Okay, so we're finally at the end of The Neverending Contest of Awesome. Which was supposed to end Friday, but a) I haven't managed to be on time yet, why start now and b) Friday was the start of the holiday weekend here in the states and I kind of figured we all had better things to do.

So, what am I giving away today? I'm glad you asked! Today I'm giving away a print copy of Undiscovered Country, and e-copies of literally everything I can get my hands on in the format of your choice. Everything I've got in print in one easy place, as well as some things that aren't technically in print but hey, who doesn't love free stories? If you win this one and you want a special kind of story I might even take requests (although that's dependent on deadlines and requests and blah blah blah). As with the others, you either need to live in the contiguous 48 or be willing to pay shipping yourself.

Alright, are we clear on what you're winning? Good. So how do you win? Another fabulous question.

I want you to share with me the strangest picture you can find. There are only two rules. 
1) It has to be appropriate for all audiences. No "nudity", no excessive violence.
2) It has to be Creative Commons or Public Domain. Most places you can search by those terms (Flickr is good at this). 

So there you go. Give me the strangest picture you can muster, and I'll give one lucky person all the stuffs. That seems like a good trade.

That's a pretty awesome map up there, isn't it? 

So, it's book promotion time, and nearly summer and I'm actually pretty excited about both of those things. Are you excited? Would it help if I promised you free stuff?

Yeah, I kind of thought so. Which should we do first, carrot or stick? Right, cause your gonna bother to read the rules if I don't tell you the cool stuff first. Sure.

Carrot:
Next week (May 25th through 29th) here on Words and Wanderings we're going to do a scavenger hunt/trivia contest. During those five days I will give away 5 books (two print, three digital). Not all of them will be mine. I haven't even decided which will be which yet. Mystery is exciting, right? Then, on the 30th and the 31st we'll do something special with an extra special giveaway to celebrate the fact I'll be at AwesomeCon all weekend. There'll be pictures of that one come Wednesday. Sound good?

Stick:
Rules. Right. Um... 
1) For physical rewards you have to live in the continental United States. 
2) You don't have to follow me on Facebook or Twitter, but you're going to have a hard time getting all the clues if you don't. 
3) Winners must furnish me with one of the following: an armadillo pup that has been certified leprosy-free, roughly twelve hours worth of life-force, or milk taken from an enraged salamander on midnight of the vernal equinox.
4) I don't really want #3 (particularly not the animal, much as I'd love an armadillo) but I feel like a list should have more than two things on it. 

FAQ (I'm guessing)
How do we play?
Every day I will set a task--either a trivia question or a scavenger hunt clue--and the first person to answer me correctly wins for that day. I'm keeping this simple, none of us need more stress in our lives.

But how do I answer?
Well, ideally you want to answer privately because then if you're wrong you get more tries and there's less chance of someone else stealing your thunder. So, there's a contact form on this website, or you can DM me on Twitter or Facebook. If you'd like to genetically re-engineer the carrier pigeon, that works as well. You'll probably get some pretty cool stuff from other people too if you do that. 


If the Weekend Giveaway is tied to AwesomeCon do I have to be there?
Yes! 


Really?
No. Obviously. I mean I'd love for people to come see me at AwesomeCon and if you're in the DC area you should just because it's giant and incredible. But no, the only rules are the serious ones up there. 




So. Now that we're all pumped for that, we get to wait a week. I know, I'm evil.


Come back Wednesday, we're going to talk about dynamic women in fiction (I think, unless I wuss out and we talk about something less serious) and then Friday we've got a guest post for Sci-Fi Friday! Also, if you're hard up for stuff to read, it's my week at the Art of Procrastination, and I'm talking about markety stuff and why everyone hates commercials. 


ps. The picture up there is Treasure Map by Jonty, and I embedded it so you could go right there and then I obviously don't own it and it's used under CC 2.0, but I'm not sure it took. 

Well, it's not really a question of smell. I don't know, sometime titles are hard.

The Book Lover's Bazaar went wonderfully this weekend. We had panelists, and people wonder in off the streets, and lots and lots of booths. We raised a nice chunk of money (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say how much we made, but it was nice).

We hope next year will be even bigger, but we've got a lot of work ahead of us in other places before we get there. 

Come back Wednesday, when we're going to talk about new challenges like we don't already have enough on our plates.

