Pushing a Snake Up a Hill

Star Wars Dogs

2012-01-20T18:44:00.000-05:00

This set Captain Jack howling! Dogs performing Darth Vader's Imperial March. It doesn't get much better than this. Call your dog over to listen before you press Play.

It Ain't Over Till It's Over

2012-01-14T17:52:00.001-05:00

Thought we were done, were we? No such luck. Today [now yesterday] I was feeling a strange pain in my chest all afternoon -- not much of a pain, but enough to annoy me. In the evening it started to get a little more pronounced -- still not particularly bad, but enough to make me think about chest pains... men who ignore chest pains, and then drop dead. I sat and took my pulse. 96. Well, that's certainly a little high, isn't it? I went and took an aspirin, just to be on the safe side, and then checked it again, several times. Still 96. Damn. Why so high? The pain felt a little stronger, and it felt more like tightness or pressure than muscular ache, and it was right over my heart. I asked myself: Which is stupider -- to make a probably unnecessary trip to the hospital, or to ignore chest pain, when you know you have family history of heart disease? Allysen wasn't home yet, and Alexandra was making dinner. Take me back to the hospital? I asked her with a sigh.

Then I thought about how long it can take to be seen if you just walk in, and I thought, the EMTs can make a better evaluation of this than me, and the pain was still there, so... Deep breath. I called 911. They were there in three minutes flat, sirens wailing. And soon I was on my way back to the hospital.

Have you ever seen the Star Trek: Next Gen episode where the Enterprise is caught in a time loop, and each iteration is just a little different? (I recently saw part of a sitcom that took off on the same idea.) Well, that's what it feels like to sit in the ER, with someone new coming in every forty minutes or so. Sometimes the new guy is a fresh-faced doctor (or doctorish person) the age of Doogie Howser, and sometimes it's an Indian fellow, and sometimes it's a guy who looks like you might look if you were a doctor -- and each new person starts with, "So, can you tell me what brought you in here tonight?" I swear, it makes me want to record my story and just hit Playback each time.

As I type this, I'm sitting here in my ER room, waiting to be moved to a room upstairs. They're keeping me overnight, so they can repeat some enzyme tests every six hours, because it turns out that the tests that show heart damage become more accurate over time. The most likely scenario is that the pain was caused by inflammation from the pneumonia, and that my heart is fine. But the only way to be sure is to follow up with these blood tests.

I have a feeling I won't be getting much sleep tonight [I didn't]. Pray I don't catch some godawful bug while I'm here.

I'm glad I got some writing done this afternoon!

* * *

I wrote the above on my tablet while in the hospital. I'm home now. The blood work was fine; they woke me at 7:30 for a treadmill stress test, and that was fine. By about noon someone finally signed off on it, and I got to leave. Still with the chest pain, by the way, which is either a side effect from the pneumonia or a pulled muscle from coughing too exuberantly.

It was hard not to feel a little silly about it all. But as the lady who administered the stress test said to me, Would you rather have been like my neighbor, who refused to go to the hospital after his wife called 911, and later that evening dropped dead of a heart attack? I guess not, when you put it that way.

Bleah!

2012-01-09T23:10:00.003-05:00

That's my comment for 2012, so far.

For New Year's holiday week, Allysen and I took a long-anticipated trip to LA to visit family. The visit was great. Getting sick, not so much. The first hints of scratchy throat came on New Year's Day, while we were all seeing The Adventures of Tin Tin (fun movie). By the next day, I was a regular plague ship. I began coughing through the night every night. Worst cold in years. I'm sure I was no treat to be near on the airplane home, either. Upon arriving back in Boston, I wondered why my eyes were stinging so much. Could the air pollution possibly be that bad? No, I had conjunctivitis, probably brought on by the pressure changes pushing the virus through tear ducts.

I went to the docs. It was, of course, the usual "It's a virus; you'll get better." But my excellent nurse practitioner was concerned about the flying, and about the low level of my O2, so she sent me for some blood tests to ensure there was no pulmonary clot. Next day they called and said, "Oops, accident at the lab. We need to draw the blood again." Sigh. I went in again on Sunday, and Sunday night they called and said, "Your d-dimer's high. Go to the ER—now!—and get a CAT scan." I argued, but they argued harder. So I went, and killed hours of waiting time with my daughter Julia and my trusty Droid tablet, Tabula Rasa.

Long wait, with many conflicting advisories (Julia: "Doesn't anyone in this hospital ever talk to anyone else?"), but finally they did the scan. First off, I have to say there was a serious lack of flashing lights and gleaming control panels. Just a guy who could have been from the local auto body shop telling me where to put my hands on the well-worn machine. The dye injection felt strangely weird—a warm flush starting in the face and going straight down my body, with a big hit in the groin and then on to the toes. Good; we're done; we can go home now, yes? Please?

No. Now comes the long, watchful wait for the radiologist's report. Julia and I watch part of Iron Man on my tablet. She makes balloon critters from examination gloves. We play volleyball with the gloves. Time passes.

Well past midnight, the word comes: no blood clot, no embolism. Great! We can go home now, right? Right; just as soon as we figure out why your oxygen is low. (I feel my life starting to ebb away. In space no one can hear you scream.) Asthma-type lung treatments: not much difference, but another hour. The supervising doc is threatening to keep me if she can't figure it out. Finally...finally...they send us home.

Early morning, the phone wakes me. It's a hospital doc saying, the radiologist says you have a low-grade pneumonia. (Different radiologist? Radiologist who finally got some coffee?) I'm to see my doc today and get new meds. The next phone call that wakes me: my own doc's office. They're booked solid, but they'll order me the new meds, something called Avallux. Great, I'll pick them up at Walgreens. Only when I get to Walgreens, Walgreens says, "We don't take Blue Cross anymore." You're kidding, right? No. They're not. Contract dispute. ("Oh right," Allysen says, when I tell her. They announced it at work, but I never got the word.)

It's now closer to end-of-day, but I finally get my meds from the HMO—but not the ones asked for, because Blue Cross doesn't cover that med. So this new super-antibiotic comes with a drug warning guide that looks like the Dead Sea Scrolls, only denser. They have a "Drugs for Dummies" version that's only a small wad of 8x10 pages. Here's the first thing they warn you about: burst tendons! Burst tendons! Who ever heard of an antibiotic causing burst tendons?? Apparently that's what I have to watch out for. Plus skin rashes. (Except I've already got skin rashes from the dye from the CAT scan.) And that's where I stand, or sit. But at least the cough is getting better. I wonder if I can still take my codeine cough syrup with this stuff. (Internet research, here I come.)

This all started with a low O2 level in the doctor's office, and my mentioning, between coughs, that I'd been flying the day before. The takeaway: Don't ever let them know you've been flying.

Update, 24 hours later: The skin rashes got worse, so they took me off the scary Terminator drug and put me on on azithromycin, which seems much more benign. I'm glad. I'm also feeling a lot better, so things are working. I hope to be back to my bounding, energetic self very soon now.

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T02:31:00.000-05:00

It's not quite midnight here in California, where Allysen and I are visiting her brother and family, but we jointly decided to call it New Year at 9:00, when we knew the ball had dropped in Times Square. (Well, call it faith; we didn't actually check online to see if midnight had come to the Eastern time zone, but I'm pretty sure it did.) We're having a very nice visit, except that I'm fighting off a cold or something, and hoping I don't give it to anyone else. We went to see TinTin today, and thoroughly enjoyed it in 3D, after an aborted effort to see it in Imax 3D. (The volume was earsplitting, and the theater people said they couldn't turn it down. We weren't the only ones asking for refunds on the Imax tickets.) Anyway, in regular 3D, and regular volume, it was a fun movie, even if it went on a little too long in the action sequences.

Two of my good friends are taking the ebook plunge, and I thought this would be a good time to introduce them. First off is Richard Bowker, author of a bunch of novels ranging from straight SF (Forbidden Santuary) to supernatural fantasy (Marlborough Street) to techno-thriller (Replica) to SF-mystery (Dover Beach) to straight-up political mystery (Summit and Senator). He's been out of print for a while, and has just created a website and blog at www.richardbowker.com, where he'll post updates on the progress of converting and self-epublishing his previously published novels. Stop by and check on his progress. When his books go up for sale, I highly recommend them.

Mary C. Aldridge works a completely different vein: African-folklore-inspired fantasy short stories. One of her stories was a Nebula finalist ("The Adinkra Cloth"), and one won her a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fiction Fellowship ("The Work Leader"). She has five short stories up at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/728grdn90, and I hope they'll also appear in the Kindle and Nook stores soon. (But you can buy the needed formats for both the Kindle [.mobi] and Nook [.epub] right now.) Mary has a remarkable talent that has been expressed too infrequently. Why not give them a look?

And in the meantime...Happy New Year!

Holiday Book Sale!

2011-12-22T23:23:00.001-05:00

To celebrate the holidays, I'm joining with other Backlist eBooks authors in a huge $.99 holiday sale on selected ebooks in the Kindle and Nook stores, from right now through January 8! I decided—about half an hour ago—which book to put on sale. I'm going with Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus, regularly $6.99 for two novels in one: Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. That's right; I've knocked the price back from $6.99 to $.99, from right now through the first week in January, plus a day. (Or, to put it another way, until two days after Three Kings Day.) If you like dragons, and if you like fantasy or science fiction, now's your chance. It's also easy now to give ebooks as gifts from both the Kindle and Nook stores. (This sale is limited to those two stores.)

These books are actually personal favorites of mine. They've had some trouble finding their audience, so I thought I'd take a deep breath and help them along. And by the way, I'm pleased to report that sales of The Chaos Chronicles have picked up quite nicely in response to my making the first book, Neptune Crossing, free. I guess people are trying it, and liking it! I hope the same will happen with Dragon Space, which you can see here on the Backlist eBooks page.

By the way, in case I don't get another post out before Christmas, best wishes to everyone for the holidays: Hanukah, Christmas, Solstice, anything you may celebrate. Enjoy it with people you love!

Tales from the Backlist

2011-12-07T15:55:00.001-05:00

If you like short stories and variety in your reading, give this book a try. It's a collection of short fiction by nineteen authors representing various genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, contemporary romance, regency romance, and probably a couple of others I've forgotten.

What these authors have in common is that they (we) are all members of Backlist eBooks, a collection of widely published authors in all genres who are bringing our previously published, out-of-print books back into circulation through self-published ebooks. The group includes bestselling authors and winners of many literary awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Rita awards. To help make ourselves better known, we've released Tales from the Backlist, filled with (appropriately enough) backlist short stories.

Tales is now on sale in the Kindle and Nook stores, and Smashwords, in DRM-free editions. Soon it will be in the Sony, Apple, Kobo, and Diesel stores. (No matter what kind of reader you have, or none at all, you can get a format that works for you from Smashwords.)

For a limited time only, the regular price of $3.99 has been knocked down to just $.99 at all stores. Check it out at http://www.backlistebooks.com/2011/11/tales-from-the-backlist/, where you'll find purchase links for the store of your choice.

Funny, Thought-provoking C.G.P. Grey

2011-12-02T18:22:00.002-05:00

I actually have no idea who CGP Grey is. But I've just discovered his fun, funny, and provocative videos, which explain everything from why the penny costs us money to why we love our natural-pesticide beverage (coffee). Great stuff! You can see the lineup on his blog page. But here are a few to get you started:

Death to the Penny

Coffee: Greatest Addiction Ever

There's lots more. I especially liked:

Daylight Savings Time Explained

United Kingdom explained

Happy 11/11/11!

2011-11-11T20:20:00.001-05:00

Allysen and I have been trying for a while to figure out how to celebrate 11/11/11. For about the last year, I've had a strange knack for glancing idly at a clock and discovering that the time was 11:11. (Again? This is weird.) I wasn't doing it intentionally at all, though after a while it became hard not to look at a clock and hope that it would be 11:11. Anyway, that gave me a special desire to celebrate November 11, 2011 (11/11/11), a truly cool date.

It turns out that where Allysen works, a lot of brainy, creative people had the same idea. She called me and said, "You have to come in and see it." I did. These people are amazing. They had decorative pillars arranged in pairs all over. They had placards spelling out 11.11.11 in a bunch of different languages, including binary and Morse code.

11.11.11 in Korean

11.11.11 in Urdu (I think)

11.11.11 in ???

They renamed all the floors.

Among the special elevenses in the world:

There have been 11 Doctor Whos.
There have been 11 Star Trek movies.
The Apollo 11 mission landed the first men on the Moon.
In M-theory, there are 11 spatial dimensions.
The sunspot cycle is 11 years.
There are 11 thumb keys on a bassoon.
The sports soccer, football, cricket, and field hockey all field 11 players to a team.

We're going to settle in for a movie and fish and chips, and plan on popping open a bottle of something fun at 11:11 p.m.

Happy 11/11/11, everybody!

SF Festival at Brown Bookstore

2011-10-29T03:06:00.000-04:00

If you happen to be near the Brown University campus today, specifically the Brown Bookstore, stop in and check out the SF Festival they're having this weekend. I'll be there in the afternoon, participating in a panel discussion at 3 p.m. Come say hello, and hear what we have to say! Other writers participating include Laird Barron, John Langan, Paul Trembley, Paul DiFilippo, and Daniel Pearlman. (I'm not sure who will be where, when, though. The bookstore website says the panel is at 4, but I was told it was at 3. Who knows?)

