Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

The strange inspiration that created the SkyRyder’s Series

by Liza O'Connor






The strange inspiration that created the SkyRyder’s Series




Early in my life, I became a private pilot. Then I took up skydiving and hang-gliding.

But oddly, the inspiration to create the SkyRyder stories came from a plastic grocery bag from ACME, no less. One windy day I noticed a shopping bag about a hundred feet up, flying as fast as the wind because it was fully deployed. And because the wind was blowing over a hill, the bag (and the wind) kept climbing higher until I lost sight of it. 

It made me ponder a whole bunch of what-ifs as I built an apocalyptic world in my head.

What if after a terrible world war, where all enemies attacked each other’s oil fields with atomic bombs, we no longer had access to fossil fuels.

What if these atomic bomb attacks created havoc with our winds, leaving us with stationary hurricanes that cover most of what is left of the Americas, while rising sea water consumes all lower lying areas.

What if traveling by sea between the continents is impossible due to massive high wind sea storms and constant seismic activity.

What if solar panels don’t work so well due to winds constantly blowing dust on them, thus massive wind mill farms become our salvation.

What if we could harness the power of our winds and use it to our travel advantage.


What if we create a light weight, but very strong windcatcher that has a large main chute that catches the wind and can carry a person across the skies at high speed. Of course, we would need to control the windcatcher, so we’ll need additional panels to provide lift and descent capabilities in winds from 50 to 200 miles. Let’s make all these panels from immensely strong, but incredibly lightweight material, so the massive catchers can be folded into a large backpack at the end of the flight.

If we do all this, then we can have SkyRyders protect the region that a stationary hurricane covers. Naturally, the rich will relocate to the eye of a hurricane, since that is the calmest area. The rest of the population will have to endure fifty-mile per hour winds at ground level.

There is one region, called Flat Land, which the surrounding mountains geographically prevents a hurricane from establishing itself and that is where the mega rich and powerful people live. And that is where my ‘worst ever debutante’ heroine lives. The only wind she has experienced is in a wind tunnel at the mall. Becoming adept in a wind tunnel has given her far better understandings of the complexity of wind, far more than any SkyRyder knows. So after she goes from debutante to street girl to scavenger, where she teaches herself to fly, then enters the SkyRyders, her flying abilities are par none. But can she teach those skills to others?


Stationed on opposite coasts, Alisha and Logan must each face their own demons and challenges. On the West Coast, Alisha loses her rank for butting heads with her General and soon discovers the life of a private can be utter hell. On the East Coast, newly promoted General Logan discovers his soldiers do not recognize his authority to command. In an effort to retake control of the East Coast Corps, Logan authorizes unthinkable actions. When Alisha faces a life-threatening crisis, will Logan rise above his own troubles or will she discover love and rescue with her best friend Jack?

AMAZON

Check out all my books on Amazon
Be sure to click FOLLOW  on my Amazon page so I can alert you to new books.
which I've dedicated to Sci Fi books

Wander over to my Personal Facebook Page
where I talk and share about books, politics, and other silliness.

Twitter is a great place to find me: @Liza0Connor 
(That's @Liza, the number 0, then Connor)

THERE’S OVER 30 OF THEM

 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Inspiration for Intelligent Aliens by Aurora Springer


Many authors and fans of science fiction love aliens. My aim is to inspire writers with ideas from weird aliens in fiction and from the perspective of a scientist with a life-long interest in the diversity of life on our planet. Biology facts will be interspersed with fictitious life forms.

Weird biology fact: We have traces of viral DNA in our genomes.

First, what are aliens? Aliens are intended to have inhuman characteristics. I will use broad categories of humanoid, animal based and other.


In Science Fiction Romance, human-like aliens are common, since a degree of physical compatibility may be desirable, although not essential. Humanoids predominate in video media, partly because they are easier to represent. Consider Dr Who: even the exterminating Daleks are mutated humans in a robotic shell.


Animal-like aliens are also common, and many resemble people in fur. Felines are popular, such as the lion-like Hani of C.J. Cherryh, Anne McCaffrey’s Hrubbans, and the Kzinti of Larry Niven.

Dragons are clearly related to reptiles and fall into the category of animal-like aliens.

One early example of non-humanoid aliens is described in the War of the Worlds (1897) by WG Wells.


Piers Anthony in his Cluster series created a variety of non-humanoid sentient aliens. He used the unifying theme of aura as a means of communication and exchange of minds into different bodies. In Thousandstar (1980), a humanoid woman falls in love with an alien resembling a giant amoeba (my description).

Adrian Tchaikovsky has fun with insect characteristics in humans in the Apt series.

Weird biology fact: Insect metamorphosis means that delicate winged butterflies with six legs are the adult forms of squiggly, voracious caterpillars with many legs and prolegs.

Think of the myriad varieties of animals living in the sea. Many are spineless invertebrate animals such as jellyfish, sea cucumbers, and squid.

Weird biology fact: squid communicate by changing color.

Intelligent plant-based aliens are less common. They include Tolkien’s Ents, which are essentially walking, talking trees. Carnivorous plant-like aliens are popular, such as the walking plants with lethal stings from John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951).

Weird biology fact: carnivorous plants can move fast, but they cannot walk. On the other hand, some seeds fly!


