Welcome to the final installment of my interview with author and scientist Caroline Hatton, where we’ll learn more secrets about her sources and explore personal aspects of her life as well.
Welcome, Caroline!
Let’s revisit that somewhat hair-raising interview you did with Steve Elliott, the scientist who invented NESP, a blood-boosting drug for kidney patients and for cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. Elliott is also a Scientific Executive Director at Amgen therapeutics company.

Q: For your Night Olympic Team article and book, how did you ultimately manage to weave Steve’s human-interest story with the science side of things for your Night Olympic Team article and book?

A: Steve served the opening image to me on a silver platter. He told me about himself as a third-grader, a budding scientist who didn’t covet model airplanes but vials of chemicals from the hobby shop window, wondering how to make something blow up.
• After getting that fortunate lead, I was able to unfold Steve’s story in chronological order, including personal and scientific milestones. While re-reading it, I highlighted the science words (e.g., DNA) or concepts as they arose, then inserted explanations nearby in the text.

Note to readers: read more about this at Caroline Hatton’s own blog http://www.stemcareers.blogspot.com; the permalink to that particular post is http://stemcareers.blogspot.com/2011/01/guess-who-this-kid-grew-up-to-be-in-my.html.

Q: Caroline, can you expand on how to work with important research resources, such as experts?

A: Experts are a precious source that can help take your writing, your message, your contribution to this world, over the top. Don’t waste your opportunity by asking basic questions. Instead, study the subject as deeply as possible before making your first contact. The more advanced you are, the more advancement you stand to gain. And the more impressed and helpful the expert will likely be.
• On the other hand, if you are asking an expert to read your entire manuscript, it’s a good idea to phrase the request along these lines: “if you or a colleague would be kind enough to do so…”  Just because a scientist is a university professor is no guarantee that he or she would do the best job catching errors in fact or logic. Perhaps one of the team’s researchers, post-doctoral scholars, or graduate students could do it better.

Q: I’d like to add that regardless of the field of expertise, it is important for us as researcher-writers to be as thoughtful and professional as possible when making such requests. That means giving experts ample time to fit in your request, and showing your gratitude for their time.

Q: Caroline, what is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

A: I read it in the book by William Zinsser, On Writing Well, the Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. In Chapter 15, “Science and Technology,” he explains the principle of all nonfiction writing as  “leading readers who know nothing, step by step, to a grasp of subjects.” This is done by writing sentences that form a linear sequence, starting with one fact readers know, and using the next sentence to build upon the previous one and broaden what it stated.
• I think of it as taking the reader by the hand and never letting go. As a children’s science writer, I’m a scout leading younger, greener hikers. I go up the path of discovery and understanding first. If the slope up the mountain is too steep, I go back and look for an easier way for people who take smaller steps.

Q: That’s a lovely and eloquent way to put it! Do you have a favorite writing tip also?
A: Make your writing as long as necessary and as short as possible.

Q: What other career or careers have you fantasized about doing?
A: In my day job as a scientist, I help test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs that are prohibited in sports. Using them can provide an unfair advantage and be dangerous to health, and it is contrary to the spirit of sport. But I’ve also fantasized about being a translator—and I am that as well! Between French and English, I’ve translated science books and umpteen professional documents. And my biggest fantasy—being a children’s writer—has also come true. I’ve published five books and lots of magazine articles, stories, and craft activities.
• There are other jobs I daydream about: working at a horse stable, for instance. Doing so would also help me research horse stories for children. But that’s for another interview.

Q: What keeps you excited about your particular field or specialty?
A: As a writer? Growth. Honing my craft. I keep getting better at it—I hope! That makes me feel acutely alive.

Q: What book are you most proud of, and why?
A: The Night Olympic Team—Fighting to Keep Drugs out of the Games. It’s about my work as a scientist, catching athletes who used prohibited drugs to win Olympic medals. My entire life went into it: first, some 20 years of demanding, consuming, often thankless but always meaningful science work, plus everything I’ve ever learned about writing, especially for younger readers. With this book, I’m passing the torch—some of the facts and wisdom I’ve acquired—to the youngest readers capable of receiving it (roughly age 10).

Q: What are the most critical things you want to write about before you die?
A: Intellectually speaking: population control, sustainability, and orders of magnitude. Emotionally: love, loss, and finding inner peace.

Q: If you got to write your own epitaph, what would you want it to say?
A: An echo of what my husband says about me: She never sat around waiting for life to happen to her.

Q: And finally, what eccentricities do you have in your working life?
A: How much are you willing to pay for this info?

Q: Les mots justes—well said! Caroline, thank you for your generous time, and for letting us in on your insights about research, methodology, and writerly secrets.

Thanks for joining us for Part 2 of my intriguing interview with author and scientist Caroline Hatton, whose nonfiction book, The Night Olympic Team: Fighting to Keep Drugs out of the Games, is a real page-turner for kids (and adults!).
• I’m confident that writers everywhere, novice as well as established, will also find much of value in Caroline’s suggestions and research tips.
Let’s get started—welcome back, Caroline!

Q: Earlier, we talked about the human-interest side of research. What can you tell us about the scientific side of fact-finding and research?

