Karen Sandler

Karen’s Blog

  • Fear No Science

    I am a self-confessed science geek. I had great fun in my high school science classes and devoured science fiction short stories and novels. In college, I found physics and chemistry pretty fascinating. I always zero in on the science articles on the web or in the newspaper (yes, I still read the newspaper). No big surprise that I’m thrilled that my own science fiction book, TANKBORN, will be published in the fall.

    No big surprise either that science doesn’t scare me. Yeah, people have done some pretty frightening things with science. Weapons of war come to mind. But the benefits of scientific discoveries so outweighs the negatives (medical advances, computers, cell phones, the Internet), it doesn’t make sense to me to fear it. You might not want to dissect that frog in biology class (yeah, kind of ick), but despite the gross factor, it’s kind of cool seeing what’s inside a frog.

    So what nifty science have I learned recently? I learned that babies make a phenomenal number of synaptic connections in their brains. They start with a clean slate, then as they bop around, discovering one new thing after another, they build those connections until they’re a big tangle. That’s pretty intriguing right there, but then when children grow, they start losing some of those connections. By their teens, they have far fewer than they did as a baby. Why? One explanation is that we start to “specialize,” that is, we focus more on certain things of interest. Our preferences and personalities develop, and we lose the extraneous stuff.

    Synaptic Exuberence at“ Birth, at 6, and at 14, Public Library Association

    As an author, my next question is, how could I use this in a story?

    What if scientists developed a virus that kept babies from losing all those thousands of connections they’d formed? What if the virus escapes the lab and sweeps the world? It doesn’t affect grown-ups, but every infected baby (say, under the age of 1) no longer loses any connections formed in their brain.  The scientists’ goal was to improve the human thinking process, that with all the extra connections, we’d be able to do a ton more things than the average person. But instead, what if we’re so swamped with knowledge and experience that we’re frozen, incapable of doing anything? Have the scientists created a race of overachievers, or millions who can’t function because of brain overload?

    Okay, I’ve ventured into scary science here. But even still, it was fun to learn about baby brain connections (especially since I’m a new grandma) and neat to brainstorm a story idea based on it. That’s one thing I like about science as an author–it activates my imagination.

    How about you? Is science scary or fascinating? Did you sleep through high school biology class or fall in love with science in ninth grade? Drop me a comment and let me know.

  • We don’t need no resolutions

    I suppose resolutions are a good thing for some people. In general, it’s good to improve yourself. Every day in every way I’m getting better and better, blah, blah, blah.

    But the whole idea of coming up with, and then attempting to achieve a list of resolutions on New Year’s just gives me the heebie-jeebs. Yes, there are many areas in my life in which I could do better. In some cases, there is much room for improvement. A whole chasm stands between where I am and where I’d like to be.

    But to set resolutions down on paper, or in a computer file, makes me quake and shake. Because once it’s down in black and white, I of course feel committed. And for me, commitment always seems to have this little companion named guilt. Once I say I will do something, I will tie myself into knots to do exactly that. If I don’t, then guilt has its way with me.

    Not to say I never make commitments. There’s the nearly 30 years of marriage. Two boys raised and off doing wonderful things. The more than 20 books written (and most of them published). Countless hours spent volunteering, usually with great joy in my heart.

    But resolutions are different. They come with a complete set of matching baggage. They’re things you’ve wanted to do differently for quite some time, things you’ve repeatedly tried and failed to do. Yet you think that this time, this New Year’s, things will be different.

    But alas, there’s nothing magical about New Year’s Day. It’s just a date on the calendar. It’s even smack dab in the middle of winter when it’s hard to feel hopeful about anything. Seems to me that spring would be a much better time to make promises to yourself, when the colors are gorgeous and everything feels new. For that matter, why not make resolutions all year long? Why save all that resolve for January 1st?

    Or be like me and don’t make any resolutions at all. Each day, just be the best you can, even if your best is grouchy and cranky. Eventually, you’re going to smile and sooner or later, spring will be here.

  • Birthday in San Francisco

    I had a lovely time celebrating my birthday in San Francisco. As much as I love living in a rural area, it is so cool going into the city for the Christmas holiday. We took the cable car down to Union Square (well almost to Union Square–we had to walk part of the way) and had dinner at the marvelous Kuleto’s. We did a little shopping at Macy’s afterward then caught a cab back to the hotel. Even the cab was an adventure–nothing like jetting up the steep San Francisco hills, then hovering at the top where you can’t see the road on the other side. Talk about a leap of faith.

