Guest Post: How long to cool boiling water for tea

With us today is Adrian, also known as Badger. With an undergraduate in astrophysics and mathematics, he decided to put his talent towards helping us make a great cup of tea! When he's not slaying Sicilian Dragons or risking everything on a King's Gambit on a chessboard to get to the princess, he's randomly bouncing around the realms of books, games, and other hobbies. Oh, and he does enjoy a good cup of tea. 

So here's Badger, answering the question, "If I accidentally let my water boil, how long should I let it cool before using it so it won't scorch my tea?"

Many of us have started a pot of water boiling and just forgot about the water until it is boiling, which more than likely scorches the teas as they are steeping. I know I have forgotten about the water to the point where the water evaporated from the pot! What can I say, besides chess is exciting? So I applied some of my schooling to find how long to wait after removing the pot from the burner for better tea-steeping temperatures, since most everyone has some form of timer/alarm now.

Assumptions: 1) boiling water in an open pot, 2) Room Temperature is ~70 degrees Fahrenheit.

NOTES: Temperatures for the teas were taken (read as "borrowed") from the blog on steeping teas. An open pot was assumed due to complications of a tea kettle retaining more heat than a pot, since the only openings are the spout and the lid (or in some models, they are the same).

The calculated times are only approximate since they do not take into consideration the specific heat of water (how well water retains heat).

White Teas: 170-175 degrees Fahrenheit, 6-7 minutes

Oolong Teas: 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.5-5 minutes

Black Teas: 190 degrees Fahrenheit or greater, no more than 3.5 minutes

Green Teas: 140-170 degrees Fahrenheit, 7-14.25 minutes; 160 degrees Fahrenheit, 9.25 minutes.


If you have any questions about my methods, feel free to email me at fencer85math@gmail.com, and I will be more than happy to tell you about the methods I used. I will make another post with more accurate results taking into consideration the specific heat of water, and then on to the TEA KETTLE!!! :)

Publishing Industry News

Publishing news and relevant industry blogs for 1/26-2/8. Kind of quiet this time around.


Publishing News

Apple's iBookstore releases a new category: Breakout Books. Self-published, best-selling, and chart-topping-debut authors, you have a chance to be showcased.

The GSU e-reserves case has been closed, but now it's time for the appeals to roll in. U.S. attorneys have asked for an extension on the deadline while they consult with some agencies before possibly submitting an opinion. (What the GSU E-Reserves case was about.)

Amazon is getting ready to sell used e-books.

Tor UK, a science-fiction/fantasy publisher, now accepts direct submissions from authors.

If you roleplay on GoodReads forums, you should know that Goodreads has new rules: no explicit sex. Romance roleplaying okay, just keep it clean.

Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster finally launch Bookish, a site that recommends books and lets readers shop for books.

Reddit opens a book exchange.

Genre writers post about their income. Find out the financial realities of being a genre writer.

Barnes and Nobles plans to close a third of its stores over the next decade.


Industry Blogs

QueryTracker for 2/1.

Nathan Bransford's These Past Few Weeks in books.

Twitter Vine is a new feature that lets you take 6-second videos and share them over Twitter. GalleyCat offers ideas for writers and readers for how best to use this.

It's been asked if small publishers are the "future" of publishing. This article looks into the financials behind it.

What do writers need to know? Kristine Rusch on the Business Rusch gives a breakdown of the minimum a writer needs to know, and suggestions for learning all of it without getting overwhelmed. Mostly, don't try to learn everything at once. And yes, even--especially--if you have agent, you still need to know all this.

Do you write sci-fi? Are you a member of the SFWA? Elections are coming up. Jim Hines posts his findings on one of the candidates, and while I'm not usually into promoting politics, a candidate who runs for hoots-and-giggles and writes articles such as "Women Ruin Everything" is something that concerns me. Sure, that's the guy I want representing an organization I might one day join. Really...

Heads' up: If you've heard of Jerry Jenkins' "innovative approach" to writing, you should also hear that he's charging close to $10,000 for the same services you can get by combining a $1600 publishing package through Lulu with $1200 worth of lessons through the Lone Ridge Writers' Group (LRWG has more variety in courses and more certified instructors, at that). More at Writer Beware.

Victoria Strauss also catches up on the matter of orphan works, including giving a summary of the Science Fiction Writers of America's statement on the issue (pdf). If you're confused about what orphan works are, or about any of the lawsuits around them (such as HathiTrust or the Google bookscanning project), she's got links to all the relevant information, and provides short, helpful summaries on what you need to know.