A: First, I draft the piece by stringing together key points to take readers from what they know, to what they can learn from reading my writing.
• The sources I use are:
• Any source at all to get ideas and to get my bearings in the ocean of new knowledge surrounding my subject. I note any facts that seem interesting; however, I do not mention them later unless I have verified them using multiple, credible sources.
• Then I go deeper by examining non-peer-reviewed sources, such as newspapers, Scientific American magazine, etc, to learn more about current developments at the layperson level.
• Next, I make sure I have a good grasp of basic concepts by studying college or high school textbooks.
• For my final stage, I tackle peer-reviewed publications such as Nature magazine. These are research reports deemed scientifically valid and worthy of publication by the peers of the authors, typically researchers in the same or closely-related specialty. I use peer-reviewed items for ultimate verification before asking an expert or two to read and check my writing.

Q: Wow, that’s quite an exacting search from the general to the particular. How do other writers (who aren’t scientists) find and obtain peer-reviewed materials?
A: They can be obtained through libraries. It’s faster and cheaper, however, to email the “corresponding author” identified on the title page of the peer-reviewed publication—and request a pdf for your personal use.

Q: By the way, why should writers bother to tackle the peer-reviewed materials as you do?
A: As a science writer, I consider it imperative to read the relevant peer-reviewed articles—or at least, to try.  I need to dig deeper than I will ever take my readers. Why? So that I can write from
a position of relevative authority, out of sheer respect for the audience. And for science. The time it takes, and my struggle is rewarded by learning a few more juicy morsels of jargon, and maybe even a couple of concepts new to me. Doing this deep research also helps me formulate questions to ask the experts. That in turn helps me make sure that lay readers won’t miss anything crucial.

Q: Caroline, how do you check scientific accuracy? And with whom?
A: In general, not only by showing my final version to relevant scientists, but also by pressing them to answer detailed questions. I might ask someone, “Is the first half of my sentence, blah-blah-blah, strictly correct?”  Or I might phrase it like this, by asking, “Is my understanding correct that [it’s like this] and [not like that, or like that]?” Sometimes I ask which of several phrases is preferable.

Q: Do you show your final drafts to the scientists and others you’ve interviewed?
A: Generally speaking, journalists don’t show final drafts to interviewees, because it opens the door for the interviewees to change the words. But I’m not a journalist, and what I write for children is not opinion. It is about science facts and it must be accurate. So I show interviewees my writing—not to allow them to take control, but to invite their feedback. Besides having the facts corrects, I want my rendition to be true to the scientists’ emotions. I want to tell the story from the scientists’ minds and hearts.
• Another facet as important as accuracy is clarity—making sure that written words cannot be interpreted so as to mislead or confuse readers. My way to check for clarity is to ask readers totally unfamiliar with the subject to put question marks in my draft whenever they come to something that puzzles them.

Q: This is a good place for us to pause, I think—but please join us next week for more research secrets and insights in the conclusion of my interview with remarkable author-scientist Caroline Hatton. Her children’s books also include Vero and Philippe; and Surprise Moon.

As a fellow member of SCBWI (the premiere organization for children’s book writers and illustrators world-wide), I’ve known Caroline Hatton for 7 years. She’s a fascinating blend of scientific rigor, literary creativity, and writerly generosity. As a scientist, she’s tested Olympic athletes for performance-enhancing drugs that are prohibited in sports. As a writer of fiction and non-fiction, she’s published numerous articles and books for young readers—including a hard-hitting article that grew into her best-known book: The Night Olympic Team: Fighting to Keep Drugs out of the Games.
Q: Welcome, Caroline! Which of your research adventures are you going to tell us about?
A: The research that I was inspired to conduct to write my Night Olympic Team book. It all began with scientist Steve Elliott, who invented a wonderful medicine to deal with chronic kidney failure and cancer chemotherapy side effects. It’s darbepoetin alfa, brand name Aranesp, but we call it NESP.

Q: What first ignited your curiosity?
A: It was a chain reaction. When I worked at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, we lab scientists found NESP in the urine samples of certain athletes. NESP is a blood-booster, designed to treat serious medical problems. It certainly isn’t meant to help athletes cheat by doping themselves with it to boost their endurance! After we discovered this, one night during a lively discussion at the lab, everyone was coming up with brilliant ideas. Some of us dreamed up possible excuses by athletes for testing positive. Others shot back rebuttals. The verbal fireworks sparked such a rush within me that I thought, “Some day, I will write this story for children.”
Q: How did you carry out that notion?
A: First, I told the Olympics tale as an article in Cricket, the children’s magazine. Later, to grow it into a book, I planned to profile each key player, including Steve Elliott, Françoise Lasne who perfected the test we used to find the drug, and my lab director, Don Catlin, whose team found the drug at the Winter Olympics of 2002. Because Steve’s story is so exciting, and revolves around modern sports, it surreptitiously leads students to meet a 6th grade curriculum requirement, by becoming familiar with recombinant DNA technology (a way to cut and paste DNA). Since DNA science has long been the basis of key medical advances, it is an essential element of basic scientific literacy.

