Talking and Driving: Just Say NO!

April is Distracted Driving Month. To raise awareness of the dangers of driving distracted, the following message was sent to all Department of Commerce employees to remind us 1) how easily and severely we can be distracted with phones and conversations, not just text messages, and 2) that it is against federal regulations to talk or text on your phone while driving a government vehicle or in your own vehicle on work-related business.

While it isn't illegal everywhere yet, common sense dictates we shouldn't do it, none of us, ever. If you have a true emergency, pull over, then get on the phone. My friend Seri posted a great suggestion on Facebook yesterday: Whenever you get in the car, put your phone in the back seat, out of reach. No message is as important as your life.

From the Department of Commerce:

Do you believe you can talk on your cell phone (handheld or hands-free) and drive safely at the same time?  Before you answer, please read the following story:

In January 2004, at 4:00 p.m., in Michigan, a 20-year-old woman ran a red light while talking on a cell phone.  The driver’s vehicle slammed into another vehicle crossing with the green light directly in front of her.  The vehicle she hit was not the first car through the intersection, it was the third or fourth.  The police investigation deter­mined the driver never touched her brakes and was traveling 48 mph when she hit the other vehicle.  The crash cost the life of a 12-year-old boy.  Witnesses told investigators that the driver was not looking down, not dialing the phone, or texting.  She was observed looking straight out the windshield talking on her cell phone as she sped past four cars and a school bus stopped in the other south bound lane of traffic.  Researchers have called this crash a classic case of inattention blindness caused by the cognitive distraction of a cell phone conversation.  (To read the full study, go to:  http://www.nsc.org/safety_road/Distracted_Driving/Documents/Dstrct_Drvng_White_Paper_Fnl(5-25-10).pdf)

Throughout April, the Department of Commerce is supporting the National Safety Council’s (NSC) Distracted Driving Month and is urging its employees and contractors to consider the lives of others on the road and to stop using cell phones (handheld and hands-free) and to stop texting while driving.  To spread the message, all Commerce employees should talk with their families and friends not just about stopping cell phone use and texting, but about eliminating all distractions while driving.  (Go to the following NSC webpage to take the Pledge to Drive Cell Free:  https://www.nsc.org/forms/distracteddriving_pledge.aspx.)

Some statistics:

·         Sending text or e-mail messages while driving is extremely dangerous, as it draws the driver’s eyes, mind, and hands away from the road.  On average, texting causes drivers to look away from the road for 4.6 seconds.  At 55 mph, the vehicle travels the length of an entire football field during that time, while the driver isn’t looking!

·         NSC estimates 28 percent of all crashes – or 1.6 million – each year are caused by drivers using their handheld or hands-free cell phones and texting while driving.  This is much greater than the number of crashes caused by any other distraction. 

·         A University of Utah driving simulator study found drivers using cell phones had slower reaction times than drivers impaired by alcohol at a .08 blood alcohol concentration, the legal intoxication limit.  Braking time also was delayed for drivers talking on hands-free and handheld phones.

Employees who drive as part of their job are prohibited from texting while driving.  Executive Order (EO) 13513 – Federal Leadership on Reducing Text Messaging While Driving (October 1, 2009) notes that “Federal employees shall not engage in text messaging (a) when driving GOV (Government-Owned Vehicle), or when driving POV (Privately-Owned Vehicle) while on official Government business, or (b) when using electronic equipment supplied by the Government while driving.”

On snakes and guns in South Carolina

My Biology 102 class has been studying vertebrates over the past few weeks: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. This is always a fun unit because the students are more familiar with this group of organisms than the invertebrates, plants, and microbes.

Most semesters, I have "experts" in the class--someone is an aquarist, fishermen, or students with birds, dogs, cats, or lizards for pets. This semester, my class expert is a part-time employee at the SC Aquarium who works with the reptiles. Specifically, the snakes. He also has six pet snakes (western hognose, python, milk snake, cobra, and two others that I can't remember.)