    A very cool motorcycle decked out with Christmas lights

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The tree in Union Square

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Macy's all decked out

     

    The interior of Kuleto's
    Kuleto's very cool ceiling

  • 10 Things You Might Not Know About Me

    1. When I was a kid, I lived a couple blocks from The Beach Boys. One time when I trick-or-treated at their house, I saw all their gold records hanging on the wall. Dennis Wilson’s girlfriend was our babysitter. (okay, that’s 3 things, but all BB-related)
    2. I was mostly raised by my grandmother.
    3. When I was 8 or 9, my family would stand me up in front of relatives so I could spell out antidisestablishmentarianism, which was the longest word I knew from the dictionary.
    4. In 1965, I went to the World’s Fair in New York City and saw the “It’s a Small World” exhibit before it ever went to Disneyland. So I’ve had that song stuck in my head much longer than most people.
    5. In 6th grade, I wrote an epic poem called “The Bell of Happiness” that my school principal read aloud at a PTA meeting.
    6. I attended Rim of the World Junior/Senior High School from 7th through 10th grade and learned how to walk to school (to the bus stop actually) in the snow, uphill, both ways.
    7. For my 15th birthday, I went to the Forum in Los Angeles (where the Lakers used to play) and saw Jim Morrison and the Doors perform. It was way cool.
    8. I was 16 when I graduated high school (Hawthorne High–where the Beach Boys attended!).
    9. While working on my MS in computer science at UCLA, I took a year’s worth of courses in queuing theory and networks from Leonard Kleinrock who, unlike Al Gore, was one of the actual inventors of the Internet.
    10. I have three Kevin Bacon-type connections with Steven Spielberg: (1) My Uncle Irwin and his partners financed Spielberg’s first movie (a short film called Amblin’), (2) My mother-in-law has volunteered for Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and once met him and (3) Back when Dreamworks was first created, they considered my movie script, ICER (which they passed on–alas). ICER gave me the germ of an idea for what became my YA dystopian novel, TANKBORN.

  • Author’s Serenity Prayer

    Well, I don’t exactly have a prayer. Other than, “Please God, let me finish this re-write by the deadline.” I’d really like to reflect on the things in my writing life that I can and can’t control. Be forewarned–this is a bit of a rant (the complaining kind, not the English Country Dance kind).

    First, the “cans,” using TANKBORN as an example. I can come up with a nearly infinite number of ideas (note 1–I have plenty of my own ideas and thank you, but I don’t need yours). I can settle on one idea and expand it into a compelling, full-fledged story like TANKBORN (note 2–this, and not ideas, is the hard part).  I can create what I hope are appealing characters. I can write and re-write the resulting book into something I think is so wonderful my agent will be ecstatic and any editor in her right mind would be crazy not to buy. I can submit to my agent. And wait. And re-write based on her suggestions. And wait.

    Once the waiting is finally over and we sell the book as I did with TANKBORN, I can work hard on the re-writes requested by the editor who bought the book. I can swallow my pride when my editor notes some bone-headed or confusing element in my manuscript, and fix said problems without whining.

    Once I’ve polished TANKBORN to my editor’s satisfaction (said satisfaction is a “can’t control,” btw), the book is out of my hands in its journey to publication. What I can do next is start on another book. Meanwhile, I can count the days until publication.

    Finally, once TANKBORN is on the shelves, I can tell everyone I know. I can go to booksignings and conferences where I’ll talk up the book with an enthusiastic rapture usually reserved for those in houses of worship. I can e-mail everyone in my fan database, I can post blogs about it, I can lurk in the young adult sections of bookstores at Christmas and Hanukkah and shamelessly beg people to buy TANKBORN.

    The above is what I have control over. The things I can do.

    Now, what I can’t. I can’t guarantee that my agent will indeed love everything I’ve written. I can’t force an editor to buy it. If an editor does buy it, I can’t dictate what the cover will look like. For my covers on previous books, I’ve had everything from zero input to making cover art suggestions that have largely been ignored (no mutant heroines, though). For TANKBORN, I’ve been lucky enough to see the initial cover concepts, but my editor and not me has the final say.

    I also can’t be sure that the book will be perfectly typo-free. A million pairs of eyes can look at that sucker and still miss a misspelled word or misplaced punctuation mark somewhere. Sorry, we tried our best. And once the book is printed, I can’t go back and fix it. Please don’t e-mail me to let me know that you found “there” instead of “their” on page 233. It’s out of my hands.

    And once my book is published, I can’t make readers buy it. Ah, that it were so. If I could, I’d probably hypnotize every reader in the U.S. and beyond to buy multiple copies of TANKBORN when it comes out. But I can’t, nor can I put something into the water supply or wave a magic wand to start a buying frenzy. The former would be illegal and the latter would be impossible in a non-magical world such as Earth.

    I also can’t force people who have read my book to like my book. I can’t insist a reviewer give me a sterling review. There are huge bestsellers that many people loved that I thought were drek. Everyone has different tastes in what they enjoy.

    Sometimes I despair that the “cans” are too hard and the “can’ts” are too frustrating. But if I wanted easy, I’d have never become an author.

    How about you? Is there something in your professional life that everyone assumes you can do, but you can’t? Feel free to comment.