Q: What were the challenges of telling Steve’s story?
A: In order to weave Steve’s human-interest background with the technical description of his invention, I needed to psych myself up to interview him. Plus I needed to study enough scientific literature to understand how he’d achieved the feat. His area of science (recombinant DNA technology) isn’t the same as mine (analytical chemistry) , so I had a lot to learn.
Q: How did you go about obtaining the interview?
A: In a brief email, I told Steve that I was one of the scientists on the team that had found NESP at the Olympic Games. I told him about my project and that I was seeking childhood glimpses, defining moments, and character-revealing anecdotes, as well as trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Steve gave me an appointment to come visit one March morning in 2004. Interviewing him was a pleasure, a thrill, and an adventure!
Q: An adventure! Why?
A: Because of the conditions in which I let the interview take place—which I’ll do my best to avoid in the future! He kindly invited me to lunch at the Amgen cafeteria, the pharmaceutical company where he works in Thousand Oaks, California. Lunch was delicious but dominated by crowd noises that made it hard to chat. It was impractical for me to take notes, let alone record anything. I was too intimidated to ask if we could carry our lunches outside. (Absolutely silly, because Steve is such a nice person.)
• Steve generously gave me masses of material—although I could only use those tidbits that were relevant to the arc of my story. For example, Steve told me that he’d received phone inquiries about how much NESP to give to camels in order to enhance their performance in races. That anecdote was too far off the topic of athletes using NESP to win Olympic medals, so I didn’t mention it in my writing. But Steve was clearly shocked by the misuse of a medicine painstakingly developed to help human patients, and I echoed his emotion in my writings about him.

Q: You must have a phenomenal memory. How did you retain all the verbal information you’d just been given?
A: Right after the interview lunch, I drove straight to a bookstore coffee shop and scribbled down everything I could remember as fast as I could: keywords, paragraphs about this and that, in completely random order.
Q: Nerve-wracking, being unable to record Steve’s quotes. Was this the worst interview you’ve ever conducted?
A: I wish! There was a worse one by far. I’d emailed the person I wanted to talk with well in advance and had my tape recorder at the ready. Then I started asking, “What kind of child were you?” Unfortunately, he failed to understand my first two tries at it. When his answers began to trickle out, they were along the lines of “I don’t remember….I don’t think of the past…I don’t want to talk about myself…”
• I began to fall apart—it was all I could do to refrain from running out the door! Taking deep breaths, struggling to get hold of myself, I thought,  “Don’t run. Don’t run.” The only thing that kept me from leaving was the thought of all my SCBWI friends, invisibly cheering me on. I’m proud to say that my writing, based on that distressing interview, turned out fine in print. And I owe that in large part to the collective synergistic power of my wonderful writing community.
Q: What else did you learn from that traumatic research experience?
A: My transcript was full of gems. The interview only felt like a nightmare because I was too upset to hear all that was said. A very good thing that I recorded it!
Q: Your best interview experiences?
A: Two interviewees of mine love to tell stories, love to write, and write well. They emailed me several thousand words full of specific facts and deep personal insights. To create my first draft of their profiles, all I did was distill the essence of their stories by selecting words of theirs with a highlighter pen. After revising and polishing, I had their words to re-read, to check authenticity.
Q: What advice can you now share with other writers re: interviewing?
A: If you have zero experience as I had when I embarked on The Night Olympic Team project, list the experts you must interview, then rank them from the least to the most intimidating and interview the victims at the top of the list first. They won’t make you as nervous. They might even put up with all your endless, hair-splitting, follow-up questions!

Terrific advice—and there’s more to come from Caroline in Parts 2 and 3 of our “Fresh Eye” interview. Please come back for more, as we explore the science side of research as well as some piquant personal details from eloquent author-scientist Hatton.

Aug. 31: The Sphinx knows….do you?  Billboard for September

Sept 3 blogpost: September, the honeyed harvest month

Sept 7 blogpost: Confessions of a serial shoe-maniac

Sept 10 blogpost: 1-minute mystery from history
(Julius Caesar and ‘The die is cast’)

Sept 14 blogpost: Ancient Evidence in Unlikely Places
(Questions put to an oracle)

Sept 17 blogpost: Ancient Evidence in Unlikely Places
(Letter from a woman, charging a crime)

Sept 21 blogpost: Part 1, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephanie Lile. Research, the magnificent journey

Sept 24 blogpost: Part 2, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephanie Lile. Cyber-research & three-way learning

Sept 28 blogpost: Part 3, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephanie Lile. Research: it’s called ‘hands on’ for a reason

Oct 1 blogpost: The Sphinx knows…do you?  October—it’s so much more than Hallowe’en or Day of the Dead!

Oct 6 blogpost: 1-minute mystery from history
(Fascinum, the mystery object worn by most Romans)

Oct 8 blogpost: The philosopher and the vampire

Oct 12 blogpsot: Ancient Evidence in Unlikely Places
(Greek pithos pottery and Diogenes of Sinope)

Oct 15 blogpost: Mundus of Ceres: Rome’s secret passage to a terrifying underworld

Oct 22 blogpost: Necrophiliac also commits necromancy, lives happily ever after

Oct 26 blogpost: Cleopatra’s choice: was it Serpenticide?

Oct 29 blogpost: Cleopatra: deathless art? Or postmortem porn?

PIC #5: Sphinx pic with Stan      billboard for November

Nov 2 blogpost: The Sphinx knows….do you?