Being in South Carolina, everyone has some interest in the reptiles and my student offered to bring a few snakes in for "show and tell." That's when I learned an amazingly bizarre tidbit about the infinitely baffling state laws of South Carolina. You don't need a permit to buy or possess a gun, but to keep a pet snake, you have to take and pass a written test in order to obtain a permit.

Obviously, in their gloriously obscure thought processes, the good state legislators saw the alarming number of cases of robbery, domestic disputes, and drug-deals gone bad that ended in the lethal use of snake and so felt the need to protect the good citizens of the state from such violence.

So, if you'd like to buy one of those interesting or exotic snakes at the pet store, be prepared to prove that you have the emotional and intellectual capacity to own such a lethal weapon. If you don't, you might just have to content yourself with buying a firearm. You don't need to show any level of responsibility or intelligence to own one of those.

On women's fiction, women writers, and initials

I just came across this very interesting, although not particularly surprising, piece in the NY Times about differences in perception and treatment of men and women writers. Not just treatment by readers, but by the whole publishing industry--from cover fonts and art to placement at the bookstores.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/books/review/on-the-rules-of-literary-fiction-for-men-and-women.html?pagewanted=1&smid=fb-share

Of course this isn't surprising. At the last writers' conference I attended, agents (both male and female) made a big deal about "chick lit"has evolved into "women's fiction." But, the grown up version of chick-lit is still relegated to the bottom shelves, next to the romance novels. Whereas a man and woman might write the same story, the male author will get the more interesting, gender-neutral cover with a bolder title font, and a book blurb with more focus on the action and less on the heroine.

Is it any wonder Joanne K. Rowling wrote as JK rather than Joanne?

Is it any wonder I considered only using LM for Chupacabra?

I don't write chick-lit, I don't write romance, and I don't write about knights riding to the rescue of the damsel in distress. In Marina Melee, George's eventual romantic interest had a very minor role and wasn't even present at the end of the book. The romance was secondary to the madness and mayhem George faced on Sao Jorge. The sex wasn't, but that was separate and apart from the romance. The sex was just part of who George was, right along with the drinking, gambling, and golf. It's a guy's story. It just happens to be written by a woman.

According to the NY Times article, that means the audience who would most enjoy it, who should most read it, won't ever pick it up because it's written by a woman. I don't have any doubt it's true since a male friend who knows I don't have a romantic bone in my body, assumed because I'm a woman writer, Marina Melee must be a romance.

Once again, I'm considering publishing Chupacabra as LM Hinkey, rather than Lynne (that damn "e" keeps prevents any possible ambiguity a "Lynn" has). Maybe I need to find the correct box to put myself in, but for now, it eludes me. The boxes that people expect don't fit. In the south particularly, people expect women to write southern fiction. I don't. I just live here. And I don't write "women's fiction," as I'm expected to do, either. I'm a female writer. And I don't write paranormal romance with vampires and werewolves, even though there is a supernatural beast in my current work.

My paranormal murder-mystery has no romance (okay, the dog is a bit randy), no sex (except for the dog), it isn't set in the south, and the protagonist is a man. True, there are some strong female characters like Kiki, Senora Milagros, and Carmen, but their estrogen-laden presence is balanced by the equally strong testosterone of Jack, Eddie, Flaco, and Norbert Ellis.

For now, I'm holding my breath that the agent I would love more than anything to represent me, and who represents a number of my favorite (male) authors--those who I emulate (at least I try)--will like Chupacabra despite it not fitting in the boxes I've been handed. Of anyone, I would trust her to guide me and my MS through the process to ensure my work is read and marketed as the quirky, satirical look at gods, monsters, and human belief in both of those that it is.

What do you all think? Do women author's get pre-judged and labeled because they're women? Is it just a sad reality of our world that if women authors want men to read their books, they have to use initials or a pseudonym?