Ninmah Meets World » writing

my sister, the author!

ninmah — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:20:15 +0000

My talented little sister just published her first book! I’m so proud I could bust. The book is awesome, and not just because she’s my sister, either. The story is fast-paced and engaging and the characters are very lovable. It’s a YA (young adult) suspense novel that — get this — does NOT involve vampires. I know, right? Here’s the book trailer and the blurb from the back cover:

When the Tiger Smiles
by Sonja Stone

By the time 16-year-old Emma Riley realizes her life is in peril, she’s at the bottom of a canyon 2,000 miles from home.

Like any self-respecting overachiever, Emma is thrilled when she’s invited to attend a small private school a few weeks into her junior year. Recently dumped by her boyfriend (for her ex-best friend), she’s ready for a change. However, the recruiter from Desert Mountain Academy fails to mention one pertinent detail: her new school is a training facility for future spies. She’s briefed on arrival and, despite the intimidating curriculum, she’s determined to make the most of her opportunity. But when her classmates learn that a double agent has infiltrated the student body, her situation takes a deadly turn.

As it turns out, the girl Emma replaced didn’t die in a car accident—she was murdered. The administration quietly suspects Emma—she is the new transfer. Evidence against her begins to accumulate, and her gorgeous new boyfriend can’t ignore it forever.

Emma’s being framed, and she’s desperate to clear her name. Meanwhile, the real double agent will stop at nothing to protect his or her identity—including an attempt on Emma’s life.

Tell me you’re not hooked! Can’t wait to read it, can you? Well, good news! You can get it right now for your Kindle on Amazon or your Nook onBarnes & Noble, and print copies will be available on Amazon on August 1!

Want to know more about Sonja Stone? Rumor has it she’s already hard at work on a sequel.

Take a look and pass the word, especially to any young adult readers you may know. You’ll be glad you did. Plus, every time someone buys the book, God kills a vampire.

happy towel day

ninmah — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:48:53 +0000

I know where my towel is

Today is Towel Day, in honor of Douglas Adams. Do you know where your towel is?

As a miserable high school student in the late 1980s, I memorized the HHGG series. I built an electronic thumb, with some help from my dad and a bunch of spare computer parts. I desperately hoped I could hitch a ride on an alien spacecraft and see the galaxy — though I suspect a lot of that was because high school was so appalling. Douglas Adams’ books helped make it bearable. At 10, my son loves the series. This photo of me with my towel is a little tiny tribute to an author who fired the imaginations of millions of devoted, if weird, fans.

why is it so hard to write your own bio?

ninmah — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:40:23 +0000

I’m at it again: updating the bio. I know I do a lot of work. I know a lot of it is interesting and exciting and fun (to me, anyway). So why the heck is it so hard to write it down? Even armed with tips from my colleague Jared Bendis, whose bio-writing skills awe and inspire, I’m still struggling to put into words what it is I actually do.

The occasion of the update is partly that I got a shiny new title: Vice President, NMC Services. Yup, that’s Ms. Veep to you. Although as my co-worker Alan notes, the family is having fun with the change. I got a celebratory clink of wine glasses, and then after that it was all teasing all the time. So that’s how a vice president fixes salad. I would have thought the avocadoes would be more neatly chopped. That looks more like a director’s salad to me… and so on.

Well, back to the bio. Out of curiosity, what do you all think I do?

dangers vs. pitfalls

ninmah — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:42:54 +0000

I’m in a session on digitizing newspapers at the Digital Library Federation’s Spring Forum, in which one of the presenters (Tom O’Brien of Global Business Development) has just defined the difference between dangers and pitfalls very neatly. He showed a photograph he had taken of the city of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background. The volcano, he explained, is a danger, but it’s not a pitfall, because you can see it clearly.

there are more things in heaven and earth

ninmah — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:19:51 +0000

I’m deep in research and writing for the Horizon Report, and I am, as always, humbled and amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff that there is in the world, and the sheer number of other people who know a lot about any given bit of it. There are 12 topics on the Short List, of which six will make the final report; each of the twelve is a little world unto itself of knowledge, tools, and ideas. Writing them up in brief descriptive papers is daunting and exhilarating at the same time.