And can someone sue you if you use a vanity publisher and say things about them that aren't true? Well, yes. But they cannot sue the vanity publisher, as it is a media entity, which is a reverse of a previous hearing. Victoria Strauss details more on the suit vs. an author and ASI.

Angela Quarles blogs about using Bit.ly and how it helps her track certain links. If you have a link you want to track how (and how many) people are accessing it, she suggests using this service.

On the Futuristic, Fantasy, and Paranormal blog, author Terrel Hoffman talks about character's emotional wounds. Many character flaws initiate from a wound, and addressing that wound--making it a block that prevents the character from obtaining her goal--forces the character to evolve, creating a dynamic character.

And also on the FF&P blog, do your characters all sound the same when they're speaking? If your dialogue just doesn't seem to resonate with readers, check to see if your characters all talk as if they're different people. Do they have the same verbal quirks, such as swearing at the same things and the same rates? Do they all use the same types of words? Try differentiating their speaking habits to truly make them stand out.

On QueryTracker, Becca Puglisi offers a great resource for showing without telling: an emotion thesaurus, which explains the signs of different emotions. Even without purchasing the thesaurus, you can still use her advice: not all responses to an emotion are physical, and some are more subtle. A character might throw his hands in the air, or he might briefly close his eyes, or he might talk himself down if he's frustrated. So if you're tired of a character always doing the same thing to reveal a certain emotion, you can try telegraphing that emotion in a different way. And try to avoid naming the emotion right out, because that's telling, not showing.

Last month, my local RWA chapter, the HCRW, did a talk about taxes. As a writer, you could list yourself as "writer" as a profession on your taxes, and treat it like a business--but only if you're treating it like a business. Ash Krafton on QueryTracker offers tips on how, and how to know if you're treating it like a hobby or a business.

What are agents doing these days, anyway? Agent Rachelle Gardner assures us they're not just sitting around twiddling thumbs: in fact, many agents are diversifying, helping authors find new opportunities, protecting authors rights in contracts, and more.

And Janet Reid answers questions at the Friday Night Emporium. If your name is close to another author's, should you use a pen name? Perhaps. If the author is well-known in your own genre, that's when, or if your name is too close to a really, really famous author's, then yes. If it's a not-very-well-known author in a different genre, you're probably fine.

Writers Write has 40 hashtags for writers. How many of these do you use?

Learn how to self-publish your audiobook on Audible.com.

Kristen Lamb has a 3-part series on how not to feel overwhelmed by social media, and dealing with the stress that we all face when trying to keep up with all the latest "musts" of social media. Part one, Part two, Part three.


What publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?

Wednesday Writing Exercise: Monster Talk

This week, it's time to switch teams. That's right, instead of playing the hero, write a scene from the point of view of a monster addressing a human. Your creature gets just 700 words of human speech. So what does it say?


Zombie:

Lost my foot last week. Can't figure out where I left it. Perhaps it was at the ZomBar, or in the vegetarian brains aisle at the market?

Maybe I dropped it when I was running from the Freshie with a baseball bat. Those Freshies are a danger to society, I tell you. Won't someone hurry up and bite them? Oh, wait. Sorry. Didn't see the nose. No offense or anything. Before you try to behead me, just tell me if you've seen my foot.

I went to the mobility class around noon. There was a cute skeleton there--narrow pelvic bone and tall, so I think male--who managed to scale the wall. Climbing walls! What a luxury. I've still got about twelve months before I lose enough flesh for that. Rigor mortis is such a pain.

But I suppose the bolts and screws surgery isn't all that appetizing. Without tendons ligaments, things tend to fall apart--case in point, foot. I hear the surgery is expensive. Some people just choose to fall apart rather than go on. But it's not like they couldn't get funding. What's forty or fifty years of front-line hording against the Freshies? Don't get pulverized to sand, and you've got an eternity to figure it out.

Or at least until the bones grind down. But metal caps are just an extra decade. Totally worth it.

Anyway, I'm planning on paying my own, or at least paying it back within the first decade. Got a "Lose That Excess Weight: How to Chop Off Flesh Without Losing Stability" book in the press right now. Thank goodness the Freshies didn't think the publishing houses were worth defending. Or the libraries. Their nice little fortifications are full of baseball bats, katanas, and rapidly-depleting ammunition, maybe a rooftop garden or two, but they haven't got three books to their collective names.

