Many years ago, as a grad student in Philadelphia, I used to tutor Biology and Chemistry in the evenings. This was my first introduction to working directly with students and I found it to be challenging, educational and quite fulfilling (and it also paid pretty well too). Although I consider myself a Biologist, I might have actually had the most fun tutoring Chemistry. This was mostly because chemistry is really just a couple of relatively simple equations that explain some neat stuff about the world.

Because the equations are fairly simple, the greatest challenge was to keep it interesting enough to be worth practicing. My solution to this was to adapt some Greek mythology to include questions about chemistry. Ever since then, I have wanted to elaborate on this idea and write it up in a way that others can use my examples to learn about science. So, perhaps seven years later I finally decided to just do it. Last night I began work on my retelling and have gotten fairly far along. I have an idea that it would make a fun animated book and I think the iBook authoring tool might just make it a snap to put together into something professional.

Now, I just need to contact some artists to work on the illustrations I want to put into it and finish writing out the text. I think I got about 1/3 of the way through the meat of the matter last night. Unfortunately, this situation reminds me a lot of the central problem of DownHouse Software, i.e. I can write the ideas out and maybe even set a decent design in place, but I don’t have the skills to create the artwork required. I’m ever in need of a collaborator… well, really a team of collaborators, to make my ideas come alive.

Perhaps this is a good project for Kickstarter?? I always wonder about using a product like that. Can I put enough of my creation out there that people will recognize the value without getting into a position of being scooped – because the whole problem is that I need others to make it happen. Maybe I’m just paranoid. But you would be guarded too if you didn’t have much else going for you professionally.

OK, enough blabbing. I want to finish my outline, flesh it out with some dialog and contact an illustrator or two.