Written in Stone
laelaps | July 1, 2010My contribution to the Sb-wide Zombie Day will soon be posted, but if you need something to sink your teeth into before then, check out today's new issue of the Times of London science magazine Eureka (included inside the Times, for UK readers). Inside you will find two stories by me - one on paleobiology in the 21st century and the other on our changing view of tyrannosaurs - and you can access them online behind a free registration wall. It was a wonderful opportunity to write for Eureka, and I am indebted to editors Mark Henderson and Antonia Senior for their support and the freedom to…
laelaps | June 25, 2010
Even though I sometimes feel quite anxious about the publication of Written in Stone, the positive comments the manuscript has received so far have helped to relieve my apprehension. Professional reviews will not show up for another few months, of course, but during the process of composing the book - from pitching to my agent to asking my wife to read the completed copyedit-ready draft - I am glad to say that the early responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, when the time came to ask scientists and science writers for blurbs, my nervousness spiked again. These are people…
laelaps | June 18, 2010
I can't help it - every time I pass a bookstore, I wonder whether they are going to carry my book when it comes out this autumn. November is still a long way away - summer does not even officially begin until next week - but I can't help but wonder where my book will pop up and how it will be received. It is both exciting and anxiety-inducing.
I try not to speculate too much about what will happen when Written in Stone comes out. It is not even entirely finished yet. Right now the original text and scribbled margin notes from the last copyedited version are being transformed into page proofs…
laelaps | May 8, 2010
Written in Stone is now available for pre-sale on Amazon.com (as well as a few other online stores)! The description of the book, author bio, etc. will have to be updated, but otherwise it is good to see it get its own page, and many thanks to the several of you who have already pre-ordered copies.
Yet another cool new paleo blog - Crurotarsi: The Forgotten Archosaurs. Looks like I am going to have to update my blogroll again.
In the "online first" section of Evolution: Education and Outreach there is a new paper on science communication (which also covers the Darwinius kerfuffle) by…
laelaps | April 9, 2010
Now that the details about Australopithecus sediba have been published, I am faced with an important question - how am I going to fit the new hominin into Written in Stone?
When I started composing Written in Stone I was determined to make it as up-to-date as possible. This was not only out of a concern for accuracy, but also stemmed from a desire to present the public with some discoveries that they may not have heard about before. Given that new paleontological papers are being published every week, however, I have often been faced with the question of how to incorporate interesting new…
laelaps | April 6, 2010
A few weeks ago, during the last part of the "So you want to write a pop-sci book" series, I briefly mentioned the idea of creating a series of mini-documentaries which would help promote my forthcoming book Written in Stone. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it, but I have a bit of a problem. I have never created a short film before (well, outside of TV class in high school), and I am asking for a bit of advice from those who are more experienced with video projects.
At the moment I have two primary questions. The first is, what sort of digital video recorder should I buy? I…
laelaps | March 26, 2010
The time has come to wrap-up this blog series, but there was one other topic I wanted to cover before concluding; how do you let people know about the mass of ink-blotted, dead tree pulp that is your book?
Promoting Written in Stone will be a tough job. When it hits shelves this fall it will undoubtedly be in competition with numerous other science titles for the chance of being reviewed in the few publications which still review science books at all. Book tours, too, have become nearly extinct, and as a virtually unknown science writer I don't expect many (any?) people to show up at their…
laelaps | March 22, 2010
Last Friday I posted an open-thread in an attempt to gauge what readers might be getting from the "So you want to write a pop-sci book" series (Parts 1, 2, and 3), and I was quite pleased by the response. I was glad to hear so many of you have found it useful (or intend to go back to it when you get your own book projects in order). There were also a few questions about the book-writing process, and I will answer them here.
Most of the questions were asked by Stan, and I'll go through them one at a time.
"How did you solve the balance between themes that you personally found interesting,…
laelaps | March 19, 2010
Earlier this week David Williams (Stories in Stone), Michael Welland (Sand), and I started a blog series about the details of publishing a popular science book (Parts 1, 2, and 3), but I have been a bit underwhelmed by the response. I had been hoping for some input from other published authors, questions or comments from aspiring book writers, and for the series to take the form of a conversation. Instead I feel like I am talking to myself. Is there anything anyone would like to know about the process of writing a pop-sci book? Or would you all prefer that I just get back to the science…
laelaps | March 17, 2010
Earlier this week I discussed how to find a publisher for your book and how blogs can be useful tools in that process, but what about the effort that goes into completing a manuscript?
As Michael has pointed out in his latest blog-length contribution to our conversation, every writer is different. How Michael approached writing Sand was very different from how I went about composing Written in Stone, so rather than try to lay out a precise set of writing rules I will attempt to summarize my unique writing experience.
