Appearances and other news

The Measure of a Man

My horror novelette "The Measure of a Man" is getting a new cover soon. It will continue to be available at http://smile.amazon.com/Measure-Man-Shauna-Roberts-ebook/dp/B00MD7NW1W/.

In addition, the audiobook should be out within a month, read by Justin James in his gorgeous voice.

Online interview

Michelle Knowlden interviewed me about writing in general and the genesis of Ice Magic, Fire Magic on her blog yesterday here.

Book signing

If you're in Southern California, I'll be selling and signing Claimed by the Enemy and Ice Magic, Fire Magic at The Lab anti-mall (whatever that is) in Costa Mesa on Saturday, March 26. The Orange County Writers Book Fair will last from 11 am to 4 pm and feature two dozen authors. Find out more about the fair at http://ocwriters.org/book-fair/.

I get Blabbed

On March 30 at 7 pm Pacific time, I'll be interviewed as part of a Blab. I don't quite know what a Blab is yet, but I do know you'll be able to watch it live on your computer or later from the archives. I'll put up more info later.

Romance Writers of America

If you're coming to San Diego in July for the Romance Writers of America's annual meeting, keep an eye out for me! I'll be there and hope to see many friends. For more information and to sign up, go to https://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=538.

The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Government publications are not subject to copyright, so I am happy (and within the law!) to share the newest government guidelines for staying healthy. I hope you find them useful in your life.

To read the article at its original site and have access to all the links there to more information, go here.

Also, there's still a day left to enter my Goodreads contest to win a free copy of my new fantasy novel, Ice Magic, Fire Magic. Click on "Enter giveaway" in the Goodreads box at top right.

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Top 10 Things You Need to Know About the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans

Posted on January 7, 2016 by ODPHP

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The Dietary Guidelines provides a clear path to help Americans eat healthfully, informed by a critical, and transparent review of the scientific evidence on nutrition.

1. A lifetime of healthy eating helps to prevent chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes.
2. Healthy eating is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce the onset of disease. The Dietary Guidelines recommendations can help you make informed choices about eating for you and your family.
3. The path to improving health through nutrition is to follow a healthy eating pattern that’s right for you. Eating patterns are the combination of foods and drinks you eat over time. A healthy eating pattern is adaptable to a person’s taste preferences, traditions, culture and budget.
4. A healthy eating pattern includes:
   • A variety of vegetables: dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy and other vegetables
   • Fruits, especially whole fruit
   • Grains, at least half of which are whole grain
   • Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages
   • A variety of protein foods, including seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), soy products, and nuts and seeds
   • Oils, including those from plants: canola, corn, olive, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower. Oils also are naturally present in nuts, seeds, seafood, olives, and avocados.
5. Healthy eating patterns limit added sugars. Less than 10% of your daily calories should come from added sugars. ChooseMyPlate.gov provides more information about added sugars, which are sugars and syrups that are added to foods or beverages when they are processed or prepared. This does not include naturally occurring sugars such as those consumed as part of milk and fruits. 

   

   MyPlate has replaced earlier representations of good diets such as the Food Pyramid and the Four Food Groups.

6. Healthy eating patterns limit saturated and trans fats. Less than 10% of your daily calories should come from saturated fats. Foods that are high in saturated fat include butter, whole milk, meats that are not labeled as lean, and tropical oils such as coconut and palm oil. Saturated fats should be replaced with unsaturated fats, such as canola or olive oil
7. Healthy eating patterns limit sodium. Adults and children ages 14 years and over should limit sodium to less than 2,300 mg per day, and children younger than 14 years should consume even less. Use the Nutrition Facts label to check for sodium, especially in processed foods like pizza, pasta dishes, sauces, and soups.
8. Most Americans can benefit from making small shifts in their daily eating habits to improve their health over the long run. Small shifts in food choices—over the course of a week, a day, or even a meal—can make a difference in working toward a healthy eating pattern that works for you.
9. Remember physical activity! Regular physical activity is one of the most important things individuals can do to improve their health. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, adults need at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each week and should perform muscle-strengthening exercises on two or more days each week. Children ages 6 to 17 years need at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day, including aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activities.
10. Everyone has a role– at home, schools, workplaces, communities, and food retail outlets – in encouraging easy, accessible, and affordable ways to support healthy choices.
    • At home, you and your family can try out small changes to find what works for you like adding more veggies to favorite dishes, planning meals and cooking at home, and incorporating physical activity into time with family or friends.
    • Schools can improve the selection of healthy food choices in cafeterias and vending machines, provide nutrition education programs and school gardens, increase school-based physical activity, and encourage parents and caregivers to promote healthy changes at home.
    • Workplaces can encourage walking or activity breaks; offer healthy food options in the cafeteria, vending machines, and at staff meetings or functions; and provide health and wellness programs and nutrition counseling.
    • Communities can increase access to affordable, healthy food choices through community gardens, farmers’ markets, shelters, and food banks and create walkable communities by maintaining safe public spaces.
    • Food retail outlets can inform consumers about making healthy changes and provide healthy food choices.

