There are discoveries out there that change the world.
And I am convinced that somewhere tucked away in the labyrinth of the scientific world, there are researchers studying things that the rest of us could only dream of or perhaps things we’d rather not know about. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been fascinated by the unknown.
We tend to think of science fiction as imagining things that don’t exist, but every once in a while, I stumble across a real scientific discovery that makes me think:
OK, maybe my imagination isn’t as wild as I thought.
What if permafrost isn’t simply frozen dirt, but a time capsule? It’s a freezer containing pieces of the Earth’s past. Scientists have recovered remarkably preserved animals from it. Mammoths. Cave lion cubs, Ancient wolves. Plants that haven’t seen daylight for thousands of years.
But it gets stranger.
Researchers have revived microscopic organisms after they spent tens of thousands of years frozen. In one experiment, scientists reported reviving tiny animals called bdelloid rotifers after roughly 24,000 years in Siberian permafrost.
Another group revived nematode worms from ancient permafrost, with subsequent research identifying one specimen as a previously undescribed species and dating the material surrounding it roughly to 46,000 years ago.
46,000 years
Frozen
Then alive again.
Tell me that doesn’t sound like the beginning of a novel.
Then there are viruses….
This is where things get particularly interesting. Scientists studying ancient permafrost have isolated viruses that remained infectious after 10s of thousands of years.
One famous example was a giant virus recovered from approximately 30,000 year old Siberian permafrost. Researchers were able to reactivate it in a laboratory, where it infected amoebae.
More recently, researchers studying ancient viruses recovered from permafrost described multiple ancient strains including one associated with material more than 48,000 years old.
Before anyone starts building a bunker, there’s an important distinction. These particular viruses were studied using amoebae as hosts. Their revival doesn’t mean a 48,000 year old human zombie virus is waiting to jump out of the Arctic tomorrow. But the underlying idea is fascinating.
Freezing can preserve biological material for an astonishing amount of time and our planet has a lot of frozen ground.
Now add a changing climate…
Permafrost doesn’t necessarily stay permanent. As Arctic regions warm, previously frozen ground is thawing that exposes material that may have been locked away for thousands of years. Scientists are interested in what that could mean for ecosystems, carbon emissions, ancient microorganisms, and potentially pathogens.
There has even been a real world example that sounds unnervingly like fiction. In 2016 an anthrax outbreak occurred in Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula after an unusually warm period. A child died, people were hospitalized, and thousands of reindeer were affected. Scientists and officials investigated thawing permafrost and old infected animal remains as a possible explanation for the outbreak.
That doesn’t mean melting permafrost is about to unleash the apocalypse, but it does mean nature occasionally reminds us that buried doesn’t necessarily mean gone.
And that idea stuck with me, so I asked the question writers are always asking:
What if…
What if something was buried beneath the ice?
What if it had been there for longer than anyone could imagine?
What if scientists found it?
And what if it wasn’t dead?
That’s where reality ends and Hidden in Ice begins.
In my story forensic anthropologist Hannah Fraser travels to a remote Alaskan research station after an extraordinary discovery. A boy had been found entombed in the ice.
Finding an ancient human would already be the discovery of a lifetime, except the boy presents Hannah with a considerably bigger problem.
He’s alive.
And because I can’t allow my fictional scientist to have a nice, uneventful work day, things don’t exactly improve from there. But the part that fascinates me isn’t really the zombies. It’s the questions of how far human curiosity can take us and what happens when we go too far. Humans are explorers.
We dig.
We investigate.
We open things.
We want to know what’s behind the door, beneath the ocean, inside the tomb, and under the ice. It’s one of the reasons we’ve accomplished extraordinary things. But imagine being the person standing in front of a discovery that shouldn’t be possible. Every scientific instinct you possess would tell you to investigate, and perhaps another much older instinct would whisper:
Leave it alone
Which one would you listen to?
Because the deeper you venture into the Resurrection Hour series, the less it becomes about the dead rising, and the more you begin the question what really brought the world to its knees
And perhaps that’s what makes the line between science and fiction so fascinating
Science tells us what is possible.
