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Morphing has been an important part of vfx for quite a while. Here's 10 memorable morphs that made us go wow!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Abayomi, the Brazilian Puma

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 21, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

This month-long series of blog posts will explain author websites and offer tips and writing strategies for an effective author website. It alternates between a day of technical information and a day of writing content. By the end of the month, you should have a basic author website up and functioning. The Table of Contents lists the topics, but individual posts will not go live until the date listed. The Author Website Resource Page offers links to tools, services, software and more.

Yes, I Want to Talk with My Readers and Fans!

You are going to all the trouble of putting up an Author Website so readers can find you. PLEASE make it easy for them to have a conversation with you. You need to decide how you want people to contact you. Do you want to connect on a social media platform ONLY? That may sound ideal, but what if your reader doesn’t use this platform or that one. Do you make them come to you, or do you make it simple for them? Of course, I think you should make it simple for them and provide an email address. (If your site is targeted at children at all, please read and comply with all COPPA regulations–the Child Online Protection Policy Rule. Also see a later post on Privacy Policies.)

Do you want them to email you directly or use a contact form? It’s personal preference. I’ve never had problems with having my email on the site, but you may not want to do that. Fortunately, there are simple, easy ways to provide contact info.

Social Media Links

To provide social media links, either find a theme that provides them as part of the design or use a WordPress plugin.
The theme I use on this site is WPAttorney and it includes those icons you see at the top of the page and a way to link each to my various social media pages. There were more options than you see, I just used the ones I needed.

Here’s a list of 10 social media plugins and another list of 8 recommended plugins.

Email link

You can also use the linking icon on the editor of your WordPress post/page. It’s the small chain icon. Just add this as a link: Mailto:[email protected] (Of course, fill in your email address!).
Put this text link where ever you like.

Contact Forms Plugins

For those who prefer not to have direct mail links, you can use a contact form. This presents a form that readers fill in with their contact information and a message. The Contact Form plugin then emails you the info and you can respond as you like. Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi is often mentioned as a strong candidate for this function. Search for it in Plugins/AddNew.

Do you Need a Separate Contact Page?

On this site, I’ve chosen to include the social media icons at the top of every page/post. Do I need a separate Contact Page? I decided not to do that. I include contact info on the ABOUT page, and those persistent icons, and feel that’s enough. But you might want a separate page with its own link on the HOME page. For example, if you do school visits or lots of speaking, you may want to explain your services and provide contact information in that context. You’ll need to decide how and where to put CONTACT links, but I highly recommend that you put them somewhere! And don’t make readers hunt for it.

How do you like readers to contact you? Social media–what platform? Email? Contact form? Or have you found a different way? You can Tweet me @FictionNotes! Or use the icons at the top of the page to connect on YOUR favorite platform. Of course, commenting on this blog is also contacting me. I’d love to hear what you’re doing with your Author Website.

The very first episode of Cosmos should have hooked anybody:

“We will encounter galaxies and suns and planets, life and consciousness coming into being, evolving and perishing. Worlds of ice and stars of diamond, atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms … The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen out toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return.”

Here was a scientist who was also a poet – a slightly cheesy poet maybe, but definitely a great communicator of “awesome” ideas.

Cosmos was a TV series first transmitted in the UK at the start of the 1980s. Sagan’s definition was “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be” so it had quite a wide remit. In the show, the American professor traversed the Cosmos in his “spaceship of the imagination”, a dandelion seed that he would blow on – the next moment he was inside, hair streaming in a non-existent breeze, hands waving over multi-coloured controls while he quoted from the Encyclopedia Gallactica. In this remarkable vessel Sagan traversed the universe, past and present. Readers of Johnny Mackintosh should recognize elements of this description and understand that Emperor Bram Khari bears a striking resemblance to the cosmologist from Cornell.