giveaway and other news

Goodreads giveaway 

Ice Magic, Fire Magic is currently a Goodreads giveaway book. To enter for a chance to win one of six copies, click on the widget at the top of the right column or go to https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/173323-ice-magic-fire-magic.

Sorry, but this time the contest is only open to those in the United States.



Cover redesign

I'm redesigning the cover of The Measure of the Man. The first draft at right gives you an idea of the direction I'm going.

The antique drawing of a 16th-century Portuguese carrack lets readers know the time period, and the blood-dripping title font, the dark edges, and the fire suggest violence.

The cover redesign was spurred by the upcoming release of the audiobook for The Measure of a Man. I'll announce it when it's available.

I hope the new cover will better catch the eye of people who like dark fantasy and horror.

Several people have told me that the current cover at left, which shows Flores Island (where the story takes place) and only hints at the plot with a few drops of blood and the black carrack, did not look dark enough. Cover design is tough. I liked the contrast between the beautiful island and the blood dripping from the title, but apparently it was too subtle.

Strangest review of Ice Magic, Fire Magic ever

I stumbled across this bizarre review (? or possibly a description?) of my fantasy novel Ice Magic, Fire Magic at the site http://kindlepaperwhite.1001boutique.top/ice-magic-fire-magic-english-edition/ and wanted to share it with you:

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For sale now at affordable price, promo discounts and super shipping. I’m very pleased with their qualities and highly recommend it to anyone hunting for a quality item with the latest features at an low. You can read testimony from buyers to find out more from their experience. Ice Magic, Fire Magic (English Edition) has worked beneficial for me and I hope it would do wonders on you too. So why spend any more time? Have Fun, you know where you can shop the best ones.

Some of the customer reviews speak that the Ice Magic, Fire Magic (English Edition) are splendid luggage. Also, It Is a pretty well product for the price. Its great for colony on a tight budget. Weve found pros and cons on this type of product. But overall, Its a supreme product and we are well recommend it! When you however want to know more details on this product, so read the reports of those who have already used it. 

Season's readings holiday hop

I'm taking part in another blog hop. This one starts today and lasts one week. It promotes Mocha Memoirs Press' new holiday releases as well as some of its backlist. 

There's a list of participating blogs below as well as a Rafflecopter whose prizes include ebooks, gift cards, and swag.

But first, my own blog-hop post on the most important holiday in ancient Mesopotamia . . . one that celebrated barley and continues to be celebrated by millions of people to this day.

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The Akītu festival of Mesopotamia 

Barley, Hordeum vulgare vulgare [public domain]

Behold a founder of civilization: Barley! 

Barley, a wild grass, was harvested in the Fertile Crescent to make beer perhaps 11,000 years ago. People then discovered how to make bread. Over time, people began planting barley in fields to have a more reliable source. Once they had control over the growth of barley, they selected for several traits that made the barley plant produce more barley. Eventually, most people of the Fertile Crescent settled down in villages near their barley fields.

In Mesopotamia, barley beer and barley bread were daily staples. The earliest written records that mention the barley (akītu) festival date to the mid-2000s B.C.E. The festival celebrated the sowing of summer crops and the harvest of winter crops. However, only a small percentage of the documents created before then survive and have been translated. The akītu festival could have been millennia old by then.