You can follow some of my progress by peeking at my 2007 Horizon link list on del.icio.us. It’s not comprehensive, but I’m adding to it as I work my way through the topics. Many of the links in there were supplied by our Advisory Board. Some were found via search or serendipity (which is my favorite aspect of this part of the project).

Campus Impact paper released

ninmah — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 23:54:23 +0000

The paper Maximizing Campus Impact: Lessons from the Trenches, which I mentioned last month, was officially released today. You can read all about it (and download a copy of your own) on the NMC's news page. Enjoy :-)

Campus Impact

ninmah — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:50:48 +0000

I’m editing this post. My husband, who does not yet keep a blog but who actively reads them, came home yesterday and said “Your post on Campus Impact might be a little vague, dahling.” (Okay, he didn’t say “dahling,” but the rest is more or less true.) His English upbringing results in a certain delicacy of expression; translated to modern-day conversational American English, what he meant was, “I’m pretty sure that people who haven’t heard you talk about this particular project day in and day out for the past I-don’t-know-how-many-weeks won’t have a clue what it’s about from the little bit you chose to say about it.” So I’m editing this post, which he assures me is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the world of blogging, so long as I’m up front about it.

Yesterday’s vagueness had a lot to do with late-stage writer’s block. I was in the push-on-through-till-dawn phase of writing and wasn’t sure what else to say. There wasn’t really a single coherent question I could ask. The post, which ran as follows, was basically a cry for help:

The NMC is working on a paper that discusses what it means to have an impact on campus (for a new media center or similar organization). It’s sort of a how-to guide for directors of such centers, with suggestions about ways to make a difference on campus. We affectionately call it “Campus Impact.”

The material for the paper has come from several discussions with the directors of centers that belong to the NMC, so the suggestions are good, solid ones that people have actually employed, illustrated with examples. The paper covers seven strategies that can be used together to increase a center’s impact on campus:

be focused

be adaptable

be productive

make allies

set expectations

make your boss’s goals your goals

be needed

Obviously the paper goes into a little more detail. It’s in a late draft stage at this point, but if you have ideas, I would love to hear them.

That said, the suggestions I did get were actually quite helpful. Thanks to Bryan’s example (The Studio at Colby College), I emphasized the role of students in making an impact. Nick’s point about leveraging campus networks is an excellent one, and found its way into the paper as well. Just the fact that someone out there expressed an interest in reading the thing gave me new energy as I tackled it (thanks Steve!). Of course, I also took a direct line of attack and walloped that writer’s block with some really good tea and top-of-the-line chocolate — desperate times call for desperate measures. All of this together got me past the hurdle.

I realize I still haven’t put in the “more information,” so here it is. The idea for the paper came out of several conversations among NMC directors (that is, people who run new media centers or similar organizations on various campuses). The directors were sharing stories about things they had done that had made a noticeable impact on their campuses, and asking each other questions about their stories. Victor Edmonds from UC Berkeley gave a presentation at the 2005 NMC Director’s Meeting based on his experiences running ETS; he’s the one that came up with the seven strategies, and the other directors really resonated with those ideas. In that session and in a similar one at the 2005 NMC Summer Conference, the directors explored those ideas some more, and swapped stories, concerns, and suggestions. Craftily, we took notes. (We told them we were going to, so it was crafty in the clever sense, not in the sneaky sense. In fact, I took notes on giant 4′x8′ sheets of paper, so it would have been really hard to be sneaky about it.)

We’ll share a draft of the paper at this year’s Director’s Meeting, which is next week (back to Texas for me — more travel stories for you), and use it as a springboard for further discussion of the topic. When the paper is finished it’ll likely be posted on NMC’s website, so I’ll include a link here for those who are interested.

As a proof-of-concept, though, yesterday’s post worked really well. You can be sure that the next time I’m stuck, I’ll be writing about it here. Thanks y’all!