Pipsqueak Articles

Posts written by Olga Werby or Christopher Werby

book promotion, Cognitive Blindness, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles, Users

Love in the Virtual Worlds

by Olga Werby • February 13, 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of this special holiday, I wanted to say something about love and women’s power. My first novel was “Suddenly, Paris” — a story of true love in many worlds. I wanted to write a science fiction romance. But not a gooey mush of a thing, but a story where the female lead was smart and abled and powerful…and flawed. And I wanted to embed the romance in a real (albeit far fetched) science, computer science, in this case. I ultimately wrote the book with my husband and it won numerous awards including being placed on the Long List for The James Tiptree Jr. Awards in 2016. (The free ebooks link below has this book.) I started writing this story at the height of the Twilight craze. I saw girls in sixth grade who have never read a book in their lives hold this one and read it in their spare time! What was it about Twilight that grabbed hold of the zeitgeist of that time? I read all those books too and I really liked them…and not. So I wanted to analyze the attraction they held for women of all ages. So what was it? 1. No…

Cool books, peril loops, tech talk, and other sci-fi reading traps

by Olga Werby • January 10, 2020

Rock? Or classical? Sometimes, good content is difficult to classify. But once you find someone good, it almost always works out (well, except for the last chord–what happened there?). I’ve mentioned before–when I find an author I like, I read everything they’ve ever written. This works for music, too. It’s a safe strategy, for the most part. But it does send me searching on a regular basis for someone new to love. Writers simply can’t write as fast as I can read. It’s one of the reasons that as a writer I don’t feel like I’m in competition with others in my genre–writing is a slow, slow process. So for the last year, I’ve gone on an adventure of searching for new authors to love. I’ve read multiple collections of short stories, old and new. And I also read a few biographies, notably Isaac Asimov’s last book, where he describes not only his life but also the history of the science fiction as it became its own literary category. [A bit of an aside: I met Isaac Asimov in New York many years ago at a science fiction convention. I thought he was a total *ss in person. His autobiography…

Ice Music

by Olga Werby • December 15, 2019

I wish I had heard of Siberian Ice Drummers or the use of Lake Baikal ice as a musical instrument when I wrote the second book in the “Many Worlds, One Life” series: “Coding Peter”! If I had, it would have been featured prominently in my story. Alas, some discoveries come too late…but at least they come! Take a listen:

Fantastical Halloween

by Olga Werby • October 16, 2019

We are quickly falling into Fall. Warm sweaters, blankets, and books. But why bother with books when there is so much other entertainment around? Netflicks, HBOs, Amazons of the world are eager to grab hold of our eyeballs and never let go. It’s great for their bottom line. In 2017, the American Time Use Survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics) said that according to their survey, the number of Americans who read for pleasure had dropped by 30% since 2003. Who has the time, right? I hear that a lot too. “I’d read, but I have kids…I commute…I work long hours…I read at work…” There are many excuses. The one that most people don’t typically mention is that it is much easier to plump on a couch and watch something on TV or to simply play on one’s cell phone (for those who no longer own a TV). But reading is an active activity, while watching videos is passive. Cognitively, that makes a huge difference. Consider a piano. About 100 years ago, most households in America (middle class) had a piano in their parlor. Everyone learned to play a little bit. People could read music and play it off a sheet.…

Protagonist Speaks, a Police Interview with Alex Orlov

by Olga Werby • September 18, 2019

Sometimes, when we finish reading or writing a story, the story is not done with us. Some characters linger in our thoughts and speak up and give rise to some other content and revelations. Mostly, such content remains private — I have tons of illustration, pages of story, and folders of research ideas that never made it into the final novel. But occasionally, I discover places on the Web where a bit of that background material can leak out and find an audience. The Protagonist Speaks is one such website. It allows authors to share interviews with their fictional characters, adding depth and dimensionality to those people who otherwise would be stuck on pages between the beginning and the end. Since my book “Twin Time” is currently part of the SPFBO 2019 competition (yes, as of today, it still stands!), I got to meet another competitor, Assaph Mehr. He runs The Protogonist Speaks, an award-winning fantasy blog that features these interviews. Here’s Alex Orlov interview with the police after the fire: “From the closed files relating to the Ms. Orlova’s house fire and the disappearance of Sasha Orlov: Transcript of Alex Orlov interview with Hillsborough police department’s Detective Hendle. (Additional…

Strange, Slightly Creepy, Mystery SciFi: My New Book is Out Today!

by Olga Werby • September 15, 2019

The paperback version of “God of Small Affairs” is out everywhere (well, mostly in online stores) today! Here’s a link to “God of Small Affairs” on Amazon. In about two weeks, the ebook version will come out as well. The story already earned three 5-star reviews from Readers’ Favorite! You can read the first few chapters here. Like for all of my books, I’ve created a Pinterest mood board for this story. Check it out. I think illustrations really help the readers to see inside my head…a little. The illustrations for this particular story are more evocative than most. Something about gods that walk among us and help guide humanity into the future… And while there, look at my other mood boards, for other stories. I find that “collecting” imagery while writing is very inspiring. Some writing is very visual, and some art is very lyrical and story-driven. As you might have guessed, I am not a big fan of an empty canvas or flat, one color artboards. I want details. Descriptions. Illustrations. I like that in art as well as literature. SPFBO 5 Competition As I’ve mentioned last time, this year, I am also participating in a little friendly…

Summer Writing and Reading and Editing

by Olga Werby • August 15, 2019

Writing In July, I finally finished editing my latest book: God of Small Affairs (first three chapters are available here). It will be a while before it gets published, but it is nice to move into the next stage of this story’s life. I have a cover that I like…I have several! Here are two: Here is a book description that will definitely NOT appear on the cover of this book: Time is made out of threads. Pull one and someplace somewhere things unravel. We know how to pull on the right thread because we see the whole tapestry of life’s possibilities. That’s why we are so good at finding a good path into the future. I say a future because there is no such thing as the future. We are made of time threads — thick bundles of knots that can pull and twist and change the course of history. It’s all about connections — pull one strand, and the others twist with it. Like Newton’s second law, for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction. But humans are small in relation to civilized time, planetary time, cosmological time. To make a big change requires a course…

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