Nov 5 blogpost: 1-minute mystery from history
(giant pearls, Cleopatra and mystery woman)

Nov 12 blogpost: Part 1, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephen Moorbath

Nov 19 blogpost: Part 2, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephen Moobath

Nov 19 blogpost: Part 3, “Fresh Eye” interview with Stephen Moorbath

Nov 23 blogpost, Part 1. The author as trained seal: six spill their guts about their worst public moments

Nov 24 blogpost, Part 2. The author as trained seal: six spill their gusts about their worst public moments

Dec 2 blogpost: December is scintillating! (From ‘scintilla,’ the ancient word for spark)

Dec 7 blogpost: Part 1, “Fresh Eye” interview with Dr. Alan Hirshfeld

Dec 14 blogpost: Part 2, “Fresh Eye” interview with Dr. Alan Hirshfeld

Dec 23 blogpost: Part 1 of the year’s index of blogposts

Dec 28 blogpost: Part 2 of the year’s index of blogposts

• Copious thanks for your attentive readership and your piquant comments during the seven months that this blog has been live in 2010.
• I’m an amazingly lucky writer—people have actually paid money to have me research and write about wildly oddball subjects.  I’m doing an roundup of 2010 for those of you who might have missed some of the zippy episodes about Alexander the Great, his mellification or embalming in honey, and his amazing afterlife adventures. In this blogpost and the next on December 28,  you’ll find the entire index of blogposts for the year 2010 by run date and title.

June 7 blogpost: Good medusa, bad medusa
June 9 blogpost:  Maddening miracle ingredient BC
June 11 blogpost: Alex the Great bites the Big One in Babylon
June 14 blogpost: Late Great leader snubs cremation, chooses honey embalming
June 16  blogpost: Rivals turn rancid as kingly cadaver sweetens
June 18 blogpost: Grieving mom demands: Send me my son’s honeyed corpse!
June 22 blogpost: Funeral bling, Alex mementos fatten faltering economies
June 23 blogpost: Tragedy mars Alexander “babies on board” summit
June 25 blogpost: Did super-cool poison ambush Alexander?
June  28 blogpost  : Mellified Alex: underway at long last
June 30 blogpost: Corpse-napping puts real damper on Alex funeral-fest

July 2 blogpost: Crocs devour troops, give easy win to rogue general
July 5 blogpost: Bees struggle to meet stinging demand for mellify-mania
July 7 blogpost: Second Memphis tomb welcomes dead but dapper Alex
July 9 blogpost: Rolling stone Alex comes to rest in town he founded
July 12 blogpost: Cash-strapped king liquidates Alexander’s assets
July 14 blogpost: Dictator junket to meet celebs, living and dead
July 16 blogpost: Nose job mars Imperial visit to Alexander shrine
July 19 blogpost: Five centuries after death, Alexander gets new birthday suit
July 21 blogpost: Body mystery: what happened to the rest of Alex the Great?
July 23 blogpost: They all wanted a piece of the golden legend
July 26 blogpost: Mellification—the sincerest form of flattery?
July 28 blogpost: The corpse that famously failed to putrefy: fact or fiction?
July 30 blogpost: 2,333 years after Alexander, honey makes a comeback

Aug. 4 blogpost: The sphinx knows—do you? Billboard for August
Aug 6 blogpost: Spartacus admits to gladiator showbiz trickery
Aug 10 blogpost: The need for vampires: a conversation with author Karen Essex
Aug 13 blogpost: “Happiness lives here:” Fascinated by the evil eye
Aug 17 blogpost: Lips and eyes to die for
Aug 21 blogpost: One-minute mystery from history
(ancient world wonder: the Colossus of Rhodes)

Aug 24 blogpost: Part 1, “Fresh Eye” interview with Adrienne Mayor: Arsenic for breakfast, venom for lunch
Aug 27 blogpost: Part 2, “Fresh Eye” interview with Adrienne Mayor and King Mithradates

Milky Way’s neighbor, Andromeda Galaxy; old stars in blue, dust lanes where new stars form, in red.

Welcome to the second half of our fascinating conversation with Alan Hirshfeld, professor at the University of Massachuetts Dartmouth and a stellar figure in astrophysics as well as an author of highly readable nonfiction.

Q: Al, what can you tell us about your latest scientific passion?
A: This is a hard one to answer, there are so many. This past week, for instance, I related the life of the sun to my astronomy class. I was struck by how much more we know now about the sun’s interior structure and its evolution than we did when I was in college.  Back then, our knowledge was fragmentary, computer simulations were rudimentary and were narrowly focused on particular stages of the sun’s life. Somehow, from these incomplete vignettes, we had to piece together a coherent and continuous pathway of solar development. Today we have essentially a day-to-day portrayal of the sun’s evolution, with a detailed knowledge of the internal physical processes that occur along the way. It’s a much more satisfying story to teach.

Q: Reflecting on your career, what’s been your fondest ‘Eureka’ moment?
A: It happened as I was developing the concept for my first trade book, a general primer about the science of stars. The publisher’s editor was dubious about my idea; she asked me to write a sample chapter. At random, I chose the chapter about stellar distances. It’s not easy to measure the distance to a star; even the closest one is incredibly far away. I learned that the first star distance was obtained in 1838. What, I wondered, prevented astronomers from measuring a star distance before that date? I found that telescope technology had lagged far behind the research aspirations of astronomers. Who had tried – and failed — to measure a star distance with earlier telescopes? I kept asking myself these kinds of questions, and each answer took me farther back in the history of astronomy and technology – all the way back to the ancient Greeks, who’d also speculated about the remoteness of stars. That Eureka! moment arrived when I realized that my seemingly narrow story of measuring a star’s distance is, in fact, an epic tale that extended over thousands of years and involved some of the greatest names in science. In that instant, the real story of what would become my first book unfolded in my mind. The book turned out to be Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos.