I'll be driving down to Providence in the early afternoon. Here's hoping the snowstorm doesn't whack the I-95 corridor too badly, or too early. Nor'easter snowstorm—in October! Aiee!

Facebook Doublespeak

2011-10-28T16:02:00.000-04:00

You just gotta love those guys who run Facebook. They had a really nice feature where you could have your blog posts (like this one) automatically import into your Facebook page. It was especially good for people like me, who aren't about to write entries for the blog, and then go write another for Facebook. It was buggy—I had to keep goosing the thing to make it do the imports—but it was way better than the alternative.

No more. I was checking last night on why my latest posts hadn't appeared on my Facebook page, and I couldn't even find the place on Facebook where you set that. So I searched Help. Lo and behold, I discovered this little buried nugget:

"Importing a blog or RSS feed to your personal Facebook account is no longer available."

A little more digging yielded this (boldface mine):

"We want you to connect with your fans in the most effective ways possible. That's why as of September 30th you'll no longer be able to automatically import posts from your website to your Page notes. The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by adding personal comments and responding to feedback from fans. We're focused on creating even better tools for Pages. Look for announcements soon."

The service is free, so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. But honestly, what a load of crap. Have I mentioned my suspicion that Facebook is the spawn of the devil? I think the realspeak translation is: "We never could get it to work right, and our software guys begged us to let them do something else."

I'll be trying one of those network share thingies. But they ask for everything but the combination to your hall locker. If I disappear suddenly, you'll know why.

Floating Quantum Puck

2011-10-27T22:00:00.004-04:00

Do you have a puck-sized disk of sapphire (coated, obviously, with yttrium barium copper oxide) gathering dust in the back of your junk drawer? If so, you're halfway to your own personal "quantum locked" maglev train. All you need is some liquid nitrogen and a magnetic track. Here's what your project will look like when you're done:

You can read about it at Discover Magazine, which also has links to some explanation of the physics.

Goodnight iPad!

2011-10-27T16:46:00.001-04:00

If you know and love the book Goodnight Moon (and who doesn't?), you should enjoy this!

(Or view it on Youtube here.)

Neptune Crossing Makes the Top 100 Free Books at Kindle!

2011-10-21T01:37:00.000-04:00

It's amazing what you have to go through to give a book away for free. I've been working at doing that on Neptune Crossing (first of the Chaos Chronicles), and I've now mostly succeeded. The thing is, you can't just do it—not in the Kindle store, or the Nook store. What you can do is make it free at Smashwords, then wait for the free price to migrate out to Sony, Apple, and so on—and then get your friends to visit the Kindle store and report a lower price elsewhere. If you're lucky, Amazon will pick up on it, and your book goes to free in the Kindle store, the most popular by far of all the ebook stores. (So far, the Nook store hasn't picked up on it; still $.99 there.)

Why go through this? Well, it's no secret. I'm offering it free in hopes people will like it, and will want to go on to read the rest of the series, and then perhaps some of my other books, for which they'll pay me. (Though they're all pretty inexpensive.) Neptune Crossing: gateway drug.

The other thing is, if a lot of people take your free book, it improves your ranking at, for example, Amazon. The reason that matters is that Amazon gives better exposure to books that have higher rankings—and by association, more exposure for all your others, too. So it can be really good for business to give away a lot of books. A few hours ago, I checked and Neptune Crossing was in the top 100 free books in the Kindle store! It was also #2 in free science fiction!

So if you haven't already downloaded Neptune Crossing from the Kindle store (or the Sony store, or Apple, or Smashwords), now's the time! You'll be helping me out by taking my free book! And send your friends!

Because, you know, I really don't want to have to carry all these ebooks home after the sale!

More International Ebook News

2011-10-10T01:48:00.002-04:00

E-reads, publisher of nine of my backlist novels, recently announced a huge joint venture with Gollancz of England to add many of their SF titles to the Gollancz ebook list—something like 400 titles. Gollancz has long been one of the premier publishers of SF in the British market, and this will further enrich their list even while it offers a new look and imprint to the E-reads books. The hope, of course, is that this will also boost UK sales for the books being added to the Gollancz list.

Because my own E-reads books (From a Changeling Star [nice plug at E-reads], Down the Stream of Stars, The Rapture Effect, and six others) are a part of this deal, I'm also hoping that this will help those books find a new audience among the British readers.

On another front, my own Starstream Publications edition of Sunborn finally has its finished cover, which you will see on the World Edition on sale in Kindle UK/DE/FR, in the iTunes store outside the U.S., and at Smashwords, where it's offered to non-U.S. readers. (Inside the U.S., the Tor edition is the one to look for, available pretty much everywhere else.)

Here's the cover Pat Ryan created for me:

And here are some links to help my friends outside the U.S. find it:

Kindle UK | Kindle DE | Kindle FR

Smashwords
iTunes: Canada | UK | Germany | France | Australia

(For some stupid reason it's not on my author pages in the international
iTunes stores. But those links will get you to it.)

If a Tree Falls on the Bike Path

2011-10-06T04:14:00.001-04:00

Something happened today that made me think of the old question: If a tree falls in the forest...

I wasn't in a forest, exactly, but Captain Jack and I were walking on a wooded section of the Minuteman Bikeway, and we'd paused while Jack sniffed something. I heard a sudden, very loud CRACK-K-K-K! and turned to see a large, full-grown tree crash down across the path, about fifty feet from where we were standing. I just stood there with my mouth open, wondering, What the—? and feeling extremely grateful that I'd been standing here and not there. A woman on the other side of the tree no doubt felt the same way. From what I could see of the base of the trunk, it appeared that the roots had rotted or broken away or something, and the tree had just been waiting for the right moment to fall.

A minute later, a group of bicyclists rode up, saying to each other, "That wasn't there an hour ago!" I told them it wasn't there five minutes ago. I called the police to ask them to notify the town tree people, and then I took these pictures.

For the rest of the day, I mulled the event over, wondering what dreamlike or theological significance I should give to it. The only thing I'm sure of is, there was definitely a sound when this tree fell.

My New Galaxy Tab!

2011-10-02T01:31:00.000-04:00

My birthday was over a month ago, but I'm reveling in a belated gift that's cool as hell: my new Android tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. I was offered a choice, and I spent a while looking at the iPad and various other Android devices, and this one rose to the top. Why this over the iPad, especially since I have quite a few friends who own and love their iPads? It was mostly the more open operating system. Apple designs great devices, no question; I just don't like their closed, control-freak approach to everything. The Android system is a little more like the Wild West of outer space—room to move, and plenty of expansion going on. Also, Angry Birds is free in the Android store.

It took me a while to figure out the ropes, but now that I've settled on some good apps and learned some of the quirks, I can say that it's great for all these things:

Ebook reader, with a variety of ebook apps (so far I like Aldiko best, ahead of FBReader and Kindle app)
Portable way to read the Boston Globe (which recently introduced a new online edition)
Web browsing, especially in the Dolphin browser, which is speedier and easier than either Firefox or the included "Browser"
Movie player (I look forward to enjoying this little reward on my next writing retreat. I've been converting a bunch of my DVDs for future watching.)

It's okay for checking email and syncing contacts and calendar with my laptop. I haven't messed with that enough yet to give it a proper evaluation.

I suspect I'll like it for typing quick notes to myself, etc. I haven't really tried writing on it. Hard to see how that would work too well without a separate keyboard. But I could see using it to review and proof and do light editing.

Sadly, I can't watch Netflix movies—not because the device can't do it, but because my Netflix plan (2/mo.) is too cheapo to allow it. That's all about to be history anyway, I guess; I'm sure not going to subscribe separately for DVD service and streaming movies at 3-4 times what I'm paying now. The one place where the Android, sadly, is behind iPad is Hulu streaming. That hasn't arrived yet. I'm sure it will.

This whole field is really taking off, with all the Androids and especially the new Kindle Fire. (Too small for much of what I described above, but I'll bet it's going to be a really fine reading device.)

Now, if only ebook sales would take off with all the new hardware to view them on!

On Writing Retreat Again

2011-09-13T15:48:00.001-04:00

This week I'm in beautiful Gloucester, Mass., for a few days to get away from it all and try to wrap my head about this elusive book. Allysen set me up with a B&B overlooking the harbor. Here's the view from my window:

Not bad, huh? The waterfront is actually a lot closer than it looks in the picture. It's about a five minute walk. The Cape Ann Brewery and Pub is a ten minute walk. (Their fish & chips are good; their beer is excellent.) My next seafood foray will probably be Gloucester House Restaurant, tonight.

When I drove in yesterday, there was an enormous honking cruise ship anchored in the harbor. Here's a fuzzy picture of it (I really should set my cell phone camera to a better resolution, if I'm going to keep using it for these things):

When I got back to my room, I hopped online to marinetraffic.com, where you can identify just about any ship anywhere in the world at any given moment. You just zoom in on the map, click the icons, and learn—for example—that this cruise ship is called the Eurodam, and it was anchored, but ultimately en route to Bar Harbor, Maine. Indeed, shortly after I took this photo, it moved out of the harbor and headed north.

Writing-wise, it's taking longer than usual to settle in. My mind is still all over the place; but slowly, slowly, some important issues about the story are starting to ooze back into focus. Here's hoping it all comes back soon.

25 Years and Going Strong!

2011-09-12T07:00:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, Allysen and I celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary! She took a half day off work, and we went to Massage Envy on our moped/scooters and got hour-and-a-half full body massages. What a great way to relax! That evening we took a couple of gift cards Allysen's brother and sister-in-law had given her a while back, and visited a very classy restaurant in downtown Boston, called McCormick & Schmick's Seafood. Fabulous food and great service. (We also mutually agreed not to step on the scales the next day.)

In a stroke of genius, as we were walking back to our car past historic Faneuil Hall, I asked a woman who was taking a picture of the hall to snap an anniversary photo of us, using my cell phone camera. Then, in a stroke of idiocy, I forgot that on this stupid Motorola phone you have to press a couple of buttons to tell it to save the picture. So... fffft... no picture to commemorate the event.

Nevertheless, we had a wonderful celebration, and we're looking forward to the next twenty-five years. Here's looking at you, kid!

Sunborn World Edition (epub) — At Last!

2011-08-31T03:09:00.004-04:00

This has really been a long time coming. If you're outside the U.S., you can now get a legit ebook of Sunborn, the fourth book in The Chaos Chronicles, in epub format. I got the Kindle version up in the Kindle UK | Kindle DE | Kindle FR stores a few weeks ago, but the epub version (for Nook, Sony, Stanza, iBooks, and a plethora of other platforms) has finally hit the stores. It's been approved in the Apple iTunes stores in Canada, Australia, the UK, France, and Germany, in DRM-free editions. You can also get it from Smashwords, though I'm contractually obligated to say: If you're in the U.S., you should buy the Tor edition instead, available from the usual outlets.

Edit: Here are links to Sunborn in the iTunes international stores:

Canada | UK | Germany | France | Australia

Edit: the above cover was the placeholder until the final cover was done. Here's the new cover:

Irene Passes

2011-08-29T01:30:00.000-04:00

Here outside Boston, we were all prepped for Hurricane Irene. Batteries on hand, everything secured outside, lots of jugs of frozen water in the freezer against a possible loss of electricity, gas in the car, and—most importantly for our state of mind—a large pitcher of margaritas in the freezer. Oh, and Captain Jack the energetic border collie heavily exercised the day before, in the pouring rain.

(I'm aware, of course, that if we lived in a more vulnerable location, we would have been taking way more serious precautions. I have a relative in the military, and I understand they had to do some fast work to secure their ship, which happens to be undergoing refit in a drydock in the path of the storm. I hope they stayed dry. And my sympathies to those who actually got hurt by this storm.)

For us, not too much happened as the tropical storm formerly known as Hurricane Irene passed to our west. Wind, rain, some fallen trees around town. We were lucky. Reports from friends and relatives who caught more of it indicate everyone came through in good shape. For that we are grateful.

The margaritas were excellent, by the way.

The Way Science Really Works

2011-08-24T23:00:00.002-04:00

Here's another a bit of art to entertain you if you have a little to much time on your hands: How People in Science See Each Other, created by @biomatushiq.

See it bigger.

It's hilarious, and undoubtedly accurate.

Where’s WALL-E?

2011-08-24T18:03:00.003-04:00

Here's a fun way to while away some valuable work time: See how many classic SF robots you can identify in "Where's WALL-E?" by artist Richard Sargent.

See it bigger.

And read how you can win a poster of it, here.

Neptune Crossing Highlighted at Ereader News Today

2011-08-24T17:42:00.000-04:00

I got a nice plug from a site called Ereader News Today, which highlights books in the Kindle store. Looks like another good place to keep an eye on ebook deals.

