Friday, June 11, 2010

A Friday Post, With Lots of History!

First of all, I have some important announcements.

1) My writerly friends on Twitter are AWESOMESAUCE.

2) Yesterday, I wrote the greatest query of my LIFE. If was for the wrong book, though.
GENERATIONS previously held the distinction of being the MS with my BEST QUERY LETTER EVER. The title has now been passed onto COST OF LIVING. (I'm not in love with the title for that MS at all. For the record. Mostly I just refer to it as Thairon's book, and pretend it has no title until pressed and even then I only give it up grudgingly. In fact, the filename of this awesome new Query is "Thairon BEST QUERY EVER.")

EDIT: I got a partial request this morning! Clearly my joy and pride was not misplaced!

 3) Oh My God, Chris Hemsworth is HUGE. Thank Goodness, because I wouldn't be able to sit through a movie with a wimpy, twig thing Thor. I think he's given Hugh Jackman a real run for his money in the bulking up department.

Now that those two things are out of the way, I can get to the real matters at hand. Namely, some awesome archaeological and historical finds! For starters, "they" have found the OLDEST LEATHER SHOE EVER in Armenia! (There is a LOT of capslock going on in this post, for which I apologize! It will stop now!)

Apparently the shoe is 5,500 years old, and so remarkably preserved you can see how it was formed to its owners foot. It's the equivalent of a women's size 7, for those of you wondering, but if you haven't clicked the link it is worth it just to see the picture of this shoe and how well it's preserved.

Now, it's not really the shoe itself that compelled me to report on this. I mean, sure it's cool to see how ye olden shoes were constructed. The thing that really gets my goat is the fact that it is 5,500 years old.

Allow me to do the math:
2,010-5,500= -3490

In 3,490 BCE somebody lost their shoe. Or purposely left it behind. Why? And why did they stuff it with straw first? To prevent odors? My friends, this was before Hieroglyphs were even developed in Egypt. JUST about the time when the wheel was invented! The idea of the wheel may not even have had time to MAKE it as far as Armenia! THAT is when this shoe is from. Just think about that for a minute.

Tell me that doesn't blow your mind a little bit.

Happy Friday!


  1. My mind is blown.

    And I'm totally thrilled about your query! I sure hope you send it out!

  2. Best of lucjk on the query and that is wild about the shoe-I'm thinking straw might have been a sock, its a good insulator.

  3. I felt the same way about the shoe, but I am fascinated with such things.

    Wow, your best query! Let me know how it does with the agents. Congrats!!

  4. Yay, on your query! Well done, you. Now, go forth and CONQUER!!! [Caps intended]

    Love the shoe. Straw by Dr. Scholls???

  5. YAY for partial requests! I just got this post on my morning blog reads, haha, so great timing!

    I also have a file in my computer for one of my novels that I call "query letter awesome for real this time".


    Also, how freaking cool is that shoe? Stuff like that just FASCINATES me!

  6. I knew yours would be, Stephanie :) And thanks for the encouragement on the query front!

    Thanks, David! I think it's stuffed too full of straw to be sock. I mean, unless they pounded in fresh every day?

    J.L.: Thanks! I got a partial request! I was floored!

    VR: Ahahaha! Thanks! Straw by Scholls- haha! I wonder if they did use it for cushioning?

    L.T.: YES! Exactly! I told one of my friends last night on the phone (non-writer) that I had written the best Query Ever and he said to me "You say that EVERY time!" and I said "BUT THIS TIME IT'S TRUE!"

  7. Congrats again, m'dear!

    I have one question regarding the shoe: How long before the shoe-market will be inundated with troglodyte-style shoes?

  8. Ahaha! I didn't think that the HIP people who set trends paid attention to ancient history! But man, that would be AWESOME.

  9. Congratulations!!!

    And, ooh, la, la, I love your new background (and Hugh Jackman. A lot.).

  10. Thanks, Sarah!

    I'm not sure I'm in love with the sidebar text color being black-- wish I could make it white without making the post text white too. RAR. these new templates are kind of annoying with the text color options.

  11. Cool new digs Amalia. I have to agree though, the side bar is a little hard to read. Oh well, its a work in progress, right?

    Congratulations on the partial request. Your query must have really been something awesome. Nice to see hard work and creativity pay off.

    Why is it people only lose one shoe? One sock? One mitten? Are there really gremlims in the world?


  12. Thanks Donna!

    Yeah-- I need to figure out if I can slip a line of code in or something to fix it, but I'm not fluent in the language myself. In the meantime, all that info is in the About the Writer tab too for redundancy.

    I'm not sure about the singular shoe! It seems really odd to me, especially in this instance!


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