Q: Do you see your main role as science writer or scientist? Who
else and what else do you write about—or yearn to?
A: I describe myself as a teacher who writes, a hybrid of scientist and communicator. To research a subject, I read everything I can get my hands on.  I need to get a complete sense of the person or the scientific issue at hand. My current project is the history of 19th century observational  astronomy: how celestial photography and spectroscopy revolutionized astronomical research. I’m also delving into the crucial role of amateur astronomers in the development and promotion of those new technologies.

Q: What are your takeaway thoughts on Archimedes, for instance?
A: Over the years, I’ve had plenty of articles in Sky & Telescope, including a recent one on Archimedes’ ideas about the size of the universe. It’s not a serious scientific treatise, he’s basically showing off his skill with big numbers. But it’s intriguing to see his thought processes. Anyone who thinks that ancient brains were any less capable than ours should read some of Archimedes’ works. The body of knowledge possessed by the Greeks was smaller and their assumptions about nature’s processes were flawed, but their analytical skills were razor sharp.

Q: If you weren’t doing what you do, what career have you fantasized
about doing?
A: Auto mechanic, although I have no particular talent in that area. I like to fix things and I don’t mind grease.  When I was a kid, I tried to turn our lawn mower into a go-kart. I got as far as sawing off the blades. Now that I think of it, it’s probably good I became an astrophysicist.

Astrophysicist by day, author by night

Q: I’d have to agree! Can you tell us what eccentricities you have in your working life? What sort of environment encourages your muse?
A: As to eccentricities, you’d have to ask my wife or my kids. On second thought, better not. With a demanding teaching career and a busy family life, I often have to sneak research and writing into those moments when nothing else is going on – often late at night. (Libraries are always open on the internet.) To stimulate the writing muse, I read passages from writers I admire, like Dava Sobel or Carl Sagan.

Q: Most unusual place you’ve ever gone to do research?
A: The basement of Widener Library at Harvard. You could get lost in there and never be found. The place smells like books, smells like history. I love it.
Q: It sounds wonderful. To finish up, I want to relate a “small world” story about Eureka Man, the book you did on one of the Greek superstars of ancient times.  You and I share the same publisher, Walker Books, and we’ve both written about early scientists in the Greco-Roman world. More recently I learned that we share another, weirder bond. We’ve both had aortic valve replacement surgery. While reading Eureka Man, I was riveted by a paragraph describing the famous Archimedes screw. It said, and I quote: “Motor-driven forms of the Archimedes screw are employed in modern pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants. A tiny version is also found in mechanical cardiac assist systems, which maintain blood flow in patients with heart failure or undergoing heart surgery.”
• To me, it’s yet another reason why the ancient past seems so alive to me. Just think –we may have survived sophisticated surgery thanks to a nano version of an invention created by a genius who lived nearly 2300 years ago.
Alan, thanks for sharing all your stories and insights with us.

Saturn’s rings, a Hirshfeld favorite

On today’s “Fresh Eye” interview, we’re  privileged to host Dr. Alan Hirshfeld, astrophysicist, teacher, and author of three terrific biographies of ancient scientists. Alan’s honors include winning the 2004 Power of Purpose international award from the John Templeton Foundation for his essay, “How Wonderfully We Stand Upon This World.”

Dr. Alan Hirshfeld

Q: Welcome, Alan! Faraday, Herschel, and Archimedes–all were giant figures, and have had countless books written about them. What did you bring to the table? Was it something about your professional background that gave you special insight into these men? One reviewer of The Electric Life of Faraday said,  “Alan…reminds us what sheer fun science can be…”  Did the Herschel-Archimedes-Faraday stories have parallels in that sense also?
A: Although I love to write about science, I’m a teacher by inclination and experience. When I was a teenager, I’d drag my parents or any dog-walking passersby over to my portable telescope to see Jupiter or the Orion nebula.  Even in mid-winter! For the last thirty years, I’ve taught astronomy and physics to college students — all levels, from beginner to advanced. And I’ve learned that the best way to teach science – and the most fun for me – is to pin the concepts to their historical context. There’s a compelling story behind virtually every advance in science, because science is a human enterprise. All of the participants, whether famous or not, have their quirky side. Or their dark facets. Or their flashes of brilliance or simply incredible tenacity. The story of science is the story of both individuals and humanity; it covers a single lifetime and it spans generations. This epic nature of scientific discovery truly appeals to me.  Writing books about science is an extension of my teaching, only to a bigger class – and I don’t have to grade the papers.

Alan at the Dartmouth observatory

• I don’t have any special scholarly insight into the characters I write about – I leave that to the academic historians. But I do try to use historical resources to get into the heads of past scientists, to get a visceral sense of what it would be like to be looking over their shoulder when they make the big discovery or even just putter around the lab. Michael Faraday’s 12-year-old nephew was present when Faraday discovered the electric motor. It was nothing more than a metal rod spinning under some invisible force, but the two of them literally danced around the lab table in celebration. That’s the level of connection I try to feel when I deal with historical characters.

Q: This isn’t really a question, Alan, but upon rereading your book, Eureka Man,  I was again struck by your accessible and amusing way of describing Archimedes in modern terms. The way you noted “he was simultaneously defense secretary, 5-star general, and  a one-man Skunk Works.” The way he saw that it would take “new technology” to defeat or hold off the Romans. Some months ago, you wrote a blurb for my book on ancient science, modestly saying that you hadn’t been able to slide into the sandals of Archimedes. I thought you did a terrific job of time-traveling. And from the excerpts I’ve read of your Herschel and Faraday books, you did them equal justice.