I'm supposed to be writing blog posts tonight, so I can get through this week without having to literally chain myself to the computer just for blogging.

But I can't, because my late evening--my work time on Mommy days--started with my kid coming into my room, looking at me with big sad eyes, and saying "Mommy, CoCo's dead!"

He wasn't wrong. I wish he was. Never mind Coco had a pretty sweet, life, for a tiny little rodent that makes it about a year in the wild. Never mind he outlived the curve for any small animal I've had, ever, by like six months. We hit one of the crappy parenting milestones today. My son experienced death for the first time. 

And don't get me wrong, Little J is just fine. We had an impromptu burial, and discussed a short respectful break from pet ownership (other than the cats) before we embark on Coco Mark-2. We discussed the fact it's always okay to be sad, just don't purchase real-estate there. Yay healthy coping mechanisms blah blah blah.

I don't know. I don't have anything profound to say. I'm just sad, and I'm spilling it all over here instead of being productive. 

Yeah yeah, I know, that's a healthy coping mechanism too.

Enjoy the big hamster-wheel in the sky, little dude. 
At least you didn't get eaten by a cat.

Alright, I'm done crying over the hamster. 

If I knew what I was doing Wednesday, or on the Art of Procrastination, I'd put it here. But I don't. I might figure it out shortly before you do. Life's a ride, and I feel like this is going to be one of those bumpy weeks.

While we were on vacation this week, near Lake Anna, we experienced a test of the Nuclear Emergency Preparedness system. There's a nuke plant, that provides a decent sized chunk of the power consumption for the southern half of the Washington DC area there. 

I honestly can't explain what that it feels like, being on a beach enjoying the day when the nuke sirens start up. It was a bit like being in one of those 1980's cold-war disaster movies. And as surreal as that was, I promise it was for the best. Obviously it's for the best that they test them, but also that we were in public when they went off. 

My small scientific replica is nervous about things like alarms and emergency signals. And vehicles, and...lets just say there's a family history of nervousness I had a fairly good indication was coming before he was born. We deal, generally positively and without a lot of drama. 

There were probably sixty or so people on that beach with us, and other than the initial jump, none of them cared about the siren. The beach isn't much of a tourist area, it was at Lake Anna State Park, which I seriously recommend, if you ever happen to be in the area (I have literally no clue why you would be). So being surrounded by locals meant the parental units stayed calm about the insanely loud, jarring, faintly terrifying siren when it started. Being calm yourself makes it much easier to keep small people-like things calm too. 

Apparently this is a test they do the third Wednesday of every month at 12pm. Another good thing to know, if you're ever in the area. If the sirens go off times other than that, as my dear-husband and I said on the day, don't get your shit, just get out. 

Fun bit of trivia? I found this newspaper article that talks about a series of false alarms this particular system had, back in the 1980's. Apparently, once in a while, they just went off. Hehe. Cause that's totally not a problem, taking the time to call the radio station to see if you should be evacuating away from the nuclear power plant...

This aren't the exact kind of sirens used at Lake Anna, but I suspect they sound very similar.

Well-Written Wednesday and Sci-Fi Friday will happen over on The Art of Procrastination this week, in deference to the whole just back from vacation thing.

"Mondays never go well."

Thera looked at the Head Novate through tired, unimpressed eyes. "It's Wednesday."

"I know dear." The older woman strolled through the walled garden, examining the beds one by one. 

It was the youngest girl's day to do the weeding, and because they had just started someone always had to come behind them and ensure they'd not pulled up any of the plants.

"Don't you agree, Thera?"

Thera sighed, and carefully replanted a seedling someone had clearly started to uproot. "That Monday's never go well?"

The Head Novate nodded happily.

Thera nearly bit down on her words. She'd joined the sanctuary on a Monday. A clear bright fall day where she'd been walked up to the gates by her mother and handed over to the sisters like a donated pig.

"I haven't noticed."

The Head Novate smiled, shaking her head. "You are always so politic."

Thera had learned. She'd been a Novate for six years now, from eleven to seventeen. She'd learned some fine skills. When not to speak. When not to even think of speaking. When to bow. When to smile and agree happily. When to smile and agree solemnly. 

How to make jam.