Can you imagine intelligent bacteria? Bacteria, aka prokaryotes, can survive in extremely hostile environments, in soil, ice, boiling springs. They communicate via chemical messages and exchange pieces of DNA, like the genes for antibiotic resistance. Different bacteria can combine in a colony called a biofilm. What fascinating elements for novel aliens! Maybe I’ll use these aliens!

Weird biology fact: the descendants of ancient bacteria live in your cells as the energy producing mitochondria.

Aliens can include entities of gas or pure energy. Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent English astronomer, disputed the Big Bang theory. His 1957 novel, The Black Cloud, explores the idea of an intelligent interstellar cloud. Aliens can be entities of pure energy, although they may be obvious of us.

I hope some of these weird life forms will inspire you to create unique and believable aliens in your stories.


Recent Novel:
Blurb
Four hundred years earlier the great spaceships had departed from Terra to colonize distant planets. Few ships reached their destinations; their sporadic signals waned and disappeared. No one knew whether the colonists survived. Now, construction of a new generation of hyperdrive ships was scheduled at one every five years. Planet Delta was selected as the next target for survey because the arrival of a brief signal suggested the descendants of the colonists were alive.
Tiger Lily longs for freedom. In her fight to escape the subterranean slums of Terra, Lily competes to join the scout team selected for the next spaceship along with a new set of prospective colonists. Their mission to discover the lost colony faces the challenges posed by the voracious predators of the planet. In the mountains, they encounter Conley, a grim warrior who longs to escape the confines of his isolated valley. Has Tiger Lily met her match in this tortured warrior? But, where is he leading them? Danger lies ahead, and conflicts between humans and aliens. Can they ensure the safety of the new human colonists, or must they retreat to Terra?
Author Bio:
In my "day job" I am a scientist, although I have composed stories as long as I can remember. This year, I achieved my life-long ambition to publish novels. My works include science fiction and fantasy with romance and a sprinkle of humor. I was born in the UK and live in Atlanta with my husband, a dog and two cats to interrupt my typing.
Website: http://AuroraSpringerNovels.blogspot.com
FaceBook: Aurora Springer
Twitter @AuroraSpringer
Google+ Aurora Springer
Wattpad, Goodreads: Aurora Springer


Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Finding Pictures for Writing Inspiration

Guest Post by Patty Hammond


Black Holes Have Simple Feeding Habits from NASA's Image gallery


Many authors depend on pictures to help inspire their writing. In this modern age of search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, authors can find pictures on a wide variety of topics using various keywords.  However, many of these same authors have a hard time finding pictures using these standard search engines because the keywords they are using in the search engines are not always associated correctly. Therefore, authors will need to find other ways to help find pictures to inspire their writing.  This blog article is going to explore a few of the resources that may help authors.

Libraries 

One of the best resources that authors can still use to find pictures for writing inspiration are within a library collection. Many local and national libraries have converted print photographs and drawings into massive digital collections that can be accessed via their websites.  These digital collections are organized, usually by topic, and can include pictures on a variety of subjects.  However, many of the pictures within these digital collections cannot be found using standard search engines.  Therefore, half the battle, is for authors to know where to find these digital collections.  Below are a few examples of libraries that offer digital picture collections on their websites:

Library of Congress

One the most extensive digital collection of pictures in the United States can be found on The Library of Congress website.  Below are two examples of the different types of digital collections that can be found on the Library of Congress website:

Master Drawings Collection

"The Master Drawings Collection (about 5,000 original drawings) offers works by artists of various nationalities. Although most of the images date from between 1830 and 1930, the oldest drawings were created before 1600 and the most recent in the 1950s. The collection represents diverse styles and media and includes finished artworks as well as sketches, preparatory drawings, and designs related to fine prints, paintings, and sculpture."


Lamb Studios Archive

"The online presentation of the Lamb Studios Archive offers images of nearly 2,500 design sketches for stained glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork, and interior architecture. The drawings feature striking watercolors created from the 1860s to the 1990s, primarily for churches, synagogues, and other sacred spaces. The J. & R. Lamb Studios was founded in 1857 and is the oldest decorative arts firm in continuous operation in the United States. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division acquired the drawings from Donald and Donna Samick, the current Lamb Studios president, in 2003. The firm’s historic business records and photographs were donated by Barea Lamb Seeley and Charles Anthony Lamb in 2004."

For authors who do not live in the United States there are several libraries that also have picture collections that can help inspire writing including:

Along with libraries, there are other sources of digital picture collections that authors can use to inspire their writing including: 

The National Geographic contains many articles and pictures The National Geographic Photography website, for instance, contains two sections that have interesting photographs that can be used to inspire science-fiction romance authors. The first is the StarStruck Blog, which invites readers to "...discover the cosmos and go behind the scenes of space exploration."  The other is the Space Suit X-Ray collection, which includes, just what you think, x-rays of all kinds of Space Suits! 

NASA and Other Government Resources

It is fairly obvious that the NASA website contains pictures, which authors, writing any type of science-fiction story, can use for inspiration. However, authors may not know about the other government resources available.  For example, many of the NASA images are housed on the Defense Video and Image Distribution System (DVIDS), which is "...a state-of-the-art, 24/7 operation that provides a timely, accurate and reliable connection between the media around the world and the military serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain." 

----
I appreciate being a guest of the SFRBrigade Blog and if you want to know more about me, then visit my blog at http://everydayfangirl.wordpress.com.

SFR Brigade Bases of Operation