Too bad for you, good for us. For some reason, all the people with the reasonable zombie apocalypse plans got bit quickly. I think the Leader might have had something to do with that. Okay, I know, that's obvious. Everyone who has ever played a game of D&D (also among the first bitten) can tell you liches are excellent planners.

Of course the whole "stupid zombie" thing was wrong, but hey. No one blames you Freshies for falling prey to the Flesh propaganda. It was written long before you were ever born.

So anyway, if you see my left foot, mind sending it back over? I'll be a lot sturdier with it around. Otherwise, see you at the next highway party. Skins versus no skins, the usual. And if you're tired of that flesh thing you've got going, we're still recruiting. Just think it over, that's all I ask.

Thanks.

Tea Time: Calming Tea

Calming Tea Reviewed by: BecTea
Type of tea Herbal, loose-leaf	Flavor aspects and Aroma Flavor aspects: Floral Aroma: Neutral/ slightly earthy
Where I got it Truly Unique in Wilson, NC	Cost $1.50 an ounce
How I brewed it Just boiling water over a cotton tea bag filled with 1 tsp of the tea blend, steeped for 10 minutes. I added about a Tbs of honey to a large mug of tea.	Rebrewing notes Did not rebrew.
Review This tea is advertised as "a daytime relaxing refreshment to take you from your hectic day." It is caffeine free. It has a strong hibiscus flavor and wonderful, rich hibiscus red color. In addition to the hibiscus, it contains rose petals, chamomile, red clover, ginger, and stevia leaf. I generally brew herbal teas for 10 minutes to access any root flavors, but this tea did not need that, even with a root ingredient. Since I brewed it strong, I added honey to ease up on the hibiscus' potency. Overall, it's nice, and the hibiscus is such an under-used ingredient that this is a nice change for your afternoon cuppa.
Reviewed by: No second review yet.
Type of tea	Aroma
Where I got it	Cost
How I brewed it	Rebrewing notes
Review

(Learning to Like Tea Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Guest Post: Types of Tea, Guest post: Getting the Best Cup of Tea)

Tea Time: Decaf Blackberry Sage by the Republic of Tea

The Republic of Tea: Decaf Blackberry Sage Reviewed by: Aritê gunê Akasa
Type of tea Black, Sachet	Flavor aspects and Aroma Flavor aspects: Natural Aroma: Strangely enough, like a soft, rich cupcake from a bakery.
Where I got it The local grocery store	Cost $9.99/canister (50 bags each)
How I brewed it Boiled water in electric kettle. Poured in travel mug w/ teabag, steeped for 5 minutes.	Rebrewing notes Good for rebrewing. I didn't notice any decrease in flavor the second time. Maybe a slight decrease the third time. I didn't try any further.
Review Lipton's Blackberry Black Tea has a far stronger blackberry flavor (and makes a delicious iced tea). The blackberry flavor in this is very subtle, as is the sage. It's pleasant, though. The blackberry comes in first, followed by the sage if you hold it in your mouth for a second. I can't for the life of me figure out why it smells vaguely like a good cupcake, but it's nice to have the sweet aroma with a hearty flavor. This tea does not have a strong flavor of blackberry or sage, but is nicely subtle and rebrews very well.
Reviewed by: No second review yet.
Type of tea	Aroma
Where I got it	Cost
How I brewed it	Rebrewing notes
Review

(Learning to Like Tea Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Guest Post: Types of Tea, Guest post: Getting the Best Cup of Tea)

2012's Science Fiction Facts!

First saw this link on Google+: 27 science fiction facts made real in 2012. Pretty awesome to think every flower in Wales has had its DNA decoded, and that we're printing replacement jaw bones of titanium on command, and that we've made a flexible and cheap solar panel. Oh, and only a little scary to think about driverless cars being street legal--but maybe that's just that old I, Robot movie talking.

What do you think about these new science facts? What do you hope we'll see in 2013?

Conquering fear: Tornado in my closet

I used to be terrified of tornadoes. Lightning? Pretty. Thunder? Sky-bowling. But quick-moving winds? I remember one year at summer camp, a storm moved in rapidly. The clouds scurried across the sky so quickly you didn't have to sit still to see them move, and the afternoon grew twilight dark. Wind whipped through the trees and tore free leaves that fluttered down, spiraling and dancing and as bright green as they'd ever been. I crawled under a table and wouldn't come out.There may have been a few tears and little incoherent whimpering.