The barley festival outshone all the other festivals and marked the New Year. The festival was celebrated around the spring equinox and was called akītu (in Sumerian and Akkadian) or reš šattim (in late Akkadian dialects). 

Some Sumerian cities, such as Ur and Uruk, celebrated akītu at both the spring equinox and the fall equinox. Over time, the festival evolved, taking on additional meanings and adding new rituals. 

By the time of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, the spring and fall akītus, respectively, had become a complex and lavish 12-day extravaganza. Among many, many other events, the akītu now included feasts; dances; singing (both solemn hymns and bawdy songs); performances that included recitation of a creation epic and re-enactments of myths; religious rites; sacrifices; the humbling and penitence of the naked king followed by his crowning or re-crowning; and a procession in which the statue of the main god [Tammuz (or later Marduk) for the Babylonians and Ashur for the Assyrians] left his temple to face danger each year and conquer it, returning in a triumphant parade. Meanwhile, statues of lesser gods processed in new clothes to the temple of the main god to honor him.

An aurochs, one of many beautiful reliefs in glazed brick that once made the Ishtar Gate (constructed about 575 B.C.E.) in Babylon one of the Seven Wonders of the World. During akītu, statues of deities were paraded through this gate and down a long avenue decorated with glazed bricks to the  temple of Marduk.  [Credit: Josep Renalias, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

The Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C.E. This conquest was not the end of the akītu festival, but rather the beginning of its expansion around the world.

The Persians either adopted akītu from the Babylonians or enhanced their own existing spring festival with elements of akītu, such as the ritual "sacred marriage" between the king and a goddess (represented by either a priestess or a statue of the goddess). 

This Persian New Year festival later also integrated aspects of Zoroastrianism. It still exists under a couple dozen names (including Newruz, NuRoz, Noruz, and Nowruz) and is celebrated in many countries as well as by the Parsi of India, some ethnic groups in China, and members of the Bahá'í faith. The god(s) honored by the festival, of course, have changed over the centuries, and in some places it is now a secular festival.

Novruz feast in Azerbaijan [Credit: Азербайджан-е-Джануби; used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 Internationallicense]

Cyrus the Great also liberated the Jews who were being held captive in Babylonia. Some Jews took aspects of Mesopotamian culture back to Israel, including akītu, which gradually evolved into the New Year festival Rosh Hashanah. 

Shofar made from a ram's horn. The shofar is blown before and during Rosh Hashanah, which today lasts one or two days and focuses more on penitence than on singing and performances. [Credit: Olve Utne; used under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.]

Other Jews moved to northern Iraq and Syria, taking akītu with them. It became the Kurdish Jewish festival of Seharane, which survived intact until the 1950s.

In the first to third centuries C.E., several peoples of northern Mesopotamia and nearby areas converted to Christianity. Since then, these groups have been subject to persecution and even many massacres. Over the centuries, many fled to other countries and now spread around the world. Massacres continue to occur in the 21st century. The most recent one took place in 2014 in northern Iraq, when terrorists belonging to Daesh attacked towns of Christianized Mesopotamians.  

As many as 400,000 "Assyrians," as the supposed descendants of the Mesopotamians who converted to Christianity are often called, live in the United States today, with 5,000 in Chicago alone. 

Other names, such as Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans, reflect differences in believed ancestral place of origin, the variant of Christianity they belong to, the language or dialect they speak, and other factors. The names and origins of the "Assyrians" are controversial, even among the groups themselves. If you have friends who trace their ancestry back to Mesopotamia, don't automatically assume they consider themselves Assyrians; they may, for example, be proud Chaldeans.

Despite the cultural differences that accrued over hundreds of years of Assyrian diaspora, despite the need for the Assyrians to sometimes hide their identity, the akītu survived. Many Assyrians today celebrate the spring akītu on April 1. It has developed several other names including Resha d-Sheta (which is pronounced much like its ancient Akkadian name, reš šattim), Kha b' Nisan, and Ha b' Nison. 

Wild barley still grows across a wide swath of northern Africa, southern Europe, and Asia. Genetic studies show that, like the akītu festival that celebrates it, cultivated barley has changed but remains recognizably like its ancestors of 5,000 years ago.  