Anyone who'd like to help give me a boost could go there and "like" it, or whatever. (This Facebook "like" business makes me shake my head like some old-timer going, "What are these crazy kids up to now?" I have to admit. But it does seem to help generate a buzz. So if you're inclined to do that, I'd appreciate the "buzz.") Thanks!

http://ereadernewstoday.com/bargain-kindle-book-neptune-crossing/677273/

Sunborn World Edition in Kindle UK/DE!

2011-08-12T18:13:00.001-04:00

International readers! You can now buy Sunborn (The Chaos Chronicles #4) in Kindle format outside the U.S.! This has been a long time coming, and it's mostly my fault, because I didn't realize for a long time that Tor only had U.S. ebook rights. Anyway, I've put a lot of time into trying to make sure everything is right in this ebook version. (If you find any typos, please let me know.)

You can get it now in the Amazon UK store and in the Amazon Germany store.

(Hmm. I just discovered that Tor has a Kindle edition in the German store. That's a mistake and should be coming down soon, as Tor doesn't have rights in that geographical area. You should buy the Tor edition in the U.S. and the Starstream version outside the U.S.)

This cover is temporary, by the way, until my crack designer can get to doing a more polished version.

This Starstream edition is DRM-free, and readers of other formats are welcome to convert it to suit their needs. (Calibre is an excellent free program for converting formats and much more.)

An ePub version is coming soon to the Apple store, and that will also be DRM-free.

Award!

2011-08-11T21:00:00.001-04:00

A woman named Deirdra Eden Coppel likes my blog and has awarded it her Best of Sci/Fi Award! Here’s the very pretty award picture that came along with it. Thanks, Deirdra!

More than that I don't know, but here's Deirdra's blog, A Storybook World.

Cool Things in Space

2011-08-11T02:57:00.000-04:00

We might not have the space shuttle anymore, but there's a lot to be psyched about in space. Here are a few, in case you haven't heard about them.

Antimatter Orbiting the Earth?
Sounds crazy, but it could be for real. Scientists working with the Pamela spacecraft (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, in case you were wondering about the name) report that they have found antiprotons in orbit around the Earth, apparently gathered into bands similar to the Van Allen radiation belts. While not in large enough concentrations to cause passing spacecraft to go boom, the researchers note that they could be a source of fuel for future spacecraft.

Water Flowing on Mars?
Could be. New studies of images from Mars orbit sure look a lot like seasonal flows of water. If it's the real deal, this could mean liquid water close to the surface, and that could mean a greater likelihood of life on Mars. Now, not a million years ago.

Beer in Space!
Now we're talking. Yeah, people—including NASA types—are really looking into the possibility of beer in weightlessness. Very serious stuff! They've already done parabolic flight testing!

Star Trek Theme Park in Jordan?
Okay, this isn't real space, but damn. King Abdullah II of Jordan is the main investor in a proposed Star Trek theme park, which has secured $1.5 billion in funding. Plans are to build it in Aqaba, Jordan. King Abdullah, you see, is a Trekfan, and even got himself a cameo appearance, back before he was king, in Star Trek: Voyager. You've gotta love it. But I haven't even made it to Universal Studios yet!

By the way, one reason I haven't posted in a while is that I've been really busy writing. I've also finished the proofing of text for the World Edition of Sunborn (crazy problems with Word losing styles, which I've finally gotten under control). Look for an announcement soon on that!

Cape Cod Writing Retreat

2011-07-12T23:41:00.001-04:00

I've just come back from a four-day writing retreat on Cape Cod, in the town of Sandwich, just over the Cape Cod Canal which marks the boundary of the Cape from the mainland of Massachusetts. Allysen set me up at a great B&B in Sandwich (the 1830 Quince Tree House), and I reveled in having time to myself, time to spend near the water, time to write, time to rollerblade along the bike path that runs most of the length of the canal. It was fabulous! Even in such a short time, I started to get more traction on the book.

Here are some pix I took with my cellphone camera, most of them shot from the bike path while I was skating.

Foot traffic on the path, near the beginning in Sandwich.
In the distance to the south, you can just see the Sagamore Bridge.

Having passed the Sagamore Bridge,
now looking back north toward it.

A little farther on, looking south toward the Bourne Bridge,
and the RR bridge in the distance

The bike path begins near a long jetty that extends into Massachusetts Bay from northern end of the canal. I could have spent a week just watching the boats go through the canal (though I never did catch any of the commercial ships that are supposed to account for half the traffic). Not far along the coast are the beaches, and the salt marshes just inland of the dunes.

Sandwich salt marsh

Another highlight was taking a scenic ride on the Cape Cod Central RR, along the canal and past the cranberry bogs. It was a foggy evening, but that just made the canal eerie and beautiful in a different way. (For more money and an advance reservation, you can have an elegant dinner or a family-style supper on the train. That's definitely on my to-do list with Allysen.)

The Sagamore Bridge, in the evening fog.

The last evening I was there, I got it into my head to skate the length of the bike path (6.5 miles) and take a picture of the train going over the beautiful 1930's lift bridge at the south end of the canal. I succeeded, though the picture didn't come out very well, so here's a shot of the train passing along the canal, right next to the bike path. And another of the RR bridge against the setting sun. Once I saw the train cross the bridge, and the sun setting behind the bridge, I realized that I'd just watched the sun go down, and I had six and a half miles of skating between me and my car! Flank speed! I just made it before the light failed.

Cape Cod Central RR dinner train, rumbling along the canal.

The RR bridge at sunset, in the lowered position.

Finally, I got to enjoy my favorite beer, Cape Cod IPA—and (somewhat to excess) my favorite foods, fresh fish and chips, scallops, and shrimp.

I'm ready to go back!

July Star Rigger Sale

2011-07-04T12:03:00.003-04:00

Let the fireworks begin! It's July 4th, so I'm taking one-fourth off the price of Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus, and its fellow star rigger novel, Eternity's End! The following coupons will get you the discounted prices at Smashwords, where you can download multiple formats, including .mobi for the Kindle and .epub for just about every other reader, including the Nook and Sony. The coupons are good at Smashwords for all of July. You paste them in at checkout.

Dragon Space

25% off code: GL94N

Eternity's End

25% off code: LR24X

Many of my fellow Backlist Ebooks authors are also advertising books at great prices. Edit: You can see a list of some of them by clicking Comments under the Smashwords thread here.

Captain Jack Carver

2011-06-29T18:43:00.004-04:00

Meet the newest member of the Starrigger Ranch! Cap'n Jack is a border-collie/lab mix, probably with some other seasonings, as well, who joined our family just three days ago. Jack came to us from a shelter in Connecticut, courtesy of the rescue group http://www.helpsaveone.org/. Guesses vary on his age, but average out to about two years.We know that he came from West Virginia, and that he'd been hit by a car and lost or abandoned. But his leg injury is all healed up now.

Jack is a terrifically sweet guy, and has made himself right at home. Our cat Moonlight isn't so sure yet. She was a bit alarmed, at first, but stood her ground. Now, she seems to regard him as a big oaf who is all too often between her and where she wants to go. They're not yet to the point where she can just walk past him. But I was cheered yesterday to see Moonlight curled up on the sofa, and Jack crouched on the floor nearby, woofing an imploring "Please play!" Moonlight was unperturbed, and declined the invitation.

The only big problem so far is that Julia's having some allergic reaction to his dander, so we're swabbing him down with Allerpet/d to try to minimize it, and the Roombas are working twice as hard. And I keep calling him Hermione, which was the name of our boxer who died back in January. (Even though he really looks way more like our old dog Sam—not the beagle of recent years, but the border-collie/lab mix I had about twenty years ago. I don't seem to have any of old Sam's pictures scanned in; I really must dig through the photos piles and find some.)

This weekend, we're going to meet another rescue dog named Igby—don't ask!—and see if he might be a good brother to Jack. (I almost said Sam just then. I'll get it straight eventually.)

Update: Igby was a charming little guy, but didn't seem like the right fit. So for now, at least, it's Captain Jack and his cat-friend(?) Moonlight.

Sunborn — World Edition Ebook

2011-06-20T19:07:00.001-04:00

I've known for a while that folks outside the U.S. have been unable to buy the Sunborn ebook, at least in the Kindle store. All this time, I thought it was a glitch at Tor. Turns out it was a glitch here at the Starrigger Ranch. It seems Tor only holds U.S. ebook rights. This discovery has caused yet another flurry of consternation and ebook production here at Starrigger Central, as I gear up to publish an international edition, for readers in the rest of the world.

This involves several steps:

Preparing the actual ebook. (I can't just put up the Tor-designed ebook, and I've learned a lot about formatting since I put up the free edition, a couple of years ago. So there's work involved.)
Preparing a cover. My designer, Pat, is booked up until mid-August. I don't want to wait that long to release the world edition, so we'll have a temporary cover until then.
Figuring out where to publish it. There's Amazon.UK and Amazon.DE for the Kindle editions. But the ePub version is trickier, especially if I have to block sales in the U.S. I'm exploring some options right now.

That said, I hope to have it up in a couple of weeks. So if you're outside the U.S., and you've read the first three Chaos books and have been wondering why the hell you can't buy the fourth, please be patient just a little longer!

Starrigger HQ out.

Spaceship Two Does the Wobble Dance

2011-06-10T18:44:00.000-04:00

Here's a video of a recent test flight of Spaceship Two, which by this time next year could be offering rides into space to the public. (Got $200,00 I could borrow? I'm good for it. I promise.) The amazing thing about this video isn't the test flight per se; it's the mode of reentry. Watch it, and you'll see the spaceship raising its tail feathers and bobbing like a badminton shuttlecock—intentionally!

I'm going to try to tweak this so that it'll fit on my page here. But if you want to read it with some explanation, view it here, again courtesy of the Bad Astronomy blog.

Stunning Time-Lapse Video of the Milky Way

2011-06-09T18:30:00.003-04:00

Treat yourself to a few minutes of gorgeous meditative video and watch this time-lapse sequence of the Milky Way from South Dakota, by Randy Halverson. You must pop this up to full-screen to get the full effect.

Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Thanks to Phil Plaitt's Bad Astronomy blog for this one. Here are more links to similarly amazing vistas.

Well, like this one.

Excerpt of Eternity's End at Marsha Canham's Blog

2011-06-08T18:08:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Eternity's End, I'm about three days late in noting here that I, or rather Eternity's End, am part of Marsha Canham's Sunday Sampler, with an excerpt from EE. Marsha wanted an excerpt not found elsewhere online, one that would convey a sense of the book in a fairly short sample. After much cogitation, I decided on the scene that leads into a hot romantic encounter between star rigger Legroeder and the sexy but dangerous lady pirate, Tracy-Ace/Alfa. Complete with cyber-implants. Read it here.

Eternity's End — Corrected Edition

2011-06-08T17:55:00.000-04:00

If you bought a copy of the ebook of Eternity's End prior to May 25 or so, you may want to download a fresh copy from wherever you bought it. I discovered, belatedly, that some of the text formatting had gotten lost in the final preparation for this newest ebook edition. Mostly, this consisted of italics that were lost. But there was a lot of it, erratically sprinkled through the book. And because this is a Star Rigger book and communication between riggers is denoted by italics, these was an egregious error that brought quite a tongue-lashing, by me, down on the hapless production people (also me), who then went through the whole blasted book again, comparing the e-text to the printed edition. The production department has promised not to let this happen again. Also, we're sorry.

I think most stores will allow a fresh download without hassle. But if you have trouble, please drop me a line and tell me where you bought it and in what format, and I'll get a corrected copy to you right away. You can always reach me at jeff at-thingy starrigger point net.

(If you downloaded the book during the free period prior to this year, your copy shouldn't have this problem. It was during the reformatting for Smashwords, Kindle, and Nook that the devious little gremlin crept in unnoticed, as gremlins are wont to do.)

The Graduate (2)

2011-06-08T17:27:00.001-04:00

I still haven't gotten the still photos of Lexi's graduation off the camera, but here's a 20-second video of her receiving her diploma from Bard College. For Facebook readers, this will be a repeat. Like watching Star Trek in syndication, sort of.

http://youtu.be/rpddLRurGCM

The Graduate

2011-05-26T00:42:00.000-04:00

Doesn't seem like that long ago that I was blogging about my daughter Alexandra's adventures and exploits as a high school wrestler. Well, last weekend, I watched her graduate from college. Bard College, to be precise, with a degree in math and plans to go on to graduate school in mechanical engineering. Inconceivable!

I'll put some pictures up as soon as I remember to get them off the camera.

Technology Keeps Truckin'

2011-05-17T21:00:00.001-04:00

I'm always saving links to cool stories, and sometimes I even remember to mention them while they're still fresh and cool. (If you wonder why I seem a little scattered at times, it may be related to the fact that Allysen just started a new, full-time job, I'm still writing a new book and trying to shift to a schedule compatible with Allysen's, we're still recording the audiobook, still getting all the wrinkles out of the ebooks, daughter Alexandra is about to graduate from college, and...well, that's a partial list, but you get the picture.)