I always felt meeting Sagan was a highlight of my time at Cambridge University. He came to give a talk on the new theory of nuclear winter, the idea of which had come out of studying volcanoes on Mars. Afterwards I spoke to him and he signed by (battered) copy of Cosmos that I’d taken along.

When Brian Cox first started doing his Wonders of the Solar System TV  programme I was determined not to like it because I thought nothing could compete with Cosmos, but I quickly changed my mind when I saw how superbly put together Wonders was – not another dumbed down trite computer-graphics-laden programme but something of real substance, and I could see Sagan’s influence shining through. I first met Cox at the Royal Society and we talked about our shared love of Cosmos. Later, in the second series of Wonders, I found it funny  to see that the Manchester and CERN professor had carried his battered copy of Cosmos on location and referred to the photograph of the Anasazi rock painting, possibly depicting the supernova of 1054, that he’d first seen on this wonderful TV series from the 1980s.

Sagan didn’t only write and present nonfiction – though we should remember his fact was often far more extraordinary than most made-up traveller’s tales. If you ever saw the Jodie Foster movie

1. How many friends do you have? If you answered less than 5, you’re a loser.
2. Do you go to gaming/movie conventions?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
3. What sort of parties do you go to?  If you answered gaming, or computer parties, you’re a loser.
4. Do you play World of Warcraft or anything like it?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
5. Do you fish, hunt, or anything else of that sort?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
6. How many people are in your phone’s contact list?  If you answered 10 or less, you’re a loser.
7. What level are you in Call of Duty? If you answered a number, you’re a loser.
8. Have you ever pre-ordered a game?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
9. Are you only friends with people of your gender?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser. 
10. Why did you read this article?  If you answered anything besides you were bored, you’re a loser.

1. How many friends do you have? If you answered less than 5, you’re a loser.
2. Do you go to gaming/movie conventions?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
3. What sort of parties do you go to?  If you answered gaming, or computer parties, you’re a loser.
4. Do you play World of Warcraft or anything like it?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
5. Do you fish, hunt, or anything else of that sort?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
6. How many people are in your phone’s contact list?  If you answered 10 or less, you’re a loser.
7. What level are you in Call of Duty? If you answered a number, you’re a loser.
8. Have you ever pre-ordered a game?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser.
9. Are you only friends with people of your gender?  If you answered yes, you’re a loser. 
10. Why did you read this article?  If you answered anything besides you were bored, you’re a loser.

We have just finished reading this delightful fable about Shanti, a lion who is a spiritual leader to the people who live in his village in India, and indeed all those whose lives he touches. He doesn’t eat meat so as not to frighten these people and is able to speak. Far-fetched as all this sounds, it is convincing within its narrative framework and there’s enough magic emanating from the story to make my two pester me with questions as to whether it was true or not and “Does he really just eat grass?”

The quality of the illustrations adds to this too – they are pencil sketches but depicted with such a photographic eye that the appearance of Shanti amongst the people becomes unquestionable. The story is introduced as a story within a story, told by a wise old man to two children who meet him on his arrival at their village. I have to say that we became so caught up in Shanti’s and the villagers’ adventures that we forgot this, until the twist at the very end which served to add fuel to my boys’ conviction that somewhere in India there is a grass-eating lion called Shanti…

The author, Paul Sinclair told me:

“Even though the book is aimed at children aged eight plus, I’ve had parents tell me they have read it to their six-year-olds and they ask a lot of questions and a lot of explanations are necessary, but they are apparently fine with it.

One friend of mine who had read it to her children aged around six told me she had an Indian friend called Ashanti. Once Ashanti phoned and left a message on the answer phone. When the children heard Ashanti had left a message they asked their mother if that was Shanti. Not realising what the children were asking she said yes to which the children asked ‘Does he eat grass?”

So mine aren’t the only ones!

All proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Shanti Lion Children’s Trust, which is very close to Paul’s heart – and he has written a thought-provoking article about his journey to write and publish the story, which appears on the organisation’s website.