Einstein's Birthday Talk

As EVERYONE in the whole world knows. . . Monday, March 14 is Einstein’s birthday!

In honor of his 126th, I am giving a 20-minute talk and a book signing at Reiter’s Bookstore at 6:00. Since it’s right downtown, hopefully many of you can swing by after work – I mean there’s a whole, like, birthday party planned. Should be a rocking time – bring your friends. For those of you who came to the talk at Politics and Prose, I promise to talk about something different, and for those who didn’t make it, now’s your chance! But, most importantly, I’d just love to see some friendly faces in the audience. . . .

Reiter’s is at 2021 K Street NW, and I hope to see you there!

Back in the Saddle

In the beginning of 1994 I spent a glorious three months as a freelancer. In my mind I have romanticized this period extensively -- at the time I was probably a wee bit more worried about money than I remember, as I was not freelancing by choice, I was in between jobs. But it was a snowy, snowy winter, one of DC's worst, and I loved never having to leave my house, answering calls from my bed, and writing at my desk in various stages of undress. Noah was landscaping at that point, and so he too had the winter off -- I mostly remember his staying up all night long to play video games on my computer, while I used the computer to work all day. We overlapped for a few hours of sleep, and for a few hours at the end of my day when we watched episodes of Twin Peaks in order.

It was a pretty fantastic time. It also taught me that I could survive as a freelancer. Knowledge that I held in the back of my head for as long as I needed it until the fateful day where I up and quit my job.

But the thing is this -- even though I made enough money in those three months to survive, I received every check I'd earned AFTER I'd already found a new job. It was a lesson in the major time delays that happen when you write. Seeds you sow early take a long time to come to harvest.

I was reminded of that over these last two months. I spent the last half of 2004 on a mission to get more magazine work. I sent in queries, I attended workshops, I gave regular updates to my writing group, I had informational interviews with editors. And nothing really happened until suddenly EVERYTHING happened. The last few months have been really lovely, because I got to do the fun part -- the interviewing, the writing. All that business of trying to meet editors and come up with good stories was behind me. I've loved writing the pieces I've had to write lately. They just flowed. I've felt really good.

But I'm at the end of the line.

When I finish the story on dolphins for which I went to Japan, I'm done.

Oh, G-d, I have to start pitching again.

E-mail Access!

Alright, on my last day in Kyoto, I have finally found a way to connect my computer to the Internet. G-d bless airports and their wireless service! That means I have now uploaded the details of my Kyoto tour. . .

Blogs

I find the web a wee bit confusing. . . way back in the day I put up a cute little personal web site and then I listed it on altavista -- because it was that or, like, webcrawler, and altavista was the better search engine. Then LO the website was suddenly getting huge numbers of visitors a minute just to hear what little ol' me had to say about, well, um, dating, 'cause that's what I was writing about back then.

Ok, but now, there's just so much out there. It gets confusing. And how do you get your site listed anywhere? Here for example is a page about all the places that Einstein A to Z is listed in blogs. Ok, I am ALL for this process. Someone wants to list all the blog info about my book, then whoo hoo! That's just a bonus for me. But somehow it found the Einstein A to Z page for this site -- when it had only been online for like a DAY. And yet it didn't spot my many mentions of it on my blog here or Catherine's mention of it.

Can you explain this to me?? I just don't understand how you are supposed to find -- or really promote -- these days.

But, hey, if you want to write about Einstein A to Z in a blog, or if you want to link to the new Einstein A to Z page. . . I'm sure it wouldn't hurt my cause!

Invoices!

Here's the problem with promising someone a query -- I get all antsy about e-mailing them at ALL until I've given them what I promised. Which is fine, except when the e-mail I want to send is an invoice. . .

Regardless, the last few days have been business oriented, and I am trying to convince myself that this is a reasonable excuse for having not met the deadline for my writer's group that I meant to.

So, like someone who is doing affirmations I will say: Wow, I have done so much in the last few days -- I have paid my bills, deposited checks, and most importantly I have successfully invoiced everyone I needed to invoice!

(Except for that one magazine that I still owe a query too. Ridiculous, I know! But I am writing that query today today today, so I can send them the invoice.)

People's Interpretations

One of the most interesting things about putting a book out there is the ways in which people react from their own biases. I have a lot to say about different audiences for anything one writes that I won't go into a lot of detail here. Suffice it to say there is always a group of people who know far more about the subject than the rest of the populus and unless you say exactly the same thing as what they believe they know, then they will raise a hue and a cry about how you are incorrect.

It's important to realize both as a writer -- and if you're a huer and a crier -- that the experts are not your audience. The experts have a knowledge base, and they are often frustrated by things that are factually correct, but just rub them the wrong way. Or alternatively, they are committed to a certain theory when you propound another one. This kind of bias is not easy to spot and can be disconcerting when you encounter it.