News about our light bulbs
Starting next year, 100-watt incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available in the U.S. The reason, of course, is that they're hideously inefficient in their use of electricity, and if we're to get serious about our national energy problem, we need to get serious about using more efficient technologies. Compact fluorescents are far more efficient, but aren't perfect, either. Now, it looks like LED replacement lights will be coming along just in time. But according to this Washington Post article, the best long-term solution will be new panel fixtures that spread the light-source over a wider area, thus allowing for heat dispersal. (Yes, even cool LED lamps have heat-dispersal problems when you cram too many together.)

Jetman flies the Grand Canyon!
If you're like me, you're still wishing for a personal jet-pack. Well, this guy actually has jet engines strapped to his personal flying suit. And he used it to fly over the Grand Canyon! Pictures are better than words:

Full story (and video if you have trouble seeing it here).

Now, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Sale at Backlist Ebooks!

2011-05-17T14:55:00.002-04:00

My friends at Backlist eBooks have organized another big ebook sale, this time with 50-plus authors participating, and nearly 200 titles discounted—this week only. Genres include Mystery & Suspense, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, SF/Fantasy, and more. These are all books from traditionally published authors who have self-republished their backlists as ebooks. Most of their books are low-priced to begin with, but this week, they'll be even lower. Even though I just had my own special a few weeks ago, I'm participating as well. Go to the Backlist eBooks specials page to see the complete list and get the coupon codes to buy the books at Smashwords. (In most cases, you'll need to copy and paste the codes from there into the Smashwords shopping cart.)

Edit: An extension of the sale to the Sony store, previously reported here, fell through for complicated reasons. Maybe next time.

I'm sorely tempted myself, even though my e-to-read pile is already causing my virtual shelves to sag.

DRAGON SPACE Goes Live!

2011-04-30T17:20:00.004-04:00

Yes, there are dragons in them stars. And now, for the first time ever, my two dragon novels—Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger—appear together in one volume, just out in ebook, Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus. Science fiction with a fantasy dimension! This new book appears under my own imprint, Starstream Publications, in cooperation with E-reads, which publishes the novels separately in ebook form.

Both books were published in paper by Tor, just before I got started with The Chaos Chronicles. The story—set chronologically in the Star Rigger universe sometime after Panglor but before Star Rigger's Way and Eternity's End—really started with a short story, "Though All the Mountains Lie Between," that I wrote for an Orson Scott Card-edited anthology, Dragons of Darkness (though the story actually appeared first in newspaper format in the Science Fiction Times). You can read it here.

Dragons in the Stars, which includes the events of that story, recounts the journey of star rigger Jael LeBrae, whose life is changed by an encounter with dragons in the "mountain region" of the hyperspatial Flux that riggers navigate between the stars. With that meeting, Jael becomes caught up in an age-old prophecy claiming that "One from outside" will come and speak her name to a dragon, and in so doing bring upheaval and a new beginning in the dragon realm. Jael has a life to live as a star pilot, but she finds she is bound inextricably to Highwing, the dragon who befriended her and whose life she later holds in her hands.

In the sequel Dragon Rigger, we experience through the dragons' eyes the war that is tearing the realm apart. For there are more than just dragons here; there are false dragons, and ifflings and false ifflings, and the tormented spirit of a captured rigger. And seeking control of all, there is Tar-skel, the Nail of Strength—a being from beyond the realm who seeks to spin all of the magic of the dragons into a web of power and deceit—encompassing not just the dragon realm, but all of the Flux where the riggers fly, and all of the layers of normal-space that lie beyond. Into this war, Jael must return. If the prophecy is correct, only she can lead the realm out of the impending darkness. But if the prophecy is correct, the price of that victory is her own death.

In their original publication, Dragons in the Stars did very nicely. But Dragon Rigger—a personal favorite of mine!—suffered from a series of distribution and marketing snafus, and never really found its audience. Both have been out of print in paper for many years, but they returned as E-reads ebooks two years ago. This is their first publication in one, low-cost volume—complete with the map that graced the paper editions. I've been working on it for months, and I'm delighted to have a new cover design by Pat Ryan, based on the original work from artist Jael (no relation to the protagonist!).

Dragon Space is available right now in the Kindle store, in multiple formats at Smashwords, and is "processing" in the Nook store. Over the next few weeks, it should start showing up in the Apply, Sony, Kobo, and Diesel ebook stores.

Please give it a look, and tell all of your dragon-loving friends!

Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus:

At Kindle | Smashwords (all-format) | Nook and others (coming)
Free excerpts here

Times Marches On

2011-04-26T16:57:00.001-04:00

What with one thing or another, I never got around to posting my Easter greetings to everyone. So, thinking in a time-travel fashion (ghoststream, as it is called in the still-nascent Reefs of Time), I will now wish all of you Happy Easter! And Happy Passover! And if you don't celebrate Easter or Passover, and even if you're allergic to chocolate bunnies, I hope you had a great weekend, anyway.

During the weekend, my Chaos omnibus got a nice featured mention on Spalding's Racket, the indie-book-oriented blog of writer Nick Spalding. His blog is well worth perusing, if you're interested in seeing work by some writers you might not know yet.

Family members have been coming and going here. Allysen was gone for two weeks and has returned. Alexandra was home for a week and has left again. Julia was gone for a week and has returned. Talula, our house guest, was here but just left on a trip. Me, I've just been settin' here coughin' on the pollen and wonderin' why God or evolution invented allergies, anyway. (But grateful for the Roombas and Scooba.) And wondering, why does our attic smell like mildew? Please tell me we don't need a new roof. (But I think we probably do.)

Here for your amusement are a few fun pages that appeared recently at Syfy.com:

Ebook Special Prices!

2011-04-19T00:20:00.002-04:00

I decided to hold a "Taxes Are Done, Done, Done!" sale and put a few of my books on special for a limited time. Thus, for a limited time, you can get:

Neptune Crossing for $.99 - Kindle | Nook | Smashwords
The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 Omnibus for $5.99 - Kindle | Nook | Smashwords
Eternity's End for $2.99- Kindle | Nook | Smashwords

Edit: That sale is now over. But everything below is still true.

Meanwhile, the prices are coming down on my other books sold through E-reads. It's taking a while for the price drops to trickle down, but in the Kindle store, you can now get:

From a Changeling Star for $4.99 (formerly listing at $9.99)
Down the Stream of Stars for $4.99 (ditto) -
Star Rigger's Way for $4.99
Seas of Ernathe for $4.99
The Infinity Link for $4.99
The Rapture Effect for $4.99
Dragon Rigger for $4.99

Maybe you can show them that lower prices are better! Those prices should appear in all the other stores eventually--I hope sooner rather than later.

Watch for an announcement soon about Dragon Space, my new omnibus of Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger. I recently put the cool map created by Ellisa Mitchell on my website, here. It's being incorporated into the new ebook, as well. I'm just waiting for the cover art to be finished. I'm very excited about it.

Progress on the Audiobook

2011-04-13T22:00:00.001-04:00

We're really rolling now on the production of our home-brew full-cast audiobook of Neptune Crossing. Our narrator Bob Kuhn has recorded through Chapter 12, and the dialogue cast has done quite a bit of recording, bouncing around through a number of chapters—sort of movie-shoot style, so as to consolidate reading sessions for the characters who are in fewer scenes. It is remarkably difficult to do good voice acting for an audiobook. Bruce Coville told us he actually had stage actors at his Full Cast Audio studio who said, this is too hard—too different—can't do it. Not stopping us, though! We're on a steep learning curve, but we haven't been flung off into space quite yet.

While Allysen's away, we're taking a pause in recording, and hoping to get some of the editing done, so that we can start to hear what a fully assembled production will sound like.

I hope to get a bit of a teaser up online soon.

Interview at Two Ends of the Pen

2011-04-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Today I'm the interview subject (Don't hurt me!) at a blog called Two Ends of the Pen, which is worth looking at if writing interests you at all. (I mean the blog is worth looking at, though I would hope you find my interview interesting, too.) My host at Two Ends is Debra L. Martin, who it turns out is just a stone's throw down the road from me, at MIT. This one focuses on writing, and also some of the differences between publishing the traditional way, and the indie way. For a look, go to http://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/. (Here's the permanent link.)

Speaking of MIT, my friend and SF colleague Joe Haldeman is scheduled to be interviewed this Thursday on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan from 3PM to 3:40PM. According to his wife Gay, he'll be talking about the effect his experience in the Army (and presumably in Vietnam) has had on the rest of his life. Definitely should be worth a listen.

And in Late-breaking News...

2011-04-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

Our older daughter Lexi just called to say...well, I could hardly make out what she was saying, because she was hysterical with joy or fear or something... and then I finally made out the words "...accepted... grad school..." So it looks like she's going to be at Northeastern next fall, studying engineering! (She was giddy with joy, after all—not hysterical with fear.) Way to go!

Taxes Are Done, the Christmas Lights Are Down, and Allysen Landed a Job!

2011-04-12T00:59:00.000-04:00

Yes, I finished the taxes over the weekend! What a relief. And today it was so gorgeous out that I finally rousted myself to do what I couldn't face all winter—I took the blue LED Christmas lights off the tall evergreen tree in front of our house. Yes, I got them down before Easter. (They were somewhat the worse for wear from the hard winter. Two of the six strings broke in the middle; the wires apparently just snapped and came apart.) I also went rollerblading and saw the sun go down over Spy Pond. It was beautiful.

That was after putting my wife Allysen on a plane to Ponce to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. Allysen's just been hired as a technical editor at a company called ab initio, and is quite excited about it. This is kind of a last-chance-to-travel for a while; she'll start after she gets back from Puerto Rico.

In other news, our daughter Julia decided to withdraw from high school and pursue other means to getting a degree-equivalent. She home-schooled for a number of years, so this isn't completely out of the blue. She had entered the high school to try to deal with some special circumstances, but for a variety of reasons, that wasn't working out for her. It was a bit of a jolt to us, but we support her in taking an alternate path, if that's what it takes. She looks happier than I've seen her in long time.

Interviewed Today at Kindle Author

2011-03-30T20:16:00.000-04:00

Moi is interviewed today at the Kindle Author blog, a spot that features a lot of authors who publish at Kindle and elsewhere, both indie and traditional. (Their main focus is indie, but these days the lines are really blurring. Many traditionally published folk, like yours truly, have a second—or maybe third—foot planted in the indie category, too.)

Anyway, I won't repeat here what I said there, so why don't you take a look at the interview? Here's the permanent link, but if you go to the main page (at least today), you can read my interview and then scroll down and read some other interviews, as well. A fair number of my fellow Backlist Ebooks authors have been sighted there in recent days.

(In other news, tax time is still right around the corner, and I'm now immersed in the Quicken Sargasso, bringing a year's worth of business records up to date. I'm a walking example of the assertion that some people never learn.)

New Book Projects

2011-03-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

I got an email from a reader not too long ago, asking if I was ever going to write a sequel to my star rigger novel Eternity's End. That got me thinking that I haven't posted an update lately on what I'm doing in terms of new book projects. So here you go, a writing sitrep.

First of all, the answer to the question is yes, I plan to write a sequel to Eternity's End. I started jotting down notes for it before that book was finished. The question is, when—because I first have to finish The Chaos Chronicles. So, yes, but don't start asking at the bookstore quite yet.

Right now, I'm dividing my time among three projects:

The Reefs of Time
The next Chaos book is still coming—still a lot more slowly than I'd like. For the benefit of people who haven't heard me say this before, part of the reason for this is some serious challenges in my family's life in the last year, and part of it is that it's a complex story. We're going back with Li-Jared to his homeworld of Karellia, along with Bandicut. In related events, other members of the company are journeying back in time, way back in time, and to the center of the galaxy to boot. And there's always that question, are Julie and Bandicut ever going to meet up again? And what's this about Dakota? And a fracturing of authority among the Shipworld Masters? Ai caramba. Don’t worry, we'll get there.

Neptune Crossing Audiobook
Have I mentioned this before? My wife Allysen and I have undertaken as a little "side project" to produce a full-cast audio production of Neptune Crossing. She started the ball rolling as a birthday and Christmas present, and we're now in the early stages of production. The voices include both of us (Bandicut and Julie), our daughter Julia (Napoleon and possibly Copernicus), and a number of folks from around town with drama or reading talent. I probably shouldn't name names at this point, but we have an experienced reader with a fabulous voice doing the narration for us, and we're still trying to figure who of our other volunteers are best for some of the other parts. I think this is best characterized, at this point, as a semi-professional production. We hope to get a salable audiobook out of it, and certainly serialized podcasts, but we're under no illusions about the work ahead of us. Our model of how this is done is the wonderful productions by our friend Bruce Coville's Full Cast Audio, and Bruce has generously offered us advice from his own experience.

Dragon Space—a dragons omnibus ebook
My omnibus ebook of the first three Chaos Chronicles volumes has been so successful, I'm now preparing a combined ebook of Dragons in the Stars and its sequel Dragon Rigger. Those two books are already out in individual E-reads editions, but E-reads has generously allowed me the rights to do my own omnibus under my Starstream Publications imprint. I'm close to finishing the formatting of the book files—it's astounding how long that can take, even when you start with files you think are in good shape (partly because I keep learning tricks that help make well-formatted ebooks)—and my favorite cover designer is working to fit me into a busy schedule.

And every once in a while, it hits me—Oh frak!—tax time is right around the corner!