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a Rafflecopter giveaway


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The stories and books that Mocha Memoirs Press is promoting are:

“It’s Christmas, Cupid!” by Dréa Riley

 “Under theMistletoe” by Siobhan Kinkade

“Holly and Ivy” by Selah Janel

Mistletoe Dreams bundle containing three stories: 

—"A Trick of Frost" by Dréa Riley and RaeLynn Blue

—"Naughty Klauses" by Dréa Riley

—"Winter’s Guard" by Laurel Cremant

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Other blogs taking part and offering holiday-themed posts—maybe a favorite recipe, a top-ten list, a flash story, or an essay about a holiday or a holiday symbol—are listed below. Click on each name to go to the linked post.

1.	Mocha Memoirs Press	6.	http://apenandfire.com/	11.	RaeLynn Blue: Spellbinding, Sensual Romance
2.	Alexandra Christian	7.	Cindy Lynn Speer	12.	Eden Royce: The Dark Geisha
3.	Marcia Colette	8.	Sherry Peters	13.	Pauline B. Jones: Perilously Fun Fiction
4.	Selah Janel: Come Selahway	9.	Gail Z. Martin: Ascendant Kingdoms	14.	Carole Ann Moletti
5.	Wynwords Weblog	10.	Samantha Bryant: Balancing Act	15.	Shauna Roberts

Fun holiday presents that do good!

Yesterday I realized I still needed to get a few presents and was scouring the Web for ideas. 

I allow browsers to track where I go, and as a result, I get ads tailored (usually) to my interests. An ad for The Elephant Pants company popped up, and I realized that one can support a charity and get an unusual, personal gift that the recipient will certainly not receive ten others just like it.

My charitable interests are feeding and housing people, feeding and housing animals, protecting endangered animals, and supporting musicians and writers. The presents ideas below reflect these interests. 

The Elephant Pants company donates a part of the proceeds from its harem pants (for women and kids for everyday wear and suitable for men to wear for yoga or as loungewear or pajamas), tops, leggings, and other elephant-themed products to the African Wildlife Foundation, which supports park rangers who protect elephants from poachers.
https://www.theelephantpants.com/

Bat Conservation International helps to conserve bats and their ecosystems and provides information to the public about bats. Its gift shop, Batgoods.com, has a wide range of products in a wide range of prices—including books, bat houses, jewelry, mugs, prints, Christmas ornaments, plush toys, socks (see one set at top), ties, and even carvings and antiques—good for gifting.
http://www.batgoods.com/shop/ 

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is dedicated to saving the Chesapeake Bay through education, advocacy, litigation, and restoration. Its small gift shop has clothes, tote bags, and other items with the foundation's logo.

https://www.cbfshop.com/

Habitat for Humanity works worldwide, bringing volunteers together to build homes for low-income people and to revitalize neighborhoods. They also provide shelter for people who've lost homes to natural disasters. Its gift shop sells branded merchandise such as stadium chairs, tents, food, golf items, clothes, tools, and books.
http://www.thehabitatstore.org/

The Awkward Robots, otherwise known as the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop class of 2012, produces an e-book anthology of short stories each year, with the proceeds going to the Clarion Workshop, which has a six-week summer workshop each year to advance the writing careers of 18 people. You can donate as much or as little as you wish for this year's anthology (minimum for last year's, though, is $3) and then download the volume in the format of your giftee's e-reader and email it to them.
The Red Volume (the 2014 anthology) is here. 
The Orange Volume (the 2015 anthology) is here. Please keep reading before ordering! From 23 to 30 November, people who donate at least $30 for The Orange Volume may receive unusual and valuable prizes. For more information on prizes and rules, go here.

Don't like my charities? It's easy to find your own. Have you, like me, already received a couple dozen beautiful calendars from charities you donated to and related charities they shared their mailing list with? Rather than letting the calendars you can't use go to waste, you can give them as gifts. Children may especially like the large, gorgeous pictures.

Also think about the museums, parks, and other public services near you that you support. Some may have gift shops, possibly with locally produced gifts. 

If you want to vet a large charity first, try http://www.give.org/ (run by the Better Business Bureau) or https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities (run by the American Institute of Philanthropy), or do a Google search to find more vetting organizations.