Book Writing
drorzel | December 1, 2014
"...and unless the King comes here himself, I'm not to be disturbed."
"Yes, of course." The servant bowed out, leaving him alone with the bath. He stepped in, gingerly at first, the water almost too hot to stand. Slowly, he lowered himself down to a sitting position, feeling the heat soak into his tired legs. All day, on his feet, running back and forth, making tests and fending off royal messengers. The gods curse obsessive kings and greedy goldsmiths.
He sighed, as the hot water began to ease individual aches that had long since run together as one big knot of pain. More than the bath,…
drorzel | December 1, 2014Almost everybody, regardless of what side they favor in the culture wars, knows that Charles Darwin was the first scientist to come up with the theory of evolution. At least, they think they do. In fact, lots of people had the general idea long before Darwin, including his own grandfather. We remember Darwin not because he was first, but because he made the strongest case, thanks in large part to that most basic of hobbies, stamp collecting.
While Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist has been sighted in the wild, the official release date isn't until next week. So, if you're still waiting…
drorzel | November 30, 2014You may not know this, but I have a book coming out in about a week. I know, I've been pretty quiet about it...
Anyway, this being the modern era, I thought there probably ought to be some sort of central web presence for the book, but unfortunately, it shares a name with a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, a SyFy show that was pretty good before it was canceled, and a famous exclamation by some dude from Syracuse. So the namespace containing obvious forms of the book title is pretty comprehensively gobbled up.
And, of course, this is my third book, and I've been doing a bunch of other…
drorzel | November 17, 2014The first time you hear about dark matter, it sounds kind of crazy-- asserting that we're surrounded by tons of invisible stuff is usually a good way to get locked up. But the process of its discovery is surprisingly ordinary: it's just what you do when you play cards.
Here's the second green-screen video I've done to promote Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, which comes out three weeks from tomorrow (but can be pre-ordered today!). This one is about card games, modern astrophysics, and why you probbaly shouldn't play bridge against Vera Rubin:
For those who dislike video, I'll put…
drorzel | November 16, 2014I've been quieter than usual here, partly because I've been crushingly busy, but primarily because most of the things I want to talk about, I can't. Not yet, anyway. But I'm still alive, and this murderous term will be over soon, at which point blogging will pick up a bit.
I will throw in a quick teaser for something coming up in the future, though, by way of a thank-you to the folks at Schaffer Library who let me take some photos of the rare books collection:
An 1845 edition of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," published anonymously but now known to be the work od Robert…
drorzel | November 10, 2014My new book comes out one month from yesterday, or four weeks from tomorrow. Of course, yesterday was Sunday, and tomorrow's a federal holiday, both lousy times for promotional posts, so I'll drop this in today instead. Here's a promotional video I put together, about how the history of quantum mechanics can be compared to working a crossword puzzle:
This is basically the talk I gave at TED@NYC last year, done in front of a green screen with slides edited in behind me for that An Inconvenient Truth vibe (Nobel committee, take note...). With some bonus cute kid photos and an explicit…
drorzel | October 4, 2014The exciting news of the week: Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist has gotten a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Woo-hoo!
They've said nice things about my previous two books, but getting the star is a big deal. And it's a really good capsule description of the book, with a great pull quote in the last sentence:
This fun, diverse, and accessible look at how science works will convert even the biggest science phobe.
Really, I can't ask for better than that.
I found out this was coming at the end of last week, where it was an absolute life-saver after some sanity-threatening stuff…
drorzel | October 1, 2014Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist has officially been sent to the printers, so we're at the phase of things where I don't have anything to do but think about publicity. There are some reviews forthcoming, at least one of which I'm very happy about, but I'll share more about that when it becomes public. I've also picked up some nice blurbs from very smart folks:
"I know, I know, you think you're just not smart enough to be a scientist. Chad Orzel might convince you otherwise with Eureka. Drawing on basketball, stamp collecting, Angry Birds, Iron Chef, and Antiques Roadshow among his…
drorzel | September 12, 2014I got a royalty statement yesterday for How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog (it continues to sell steadily, which is very gratifying), which includes a breakdown of the sales in terms of different formats. That reminded me of a particular annoying quirk of many recent discussions of the state of modern publishing, which is the often unsupported assertion that everything is ebooks these days, and paper books (and book stores) are just a small residual element that publishers and authors cling to out of historical affection.
Since I happen to have my royalty statements in front of me,…
drorzel | September 2, 2014If you're making your weekly check of the ebook editions (Kindle, Nook) of my quantum book (I'm not the only one who regularly looks at these, right?), you may have noticed a change: they're no longer sporting the original black cover you'll see in the right sidebar, but a new cover based on the smash hit UK edition. This isn't a database glitch, but a new release, with a new cover and adding the word "Quantum" to the title.