By the time I signed with Bellevue Literary Press in the autumn of 2009…
laelaps | March 16, 2010
Blogs, as Carl Zimmer astutely noted at this year's ScienceOnline conference, are software. Despite all the hand-wringing over whether science bloggers can or should replace science journalists the fact of the matter is that science blogs are the independent expressions of a variety of writers about subjects which they feel passionate about. There is no single science blog archetype that all blogs must fit, and this flexibility allows science writers the freedom to compose and promote their work in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
Hindsight being what it is, of course, I can look…
laelaps | March 15, 2010
Writing a popular science book has simultaneously been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my writing career so far. It was not so much something that I wanted to do as a task that I needed to do, and without that sense of resolve Written in Stone would probably be a half-finished manuscript left to rot on my hard drive. While hard-headed persistence has been essential to writing my book, though, it was not the only thing I required, and through this blog conversation with David Williams (author of Stories in Stone; blog) and Michael Welland (author of Sand; blog) I hope to…
laelaps | March 8, 2010
Long-time readers of this blog know that "Laelaps" is not so much a stand-alone repository of my thoughts and opinions as an active writing lab; from the very beginning I have had bigger things in mind. One of those projects, my book Written in Stone, will be published later this year, and every now and then I have thrown together a few thoughts on what it is like to write a pop-sci book. I am hardly the only science blogger to have gone through this process, though, and starting next week I will be teaming up with two other geoscience writers in an effort to help potential book authors…
laelaps | February 26, 2010Today is my 27th birthday. To celebrate Tracey and I were planning on visiting Philadelphia's Mutter Museum and the Academy of Natural Sciences, but given the deep accumulation of snow we thought better of going into the city. I can still celebrate by sharing something with you, though. Presented below is the cover of my forthcoming book Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature.
And, in related news, I am dusting off the old "Best of Laelaps" anthology project. It is tentatively-titled Giant Killer Lungfish From Hell and Other Tales From Deep Time, and it will…
laelaps | February 4, 2010I got a pretty nice surprise yesterday morning; Laelaps was listed as one of the "Top 30 Science Blogs" by the Times science magazine Eureka! I was proud to see this blog featured alongside those of Scicurious, Ed, Carl, David, Sheril, Bora, and many of the others who made the list. Even better, Eureka wants to expand the list to include the top 100 science blogs, so be sure to send in your nominations for the best of the best to eureka@thetimes.co.uk, with "Best blogs" in the subject line.
And, as Ed already said, Times science editor Mark Henderson deserves three cheers (and a bit more) for…
laelaps | February 1, 2010The due date for Written in Stone is still nine months away, but I have already started to compose a list of potential op-eds, essays, and articles that will help promote its release. They range from summaries of the book's premise to stories that were hacked out during the editing process, but the question is where I should pitch these ideas. There are only a limited number of popular science publications now in operation, and even among this small pool there are some that cannot pay writers and others that do not accept unsolicited proposals. As you can guess, trying to be a freelance…
laelaps | January 27, 2010
A few weeks ago the first packet of edits for Written in Stone was slipped under my door. I did not know exactly what to expect. As I opened the mailing sleeve I started having flashbacks of returned elementary school writing assignments, the pages cut and bleeding from the merciless slashes of the teacher's terrible red pen. Had my editor also cut my prose to ribbons?
I took the sheaf of papers, covering the first two chapters of my book, and sat down with my laptop to start making corrections. Nothing on page one. So far, so good. A typo on page two, marked in black (thank god) ink. Not…
laelaps | January 18, 2010The wonderful thing about this past Saturday's ScienceOnline session on going "from blog to book" is that my co-panelists and I were able to highlight the ways in which the web is becoming increasingly important for authors. The only drawback was that there was so much to talk about that we could not have answered all the questions even if we stayed in session for the rest of the day! Fortunately audience members continued to ask me questions and make comments throughout the rest of the conference, and I wanted to specifically address one comment brought up by the wonderful blogger Stephanie…
laelaps | January 15, 2010If there is any problem with my upcoming panel discussion with Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot tomorrow morning it is that there is too much to talk about! There is no way to get to it all. In the spirit of the conference, then, we are going to let the questions of our audience guide the discussion rather than lecture our listeners about our experiences, but I did want to briefly comment an issue Tom brought up on his blog earlier today.Tom wrote;
[O]ne piece of advice I do have for writers planning to start blogs specifically to aid their upcoming book projects -- don't. At least don't…
laelaps | January 11, 2010Just under three weeks. That is all the time I have left to finish my first book, Written in Stone. Although I must admit that I have had my share of "Oh crap, that paper is due today?" moments during my academic career, I am happy to say that I am fully prepared to meet my deadline for the book. The text of Written in Stone has been essentially complete for a few weeks now. It still needs some work, some rough patches need to be buffed out and some holes need to be spackled over, but all of the major parts are in place.
But this is not to say that I am devoid of anxiety. I have written a few…