A: If I detect the question behind your non –question… Yes, I try to bring in modern analogues and cultural references if I think they’re effective in conveying an idea or encapsulating a personality trait. Again, it’s the teaching gene at work – much of teaching is effective communication (duh!) and the challenge is to fire up a student’s (or a reader’s) neurons through words and images, even through physical sensations.
• Before I get myself into trouble here, let me explain by example.  To demonstrate the weird forces that seem to arise in a rotating frame of reference, like our spinning Earth, I ask my students throw a ball while riding a homemade, wooden merry-go-round. The path of the ball is seen differently by the students on the merry-go-round versus those who watch from the outside. Likewise, I try to immerse my readers in the world of scientific discovery,  and a choice cultural reference sometimes makes that easier.

Alan’s biography of brilliant Faraday

Q: What was your first scientific crush?

A: I assume we’re not talking about my lab partner in 8th grade earth science?  I was absolutely fanatical about astronomy when I was a kid.
My aunt worked for the publishers of the Golden Books series. She gave me their Sky Observer’s Guide, which described incredible celestial sights one could see with a small telescope in the night sky. I memorized the constellations, the bright stars and the planets, got to know the cycle of the Moon’s phases. I started out with a cardboard sighting tube with little indicators that registered altitude and azimuth. Then graduated to a small cardboard-tube telescope. Finally ending up with a slightly larger telescope I paid for with a mayonnaise jar full of coins. All this happened eight miles outside New York City, not exactly considered a prime site for observational astronomy. My greatest accomplishment as a kid wasn’t hitting a home run in Little League or winning the science fair, either. My big “home run” was sighting the Crab Nebula in my 4-inch telescope through the suburban lights of New Jersey.

Q: So you were fascinated from childhood on by the heavens. What became your particular specialty within the field of astrophysics? Is it double stars (like Herschel)? What nonsteller objects do you study and which are your favs?
A: My academic training is in stellar interiors – the structure and evolution of stars. But to paraphrase the former defense secretary, we have to proceed with the brains we’re given and not the brains we wish we had. My talent – and, as it turns out, my joy – lies in teaching and writing, especially about the history of science. When I do look through my school’s telescope these days, I often gaze at Saturn, whose rings are always incredible. And I love Jupiter and its moons. But deep sky objects – nebulae and galaxies – are also an amazing sight, not so much because of the way they look – a faint smudge of light through the eyepiece – but because of what they are. The Andromeda galaxy looks like an elongated cloud, but that’s the collective glow of hundreds of billions of stars more than two million light-years away. We’re seeing Andromeda the way it looked when the earliest humans were roaming the plains of Africa. The telescope as time machine.
Q: What an enchanting phrase—the telescope as time machine. We’re going to explore more of Alan’s passions in Part 2 of our interview, but right now I’m going to finish up Part 1 with a quote from his winning essay on self-taught genius of Michael Faraday. A piece of writing, I might add, that was awarded a cool $50,000 in prize money!
• A short excerpt from “How Wonderfully We Stand Upon This World” by Dr. Alan Hirshfeld:
“Born in a London slum in 1791, Michael Faraday came to George Riebau’s bookbindery in 1805. The shop proved a fertile environment for the inquisitive, but virtually unschooled, Faraday. Books came in, books
went out, a steady stream of treacle and treasure that Faraday sampled haphazardly in his off-hours. This week’s ‘lesson’ might be Arabian Nights, next week’s a collection of Hogarth illustrations, and after that Fanny Burney’s edgy take on English society, Evelina. But it was books of science that excited him most.”

• Please join us next week for the second half of our absorbing interview with scientist and master sky-watcher Dr. Alan Hirshfeld

• This month, you’ll gaze at all things glittering and celestial, from meteors ancient and modern, to an award-winning skywatcher in our world today

• Dec. 5—read my guest post on ancient Greek timekeeping at scientist and fellow author Holly Tucker’s Wonders & Marvels site: www.wondersandmarvels.com.

• Dec. 7 and 14—a lively, two-part interview with Dr. Alan Hirshfeld:  astrophysicist and author of snappy prose about intellectual giants of the past, from Archimedes to Faraday. For his students at Umass Dartmouth, this guy reveals the red-hot secrets of stellar interiors—including our own sun.

• Dec. 21— 2010’s winter solstice promises to be quite a celebration. Big doings skyward tonight, including a total lunar eclipse of the full moon! In honor of the heavenly goings-on, you’ll get a fascinating peek at what the ancient Greeks and Romans made of meteors and eclipses—and the hero-worship still given certain meteoric hitchhikers in our galaxy.

• Dec. 28: Everything old is new again: an end-of-the-year index of my first year’s blogposts, from Alexander the Great’s excellent afterlife adventures to our own great 21st century Al…Hirshfeld.

• Beginning in December, I enter the hermetically sealed author’s bat-cave to complete work on my forthcoming book—and my blog posting frequency will go to once weekly.  Join me in January for more interviews, more larks with ancient evidence, and as always, more 2000-year-old stories to astonish, amaze, and amuse.

• We continue our muckraking exposé of the sordid tasks that working authors today are obliged to do in order to flog their wares. The gang of six authors I’m profiling here run the gamut of genres, from books for younger readers to historical fiction and nonfiction. Their common thread? All six authors write on Greco-Roman themes or books sets in Greco-Roman times. And all six have new books out this year.

