I’ll kick things off with the wonderfully fun Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, featuring illustrations by Briony Morrow-Cribbs and Jonathan Rosen (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009).

Stewart’s style is entertaining and breezy, with lots of historical anecdotes thrown in (in addition to Lincoln’s mother, we learn about President James Garfield’s assassin, details of how Socrates met his end, and more) as well as some nice tidbits of science (how poison ivy, oak and sumac cause skin irritation, types of toxins found in various plants, etc., etc.).

Stewart explores plants with a wide variety of traits: some kill-on-contact deadly, some mild irritants, some useful-but-dangerous, some used recreationally by humans (several of which are also deadly, notably tobacco). It’s a beautifully designed book, and the illustrations, particularly Rosen’s cartoons, add a certain whimsy to its macabre charm.

Wicked Plants is particularly of note to writers because of its focus on plants that are poisonous and/or noxious in some way, which makes it a nice supplement to herbal guides that focus on edible and medicinal plants, or more general field guides. Murder mystery writers in particular will find much to love here.

I found the book useful for world-building in speculative fiction; my work-in-progress has some scenes outdoors in the desert and in grassland, and using a few of these plants as models made things much more interesting for my characters, who had to avoid some and use others VERY carefully.

My one criticism is that the book lacks an index; the table of contents is fairly detailed, and that helps, but it would be extremely handy to look up plants by the active toxins they contain, for instance, or the region in which they grow. Stewart does include a bibliography for further reading and a list of “poison gardens” (botanical conservatories and the like) that contain specimens of some of these deadly beauties, both useful to researchers.

The links go to Stewart’s page for the book, which I think is also notable as an example of a marketing tool for writers – many of the things she does there would work for nonfiction and fiction writers alike: http://www.amystewart.com/wickedplants.html

These things come in various sized blocks; pictured is part of an 1800 calorie block, which is enough to feed one person for one day. They also come in 2400 and 3600 blocks, the idea being a handy block of shelf-stable food you can easily throw in an emergency pack or your glove compartment (or in with your camping gear).  Main ingredients: flour, vegetable shortening, and sugar. Tastes like slightly lemony shortbread as made by a very large institutional bakery (think: schools and prisons). The 3600 calorie block also doubles as a handy defensive weapon.

I originally thought, given the ingredients (it’s a cookie!), that I might be tempted to blow through two or three of the blocks at a time. Turns out this is not the case; eat one and you are ready to stop eating for several hours at least (and go out foraging in the meantime for wood sorrel, dandelions, clover, tall fescue, or anything resembling a vegetable).

And if it’s lightweight, calorie dense food guaranteed not to go bad for years that you need, you could just buy a 12-pack of Twinkies (though they aren’t nearly as compact).

So basically, made for true emergencies and for people who don’t actually like eating.

In other news, I’m going camping tonight, which I may use as a reason to try out some of those just-add-boiling-water pouches of freeze-dried camping food, another fave of many emergency preparedness advocates. I’ll report back.

Please allow me to wax geeky for just a moment about a tool I think writers may find extremely useful.

Juice, a new plug-in for Firefox from Linkool Labs, puts a sidebar on your browser. Highlight any bit of text, drag-and-drop it on the sidebar, and a tabbed Google search (for web, images, news, videos, and blogs) opens there. It’s fast, free, and speeds all sorts of online research tasks.

Well, they are reasonable places to start, but I think I’d have to supplement my reading quite a bit about the Vikings in particular, beyond what I’ve found here, before I’d feel ready to write a story set during that time.

I know of one job seeker who has a Ph.D. in English, publications including a scholarly monograph, many years of college teaching experience, a recent MLIS, and substantial preprofessional library experience. She sent out nearly 200 applications over an 18-month period before being offered a professional job as a reference and instruction librarian. (my emphasis)

That’s an average of 3 applications a week for a year and a half, folks. Having gone through the process of applying for several jobs in academia, I can tell you that doing that many applications in that period of time actually decreases the likelihood that you will be called for an interview and get the job.

Why? Because to be successful, you need to tailor your materials to the job you are applying for. Each job will require a slightly different CV, and probably a fairly different cover letter, different teaching materials, etc. If you don’t do that preparatory work, you will not get the job; you will probably not even get an interview.

This is an interesting phenomenon with carryover to the writing submissions process. Submitting work is partly, but not only, a numbers game. Writers need to send out work, probably to many places, in order to find a home for it, but we also need to do our best to find the venues where that work fits. In other words, it’s also a matchmaking game – and it’s very difficult to be a matchmaker for your own work. (This is why literary agents exist; unfortunately, you have to do your own matchmaking to find an agent, and to get your work published in magazines and journals.

So who will be more successful:

• a writer who sends out 200 submissions to journals all over the country (some of which she may even have read),
• a writer who sends out 20 submissions to magazines that seem like they’d be a good match based on what’s on their web sites, or
• a writer who sends out six submissions to journals she has read (all the way through, multiple issues)?

I know where I’m betting my time and energy.