Here on Planet Pailly, I write about real science, or at least I try to. That’s not so much the case on my other blog.

Today on the Tomorrow News Network website, I’m starting a series of posts about the “science of the chronoverse.” It’s basically the made-up science I use to justify time machines and faster-than-light travel in my stories.

The first post is on primitive science. Although actually, “primitive science” is just classical physics, so I guess I’m not making stuff up yet. But I will be soon!

It’s been a while since I updated anything on the Tomorrow News Network website.  I’ve been neck-deep in revisions of the 2012 stories for the last few months.  When I started writing T.N.N. over two years ago, I was very much a novice.  I’m not going to claim that I have since mastered the art of writing, but I am far more competent at my craft than I used to be.

I have also started working with an editor who has taught me the difference between “borders” versus “boarders,” “prescribed” versus “proscribed,” and “farther” versus “further.”  My editor has also called my attention to a number of other embarrassing errors that I am now in the process of fixing.

Today, I am happy to announce that the revised versions of the first two Tomorrow News Network stories are available on the T.N.N. website.  Revisions of the third story are coming soon.  In fact, I had a meeting with my editor today concerning story #3, “The Orion War,” and she tells me that the updated version is much stronger than the original.

For those of you who’ve read these stories before, I hope you’ll take the time to read them again and see how they’ve improved.  And if you’re new to T.N.N., I beg your indulgence as this revision process goes forward.  Any typos or grammatical errors you find will be corrected in due time (probably).

Please click here to start reading the new version of “The Medusa Effect,” the “pilot episode” of the series.  Click here to read the new “99 White Balloons,” which focuses on the true story of Roswell.

Today on the Tomorrow News Network website, I’m accepting my first Blog of the Year award!  It’s very exciting, and I feel both honored and humbled by this recognition for my short story series.  I want to thank my friend and writing buddy, Linda Frindt, for nominating me.

Click here to visit Linda’s blog, and click here to check out my shiny, new award!

Today’s post is part of Indie Life, a blog hop for independent authors hosted by the Indelibles.  Click here to see a list of participating blogs.

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but your cover art is worth much more than that.  Potential readers might not even bother to look at your book (much less buy it) if the cover doesn’t somehow catch their attention.  When I first started my indie life journey about two years ago, someone told me that I must hire a professional editor and I must hire a professional illustrator.  I chuckled at the time because I am a professional illustrator, or at least a semi-professional illustrator.  How hard could it be to do my own cover?

It wasn’t until I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and started thinking about how this one illustration—this one illustration!—could make or break the success of my first book and perhaps my whole career as a writer that I began to freak out.  I started sketching, then I stopped and started over, then I stopped and started over again.  Normally a project like this would take me a week, two weeks maximum, but this illustration took almost a full year.

Drawing and painting have always been easier for me than writing, but this was worse than any writer’s block I’ve ever experienced.  Many times, I wondered if I should give up and hire someone less personally involved in my book to do the cover for me.  I knew perfectly well that was the only reason I was struggling.  But I kept working on it, and as of this past Sunday I finally finished.  Here is the long awaited cover art for Tomorrow News Network: Volume One.  Please let me know what you think!

As for the editing, I did hire a professional to help me with that.  Even if I were a professional editor, I wouldn’t trust myself to catch all the mistakes in my own manuscript.  For that, you need a genuine outsider’s perspective.  So far, the editing process has been far less stressful than doing my own cover art.  I’m happy to announce that, while I still don’t know the exact date yet, the day my book comes out is tantalizingly close!

P.S.: If you’re in need of an illustrator, my services are now available.  Please email me at james.pailly@gmail.com if you’re interested.  I promise it won’t take me a full year to do your cover art; I’d only inflict that kind of delay on myself.

When Albert Einstein died, his doctors removed his brain so it could be studied.  They carefully dissected it, taking lots of photos, and preserved the pieces of jars.  As disgusting as this may seem to us now, apparently it was common practice at the time whenever an especially intelligent person died.  It also means we now have some idea as to why Einstein was such a genius.

There’s a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum which connects the right and left hemispheres of the human brain, but according to researchers Einstein had a larger and thicker corpus callosum than most of us.  It’s like the two sides of his brain were connected by rope where the rest of us have only a few tangled strings.

You’ve probably heard about the difference between the left and right brains before.  The left side is supposedly more creative while the right is more analytical.  Left-brained people tend to be artists while right brainers make better scientists and engineers and accountants.  You might assume a theoretical physicist like Einstein would be a right brain type of guy, but it seems he was one of those lucky few who could use both sides equally well.

Of course we already knew this about Einstein, not from the dissection of his brain but from the things he said and did when he was alive.  He was a brilliant physicist, but he also played the violin.  Whenever he was stuck on some vexing mathematical problem, he often wandered over to his piano, played for a few minutes, then went back to his physics with some new insight.  And of course Einstein was most famous for his thought experiments, experiments he conducted not in a laboratory but in his own imagination.

My question I have is this: was Einstein born with his abnormally well wired brain, or is the brain more like a muscle, its parts growing and atrophying depending on how you use them?  Whatever the answer, it seems clear that the key to true intelligence is to try as best as we can to use our whole brains, not just one side or the other.

P.S.: I’m nearing completion of a new Tomorrow News Network story, and this one happens to be about Albert Einstein, specifically his brain and what scientists might do with it in the distant future.  Click here to read a preview scene from the upcoming short story “Einstein’s Clone.”

Wherever Talie Tappler goes, death and destruction are sure to follow, so when she turns up on Earth circa 4000 BC, the people of Atlantis know there’s going to be trouble.  Now two Atlantians, a temple priest and a high class prostitute, have only a short time to save their civilization from certain doom.  Click here to start reading “The Flood of Atlantis.”