Adrienne Mayor

• Adrienne Mayor, an independent research scholar in Classics and the History of Science at Stanford University, is the author of The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times; Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs; and The Poison King: the Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, the latter a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award.
Q: Welcome, Adrienne! Well, enough of the small talk–what’s the most embarrassing event you’ve ever done?
A: In Paris, I was invited to present “The First Fossil Hunters” to a Francophone classics/art history audience at the Institut National d’Histoire d’Art. Professors and students filed in for my lecture at 8pm; there was even a simultaneous translator. A bit jittery, I made a quick trip to the lavatory down the hall. The cleaning staff didn’t see me slip into a stall—and when I tried to exit, they had departed, locking the door behind them. Although I’m not fluent in French, I was able to shout “Allo!” and “Aidez-moi!” After a long time, I was liberated by a Sengalese cleaning woman. Amid laughter, she confessed she had hesitated to let me out in case I was a ghost!
• That incident had a happy ending. My other martyrdom occurred in Seattle in 2001. As my four hosts at the Pacific Science Center escorted me over, I was taken aback when they confessed they’d neglected to advertise my talk. I was even more appalled to learn they’d booked me into the cavernous IMAX theatre that seats thousands. Four other people showed up—for an audience of eight.
Q: Whew. That story is enough to make anyone lock themselves into a toilet stall. What about your  oddest comments (or gifts) from fans?
A: When I spoke at the Museum of Radio and Television in Los Angeles a few years ago, I was presented with a splendid gilded Proclamation from the Mayor of Beverly Hills. That alone was unique but the questions afterward were the weirdest I’ve ever fielded. I particularly recall the gentleman who inquired, “What is the difference between a Greek griffin, a Scythian griffin, and Merv Griffin?”
Q: Only in La-La Land. Wild stuff, Adrienne! Thanks!
(P.S. to shoppers: Adrienne’s books are in hardcover and paperback; The Poison King and Greek Fire are available on Kindle.)

Caroline Lawrence

• Caroline Lawrence has written a 17-book series of history mystery stories for children aged 8 and up. There are also two quiz books, a Treasury, an two volumes of short stories, including The Legionary from Londinium published in 2010. The BBC produced a glossy TV series based on the books and in 2009, Caroline won the Classics Association prize for “a significant contribution to the public understanding of the Classics.”
Q: Welcome, Caroline! Can you describe the most embarrassing book event you’ve ever done?
A: It was the Oxford Literary Festival. They didn’t provide a dressing room, and as I was changing into my Roman costume at the venue, 30 middle-school children arrived early. Luckily, none of them spotted me crouching, half naked, behind a pillar.
Q: Most unusual place you’ve ever found your own book/s for sale?
A: In a secondhand bookstore on a Roman backstreet.
Q: Caroline, what’s the most bizarre question an interviewer has ever asked you?
A: This one occurred in Holland. The interviewer asked, “How old are you and how much do you weigh in kilograms?”
Q: What’s the most unusual gift you’ve ever received from a fan?
A: Fans who started reading my series eight years ago at age 10 are now studying Classics at University—and they say that my books are part of the reason!
Q: What a satisfying “gift” that must be!
(P.S. to shoppers: Caroline’s 2010 title Legionary from Londinium is a Kindle e-book. Her other books are available online and elsewhere in paperback and some in hardcover editions.)

Gary Corby

• According to Gary Corby, ancient history is more bizarre and exciting than a modern thriller—that’s why he chooses to write mysteries set in Classical Greece.
Q: Welcome, Gary! What’s the most unusual place you have ever found your book on sale?
A: Within minutes of my book’s release, a used (!) copy was up for sale on Amazon. And another copy was up for auction on eBay Australia.
Q: What’s the strangest question ever put to you by an interviewer?
A: This didn’t happen during an interview but while doing research, touring ancient sites in Turkey. A Kurdish rug salesman asked me if it was possible for a woman during her menstrual period to experience an orgasm.
Q: Wow. I wonder why he asked you instead of a female tourist. Did you learn more Kurdish words than ‘orgasm’? In the spirit of research, of course.
Q: What’s the oddest remark—or the most enigmatic comment you’ve ever received from a fan?
A: A struggling writer once told me that my success had given him hope that he could make it too. I still don’t know what to say when someone tells me that!
(P.S. to shoppers: Gary’s debut novel The Pericles Commission is available wherever good scrolls are sold. It’s also on those newfangled nook and kindle thingies.)

• Now then—aren’t you relieved you’re not a published author? Although most authors will claim there are more glory moments than dire, deer-in-the-headlights ones, it’s still an arduously competitive and frequently humbling business. So, dear readers, please be good to these authors, and others like them, this Christmas!

• Far too many of you out there, wistful writers and blissful non-writers alike, vicariously picture yourselves living The Life of a Published Author. Admit it. You fantasize about sprinting to your glam book-signing event past lines of adoring fans. Getting cosy late-night calls from your agent, announcing the latest kindle numbers for your book. Chilling in the Green Room before your Oprah interview.
• This week you’re in for a treat. You’ll live vicariously, all right—in my armchair tour of the dark underbelly of book promotion. Yesirree! Step right up! Meet the author as trained seal, valiantly endeavoring to shout over the cacaphony of expresso machines. Squirm to the real-life trials, tribulations, and humiliations endured by even the best wordsmiths.
• Authors Steven Saylor, Vicky Alvear Shecter, Ruth Downie, Adrienne Mayor, Caroline Lawrence, and Gary Corby—my terrific gang of six—
rashly volunteered to undergo my grilling about their worst book-peddling experiences. As writers, they run the gamut of genres, from children’s books to historical fiction to nonfiction. Their common thread? All six authors have new books out this year on Greco-Roman themes or set in Greco-Roman times.