I'm here today to discuss a whole different kind of "the wrong" audience. By "wrong" I simply mean people who are not going to get out of a book what you were aiming to give them. One of my favorite cases is from The Big Bang Theory.

It is an interesting device of those who are anti-science to point fingers at a theory's weaknesses and then say "See! It's clearly wrong, even scientists have to agree there are problems, and so the entire scientific approach is wrong and we should return to a simpler life/believe the bible literally/jettison technology that is destroying the world."

As it happens, the whole point of my Big Bang book was to analyze how robust a theory it is, where there are holes that still need to be patched up, what seems proven completely, what isn't, etc. Therefore, I naturally went into detailed discussions about the weaknesses (weaknesses that, mind you, have already changed in the two years since the book was published -- cosmology is a fast-moving field. . . ) I wrote in the introduction that it would be foolish to think that because there was room for discussion about the theory, one should embrace, say, Creationism instead. One can, and should, accept change in science, without feeling that science as a way to analyze the world is fundamentally untenable.

Ok, that was the background to the fact that in the article THE BIG BANG THEORY—A SCIENTIFIC CRITIQUE [PART II] by Bert Thompson, Ph.D., Brad Harrub, Ph.D., and Branyon May on a website dedicated to defending fundamentalist Christian beliefs in the face of scientific data, I am described as "admitting" the problems with the Big Bang Theory.

Karen Fox admitted:

The fact is that the dark matter problem is reaching something of a crisis, although few astronomers have been willing to admit this yet. Forget not finding any ideal dark matter candidates. The problem isn’t that no one can find the missing matter (although they can’t) but that even if theorists stomp their feet and shake their heads, observations haven’t even shown that the universe is at the critical density (2002, pp. 122-123, parenthetical item in orig.).
But if “observations haven’t even shown that the universe is at the critical density,” then that plays havoc with the idea of inflation producing a Big-Bang-type of Universe that is flat, and that will expand indefinitely.

As Fox casually remarked: “The dark matter problem affects the basics of the big bang model” (p. 124). It certainly does!)

It also describes me as "confessing":

Evolutionist Karen Fox confessed: “This radiation in and of itself doesn’t require the big bang theory per se be correct” (2002, p. 134).

Never mind the fact that they call me an "evolutionist" -- which, yeah, I am, but which has nothing to do with the big bang -- I just love this. I love the fact that I write a section entitled "How Good a Theory Is It?" with a chapter called "Glitches", in which the whole point is to describe what the problems about the theory are . . . and it's interpreted as this dirty secret, where I have to "admit" that everything is not smack-dab perfect within the world of cosmology. The words echoed throughout the web. . . On a Christian Message board arguing the Big Bang theory versus a 6-day creation describes says my "admission speaks volumes."

I have not, of course, attempted any discourse with the authors in question -- it wouldn't get any of us anywhere. But as I gear up for the next round of reactions on this current book, some of which I'm sure WILL be negative and WILL affect me more deeply than the above examples, it's great to be reminded how often feedback is rooted in biases I can never hope to affect.

Feedback

Thanks to all of you who dropped me notes after the Politics and Prose reading aired on BookTV this morning. It's great to know that there were actual people awake at that hour, who enjoyed, agreed with, disagreed with, wanted to comment on, or simply watched, the show!

(And thanks also to those of you who bought the book due to the show -- our Amazon ranking went from 50,000 yesterday to 9,000 today.)

More Media

Is it thoroughly jejeune of me to be excited any and every time the slightest thing gets put in print about Einstein A to Z? Probably. . . but hey it's still fun!

My friend Hilary Liftin, who is not only a fantastic writer, but who shares the wealth, sent my Shameless Boasting e-mail to a colleague at the NYC edition of Metro -- a free newspaper distributed globally. And so we're in there today! Aries and I are their book pic of the day. (Hit the link and scroll down to page 12 to read it in print. . . But here's what it said, next to a picture of the book: "Sure Einstein was brilliant, smart, witty , adn the greatest mind of our time. But, man, do you reall GET him? It's just too much information for us to handle Thankfully, science writers Karen Fox and Aries Keck have written a handy entertaining breakdown of the great thinker: from A to Z -- with a little E=MC2 thrown in.")

ALSO! If you'd like to see how Aries and I did at our Politics and Prose gig two weeks ago -- or alternatively if you're an insomniac and will be awake at 6:15 AM this Sunday, you can see us on Book TV on C-Span2.