I've made allusions on Twitter a few times to having exciting news I wasn't ready to share-- this is one of those things. The original edition sold reasonably well and…
drorzel | August 13, 2014Kate and I had a very nice time doing touristy things in Bath yesterday during the day-- old church, very old hot spring, Georgian architecture-- then went on to Bristol where I gave a talk on the forthcoming book, as you can see in the picture above. I would ordinarily include a SlideShare link to the slides I used for the talk, but the talk is so image-heavy and the hotel wi-fi so grindingly slow that I'm not even going to attempt uploading it.
The first bit, as you might guess from the photo above, was basically the same as my TED@NYC talk last fall, making an analogy between the…
drorzel | August 12, 2014I figured I probably ought to post something to let the wider world know we made it safely to London, and have been engaging in tourism. So, please take the above photo of St. Paul's with a backdrop of the ominous dark clouds that have been chasing us around the city as proof of our location.
We also dropped by the offices of Oneworld Publications, the nice folks who published the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. While there, I took these:
Covers for the UK editions of my first book and Sean Carroll's second, displayed in the publisher's offices.
Good company to be in...…
drorzel | August 9, 2014...of the Atlantic. After a few stress-inducing bits the less said about which the better, preparations are basically complete, and we're heading out for London tonight. In the highly unlikely event that I haven't done enough plugging of my appearances, here's a compact list of where you'll be able to find me if you happen to be in Europe the next couple of weeks:
-- I'm giving a talk about the material in the new book on Wednesday the 13th at 6:30pm in Bristol, at the Institute of Physics. I'm doing this one TED-style, with no words on the slides, so it's both exciting and terrifying.…
drorzel | August 1, 2014I took a short nap yesterday, and of course as soon as I lay down on the bed, Emmy erupted in the furious barking that signals the arrival of a package. When I went out to get it, I found shiny new bound galley proofs of Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist:
The just-arrived galley proof for my forthcoming book. Laptop included for scale.
I knew these were coming, but didn't expect them so quickly. I asked for several to take to the UK, on the off chance that we're seated next to somebody really famous on the flight to London, who says "Gosh, I've always wanted to blurb a book about…
drorzel | July 16, 2014The surest sign that I've become a Real Author is that there are five months yet before Eureka comes out, and I'm already fretting about negative reviews. Negative reviews that haven't happened yet, but that I know will come, in a particular form.
The book, as you probably know from my prior ramblings on this subject, contains a large-ish number of historical anecdotes illustrating particular aspects of the scientific process, and relating them to everyday activities (rough list in this post). The thing that I worry about is that I decided early on to make a conscious effort to keep the whole…
drorzel | June 19, 2014As noted earlier, I was a guest on the Read Science! hangout on G+ earlier today. If you weren't able to watch it live, the video is available at that link, and I'll embed it here:
There were some feedback problems with the audio for a little while-- annoyingly, it only got bad once the hangout went live-- there was a tiny echo when we were talking about logistics beforehand, but not enough to justify screwing around with earbuds. then when we started the actual event, it suddenly got completely awful for a while. It does get better, though-- I have no idea why, but later on, the echo is…
drorzel | June 19, 2014Rhett and I haven't done Uncertain Dots for a couple of weeks due to scheduling issues, but that doesn't mean I'm neglecting the multimedia side of things. In fact, I'll be doing a hangout today, as a guest on the Read Science! hangout hosted by Joanne Manaster and Jeff Shaumeyer. The event page is here.
I've also got four summer research students to supervise this year, who quite reasonably expect a fair bit of my time (thus the blog silence this week), and thus I'll be doing this from my office on campus, which means Emmy isn't going to be joining in. Alas. Odds are good that I'll have to…
drorzel | May 13, 2014I've been setting up schedules with my summer research students lately, and the main constraint we're facing with that is that I'm going to spend most of August in Europe. Part of this is pure vacation-- Kate and I are going to the UK for a couple of weeks. Part of it is the World Science Fiction Convention in London, in the middle of that trip, where both Kate and I expect to be on programming (though there aren't any set items this far out). And the last bit has just been officially announced: I'm speaking at the Nordita Workshop for Science Writers organized by Sabine Hossenfelder from…
drorzel | May 2, 2014My Thursday presentation here in Houston went well, though it was a pretty small crowd. I'll be doing it again today before running to the airport to get home. I didn't really have an opportunity to do shameless self-promotion regarding the new book, but I did get a copy of the official cover for it, which you'll see above if you're looking at this on the blog, or below if you're reading via RSS.
I don't have a very detailed schedule for the rest of the process, but the target on-sale date is in early January 2015. Which probably dashes my dream of getting on the Colbert Report, but I'll…
drorzel | March 4, 2014In October 1988, I trashed my parents' basement in order to get into college.
OK, the causal connection is a little indirect, but it's there. I was applying to college that fall, and needed to write an essay to go with my application. I've always been able to write stuff with very little effort, so I banged out something that I thought was adequate, and showed it to my guidance counselor, who said "No way." My parents backed her up on this, and I had to go write another one.
The problem was that while what I had written was reasonably polished, it was also glib and superficial-- because I'm…