A Fine Hand

Image courtesy of the Queen's Table blog

I am the first to admit that I have horrible handwriting. It's a big old bummer, because to my mind script can be an artform. I love artistic block capitals, copperplate, and calligraphy.

My parents had their own styles of writing. Dad wrote in fine Italics always with a fountain pen. Mum had a fine, British hand. Both reflected them in a way I can't describe - I instantly recall them when I see pages that they wrote by hand.

As a girl, I had a long-standing correspondence with my cousin in Ireland. We wrote long letters to each other. She was very artistic (still is) and had a lovely, sloping hand. I pitied her having to read my crabbed, sloppy script in return.

I always vowed that I would change my writing and make it nicer to look at - or legible at least. Alas, it never happened. Dad gave me a fountain pen and tried to teach me Italics. I understood the dynamics of it and learned the letters and strokes, but the thing was - it was too slow. There were words and phrases pressing to come out, and they couldn't wait for fine flourishes and lovely scrawls.

For that reason, when I attempted to write long works, I never succeeded. The sight of my scribbles on my page took away from what I tried to convey. So when my boyfriend (now my husband) gave me his old Apple IIe computer, it was a revelation.

Finally, I was able to write without worrying about what the words actually looked like on the page. It was as magic as an incantation or a spell.

Perhaps I reflected that subconsciously in my Crown Phoenix series. The Crown Phoenix is, after all, a quantum typewriter that can move time and space.

And in a way, my laptop does move time and space. When I sit down to my story, I am transported to an Edwardian world. I'm in a stone cell with a black-haired orphan, or the garret of a huge, country house, with a boy who cannot leave his room.

I wish I did have beautiful script, especially when I'm signing a book for readers. They deserve the best I have to offer. I don't think it will ever happen. However, that magic, the machine, the Crown PHoenix - for me, that is real.

Cool Science Stuff

Truth really is stranger than fiction. Teleportation, the "God Particle," and quantum computers are the stuff of scifi, but if you read the news they are more real than you think.

Now, I am not very bright when it comes to science. In fact, I failed Chemistry (the only class I couldn't crack) and didn't even attempt physics. Still, I love science in principal, even if I can't understand it, and I like to celebrate cool stuff that scientists do.


Number one today has to be the discovery of the "God Particle" or boson, aka a new subatomic particle. How cool is this? It's the glue, the stuff that makes atoms clump together into stars and planets. Without it, the universe would be a soup of particles whizzing around at the speed of light. 

Here's a cool science fact: The tidal forces of the Moon don't just affect the ocean. They also affect dry land, which can rise and fall as much as 21 inches.


They're getting closer to that quantum computer, too - a group of Harvard scientists were able to create quantum bits and store information on them for two seconds. Now, two seconds doesn't sound like a lot to a clueless geek like me. But that is six orders of magnitude greater than the previous time stored, which makes this a huge breakthrough. 

Which means that my Crown Phoenix typewriter could be a reality soon.


We can't beam anyone up yet, but it is possible to teleport information using quantum entanglement. I don't know what that means, but it's pretty darn cool. The real world applications are huge - transporting medical info through skin, for example. And this year scientists at A*STAR worked on an actual tractor beam, using something called a Bessel beam that actually pushes particles towards a light source.

So, I may not be able to understand it, but I am a big scifi fan. And all of this stuff is pretty darn cool.