blog meme – Katie L. Carroll

I’m pleased to announce that #InkRipples will be back in 2017 with a brand new set of topics! #InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and Katie L. Carroll. We’re all authors, but you don’t have to be to participate.

#InkRipplesBlogBanner

The idea of #InkRipples is to toss a word, idea, image, whatever into the inkwell and see what kind of ripples it makes. We provide the topics and will be blogging about them on the first Monday of the month. I often post on the topic on subsequent Mondays as well. You can spread your own ripples by blogging about the topic any day of the month that fits your schedule, just be sure to include links back to the three of us please (Katie, Kai, and Mary).

Or you can simply share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag #InkRipples. You might comment on one of our posts to pay along. Tag us and we’re always happy to share your posts and thoughts to keep those ripples going and intersecting.

There is no wrong way to do #InkRipples (with the exception of following basic human decency!). It’s about having a conversation, sharing ideas, and connecting. So if this sounds at all interesting, please do participate in whatever way you can. And feel free to use any of the meme’s images above or below (created by the wonderful Mary Waibel).

The 2017 topics are:

January – Book covers
February – Genres #InkRipplesblueandgreen
March – Tropes
April – Revision
May – Fairy Tales
June – Blurbs
July – Heroes/Villains
August – Author Options in Publishing
September – World Building
October – Career vs Hobby
November – Finishing that Book!
December – Goals

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#InkRipplesgreen

I’m a bit of a science nerd at times. I have a layman’s fascination with astrophysics and love watching programs and videos, reading books, and visiting exhibits on the many topics it covers. (Long time readers of the blog may remember these classic science posts on the Large Hadron Collider, the Big Bang, and dark matter.) And that’s what brings you today’s #InkRipples moment of inspiration.

The boys joke that when they see too many cool things (i.e. trains, fire trucks, police cars, construction vehicles, and the like), their heads explode, complete with hand gestures and sound effects. I feel that way about science. It can make my head spin, but it’s an endless source of head-explosion moments…and inspiration!

The thing about science is that it can make you feel very insignificant, as it does in this video about how small we are in comparison to the largest known star. (I may have shared this video and the following one on the Observation Desk before, but they are totally worth a rewatch if you’ve already seen them.)

With information like that, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the large scale of the Universe and to think that nothing you could ever do in your puny, little lifetime could have any kind of lasting effect. So before you begin to despair, let me share this next video with you, which I think helps us to appreciate the intricate way we are all connected to each other and the Universe. When famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what the most astounding fact in the Universe was, he head this to say: