Recent Publications Honored

This Sunday WCW held its annual Author Tea honoring members who have recently published books. Congratulations to an amazingly varied group of writers. We’re proud to count you among us:

•Carol Amato for Maximize Your Competitive Edge, a book for small business owners.
•Amanda Ashley for Night’s Promise, the latest in her vampire romance series, Children of the Night.
•Kathleen Harrington for her historical romance,  Black Raven’s Lady, the third in her Highland Lairds Trilogy.
•Rubin Johnson, for Well-Oiled, Cyberbully Blues and Dark and Cold, the first books in his futuristic series set in Mayberry.
•Hilda Lassalette for Fishing for Love, a romance with a touch of the paranormal.
•Angela Myron, for Ennara and the Fallen Druid, the second of her young-adult science fantasies about a young girl learning to master her powers.
•Raquel Reyes-Lopez for Born to Electrify, a collection of poetry.

Advertisement

Celebrate Pi Day

Mathematics is all about making the invisible visible. The relationship between the distance around a circle and straight across can’t be seen directly but is well known. The ratio of circumference to diameter is pi, whose symbol is π.

In 1971, Petr Beckman published A History of π which details humanity’s attempts to capture this irrational number. From about 3, to 22/7, to 256/81, to as many digits of accuracy as you are willing to compute, mathematicians and dilettantes have approximated π with precision.

Some people celebrate Pi Day by eating pastries and pies. A slice of cherry pie works for me. Technical schools and math classes celebrate by writing digits of pi, by answering math questions, or having an all-around fun day. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrates by sending out its admission decisions. Einstein was born on March 14. This is a special day.

Pi Day this year of 2015 will be a once-in-lifetime event for most of us. Look at it — 3/14/15 is the first five digits of π = 3.14159265358979. If you see people in a joyful but quiet moment around 9:26, they may be paying attention to π with additional precision.

If you need some help remembering, the following is a famous piem (pi + poem) where the letter count of each word is a digit of π: How I need a drink, alcoholic, of course, after the tough chapters involving quantum mechanics.

Given the technical nature of Cyberbully Blues, it seems only fitting to help celebrate this very special day. On Pi Day, on Amazon, Cyberbully Blues will be released. Perhaps, you’ll join in the celebration.

A Web Presence

Should you ask a barber if you need a haircut?

Should writers have a web presence? Search online. You’ll get hundreds of thousands of links offering lists of reasons why every writer should have a blog, a website, or a website with a blog. Rationality doesn’t explain my web presence. As a recruited WCW contributor, this blog was foist thrust upon me. I already had a website.

Here’s why I had a website. My first novel, Well Oiled, involves characters interacting with mayberryoil.com. An hour after the book hit Amazon, it occurred to me that my readers should be able to interact with the website as did the characters in the book. This brainstorm hit thirty minutes before I needed to leave for a dinner engagement. In that time, I was able to confirm that the name of the website used in the book wasn’t taken. I bought it.

After dinner, I built the site using Drupal. I also created an account with a username and password matching a character in the book. In the next week, I added treats to the site — pictures of elements in the book and related materials. To access the treats requires answering questions based on the story.

It takes time and energy to maintain a web presence. There’s probably a benefit. I still don’t know if every writer needs a website. My reason for having one is simple — it seemed a good idea at the time.

Welcome to Mayberry

The Pasadena Author’s Fair took place on February 21, 2015. Hobnobbing with other authors, and signing and selling books entertained me from setting up at 9:30 am until packing up books, bookmarks, and posters at 2 p.m. There was also a chance to present. My remarks, including four passages I read, are the bulk of this, my first blog post.

Good afternoon. I’m Rubin Johnson, a Californian, born in New York. I graduated Harvard before doing an engineering Ph.D. at Berkeley. I worked at big companies before starting a software firm. Lately, I’ve been focusing on the craft of fiction.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my novels – Well Oiled and Cyberbully Blues, both Mayberry Multisport Adventure stories. Why Mayberry? I’ll explain and then read some excerpts.

Pasadena Author Fair

Four of our writers will be appearing at the second annual Author Fair sponsored by the Pasadena Public Library this coming Saturday.  Rubin Johnson, Kay Murdy, Raquel Reyes-Lopez and Mary Terzian will be among the fifty-plus authors who will be speaking and signing books at the Fair.