Fiction gets to ask:
What if we went one step further?
So here’s my question for you…
If scientists discovered something frozen beneath the ice that appears to be biologically impossible.
Would you investigate it?
Or would you leave it exactly where you found it?
I already know what my scientist chose.
And well…
There wouldn’t be much of a book if they’d made the sensible decision, but isn’t that how all horror movies start?
…that one stupid person opens the door.
Please find the link below to read the first three chapters of Resurrection Hour: Hidden in Ice.
This year has been a slow writing and publishing year for me. Life has been super busy and changing in big ways, so writing kind of took back stage to everything else.
But I don’t want that to continue to be the case because I have so many stories to tell and limited time to tell them. I’m not getting any younger and with the loss of my dad, that knowledge really hit home.
But with that knowledge hitting home, it also made me realize how precious time is with your loved ones and it’s been hard to focus on things like writing because I don’t want to lose out on time with them.
Even now as I sit here, my partner is cooking in the kitchen, and I’m in the living room. This is not where I would usually be because I want to be by his side, doing as much as I can with him. He said that he could handle dinner, so here I am, trying to pick-up where I left off many months ago.
We both started new jobs. I actually accepted a Site Supervisor position for the first time. Something I had never really wanted to do because if you know me, my life was previously stressful so the last thing I wanted was to be the one responsible for everything running smoothly. *lol* But everyone has to excel upwards at some point, right? We can’t stay where we are forever or we never grow, and at 47 years old, it’s time for me to grow in my industry.
So tell me, are you working on climbing the ladder or are you just coasting? If you’re coasting, then I understand completely. Change is difficult for me, but so many things have been changing that I figure I might as well embrace it and change with it.
What about you? What have you changed in your life this year? Share in my email or in the comments below. Also, I want your advice, should I work on releasing my zombie series, or would you like to see my steamy trilogy?
I roll over and my shoulder blade goes, nope. I walk up the stairs and my knee is like, nope. Hip. Same thing. Why do we have to get old. Why can’t we stay young and vibrant forever?
Today we walked ten kilometers around Barnston Island in Surrey. The island was an interesting place to walk around. Big farms. Cute houses, but also dilapidated houses.
As we walked around, out bodies decided to say nope, not today; yet, we still had to keep walking because there are no buses and no way to get back to the ferry but walk. Our car was parked on the other side. We had walked onto the ferry.
But who would have thought ten kilometers would make our bodies start crying? I used to walk for a living and ten km was nothing in a day. I’ve come to realize that sitting at a desk all day at work is so not healthy. I’m determined to be able to walk without hobbling like an old woman.
Life is too short to be achy and stuck in a chair. Our world is too beautiful to let it waste away. So despite being sore, I am glad we got out to see Barnston Island.
We saw donkeys, cows, horses, chickens, silage, corn and blackberries. But what surprised me most was the amount of dilapidated buildings. Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice places on the island, but the others quickly became an eye sore.
While we were walking around the island, it surprised me that only a few properties were actually growing anything, unless everything else we saw was silage, but I wasn’t sure. When I got home, I did some research and found out that a high water table makes poor growing conditions for about 85% of the land, so I guess that would explain the lack of farming activity and maybe even some of the poor falling apart buildings.
However, I did find a place that sells eggs and beef called “Painted Rivers.” We’re looking forward to going back and checking them out. But ya, getting old isn’t a piece of cake. Everything aches. If you have a cure or you know of a way to settle these old bones, make a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
The Blues of Atlantis
For as long as there have been men, there have been myths. And as long as there have been myths, there have been dreamers. Dreamers who wonder what else is out there.
Nerina Winters is no different. She lives a fantasy life as a mermaid, putting on daily shows at the aquarium. Until one day, she finds herself sitting in the doctor’s office. The revelation of what’s ailing her reveals a family secret she isn’t supposed to know about until her thirtieth birthday.
But it’s too late. The secret is out. Now she’s on the run with a husband she no longer trusts, who harbors a secret of his own. Her husband quickly learns that secrets are perilous by nature.