(If you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know why.)

The Heart of Dog

2011-03-13T03:11:00.000-04:00

One of my writing friends, Doranna Durgin, has a beagle named ConneryBeagle who's sick and has expensive vet bills. Doranna put together an anthology of SF and fantasy dog stories, all proceeds to benefit Connery. She's written a bunch of stories herself, but nine more reprints were contributed by her writing friends, including Julie Czerneda, Tanya Huff, John Mierau, Fiona Patton, Jennifer Roberson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Zakour, and me. Do check it out. It's only $3.99 at Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

With a Little Help from My Friends!

2011-03-08T02:56:00.003-05:00

I wonder if you folks would be willing to help me out a little. Many of you have been remarkably supportive, and have even gone so far as to buy my books. (Thanks!) What I'm asking now is not that you buy my books, but that you help other people buy my books.

Common wisdom has it that word of mouth is the best way to sell. I always love it if you tell your friends and relatives and near-relatives about my work. Now I'd love it even more if you'd help tell some strangers. Here's how: by posting reviews, and by tagging.

I'm going to talk now of Amazon, but I'm sure there are variations of this in a hundred places. If you know them—please, by all means. Anyway, here's Amazon, and here's what I'd love you to do: go to my Amazon Kindle page. From there, you can click each of my ebook titles, which will take you to the product pages.

Once you're on each book's page, you have the option of posting a review. Please don't do anything that you're uncomfortable with, or that isn't honest. But if you've read the book in question, and you liked it, and feel moved to post even a very brief review, that would be wonderful. Still, reviews are just one way to help.

Amazon has a tagging feature for each book. Those tags help select books shown to browsing customers. There's no value judgment. The tags simply characterize the books: this one's about alien contact, or artificial intelligence, or rutabagas in Spain—whatever's appropriate. My books already have these tags. What I'd like you to do is agree with them. The more people agree with tags, the more weight the tags carry in searches. Here’s how:

When you get to the page, type "tt" quickly—just the letter T twice. (Edit: Click on the page first. You can also just scroll down, but you have to scroll quite a ways.) That'll take you right to the tags, and open up a little dialogue with the existing tags. (You might have to be logged in as a customer.) If you just check all those tags, or copy and paste them into the little box, then click Save, you'll register another vote for the tags. It might offer you a chance to Agree with them, or to See All the tags. That's a good thing to do, too. If a lot of you do that for me, it should bring my books to more people's attention. You don't have to say it's a great book, or lie about how you stayed up all night reading it, or anything like that. Just agree that I know what the books are about. Add more tags, if you like. (Edit: If you feel comfortable clicking the "Like" button, that's helpful, too. You can also do this in the Nook store.)

This is a big favor to ask. But if you have a little spare time and would be willing to do it, I'd be eternally grateful. You might not be literally saving my life, but you sure could help me push this writing business one step closer to actually earning a living! Big thanks!

Read an Ebook Week 2011 (March 6–12)

2011-03-06T04:10:00.000-05:00

It's March again, and that means it's time to celebrate Read an Ebook Week! Lots of authors and publishers are offering free books, discounted books, and other promotions. Click Partners to get a list of links. Some of them offer daily giveaways, so stop back regularly this week.

I'm offering Neptune Crossing for free again, just for this week, from my website—and also Battlestar Galactica: the miniseries novelization (in epub and PDF).

From my Smashwords page, you can get both free and discounted offerings this week only, if you use these coupon codes (RA...) in your cart:

Neptune Crossing — free — RE100
Eternity's End — 25% off — RAE25
The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 omnibus — 25% off — RAE25
Reality School (short fiction) — free — RE100
Strange Attractors — 25% off — RAE25
The Infinite Sea — 25% off — RAE25
What Gods Are These? — free — RE100

Check out all the other authors, too!

The Gay Community and the Church

2011-02-26T23:11:00.000-05:00

I haven't stirred anyone up about questions of religion and faith lately. Maybe it's time. The occasion is a sermon I just listened to online, called "Homosexuality and Churchgoing," (direct mp3 link here, found on this page) by Dave Schmelzer of the Boston Vineyard. Normally I would have heard it in person, but I was away that Sunday. Dave says that as a pastor at a large, urban church, the most common question he is asked is, What's your church's position on gay and lesbian issues? His standard answer is, "We don't take a position, but we'd love to have a conversation." And he means it.

In this talk, he takes the unusual approach (for a pastor who I think would characterize himself as evangelical) of saying, Maybe the most important question here isn't what we think the Bible says specifically about homosexuality (interpretations vary widely), but rather how can we talk to each other about these things, and listen to each others' stories in a helpful and respectful way. He talks a lot about a "centered set" perspective on faith generally: not the you're in or you're out view of what we could call "bounded set" thinking, but rather, What is the common center toward which we are all striving to move? If you're looking for a church position on GLBT issues, you won't find him taking one here. But if you'd like to hear a pastor thinking outside the customary evangelical box, you might find it interesting. He also writes on the subject, and here's one of his posts on centered set thinking.

Dave has an earlier talk online in which, addressing a large group of church leaders, he more specifically looks at what the Bible's take is on the question of homosexuality. Again, he's not there to try to lay down prescriptions or doctrines, even among leadership types. Instead, I think he does a creditable job of putting the various views on the subject into perspective, with a bottom line of: Talk to each other. And listen. (Here's a direct link to the talk, but it's found on this page under "Are You [meaning, your church] Gay Friendly?")

Provocative stuff, in a good way.

Enough with the Spinning, Already!

2011-02-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

As a private pilot, before I ran out of money for flying, I always wished that I could take aerobatic training and learn to spin an airplane. I never got to do that, but maybe this is the next best thing. (Not.) I recently got my annual inspection—not from the airplane mechanic, but from my doctor—and since I'm over sixty, he recommended that I get the shingles vaccination, Zostavax. So I did.

The only thing is, I woke up the next day with the whirlies, and felt lightheaded and dizzy all day. I went back to the docs, and was told, yeah, that's a known side effect. You might not find it in the usual online references, but in the sources that medical professionals use, it's clearly cited. Okay, I thought. I wish they'd told me beforehand, but still, it's better than getting shingles.

I still think that. But it's been a week now, and I continue to have occasional brief bouts of spinning if I move my head too fast. It's getting better. But I'm pretty ready for it to end. I'd really rather do it in an airplane.

Other Author Blogs of Note

2011-02-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before that I'm active in a group of writers who, like me, are promoting their formerly published backlist books as ebooks. Our group is called Backlist Ebooks. Many of the members blog from time to time on the subject, and I thought you might like to check out some of their blogs. They work in a variety of genres. Here's a starter list:

Doranna Durgin
Gerald M. Weinberg
Marsha Canham
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Jill Metcalf
Terry Odell
Maryann Miller
Patricia Rice
Pati Nagle
Lorraine Bartlett / Lorna Barrett
Karen Ranney

There are lots more authors listed on the main Backlist Ebooks webite. More authors are joining all the time, so keep checking back.

Boskone 2011 Weekend

2011-02-18T13:20:00.000-05:00

This weekend I'll be at the annual SF convention Boskone, on Boston's waterfront. This is one of my regulars, partly because I like it, and partly because I can commute to it. This evening I'll be on two panels: one on domestic robots, and one on workshopping fiction. Tomorrow I autograph and sell books and have a "literary beer," which is a chance to hang out with anyone who signs up to hang out with me. Sunday I'm on a panel about ebooks, and one about great, memorable deaths in science fiction and fantasy. You can see the whole Boskone schedule at http://www.nesfa.org/boskone/schedule.html.

If you're there, please look me up! It's at the Westin Hotel next to the convention center and Word Trade Center. (And one of these days, I'll start remembering to post these things ahead of time.)

Valentine's Day at the Starrigger Ranch

2011-02-16T03:06:00.000-05:00

Who says kids are ingrates? I never did, but if I had, I'd have been wrong. (Well, okay, maybe I said it once, on a bad day, but I'm sure I didn't mean it.) My kids and our house guest Talula proved it this past Valentine's Day—or, as they like to call it, Singles Awareness Day.

My wife Allysen and I were warned: Don't make any plans for Valentine's Day. And be ready to dress up in your nicest clothes. Yes, Dad, that means a jacket and tie, don't even think about arguing, and be ready by 7. Okay, we said, figuring they must be hijacking us to a restaurant, which seemed awfully sweet. But as 7 approached, we were cast out of the kitchen, and finally told to go in our room to dress and don't come out. Meanwhile, Julia scurried around setting up something in the dining room, and Alexandra and Talula furiously cooked.

Then came a knock on the door. Alexandra stuck her head in, said, "Count to ten, then come out. We'll be back at midnight." She was just slipping out the door as we emerged. And our jaws dropped. We strolled out in our finery to a dining table set with white tablecloth, soft candlelight, dragon glasses filled with a nice red wine, classical music on the stereo, and an amazing dinner on the table. A tomato, mushroom, and squash soup with crisped fried rice. Delicious baked or fried, spicy cakes made from ricotta and egg and parmesan—and no, I don't know what they were called, but they were served on a bed of spinach greens, and they were fantastic. Afterward, we decided to make some Irish coffee. We didn't have Irish whiskey, so we used Scotch. We didn't have whipped cream, so we used vanilla ice cream. (We did have decaf coffee.) It was wonderful. And the house to ourselves until midnight.

I'm here to tell you, our girls (and I include Talula even if she isn't technically ours) are wonderful. Thanks, guys, for the best Valentine's Day ever!

Surprise Peace Offering to Authors from Amazon and Macmillan

2011-02-03T18:10:00.000-05:00

Many of you will remember the Amazon Buy-Button Removal War of one year ago, in which Amazon decided—in a dispute over new ebook contract terms—to blast Macmillan US by taking down all of their books, paper and e, from their catalogue. I was one of thousands of writers affected, and the memory still stings.

Well, according to this post at E-reads.com, Macmillan and Amazon have jointly decided to make reparations to authors for their estimated losses on ebook sales during that week. I don't know how they're calculating the estimate; I haven't gotten my royalty statements yet. But I do appreciate the gesture. (Realistically, I don't expect it to make much difference to me, as the reparations were only for the loss of Kindle-book sales, and where I think I got whacked the most was in my newly released paperback of Sunborn. Still, it's a gesture they didn't have to make.) Further, in the letter to authors reportedly enclosed with forthcoming royalty statements, Macmillan's Sargent offers to amend ebook royalty rates to its authors to the somewhat higher, now-semistandard rate of 25% of net receipts. (That's still not quite where they should be, in the opinion of many, but it's a clear step in the right direction, and I'm pleased to see it come as a willing offer from publisher to author.)

Change of topic, but still on publishing and books: a reader helpfully pointed me toward this fascinating blog series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, called The Business Rusch. (This link will kind of put you in the middle, but she has some links in the article to good places to start, depending on your interests.) A must-read for authors!

Guest Blogger Today at Star-Crossed Romance

2011-01-31T13:06:00.000-05:00

I'm traveling again today, offering a guest blog at Star-Crossed Romance—a blog for lovers of science fiction romance. While I'm not considered a romance writer by anyone, romance is nonetheless an important part of my writing. Why? (Do I really have to say why? Maybe I do.) If you'd like to know what I have to say about it, go take a look at
http://star-crossedromance.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-jeffrey-carver.html.

By the way, one of the editors of the blog has just reviewed my novel Neptune Crossing. You can read the review on the same blog, at
http://star-crossedromance.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-neptune-crossing.html.

Go pay them a visit. They're nice people.

So How's It Going with the Ebooks, Anyway?

2011-01-30T00:48:00.002-05:00

When I started my program of self-repubbed ebooks a few months ago, I promised I'd tell it like it is on the results of the experiment. It is an experiment, after all (one I'm doing along with some of my fellow scribblers at Backlist Ebooks and elsewhere). I was a little leery of going the self-republishing route, I guess because there was always a stigma attached to that—but it is, after all, working for some writers, including some famous and now wealthy writers. I wasn't making much money directly from the free ebook distributions—though I was enlarging my readership, and some readers made voluntary donations. I finally decided it was time for a new approach, and in September I took the plunge.

First up were the first three Chaos books: Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea at $2.99 each. Sales at first were, to put it mildly, sluggish. I followed in December with Eternity's End at a price that wobbled around and eventually settled at $3.99, and The Chaos Chronicles 3-book omnibus at $6.99. For these last two, I got professional help with the covers, and they both look great.

In late December, sales started to pick up—meaning they went from 2-3 sales per day total to 7-10 per day. Christmas was coming, and a lot of people were getting shiny new Kindles and Nooks and Kobos and Sony Readers and iPads. Sales growth! Yes! The new level of sales continued through the first week of January. Then, whump. Holiday sales bump over. Back to a handful a day. A week went by. You could hear my fingers drumming on the table, day and night. And then...for no obvious reason, things started picking up again, even better than before. For the last ten days, sales have been in the range of 10-18 books per day. Is this a sustainable rate—or better yet, a rate upon which I can build? Time will tell. Some of my colleagues are reporting better results; some are reporting worse.