'Nother Review

I think Publisher's Weekly is pretty much REQUIRED to write a review on every book that is ever published, but I am still pleased they take the time to write about my books. Their reviews are always really nicely written as well (Hey, this one had Latin in it!) and I kinda like that too. . .

From Publisher's Weekly: A is for absentmindedness, and yes, the greatest scientist of the 20th century was a stereotypically absentminded professor. E is for his famous equation on the relation between energy and mass, which is nicely explained here in a clear, comprehensible way. M is for McCarthyism, which Einstein openly decried, and also for Marilyn Monroe, whose link to Einstein is wholly fictional. Fox (The Big Bang Theory) and Keck, a science reporter for public radio station WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, say their alphabetic omnium gatherum "is designed to be as casual or as specific as the reader wishes," and that's a fair description. Details about Einstein's life, not just his science, are found in these alphabetical fragments, which cover the physicist's feelings on Israel and Judaism, on pacifism (which he espoused) and on quantum mechanics (which he famously rejected), as well as his relations with other scientists and with his own family. Novice students of physics and casual browsers can learn a fair amount from these entries, though, of course, it's no substitute for reading one of the many comprehensive books on Einstein's life and work. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reviews

So now that Einstein A to Z is available online, readers may leave their personal reviews up for others to read. Authors often stack such things, trying to encourage as many people as they know to put up something interesting. . . and so I am used to getting all sorts of 5-star reviews from people on the Amazon web page.

In this case, one of my first reviews was a 3-star review. (His comment was that, while well-written, the book didn't break out any new information on Einstein -- which is a fair comment. We really weren't looking to put out all new information, just trying to put it together in an interesting way. I would argue that the format is quite new, and a particularly good way to be introduced to Einstein for people who aren't well-versed in his science and life -- which is actually the bulk of readers, not just students, but nonetheless the reviewer's comment is fair.)

Here's the point: while it would have been great if it wasn't a 3-star review, I am so incredibly thrilled that someone random wrote a review for me, that it entirely makes up for it. It's just SO exciting.

Query Writing

OK, I just e-mailed off a parapraph query that literally ended with the sentences: "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!"

And the editor wrote back within an hour and said he loved the idea.

I swear casual -- good and interesting of course, but comfortably casual -- writing makes all the difference.

(Since he still has to check with other editors, I'm not going to jinx myself by telling what the story is yet, but I have my fingers crossed, 'cause it's a story I've wanted to do for awhile. . . )

Einstein A to Z is Out!

The e-mail I just sent out to my 600 closest friends:

Einstein: A to Z -- the book I've been working on for much of the last two years with my friend and co-author Aries Keck -- was just released today. It's made of (fun, enjoyable, eloquent) encyclopedia entries from "absentmindedness" to "Zionism," with stops at such things as cosmology, God, relativity, women, and wormholes in between. You should, of course, buy it. . . or, well, do anything you can to promote it.

And not just because I say so! Previous reviews of my writing have said things like:

--"[The Big Bang Theory is] a first rate book , having a permanent place in my library and I look forward to reading future work by the author."

and

--"Karen Fox has the freshest of writing styles and a complete grasp of her subject. Her voice is, at once, playful and intimate."

Ok, the second one was written by a friend of mine on Amazon, but the first was said OUT LOUD on BBC radio in May of 2002 by someone I have never ever met.

So, for those of you who would like to do what they can to help this budding writer along in her career, here are a handful of ideas.

1) Buying the book never hurt.

2) Telling your friends to buy the book and forwarding this message to anyone you know -- also good.

3) Write a glowing review of the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, dealer's choice.

4) Make one of those lists on Amazon that says things like "the only way to be erudite in the modern world is to have read these 5 books" and then list this book as your first one.

5) Go to your local book store and
--ask them to order three copies of the book if they do not have it in stock. You may then buy any of them or not. (You can do this in other cities too -- a friend of mine does this when he's on vacation. He never goes back for the books he's ordered, but they will be put on the shelf if you don't return and that's a win-win situation.)
--take a page from my friend Catherine Cooke's mom who always puts my books out front of other books whenever she goes to a book store.
--tell them you know the author and ask them if they'd like me to come read. Since I'll be driving myself there, and then staying at your house, because this is a strictly self-funded book tour, it's an extra bonus since I'll get to see you!

6) Let me know if you are in a position to review the book in any way in print or online (blog? do you have a blog??) and I will make sure you get a FREE copy. (Many of you probably have copies on your desk already. . . )

7) Get your university library to order a copy for their general library and for their science library.

8) Come to Politics and Prose (5015 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. WDC) at 5 PM, Sunday July 25 to listen to Aries and me speak.

Aries and I had a lot of fun writing this, and I really think it came out well -- I hope you enjoy it too!

-- Karen