Do you find yourself unable to finish a story? Do you get half-way through and lose your interest in it? Do other ideas sound more appealing?
What if I was to tell you that what you feel is perfectly normal? It’s a phase that every writer goes through when they reach a certain point in the story, usually about half-way or three-quarters of the way through. Sometimes it can happen earlier if you don’t write on a daily basis and keep your mind engaged in the story. As writers, our minds move a mile a minute, always searching for the next story, and new ideas feel like a brand new toy.
But that doesn’t mean the story you are writing now is boring or that it isn’t any good; so, don’t let your excitement for that new idea make you think that your current one sucks. I can tell you 100 percent that if you stopped your old story and started the new idea, you’d have the exact same problem mid-way through when another idea came your way. Ideas never stop, so write it in an idea book and stay the course, my dear writer. Your new idea will still be there when it comes time to write it.
Once you learn the pattern and phases a writer goes through, it gets easy to continue on the journey instead of giving up. And once you finish one story, it gets easier to finish the next. But if you keep giving up, you build a pattern too…one of never finishing what you start. And you don’t want that to be you.
It’s the same with any goal really. After doing something for a while, the initial excitement ebbs and other things look more fun; but, if you push through it and keep writing, you’ll make it to the end. Be stubborn!
For the last 20 days, I’ve been hard at work tackling Nanowrimo. This has been a goal of mine for the last four years, but I’ve never attempted it until now. What is Nanowrimo? It’s basically a challenge for writers; where you have to write 50k words in the month of November to win. The idea is to write a novel quickly, but anyone who writes knows how easily life can get in the way. There’s work, chores, family, shopping, spouses, internet and whatever else you can think of that detracts from your free time.
In previous years when I thought of trying Nano, I was always in the middle of another project or, well, I just chickened out. I’m a mom of four(three at home), who works fulltime, so finding time to write can be tricky. Now, I could have just let this year be another one of those years, but I said no, “This time I’m gonna do it.”
I already had a few novels under my belt, along with a few short stories, so I knew that I had the ability to follow through on a goal; but, this type of goal required me to write every day, which was not something I was doing, especially not over the last year. We’ve had a lot of hardships over the last year, and that’s not including the trials we’ve had with Covid affecting our world.
If I was going to do this, I had to dig deep inside of me and bring out the person that I knew was hiding in there. The one who had finished goals before and never let anything get in the way. No matter how tough life is, I needed to show myself that I could do it. And like I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I’m all about setting a daily goal and keeping it.
So exactly how many words do you need to write every day to reach 50k words in a month: 1,667. Now that isn’t a lot to some writers, but when you have a crazy life, that can be a challenge. I wasn’t going to let that deter me though. I was determined to see this goal through to the end.
When I’m in a good writing grove, I would usually write 1500 words a day between Monday-Friday and wouldn’t write anything on the weekends, except social media posts. But that wasn’t good enough for this type of challenge. I had to up my game. And to be honest, I wasn’t even sure that was possible as I haven’t written much all year, and near the end of the year, I lost the job that really allowed me time to write. That was a devastating loss.
Life had changed so much for me that I either could hide my head under a pillow or change with it. I decided it was time to pick myself back up and this was just the way to do it. I made it my mission to write 1700 words a day, overshoot the goal. The question was, exactly how badly did I want it? Unless you’re determined, the chances of completing what you set out to do is unlikely. You need to believe it’s possible.
Below you can see my daily word count as the month progressed, culminating at today, November 20, 2020.
Some days I didn’t write as much, but I did manage to stay above my daily goal. Of course, that meant that sometimes we had dinner late, easy meals, takeout. Sometimes the dishes piled in the sink(Okay, that one was not so good*lol*). My son, Ethan, helped us not get buried under a whack load of them. And now that the goal is done, I’ll be doing a deep clean of my house, which somewhat looks like a tornado ripped through it. Clean laundry is piled on our loveseat, having just been plunked there after the dryer was finished. I did manage to get garbage out on a regular basis, so I had that going for our house. Haha.
