's music at the end of the Stargate Universe episode "Air." The crew had been struggling for three episodes just to have enough air to breathe, and then they found relief and here comes this song. It was so beautiful to have such a raw acoustic song on a show set in space. The moment's never quite left me.



2. "Paparazzi" as sung by Greyson Chance - If you haven't heard this kid sing yet, do! He took a Lady Gaga pop song and turned it into an emotional ballad here. I can still play the Youtube video over and over.



3. "Cosmic Love" by Florence + The Machine - I heard this at the end of a Covert Affairs episode and it was just so perfect for the moment. Love this band's sound, but this song in particular.



4. "The Weary Kind" by Ryan Bingham - I loved the movie Crazy Heart, and "The Weary Kind" just sums it all up with gut-wrenched soul.



5. "Time to Say Goodbye" by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli - I'd heard this song before but became really attached to it after watching a Dubai water show on Youtube. It got stuck in my head and I had to look it up.



What songs rocked your world this year?

Cool Fish and Keeping the Mythos Straight

Right now, I'm editing my first novel set in a glittering galaxy-spanning multi-culture of the far future. And I just wrote a short story set a couple thousand years after my novel. I'm writing another story (that is threatening to become a novella or worse) set a couple thousand years between the two, and I have another three stories set in the same universe spaced out in the past. Add that to a prequel to my novel and two drafted sequels...and plans for another...and oh yeah, this is future fantasy - there's magic to keep track of too.

My brain feels a bit bloated at the moment, like a whale decided to drink ten gallons of coffee and have a beach party in my head. How can I keep the details straight? They change with every backward step through the writer's magic time machine. Names change. Places change. Whole cultures grow and disappear and reappear as new and cooler cultures. Rules of science and magic change.

But change is good. Change is motion, change is life, right? I might be swimming in an ocean as wide as the universe and twice as deep, and I might have only one small light strapped to my head to see where I'm going, but hey, there are cool fish down here. And cool fish are fun. As Dory would say, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming..."

The Universe Inside

I've always wanted to see the stars. Not just look up at the night sky with its scattering of light-pollution sparkles, but really see the stars. To stand on the edge of space and watch those billions of particles lacing and colliding and exploding with fantastic fusion. I want to be awed by the sight of my home planet from space. I want to sweep through the wings of a giant nebula. I want to live.

Maybe I was born out of my time. Or maybe my time is fantastic, and new stars and hopes and planets and dreams will be born beneath my fingers.

I am a science fiction writer. I say that cautiously, as no one really wants a label and those who do deserve them. I am one who paints, with words and feelings, pictures of the Universe. I live a thousand lives among the stars.

Maybe some day I will see my home planet from space. It would be an honor beyond compare. But meanwhile, I will tell my tales of grand adventure and tragedy and triumph, and I will imagine...because the Universe inside is hardly less rich or real than the Universe Out There.