Romeo

I am incredibly pleased to announce that my post Romeo: A Lone Wolf’s Tragedy in Three Acts, was selected for publication in Open Lab 2012, an anthology of the some of the best science blogging on the web.

This announcement comes a bit late in “internet time” — a full 3 days after I receive the email from Jennifer Ouellette.  But I’m not a yipeee jump up and shriek sort of person – especially for myself. Also, I do feel that certain people deserve to hear Big News first (and BIG this was!).

My order of operation was simple: Husband (over a toast during my birthday dinner: “Honey, I have news …” ), parents, close friends and family, my writing group, and only then, Twitter ….and the world.

But while my announcement comes late, the honor itself comes early in my blogging career. My first post went up February 25, 2010. Romeo went up on August 27, almost 6 months to the day after I began.  Three months later, this. What better confirmation can a blogger ask for, really?

So first, a humble thank you to the editors/judges of Open Lab 2012: Editor, Jennifer Ouellette, Bora Zivkovic, Scientific American Blog Editor, and Amanda Moon, Senior Editor, Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I appreciate the effort that you must have put in and know it couldn’t have been easy to make the final selections. Thank you very much.

It’s an honor to be amongst such a great group of writers. There are so many people on that final list (and in the science blogging community at large) I admire. First, of course are the veterans – those scientist and journalists whose names I recognized from books, newspapers, and magazines. You are the first people I found when I stumbled my way into Twitter six months ago and you are the level heads, critical thinkers, and seasoned writers I consistently take my cues from.

But really, it’s you young bloggers who leave me in awe –the students and young scientists and writers whose unfettered enthusiasm, grasp of science, and pure hutzpah have completely blown me away.  Unlike me, you folks came of age in this world of blogging, tweeting, and online discourse and you’ve embraced it in the most positive way I can imagine. I’m thrilled (and hugely relieved) to know you’re out there taking the world head-on in the name of delivering accurate and immensely readable science to the public.

So congratulations to all of the fine writers who made the cut for Open Lab 2012 and also to those who, just by nature of print-publishing constraints, had to be one of the darlings killed in the final selection. I’m looking forward to another great year of being part of the science blogging community and, most especially, to the publication of Open Lab 2012.