Really though, I wanted to prove to myself that there was still a writer inside me somewhere, even when the world is crazy. I wanted to prove to my kids and others that you can do anything you set your mind to, as long as you are willing to do the work it takes to get there. It won’t always be easy. Sometimes it will feel almost impossible, but that’s what separates the doers from the dreamers. Doers keep doing even when the way seems dark. Dreamers just keep dreaming…
Congrats to all the Nanowrimo winners out there! What’s your dream? Share it in the comments below.
Here’s the opening to my Nanowrimo story, “Resurrection Hour: Hidden in Ice.” This is a rough first draft, so you’ll see it in all it’s raw glory. *lol*
Xavier stared at the young woman, who couldn’t be more than eighteen, walking towards him on the tarmac. One woman and man followed in her wake, carrying all the luggage, while all she carried was a backpack. She couldn’t be who they were expecting, but, for some reason, the description he was given fit her to a T—bright red hair peaked out of her parka.
When she stopped in front of him, his heart did a triple thump as her vibrant green eyes locked with his. There was something otherworldly about them, and he found himself at a loss for words. He couldn’t see much else, but it was enough.
“You must be Xavier. Hi, I’m Doctor Hannah Fraser,” she said, shoving her gloved hand at him. “And these are my assistants Cheryl Blakely and Flynn Peters.”
He stared at it mindless a moment before he cleared his throat, trying to get his mind back on track. The last thing he could afford was getting distracted. Being the head of security it was his duty to keep everyone safe, and get the doctor inside before they froze to death. It was 30 degrees below zero. Far too cold to stand out there and do idle chitchat.
“It’s nice to meet you.” After shaking her hand, he gestured towards the door a hundred feet behind him. “Right this way.” Xavier shivered as a chill blew underneath his hood, ruffling his dark brown hair. It was one of those colors somewhere in between black and brown that could be one or the other. It gave him a hell of a time filling out security applications or driver’s licenses.
Punching in the security code at the door and opening the door, he allowed them to enter first. Once the door was closed, he turned to face the newcomers. They were now in a small foyer, not any larger than a small bedroom. There was a desk on one side with a computer. Xavier pulled off his jacket and hung it on a hook in the corner before sitting down.
“I’ll need to see your identification.” He sat there patiently while they dug in their bags.
Hannah placed her bag on the edge of the table and pulled out a make-up bag, a small bag of medicine, two books-romance by the looks of it, and a bra. He glanced up at her and noted her cheeks turned a pretty hue of pink, making him grin. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was wearing a bra under all her clothes.
She chuckled nervously and continued digging through her bag’s contents. “I know it’s in here somewhere.”
In the meantime, her companions handed him their id’s. They had flown up from Vancouver, British Columbia. She was well-known in her paleontology field, which in a way surprised him. By appearance, he wouldn’t have pegged her for a doctor. She was someone who could have had her face splashed on a magazine, or even snagged a rich sucker to pay her way.
A shiver rippled through him and he pushed the thought out of his mind. He wasn’t going to go there. He’d transferred up here to get away from the memory of Catherine. Away from her bleeding him dry and ruining his life. What was Hannah trying to escape from?
“Ah ha! Found it. I must have put it in my suitcase when I was trying to find my notes.” She handed him her license and he couldn’t help but take a peek at her date of birth. He looked between her and the ID. There was no way she was twenty-eight. “I know. I know. I look sixteen, right?”
“I was going to say eighteen, but ya.”
After checking everything over, he leaned over and pulled out their access cards from the bottom drawer. With a few clicks on the keyboard, their cards were activated. “Your cards will give you access into your rooms, as well as any medical and research rooms within the facility.”
“Funny to have such high security in the middle of nowhere,” Flynn, one of Hannah’s assistants, commented.
“You can never be too careful, even out here. We have at least two hundred people in this facility and sensitive information.” That included his twelve man security team who covered all six floors. Not much has happened since he joined, so it was a nice quiet job.
“Speaking of which, has the specimen arrived?” Hannah asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“One second.” Xavier picked up his radio and contacted one of his teammates to man the desk while he showed the newcomers around, and then responded to her question. “It should arrive later today.”
“Were you apprised of its condition?”
“They don’t tell and I don’t ask.”