Also puzzling: Some writers find that the majority of their sales are at Kindle, with the Nook store and Smashwords hardly worth noting. Others, and I'm among them, are finding sales at Amazon sluggish, and the Barnes & Noble Nook store where the action is. Nobody can figure out why. For some of us, the sales are coming where we're doing less promotion, rather than more.

So...am I making any money? Well, with most sales at 60-70% royalty, yes I am. Not a lot of money, but still. Why don't I just cut the crap and show you some of the numbers? I generally don't wave private numbers around publicly. But maybe it would be useful for people to get a glimpse of how much (or not so much) money a respectable but not-bestselling SF writer makes from one significant component of his career, ebooks. Here are some numbers for Kindle U.S. sales:

Sept-Oct (combined) — $84
November — $76
December — $244
January (through the 22nd, the last date for which I have dollar amounts) — $410

My January numbers for Nook are similar (slower start, but now pulling ahead).

Add in earnings (some reported, some estimated) from Kindle UK, Smashwords, Apple, Sony, and Kobo—and I've netted a little over a grand to date from my self-repubbed books, since late September. I should see the money in about 60 days. That time-frame of payment, while it feels slow, is practically tachyonic compared to the rate of payment from regular publishers.

Let's compare these findings to my likely earnings through other publishers. Nine of my backlist books are with E-reads (a respected print-on-demand and ebook publisher specializing in backlist books). Past royalties there have been in the range of $300 – $900, per quarter, for all nine books. Those nine books are selling in many of the same stores, but at a typical retail price of $6-10. Indications are, they're not selling as well. Is it the price? Unfortunately, I can't directly compare recent sales of those books to my new ones, because I have to wait for the retailers to close out a reporting period and remit money to E-reads, and then I have to wait for E-reads to close out a reporting period and remit money to me. This means a lag between sales and reporting to me of as much as 6 – 9 months. But still, that's better than the case with traditional publishing.

As for my three ebooks from the traditional print guys, who knows? They're selling at $7-10, and are not all well distributed. Reporting is so slow and cryptic that by the time I see the numbers, I've forgotten what we were talking about. The royalty rates are lower. And in any case, ebook sales from those books are first applied to earning out the advance—fair enough—but because many books never do earn out, this can mean that ebook earnings serve only to reduce the unearned balance. The money to the author's pocket may be zero...or little, and late. That might seem like a slam at the traditional publishing model, but it's not. Remember, the publishers advanced the money that helped make it possible to write the books, provided the invaluable work of my editor, and through their marketing helped build an audience and recognition by way of paper books. You really can't make a direct comparison of the two models.

In short, I'm not agreeing with the gurus who say, "Traditional publishing is dead! Long live self-publishing!" I don't see it that way. Traditional publishing is still important. But for backlist sales, which publishers have largely abandoned as uneconomical, self-repubbing is clearly an exciting option.

Have I found the key to mega-sales, like J. A. Konrath and others? Clearly not. But while my self-repubbed books haven't exactly caught fire, they are selling and at the moment they seem to be making more money for me, and paying faster, than all my other ebooks combined. It's not exactly a living wage. But now the game is to see if I can build traction and grow my own audience along with the general burgeoning audience for ebooks. (And with luck, these sales will help to generate additional sales of the publisher-issued titles.)

Is it a sales bump, or a snowball? I guess I'll find out.

Maybe in a future post I'll talk about the challenges of self-promotion. In the meantime, here's my quick guide to ebook samples, downloads, and purchases.

Hemmed in by Snow

2011-01-29T00:21:00.000-05:00

I know people in Rochester or Buffalo or Minnesota will roll their eyes at this, but by Boston standards we've gotten a lot of snow this year, and not much time for melting off between storms. So the piles are getting higher, the streets are getting narrower, and it's getting harder and harder to find a place to put the stuff. I am so glad for the snowblower we got a couple of years ago (a rescue adoption—it's about 35 years old, and wasn't running when I took it off someone's hands). I spent about four hours outside with it yesterday, doing the usual stuff on the driveway and sidewalk, digging out a couple of fire hydrants that had been plowed in, and then carving a ravine alongside the house, where snow had been piled up from next door...

This bank had been solid against the foundation. It didn't seem a problem at first. And then it got higher, and higher. And I started to think about our basement flooding last spring, and how much water would be released when all that snow melted. So I fired up the snow blaster and started digging the New England Chunnel. I didn't actually expect to finish it yesterday, but I just kept going, thinking about it all turning to ice. Here are a few more shots around the house:

More snow predicted for next week.

Short Stories

2011-01-24T02:00:00.002-05:00

What with one thing and another, I seem to have forgotten to mention that I've started putting some of my short fiction up for sale, along with the ebooks. I've always had a few of them up on my website, and people do seem to read them. But this is the first time I've put them in format for the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, etc.—and I'm adding a bunch of other stories that haven't appeared anywhere since their first publication. I don't really write a lot of short stories, but you could say that these represent a brief history of my career. My first few publications were short stories, and I've written a new one every once in a blue moon since switching largely to novels.

For starters, I've put three stories up: "Shapeshifter Finals," "Reality School: In the Entropy Zone," and "What Gods Are These?" No, they're not in chronological order according to when I wrote them, though that might have been clever, too. Here's a bit of background on them.

Shapeshifter Finals — One day some years ago I got a call from Roger Zelazny, who was practically a god to me. He said he was editing an anthology of SF stories involving martial arts. He'd heard somewhere that I'd been a wrestler in school, and would I like to submit an SF story about wrestling? I stuttered something about how if I could come up with an idea, I'd send it to him. But I didn't really expect to. But then...I got an idea about a high school wrestler facing a shapeshifter. Not by accident, but because Earth was hosting the 57,463rd Games of IIMAWL, the IntraGalactic Interworld Multicultural Amateur Wrestling League, and one Hog Donovan was competing at 138 pounds. He knew he’d be facing tough, alien competition. But wrestling a shapeshifter? With Earth’s honor at stake and his mother screaming from the stands, what’s the young wrestler to do? “Shapeshifter Finals” originally appeared in the anthology Warriors of Blood and Dream, edited by Roger Zelazny. Kindle | Nook | All-format

Reality School: In the Entropy Zone — This story had its own weird origin. I wasn't really thinking about writing a short piece, but one day I was thumbing through the newspaper and I saw a small ad for...as I first read it, Reality School. I blinked and read it again. The ad was for realty school. But the thought stuck with me. As it happened, I had an earlier, unfinished story involving the world being swallowed up by a creeping zone of entropy. I put the two together, and decided that the reality school must be a place where kids—with their elastic minds and incredible imaginations—would have their talents harnessed to defend the integrity of reality and the world itself against encroaching, and potentially devastating, entropy. "Reality School" first appeared in the magazine Science Fiction Age. Kindle | Nook | All-format

What Gods Are These? — To be honest, I don't remember where this story came from. I know it emerged from a time when my view of life was rather dark. At least, it's definitely a darker story than I usually write, and all I can say for sure is that there was something dark inside me that wanted to be let out. Earth has been conquered by invading aliens—not because they want our water, or our mineral resources, or to eat us, or to use us as batteries—but because they see it as their mission to save us from our self-destructive character. All of Humanity but for a lone holdout has been killed or transported to a place of enforced peace and good behavior. And that holdout, holed up in a ruined space station, knows they're coming for him. Can his human spirit survive in the face of the Saviors' overwhelming force? Writing "What Gods Are These?" was a good catharsis. It first appeared in Galileo SF magazine. Kindle | Nook | All-format

More are coming. About half of them exist only on paper, so they need to be scanned or typed in. Fortunately, my daughters offered to pitch in—so stay tuned!

Our Dog Hermione 1999-2011

2011-01-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

In a real shocker to the family, we lost our beloved boxer Hermione this morning—pretty much without any warning. Not quite twelve years old, she had seemed like a healthy, if slowing-with-age, dog. Just yesterday, I looked at her and thought, You're looking fit for your age. I hope we have you for a couple more years.

Hermione, pretty much the way she always looked

This morning she staggered up out of her bed, stumbled, fell, and couldn't get up. She was dazed, and her lips and gums were pale. We got her to the vet as fast as we could, but the news was grim. An ultrasound showed a tumor on her spleen, with internal bleeding. Dr. Grosser, a lovely woman who has seen Hermione through several difficult situations, couldn't offer much hope. It would be possible to spend thousands (which we don't have) on surgery to try to buy her a few months. But she couldn't recommend it, even medically. Hermione's condition was likely to grow worse, not better. The doctor's recommendation was to put her to sleep before she went from dazed and helpless to being in a lot of pain. And that's what we did. All four of us were there—I'd gone to get Julia out of high school—and Hermione was aware of us being with her. She went peacefully.

About two minutes after she slipped away, Alexandra, our older daughter, changed abruptly from sobbing tears to a big smile and cried, "She's running! I can see her. She's happy!" I looked up at Alexandra and saw joy and recognition of something ethereal in her eyes. That vision for those few seconds transformed Alexandra on the spot and greatly comforted the rest of us.

Hermione was one of the sweetest-tempered dogs I've ever known. She didn't always like other dogs, but she never met a human who wasn't her friend. And she was supremely tolerant of her buddy Moonlight the cat, who would from time to time swat her for no apparent reason except to say hi. As a puppy, Hermione was almost ludicrously eager to please, but as she matured, she came to decide that life was not entirely about following instructions. We were always kind of glad about that.

Hermione and Moonlight, in younger days

The house feels strangely empty now. Moonlight seemed for a moment to sense that something was wrong, when we came home--but who knows what cats can understand? And I guess I'll have to get used to going on walks by myself now.

Today on DailyCheapReads.com

2011-01-15T17:04:00.000-05:00

My omnibus ebook, The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3, is a featured title today on one of the leading guides to Kindle bargains, DailyCheapReads.com. Or if it's scrolled out of sight there, here on its own page. DailyCheapReads is a great place to visit. They feature new ebooks every day, both from indie authors and traditionally published authors doing the kind of thing I'm doing. Drop in once in a while to see what bargains are lurking! (Some of them are time-limited specials.)

Tale of the New Computer (with Snow)

2011-01-13T22:18:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was snow day in Boston. We got 20 inches or so in Arlington, and I spent a good part of the day driving the snowblower around. God, I love that machine! How did we ever dig out those plowed-in driveway aprons before? I forgot to take pictures, but you know what snow looks like, right? It was fun.

Here's something less fun, though by the end I could only laugh. I spent much of the last week getting a working computer for my office. My old computer, Orion, died right before the holidays, and I replaced it with a cheap model on sale at Microcenter. It didn't take long to realize the replacement was seriously underpowered, so after the holidays I boxed it up and went back to the store. Thus began my saga. Here's how it went:

Before trip — new computer (1) comes home. It works, but is slow and wimpy.
January 6 — I upgrade to new computer (2)—a nice, powerful HP tower—a refurb, but so what? I take it home, add in the extra peripheral cards (did you know computers don't come with parallel printer ports anymore, or firewire ports—both of which I need?), and fire it up. Gaaah! No video output! Dead as a freaking doornail.
January 6 (later) — Back to the store. The salesman, Yonas, looks worried when he sees me. But he's a trooper. He fixes me up with another: new computer (3) — same model. I mean, it had to be a fluke. It was a refurb, but so what? I take it home, set it up. It works! I spend the weekend installing software, getting things the way I like. Then... doom!...it suddenly starts shutting down with the ominous red message: CPU fan failure. Nooo!
January 9 — Yonas sees me and winces. We huddle. Agree on a plan. In order that all my work doesn't go to waste, they'll replace the fan with a better fan, and upgrade the warranty for my trouble. The tech, Mark, gets right on it. All seems well with new computer (3.5). At home, I flick it on. It flashes a cheerful greeting: CPU fan failure.

THIS IS RIDICULOUS. It can't be the fan; it must be something else in the machine.
January 10 — They're starting to cross themselves when they see me come into the store. I'm glancing over my shoulder, myself, wondering about boggarts or poltergeists. We huddle. Forget my work setting up a new machine, forget refurb. They'll swap me up to a better unit, new. The tech will move my peripheral cards over—and since they've gone to the trouble of giving me an upgraded fan, he'll put that in, too. We test it; all is well. I go home with new computer (4) — I set it up, turn it on. Yay! It boots up. I decide to boot it up a few times to test. The machine helpfully speeds up the process by telling me: CPU fan failure. Noooooooo!
January 11 — Mark the tech sees me first and turns pale. We take it back to the workbench, and the machine helpfully reproduces the problem. It has to be the fan, sez Mark. Forget the odds of two fans being bad, it has to be the fan. We'll put in a better fan. We walk into the store and Mark picks out a fan that looks like it came from a Saturn 5 rocket, a tower full of pipes and fins. Oops—this one requires taking the motherboard out. Oh well, the sooner we start... I go read while Mark works. For quite a while. I saunter back to see how it's going. Mark's lowering the motherboard back into the case, with towering fan attached. I mention that the fan seems to be sticking out of the case by half an inch. Mark stares in disbelief, then sags.