The jam was probably her most useful skill. Because someday when she was alone, when the day came they let her check the girl's weed pulling skills on her own then she'd sneak one of the st of henbane. And then, while the others were all spending the evening in line to the loo, she would be off...

"Come come dear," the Head Novate said quietly. "The henbane isn't ready yet anyway." She patted Thera on the shoulder, and walked toward the kitchen. "Besides, fall is a bad time of year for a sea voyage."

Thera sighed, and focused back on the job at hand. "It's still Wednesday."

I have no explanations for this. It just decided to hang out in my head tonight. Also, you really shouldn't give people henbane. It's not pleasant, and it probably wouldn't kill anybody but all the same...

And can you guess how little I'm paying attention to these titles anymore?

Today's Miscellaneous Monday is a collection of links. Because I came across this and thought I would share it all with you. It seems suitably random.

In 1997 a container ship called the Tokio Express lost a collection of containers when it was hit by a wave. Now, there's not generally any bright side to accidentally spilling twenty containers worth of stuff into the ocean. 

Except maybe a little when it's twenty containers of nautical themed Legos. 

I won't bore you with the details, the BBC did a much better job of it than I would have. You can find the article here.

I'd class that much better than the dead jellyfish I usually find along the beach. 

Lego Lost at Sea -- The Facebook, so you can track the phenomenon. As time wasters go, it's probably one of the better ones I've found lately. 

Because I'm being an over-achiever today. 

Random Fact #5385
The Armadillo is a primary carrier of Leprosy. Once, before European entrance into the new world, both the Armadillo's and the people were free of leprosy. 
This means...
Somewhere in the annals of history a Spaniard touched an Armadillo and it all went down-hill from there. 

Random Fact #5386
One of the most common ways for people to contract Leprosy? Eating Armadillo. If I could draw there would totally be a 'battle armored-pig' comic below this one. Cause it still gets you after it's dead.

Random Fact #5327
When startled, the nine-banded armadillo jumps three to four feet straight up. Get that image out of your head.

Random Fact #5390
The Nine-Banded Armadillo is the only mammal to have fully polyembryonic reproduction. This means every single time the girl Armadillo get's pregenant--and that's a set of facts for another time--she has four genetically identical offspring, all formed from the same egg but growing their own placenta and embryonic sack (do you call it an embryonic sack in mammals, or is that just chickens?). She will do this once a year for her entire adult life span. 

Is it any wonder they're slowly crawling their way north? 

And lastly...Behold, the Pink Fairy Armadillo.
What the heck.

And more miscellaneous than ever!  

Shhh, I know it's still Sunday.

Today's random bit of randomness is that dude up there. His name was Bernd Rosemeyer. And despite how strange his car looks (it looks backwards, doesn't it?) he was notable for being a Nazi, a Racing super-star, and having a ridiculous nickname. 

Alright, Miscellaneous Monday can wave goodbye to the Neiblemeister--I don't know what that means in German and I don't want to--and maybe we'll wave hello to his flying ace wife, Elly Beinhorn next week. 

According to my mother I decided I wanted to be a Paleontologist when I was three. I had an early, avid fascination with all things Dinosaur. Sometimes it wondered off in other directions--for a solid year I gobbled up everything I could find about the Titanic, off and on in my teens I wandered into Grail Lore and Arthurian legend. But I always went back to dinosaurs. 

Jurassic Park was probably my first honest fictional obsession. I read the book until it fell apart, and watched the movie as many times as I could, and suffered through the video game, and listened to the soundtrack, and mentally wrote myself into the story in a million different ways. I bought the ridiculous merchandise, and my mother encouraged this--she even bought me a set of Jurassic Park sheets once when I was like sixteen--I think because she was secretly enamored of the idea her teenage daughter wanted to be a scientist.

Sometimes I think if the internet had existed when I was properly little, I might have hung on to that past the first semester of college (probably not, Chemistry kicked my butt good). I spent a lot of time on dinosaurs, but nobody told me about Mary Anning. Nobody told me the story of a little girl playing on the cliffs of Dorset with her brother, who found a fossil that changed the world. Who went on to become one of the first paleontologists ever. 

Next time you see a plesiosaur, think of Mary Anning. Because dinosaurs are cool, whether you're a scientist or not.

Also, apparently the closest word spell-checker can come up with for plesiosaur is applesauce.