A camp counselor got on her hands and knees to tell me there wasn't even a tornado watch. It was just a fast-moving summer storm.

I didn't move until it was gone. Any clouds moving that fast had to be driven by cyclone-power, regardless of what the weathermen said.

There wasn't, off course, any tornado. But having grown up in the South in an area where tornadoes aren't an uncommon threat, having a phobia of them isn't unusual. I could stand spiders with minimal squealing and chair-hopping, but tornado watch? Send someone to pry the kid out of the game closet. Heck, I'd share a crawl space with spiders if I had to.

As I got older, I got better about ignoring the fear. Play it cool, I'd say to myself, and get through the day by blatant denial--turn off the radio and get lost in schoolwork, or turn on the TV to a news channel (in retrospect, probably a giveaway because it was the only time I was the one to flip to the news channel, but my parents never called me on it) and pretend to be  reading a book instead of watching.

One night in high school I had two nightmares. In the first, I was trapped in a hotel in which a tornado was bearing down on us. Had a lovely view of it coming our way from our 20th story room with a wall-to-wall window. I ran out into the hallway to find some windowless room to hide and encountered a chestnut stallion, possibly the most beautiful horse I'd ever dreamed up. I grabbed his halter and tried to pull him with me to safety, to get him to the stairs so we could go to the basement (I'm thinking it was a slow-moving twister when out of sight?). He was spooked, though, and I woke up as things started to fly.

Well of course that put tornadoes on my mind. So when I fell back asleep, no surprise my next dream featured a tornado bearing down on my house. I ran and hid in the coat closet, squeezing in between the vacuum and spare table leaves, stepping over the bag of gloves and hats, and ducking under the coats to protect my face from possible flying objects. (Since I had plenty of waking experience with this, that part of the dream was rather realistic.)

But then in my dream I decided I wouldn't accomplish anything by hiding. So I stepped out of the closet just as the tornado reached the house and blew into the hall (oh dream physics, how you defy logic). Rather than running from it, I put on full bluster and began to scream at it (How dare you, tornado!). I scolded that twister so thoroughly it twisted up with shame and shrank, and finally ducked into the closet to hide from the terrifying human. At some point it had acquired a face that now began to droop and sag and wince, and in true Harry-Potter boggart fashion I completed the picture by giving it a pink-and-lime hairdo and a handbag.

I woke up feeling powerful and exhilarated. I had defeated the tornado! Go me, go me, strike a pose and victory dance.

If only shaming tornadoes worked in real life.

But after that dream, my knuckles stopped turning quite so white when the clouds blew in, and if I still twist an eye up to the sky now and then during tornado watches, it's just a twinge of persistent nervousness, not gut-clenching fear. Tornadoes are something worthy of being a bit nervous about, if you ask me, so a little careful awareness isn't uncalled for.

These days I rather enjoy storms. If the news says I don't have to worry about major damage, I'll spend a summer storm on the covered balcony watching the clouds roll by and the lightning flash. Sometimes I'll feel a bit of uneasiness if the wind is too strong, but then I remember a tornado with pink-and-lime hair, and that the weathermen really do know what they're talking about, and I can go back to watching.

There's something about taking control that diminishes fear, at least for me. It's why I mock the scary movies that scare me the most, because it gives me power over them. It's why boggart-fighting works for me, because making my fear ridiculous gives me control over it, and that makes it less terrifying.

It's why I can do things in my real life that scare me, such as following the dream of becoming an author, such as submitting queries knowing I'll probably get many rejections before I find an agent: because I can remind myself that what I write is within my own control, and that I can improve. It's why I can attempt any major life change: because if any plan doesn't work out, I can do things to mitigate the damage, such as save money beforehand, have a back-up plan, and have friends on call to talk me through the down times.

I can't control other people, and I can't scold tornadoes into closets. But I can promise myself that I  have many options if my first choice doesn't work out, and then take advantage of those options, because I only lose if I give up, not if I take a different street to store. Knowing I can change my path, even if I don't, gives me choices, which is a form of control, which gives me courage. So, afraid or not, I put the pink-and-lime hair on my most terrifying challenges, and then I face them.

I'll never fully stop being scared. But I don't have to hide in a closet, either.

What's a fear have you faced? How did you get through this fear?