Now what? It has to be the fan, so Mark goes and gets another fan like the first upgrade they gave me. He installs that. He fires up the machine, and... the fan doesn't go. CPU fan failure. He gives the blades a little flick; they spin up nicely. And that's when the cold truth sinks in: there's not enough current to start the "better" fans. "Oh right,” says another tech offhandedly, "those HPs won't accept aftermarket fans." Mark gazes at the machine in despair. The original fan from this computer, which was probably fine, is no longer available.

I go back to find Yonas. He's ready to give me title to the store, if I'll just go away and be happy. We huddle. Yonas sets me up with another new machine, out of the box, and Mark moves all my stuff into it from the last machine. It works! I go home with new computer (5) — which, knock on wood, is working beautifully. I have almost all my software installed, and it purrs nicely. Back at the shop, they have four machines in pieces, and are wondering where they went wrong.

I like my new computer. I've named it Polaris, in honor of the guide star, but even more in honor of the rocket ship piloted by Tom Corbett and his fellow space cadets of the Solar Guard.

Up in the sky, rocketing past,
Higher than high, faster than fast,
Out into space, into the sun
Look at her go when we give her the gun

— from the Space Cadet March (Space Academy)

New Ideas for the New Year, at Terry's Place

2011-01-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

My first blog post of the new year turns out to be a guest spot! I'm guest-blogging today at Terry Odell's blog Terry's Place. My topic is New Ideas for the New Year--by which I mean ideas for stories, and some thoughts on how you take an idea (we all have ideas) and turn it into a living story. Stop by and join the conversation!

Holiday Reading—Oh, the Trials!

2010-12-28T15:08:00.001-05:00

I left for our holiday travels with two ereading devices, just to make sure the bases were covered, and that I wouldn't run out of books to read (hah). On Christmas Eve, Allysen was reading a newly acquired SF book by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller on my Sony Reader, Plato—when suddenly it froze like a brick. Aughh! Aughh!

Probably just needs a simple reset, right? Wrong. Plato was bricked right through Christmas and for our trip from Miami to Ponce. I tried everything I could think of. Nada. Then, two nights ago, I left Plato plugged into the laptop to recharge fully while I slept, and also plugged in my Dell PDA (an Axim named Maxim) to top off. (I was reading the latest Vorkosigan book by Lois Bujold, Cryoburn, on it.) The next morning it was bricked, too! Auggghhhh!

What to do? What to do? Running in circles didn't help. Neither did any of the usual techie approaches. Finally, this morning, I plugged Plato into my laptop again, for one last try. Windows Explorer told me it found a file error. It removed the offending file. Voila! Plato lives again!

Maxim is still lifeless. But at least it has a removable battery, so I hope when I get home I can swap in another battery and bring it back, too. Just have to keep the faith on that one.

I realize that my tale isn't exactly the most ringing endorsement of ebook reading, but if you're one of those with a shiny new reader, I've got a hot tip for you. From now until Dec. 31, there's a 25% off sale from many authors of various genres at Backlist Ebooks. Head over and take a look for some great deals!

Meanwhile, here in Puerto Rico we've been having cloudy skies, mugginess, and rain—while back in Boston, I imagine everyone is still shoveling out from a foot and a half of snow. Either one is better than the folks on the west coast pumping mud, though. What a crazy winter for weather. But did I mention the fantastic flight we had over the mountains from San Juan? It was a night flight in a 12-seat Cessna 402, and it reawakened every nerve in my body to a longing to start flying again! Someday, someday!

Marriage and Gators and Christmas!

2010-12-24T17:00:00.004-05:00

But not at the same time!

My brother Chuck was married on Monday, to the lovely Youngmee Kim, who like Chuck is in the psychology department at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. The beautiful wedding took place at the Biltmore Hotel, which itself is something from another world. Much of Youngmee's family is here from South Korea, so we've had an entertaining multicultural experience. Here's the happy couple:

Yesterday we all headed off to the Everglades and took a 2-hour tram tour, and here are a few of the critters we saw:

Beautiful! And with that, I'm going to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a peaceful weekend!

Book Takes Wing, and So Do We

2010-12-19T00:17:00.000-05:00

I'm typing this at 32,000 feet out of Charlotte, North Carolina over a beautiful cloud deck en route to Miami. (Oops, we just flew back into the clouds! Later: a stunning sunset above the cloud deck, just as we started our descent toward Miami. Layered clouds against a crimson horizon band.)

The last few days have been insane, but I'm about to rest. Aside from the usual trip prep, I was busy getting one last book up at Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. This is a new one, in a way—an omnibus collection of the first three Chaos books. Called simply The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3, it's got a gorgeous new cover by Pat Ryan. I enjoy omnibus collections myself—I've just finished reading through a series of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan omnibuses that I bought from Baen Webscription. So I thought, why not make an omnibus of the Chaos books myself, and maybe give the publishers a hint by example? Here it is:

Chaos Omnibus at Kindle | Nook | Smashword

I got that up just in time to see it go live before dropping everything for the trip. No time to make formal announcements—so this will be my first, whenever I have time to get online and post it. (That would be at my brother's house in Florida.)

Starting this evening, we're with family, and kicking back a little. I hope Chuck's hot tub is still working!

My Computer Celebrates By Dying

2010-12-16T02:25:00.001-05:00

Maybe it couldn't stand knowing that I'd done most of the work on my last ebook on my laptop. Or maybe its time had come. But on the very night I got the new Eternity's End ebook up for sale, my office desktop computer Orion kacked. Really? Did you have to do that? (It was six or seven years old, so maybe it did.)

On top of that, my website was down for pretty much a full day (Monday, I think it was). No connection between the two, unless you think forces we aren't meant to know about were at work. Something kacked at SFF.net the service that hosts me, and they spent pretty much a full day getting Verizon to fix their end so that service could be restored.

I've got a new computer up and running (typing on it now). I hope I like it. The budget's tight, so I went for an econo model on sale at MicroCenter. It's not like I do gaming or anything, so I didn't need to go for power, particularly. But I did want a full-sized tower unit, so I could put in a couple of extra drives salvaged from the old one. It seems uninspired, but I've named it Orion-2, mainly so as not to confuse Allysen, who already has trouble keeping the names of the computers on the home network straight!

We're hitting the stretch here, at the Starrigger Ranch. In just a couple of days, we wing our way south. My brother's getting married, in Miami, and that's where we're spending Christmas. Then to Puerto Rico for a little while. Can we get everything done before we leave? Sure. We eat problems for breakfast around here. Don't you?

Eternity's End Gets Kindled (and More)!

2010-12-13T01:56:00.005-05:00

Until now, Eternity's End has been my only book not available in the Kindle ebookstore. That changed a few hours ago, when a new ebook version went live, complete with this new cover. I had this one designed by a pro, and I think it's great.

Eternity's End in the Kindle | Nook | Smashwords stores

I'm excited to have this novel, which was a Nebula finalist, up for sale as an ebook at last. As I write, it's working its way through the conversion queue at Smashwords; maybe it'll be done by the time you read this. (The Smashwords edition will be of interest for folk who prefer an ePub or PDF version, or any of several others. And eventually for those who'd rather buy at Sony, Apple, Kobo, Diesel, etc. However, even if you buy the book in the Kindle store, it's DRM-free—so you can convert it to any format you like with Calibre, my favorite free ebook software.)

This has been a long push, and I'm very happy to hit this milestone.

EDIT v.2: I had problems getting it through the system at Smashwords, but now it's up at Barnes and Noble (Nook) and Smashwords, as well as Kindle. In due course, it'll be in the other locations, too.

Google Ebookstore Opens

2010-12-10T02:19:00.000-05:00

Long promised, the Google Ebookstore opened its doors this week. Naturally, I went to take a look. Also naturally, the first thing I did when I got inside was to see if they had my books. To my surprise and delight, when I clicked on Science Fiction, I found Sunborn on the first page! Whoa, wasn't expecting that. Further examination found most of my other publisher-issued books. Unfortunately, they're not all on one page, because some of them are under Jeffrey A. Carver and some are under Carver, Jeffrey A. (The sort of thing that drives you crazy. But they're there, and we'll get it straightened out eventually.)

What's the big deal with Google Ebooks, besides their being one more bit of competition for Amazon? That's a little hard to parse out, because the information on the site isn't exactly crystal clear. I know this: you can buy books in PDF or Epub format, and you can read them while tied to the web, and you can read them on a wide variety of devices. There's a feature that will somehow enable you to patronize your favorite independent bookstore, while buying ebooks from Google. (How that works, I don't know yet.) There will be books from indie authors, and from backlist ebook types like me. But that's really murky at the moment. (First report I heard from an author who had tried was...waiting...waiting...for the system to respond. Still waiting...)

Bottom line, I'll probably get my self-reissued ebooks up there in time. But I'm going to wait for things to shake out a little bit first.

SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Dragon Into Space

2010-12-10T01:52:00.000-05:00

I almost missed seeing this in the Globe's electronic edition, but Space.com clued me in. SpaceX successfully launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and this time it had a mockup of their Dragon spacecraft on top. The Dragon, which is slated to eventually transport cargo and possibly crew to the International Space Station, went into orbit for a couple of rounds and safely reentered for a Pacific Ocean splashdown. This made Paypal / SpaceX / Tesla Motors tycoon Elon Musk ecstatic. It made me pretty happy, too. With the space shuttle coming up on retirement, the sooner we have less expensive, privately operated spacecraft hitting the Up and Out, the better.

I also have to smile that the Falcon rocket series is named after the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars, and the Dragon capsule is named for Puff the Magic Dragon. Check out the great pix of the flight at http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-120810a.html.

Top Ten SF/F Movies of the Decade

2010-12-08T20:20:00.001-05:00

I took part in another one of SF Signal's Mind Meld editions today. The theme: What are your favorite SF/F films of the first decade of the 21st Century?

Check out what I said--and what Paul Levinson, Julie Czerneda, and several other writers had to say!

Online Auction for Vineyard Community Servings

2010-12-06T15:23:00.001-05:00

The Boston Vineyard church in North Cambridge has a terrific group dedicated to community service: kids' soccer, college help for high schoolers, food pantry, etc. They're holding an Ebay charity auction right now, with a lot of nifty items and services up for bidding, all proceeds going to the community service program. The full list of items is at
http://donations.ebay.com/charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=35322

I'm one of many folk who donated items—in my case a collection of five autographed, first-edition, hardcover science fiction novels. The market value of the books is around $125, and the current bid is way low. So if you'd like a shot at a deal on some collectors-item hardcovers for the SF-lover on your gift list, here's a chance to score some books and contribute to a good cause at the same time!

Guest Blogging Today

2010-12-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

Today I'm the author-guest at Linda Wisdom's blog. She's a romance-fantasy writer, and one of my colleagues in the getting-books-up-on-Kindle effort.

Here's the beginning of what I have to say...

What's a science fiction writer doing in a place like this? he asks himself, looking around warily. Book lovers, from the appearance of the joint. Romance, okay... [more]

Why don't you drop by and have a cup of coffee?

Busy Day Yesterday

2010-12-02T03:14:00.000-05:00

My downloads page took on a whole new look yesterday. I spent the whole day pounding the keys, revamping and reordering the page to reflect the shift in emphasis from a whole bunch of free stuff...to some free stuff, plus purchase links for my new, low-cost ebook editions. Dreamweaver and the html got a workout, and so did Word as I created new sample PDFs of all the Chaos books, plus Eternity's End. I'm now giving out excerpts of the first 8-10 chapters, which I hope will let folks decide if they like the story enough to drop a few bucks on the whole story in their preferred format.

Eternity's End isn't quite ready for upload of its ebook yet, but it's close. I'm working with a cover designer on this one, and I've been working hard at trying to nail down the concept and the art pieces that will go into it. I hope to have the book up for sale in the next couple of weeks.

To celebrate all that work getting done, I took another crack at something I started a couple of weeks ago—writing a new afterword for the Sunborn ebook from Tor. They're fixing some typos for me, and letting me add some value to the for-sale edition of the book while I'm at it.

And finally...some work on a particularly thorny subplot in The Reefs of Time, which—fear not—I am still hard at work on.

If you haven't visited my downloads page in a while, I invite you to take a look.

Oh yes—I had a nice dinner with my family, too!

Holiday Special on Autographed Books!

2010-12-01T20:10:00.001-05:00

Last time, I promised some specials. Here's a Christmas special for you, also good for any holidays you celebrate this time of year. Did you know that autographed books (especially hardcovers) make excellent gifts for the readers in your family? You didn't? Well, they do. And I've got 'em. Boy, have I got 'em. You can have 'em, too!

Now through December 14, you can order any of my hardcover science fiction novels for 25% off, and paperbacks for 15% off. Choose from any of the books listed on my Autographed Books page (note—some are sold out, and I have no way to get more). Tally up your order, apply the discounts—but not to the postage, please!—and send it to me. I'll sign the books and get them out right away.

One exception: the four-volume set of Chaos Chronicles hardcovers is already discounted. I'll apply the 25% discount to the list price, so that set will be $75 instead of the regular discount price of $85.

I need to have your order in my hand by December 14, or I cannot guarantee shipping for the holidays. I'll be traveling myself after that, and this is a one-man operation.