She tilted her sweet head to the side and studied him. “You aren’t the least bit curious?”
Truth be told, when he first started here, he wanted to know everything. But they had enough on their plate without knowing every little thing, and the director didn’t like them prying into the research.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not paid to inquire.” The less he knew the better because then he wouldn’t get accused of taking something if it disappeared or was misplaced. If it posed a threat that would be a different story, but a fossil frozen in ice was the least of his worries. They had the proper isolation rooms on the research floor to separate it from the rest of the population of Finley’s Research Station.
“I don’t think I could do that,” she said. “I like to know every detail.”
“Makes sense. You wouldn’t be a doctor if you didn’t like to know what makes things tick.”
As they were talking, one of his men walked in, dressed in their usual attire- white shirts with a security logo on the front and Finley’s Research Security on the arm patches, along with black pants and polished black shoes.
“Man the desk, please. I’m going to show Dr Fraser and her associates around the station.”
“Sure thing,” his buddy replied, taking up a position behind him.
Xavier nodded towards him, then turned his attention back to the newcomers. “We’ll put your luggage in your room before we do the grand tour.”
“Can we have 30 minutes to freshen up? It’s been a long flight,” Cheryl asked, her wavy hair standing on end from static after pulling off her toque. He fought to suppress a grin. It looked like she stuck her finger in a light socket.
He looked at his watch. “We might just have to wait until after dinner for the tour then because Director Adams wants to see you in the conference room in an hour.”
Pushing the chair back from his desk, he stood up and moved over to the sliding door. He pulled his access card from his pocket and held it in front of the scanner before punching in the code. The sliding doors opened and they walked into a hallway. To his left was a set of stairs that led down to the lower floors.
“You have two options. We can take the stairs or the elevator. Your pick.” He pointed down the long hallway to the elevator.
They had a pile of gear, so they opted for the elevator, even if it took them farther away from their room. As they walked down the hall, a square black case that Cheryl had stacked in her arms started to slip off.
“Oh no!” she cried as it tumbled towards the ground. Xavier snatched it out of the air, pulling it safely into his arms. Cheryl let out a visible sigh of relief. “Thank you so much.”
Instead of piling it back on top, he opted to carry it. By the look on Hannah’s face, the girl would have been up the creek without a paddle if whatever was inside broke. She held herself together though and didn’t say a word.
It didn’t take long for them to head down to the second floor. They walked halfway down the corridor and turned to the left, then a short bit later turned to the right. “Geez, this isn’t confusing at all,” Hannah said with a wry grin.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. We’re essentially a great big square and if you get lost, there are security phones along the outer hallways-one in each corner.”
Xavier stopped in front of a room. “Dr. Fraser and Mrs. Blakely, this is your room. Flynn will be sharing a room next door with one of our resident engineers, Levi White.”
“Please, it’s just Miss Blakely. I’m not married,” she made a point of saying, as she fluttered her eyelashes at him.
Xavier smiled. “Duly noted.” Cheryl was a cute little thing, but she wasn’t his type. Besides, he had no interest in pursuing a relationship while stationed out here. They may be in the middle of nowhere and fun activities were slim to none, but he was here to do a job and that’s it. Anything else complicated things more than they needed to be right now.
Hannah swiped her card on the reader and stepped inside the room after the doors slid open, placing her gear on the table before turning to him. “If I need to speak to you specifically, where will I be able to find you?”
“Our main office is on the main floor where we came in, to the right of the elevator. I’m there from 0800 to 1600.”
“Good to know.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
Hannah nodded her head and then turned to Cheryl. “Did you want the washroom first or me?”
Special visitors to the island were given the best suites, which had a full bathroom, as opposed to the normal crew which only had a sink and toilet inside theirs. Only the director and assistant director had the same. Xavier didn’t really mind. It’s not like he had any entertaining plans.
Stepping out of the room, he allowed the doors to close behind him. Just as he was about to head back to the front his radio squawked. “Alpha-1 to Delta-1, the elevator has malfunctioned. The Director is inside. Repair crew has been dispatched.”
Patricia Elliott 