Steven Saylor

• While watching movies like Spartacus and playing with Roman toy soldiers as a boy, Steven Saylor never dreamed he’d grow up to write novels about ancient Rome. His sleuth Gordianus the Finder uncovers crimes in the age of Julius Caesar. In his novels Roma and Empire, Steven takes a more panoramic view of the ancient world.
Q: Welcome, Steven! We’re hungry to learn—what’s the most embarrassing book event you’ve ever done?
A: Years ago, I took part in a group signing for Mystery Week in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everything went wrong. The bookseller had no idea who we were and put none of our books in the window.  A handyman on a ladder went about rewiring a light fixture a few feet away while we sat at a table for two hours. No audience. It was gruesome—until a shopper who was headed for Italy happened to drop by –and I got to sign a book! Gratifying—but also embarrassing, since it was a group event.
Q: Most bizarre question you’ve ever gotten from an audience?
A: On my first trip to the north of England, a man raised his hand and in a broad Scottish accent, asked, “Mr Saylor, I read ye book, and I liked it but—why must ye have a murder?” I was speechless. Naturally, that night in my hotel room I came up with an answer: the murder is the Pandora’s box, the rip in the social fabric that allows all the other secrets being kept by the characters to tumble out.
Q: Oddest or most poignant comment you’ve received?
A: At a signing a male reader once asked, “What does it mean that, over the course of your series, you’ve created an ideal father in Gordianus?” Something I’d never realized, but he was absolutely right. The reader at times sees patterns not seen by the author, who’s like a painter standing too close to the canvas to see the big picture. Gordianus as an ideal father is a theme that runs all through the series, even though I never intended to do this. I’m still thinking about what it means.
Thanks, Steven! (P.S. to shoppers: Steven’s books are available in hardcover, paperback, audio CD format, and Kindle e-book format.)

Vicky Alvear Shecter

• Vicky Alvear Shecter writes for teens and younger readers on figures of ancient Greece and Rome. Her lively language enthralls kids; educators and parents alike praise her meticulous research. Both Alexander the Great Rocks the World and Cleopatra Rules! are large format, heavily illustrated books with plenty of extras.
Q: Welcome, Vicky! Prepared to lose your last scrap of dignity? Tell me, what’s your most humiliating book event ever?
A: When a big box store invited me to do a signing but never a mentioned a word of it to anybody. I spent the entire time listening to chirping crickets!


Q: Hm. Would this have been a pet store, I wonder… OK, what’s the most bizarre question an interviewer or bookseller has asked you?
A: I’d just completed a storytelling session for kids in a popular bookstore, and went to thank the manager, where the conversation went like this:
Me: Even though the audience of toddlers was much too young for my book, I appreciated the opportunity.
Manager: The parts of the stories I could hear over the wailing toddlers were really good.
Me: Thank you. May I tell you a little more about who my books are written for?
Manager: Yeah. But first, what’s your favorite cookie recipe?
Me: um…
Manager: I’m putting together a cookie recipe book featuring the authors who come to my store.
Me: Oh, I don’t really bake. Still, I do want to clarify that my books are best for children nine years and older…..
Manager: (interrupting) Oops, gotta go! Email me that cookie recipe when you can! Thanks, bye-bye!
Q: Funniest comments ever received from a fan?
A: A girl about 11 emailed to say how much she enjoyed my first book. “I normally hate history,” she wrote, “but reading your book was fun. I’m going to write my report on Alexander the Great. But I should tell you, as soon as I finish it, I’m going to forget everything I read. Just thought you should know.”
Thanks, Vicky! (P.S. to shoppers: Vicky’s books are available in hardcover online and from other fine bookstore and museum retailers.)

Ruth Downie

Ruth Downie is author of what will soon be 4  books, set mainly in Roman Britain. They feature army medic Gaius Petreius Ruso and his inability to avoid murder mysteries. She loves doing the research and has developed a worrying habit of gazing into holes dug in the road in case the workers have turned up something ancient and interesting.
Q: Welcome, Ruth! You’re in for it now. What’s the most embarrassing book event you’ve ever done?
A: That would be the one attended by me, the organizer, one other person (which is why the show had to go on), and the nice couple who were there to lock up the building afterwards. Halfway through, two more people wandered in, but I think they came to see why the lights had been left on.
Q: What about the oddest or funniest remark you ever gotten from a fan? Or a non-fan, for that matter?
A: I had a lovely email from a reader who must have sussed out my deep insecurity. After I had responded to her, she wrote back, saying,  “Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to me—a real writer would never have bothered.”
Thanks, Ruth! (P.S. to shoppers: Ruth Downie’s books are available in hardcover, paperback, and various e-book formats, including Kindle and Nook.)
How to stun an author: buy a book, for pity’s sake!

• Can’t get enough of these unsavory literary doings? Stay tuned for my upcoming blogpost. Part 2 of our wrenching, rollicking exposé will continue with more of the everyday ghastliness that confronts authors of every stripe.