The quickest and easiest way to order is to click the Paypal button and email the details. If that doesn't work for you, the good old Postal Service and a check will do, too. Note: If you don't see anything about the special on the ordering page, don't worry. Just mention the discount when you send it.

If you want the books personalized to somebody, be sure and let me know!

What better way to save yourself a shopping trip?

Free Downloads Ending. Wait—What?

2010-11-27T19:30:00.002-05:00

It's true. Driven by my insatiable desire to keep a roof over my head, I'm cutting back on my free-download offerings. Starting this week, I'm shifting my website to samples and purchase links for the Chaos books, and the same with Eternity's End. I've already got my own Starstream Publications editions of the first three Chaos books—with new afterwords—for sale in all of the major stores for a very low price (Eternity's End coming soon). But even a very low price isn't competing well with free.

I've been running the free-downloads experiment for more than two years now. Here's my conclusion: The free downloads have significantly expanded my audience, and enabled me to meet some very nice people electronically. But they haven't done much in terms of pay. Yes, some people have been generous with Paypal donations, and some who liked the books have gone out and bought my other ebooks—and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. But the theory that free downloads drive sales of books, which apparently works for some writers, does not seem to have clicked for me. I don't regret offering the downloads—not a bit—but now it's time to try something new.

I'm asking all other sites that host my free downloads to remove all except Neptune Crossing. (I'll still let them offer that first hit for free, heh-heh.) I'll provide big enough samples of all the books for new readers to give them a good, fair try—not like those weenie samples you get at a lot of stores, where most of the sample is ^%$@ front-matter, not the actual book.

And I'll keep the prices low.

With the holidays coming, I'll be offering some specials. But one thing at a time. I'm posting this right now as last call for alcoh—errr, free books!

(Note: Short stories and Battlestar Galactica will remain free in some ebook formats.)

Time Travel My Way

2010-11-26T18:29:00.000-05:00

The SF novel I'm currently writing, The Reefs of Time (Book Five of The Chaos Chronicles), involves time travel as an important story element. Specifically, a couple of my characters need to go back in time a few hundred million years, to see what they can learn about a malignant entity believed to have originated that long ago, near the center of the galaxy.

This is a pretty demanding jaunt for anyone, even those who travel with the help of far-future alien technologies. The time-travel theory involved, which I devised after a long period of mulling possibilities (and for which the prime criteria were: Does it make sense to me? and, Does it work in the story?), posits that travel back into deep time can be accomplished through an extreme version of exploiting quantum entanglement: essentially the possibility that we live in a vast web of entangled particles spanning deep space and deep time. (If you don't know what quantum entanglement means, stay with me for a moment. I'll get to it.)

According to theory (of alien origin, in my story), there are a couple of limitations on this form of time travel. One is that you don't really travel physically or materialize in the past. It's more like projecting yourself, ghostlike, in a way that lets you observe the past without actually (in theory!) interacting with anything in a way that could change the present or future. It's so ghostly that it's called ghoststream transmission. The theory (being tested right now by my characters Julie and Ik, under dangerous conditions) further says that any change that might be made in the past will create only limited local ripples. Nature has its own self-correcting mechanism that prevents, for example, the grandfather paradox (where you go back and shoot your grandfather before he meets your grandmother).

All fiction, folks.

Except, maybe not. This week's New Scientist has an article about a couple of researchers who believe they may have shown that quantum time travel is theoretically possible (registration required to read article), not by the usually-cited method of flying through a wormhole or other means requiring black holes, but by performing just the right trickery with quantum-entangled particles. (Quantum-entangled particles are particles joined in a spooky way such that an action on one—change in polarization or spin, for example—is instantaneously reflected in the state of the other, even if they are separated in distance, theoretically limitless distance.) It's one of those weird things that makes quantum physics so mind-bendy.

The New Scientist article goes on to explain that this model for time travel has a built-in mechanism that prevents time-travel paradoxes. Effectively, an entangled photon cannot go back and kill its grandfather photon, because if conditions are such that it can actually pull the trigger on its little quantum gun and pull off the photonicide, then the time travel fails to work in the first place. How's that for prevention of terrorism?

I started to develop a peculiar sense of déjà vu as I read this article. Didn't I just write this stuff a few months ago, weaving a bit of world-building that would make my story make sense to me? What are they doing, talking about it now in a serious scientific magazine?

You don't suppose the researchers took a little trip forward in time and read my finished book, do you? Hey guys—if you did, please tell me, how the heck does the story turn out?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T14:15:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone in the U.S.! And I hope all of you elsewhere in the world have a really nice day, too. :)

Our Thieving Sun

2010-11-23T20:23:00.001-05:00

According to NASA Science News, the sun has been stealing comets from other stars. Or rather, it did in its scofflaw youth, when it was part of a disintegrating star-forming nebula. This assertion is based on computer modeling of the Oort Cloud, the enormous cloud of comets that encircles the solar system at a distance of about a light-year. Mind you, the evidence of theft is based on measurements of a cloud that has never directly been observed, though there's plenty of evidence for its existence. Apparently the cloud (which has never been seen directly) has way more comets than can be accounted for by honest procurement. And so, the evidence for the misappropriation.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101108.html

Therefore, it's possible that this weird-looking Comet Hartley 2, photographed last week by NASA's robotic EPOXI spacecraft (no, it's not made of glue), is actually not from our own system originally, but rather from an alien sun. Is that cool or what?

Neptune Crossing Featured on The Frugal eReader!

2010-11-23T16:28:00.000-05:00

Neptune Crossing is featured on today's edition of The Frugal eReader on Facebook! (Wait—didn't I just say that?)

Anyway, take a look at Frugal. It looks like a great resource for finding low-cost ebooks!

Hyperbole and a Half

2010-11-23T02:52:00.000-05:00

I came across this blog called Hyperbole and a Half yesterday, and had to share it. No one who has ever owned or lived with a dog could fail to appreciate this: Dogs Don't Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving

If you like that one, try: This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult

Carver Gothic

2010-11-22T02:25:00.000-05:00

While going through some old photos recently, I came across this snapshot dated twelve years ago.

That's me and my family, standing proudly behind our wheat field. Yes, that's wheat you see, and that's the whole field. We still have the harvest in a jar, because we never got around to grinding the kernels to make the muffin we planned. Best laid plans, etc. When my Uncle John (a farmer) was still with us, we gave him a good laugh and a brain teaser by asking him to calculate how much wheat we needed to plant for a loaf of bread. I don't remember what the answer was, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't enough.

Those two poor waifs are now a senior in high school and a senior in college. And that's Allysen, my sturdy farmer wife.

White House Adviser Calls for Asteroid Defense

2010-11-17T01:44:00.000-05:00

In a rare outbreak of forward-thinking in the federal government, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has called for defensive planning against the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth. In letters to both the House and the Senate, the White House adviser has called for the development of plans for emergency response, and for coordination with other nations, in the event the need arises to deflect an incoming asteroid.

While hardly a new idea—science fiction, astronomy, and space technology types have been calling for this for years—what is new, I suspect, is the idea reaching the point of being taken seriously at the White House level.

(A tip of the hat to Mike Flynn, fellow member of Sigma SF, for pointing out this story.)

New Amazon Store for Backlist Ebooks Authors

2010-11-17T01:36:00.002-05:00

I was away a little longer than I expected. But I'm back.

More news on the growing effort by writers like me to adapt to the changing world of books and publishing. The fledgling group I joined not too long ago, Backlist Ebooks, has taken another step toward making it easier for you to buy low-cost ebook editions of its members' out-of-print books. The group is a loose collection of authors who have taken matters into their own hands regarding their previously published, out of print books—and are reissuing them through avenues such as Amazon Kindle's self-publishing shop and Smashwords. Those of you who buy ebooks for the Kindle platform might want to check out the Backlist Ebooks store, for links to authors in a variety of genres and their low-cost ebooks (mostly around $2.99 a book).

Phil Palmer, We'll Miss You

2010-11-03T01:39:00.002-04:00

My father-in-law Phillip Palmer died Sunday evening, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He was 87. Allysen was down there at the time, and had visited him in the nursing-care home just hours before he died. She's there with her mom now, and with her brother Andrew, who's just flown in.

Phil was a wonderful guy, a lover of travel and good food and wine, who in his working life was an electrical engineer in international sales. It was thanks to that work that he and his wife Fay settled in Puerto Rico, a place they loved in their bones. Phil had a hard last few years—especially this final one, with several heart-attack trips to the hospital, and a rapidly declining ability to get around or to do the things he loved to do (home renovation projects, mostly). It's not that many years ago that he masterminded the lovely deck that's now on the back of our house here in Boston. He loved building things, and especially loved changing things.

Phil in 2007

I'll write more later. For now I need to focus on helping Allysen from a distance, and on getting the rest of us ready to go down there to join her for the memorial.

Last Day for Halloween Special!

2010-10-31T00:22:00.003-04:00

Don't forget! Through October 31, you can get the first three Chaos books for 25% off at Smashwords, in multiple formats--complete with all new Afterwords on their writing. Just use these coupon codes:

Neptune Crossing: EQ52F

Strange Attractors: FU64M

The Infinite Sea: MN92V

For other participating authors and coupon codes, head over to http://www.facebook.com/BacklistEbooks and click on Sale at the top.

Texas Supreme Court Cites Mr. Spock

2010-10-31T00:13:00.001-04:00

In what surely must be a legal first, the Texas Supreme Court has cited an alien off-worlder in a recent judgment, a fictional alien at that. In Robinson v. Crown Cork and Seal, the Texas court cited Star Trek's Mr. Spock, from the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. You will recall that, in one of the finest scenes in the film, Mr. Spock dies heroically saving the Enterprise and her crew. Just before dying, he says to Kirk, "Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical..." And he reminds Kirk that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one."

In the following movie, The Search for Spock, Kirk turns this dictum on its head by telling Spock that the reason they came for him was because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.

SFWA quotes the Texas Court:

"Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan21), it is cabined by something contrarian and Texan: distrust of intrusive government and a belief that police power is justified only by urgency, not expediency."

Footnote 21 reads:
See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book’s opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock’s famous line from his moment of sacrifice: “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . .” to which Kirk replies, “the needs of the few.”

Some have pointed to earlier quotations for this thought, including Aristotle, and the Gospel of John 11:49-50 in the Bible (which quotes Caiaphas, the High Priest, expressing a similar thought). But really, I think Spock said it the most succinctly.

Exclusive New Afterwords for My Chaos Ebooks!

2010-10-26T02:29:00.003-04:00

I've just finished incorporating all-new Afterwords in the ebook versions of Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea. I set down some reflections on the Chaos series as a whole, what it was like to write those first three books, and some of the thought processes and creative impulses that went into shaping each of the stories.

The new Afterwords are exclusive to my new ebook editions, available in the Kindle store and from Smashwords, and slowly migrating into other ebookstores. (If you're a new visitor here, the original print versions of these books were from Tor Books; these new ebook releases are from my own Starstream Publications. That's just me, but I thought new editions ought to come from an imprint, not just some guy.)

These three books were free on my website for two years. There are still free editions out there—but the Afterwords are an extra value for folks who buy the books in the stores. (Just $2.99 each!)

Edit: The new Kindle versions are live now. If you bought the Kindle books before the Afterwords were added, contact me via my website, and I'll see that you get the updated versions. (Amazon apparently has no provision for redownloading updated editions of books.) I'm not sure how it works with editions from Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc. via the Smashwords distributions. If you have trouble, let me know.

Halloween Sale at Backlist Ebooks

2010-10-26T01:47:00.000-04:00

A bunch of authors, yours truly included, are offering books from their backlists for 25% off at Smashwords, as part of the October sale at Backlist Ebooks. To see the list of participating authors and get the coupon codes you'll need, head over to http://www.facebook.com/BacklistEbooks and click on Sale at the top. (Or, if you prefer not to go to Facebook, you can go to http://backlistebooks.com/.) Take a look! There's mystery, SF and fantasy, romance, and I don't know what all. The sale runs through Halloween.

The Infinite Sea at Kindle and Smashwords

2010-10-19T02:59:00.004-04:00

I've just released a new ebook edition of The Infinite Sea, the third book of The Chaos Chronicles, to the Amazon Kindle store—and to Smashwords (from which it will migrate to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobobooks, and the Apple store). With this release, all of the Chaos Chronicles are now available for instant download in the Kindle store. Come to think of it, with this release, all of my novels are available in the Kindle store. Most of them are available in other ebook stores as well. For a complete list, see: http://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm.

I've been fiddling with the covers to make them display better at thumbnail size. (I may revisit them later, but for the moment, I think I'm done fiddling.) Here's The Infinite Sea:

Halloween Special!
From now through October 31, you can get the first three Chaos books for 25% off at Smashwords, in your choice of formats. Just use these coupon codes:

Neptune Crossing: EQ52F

Strange Attractors: FU64M

The Infinite Sea: MN92V

Authors Together — Backlistebooks.com

2010-10-19T02:36:00.000-04:00

I recently joined a band of authors from a variety of genres to jointly promote our backlist books that we're putting back into circulation as ebooks. The group is called Backlist Ebooks, and it includes SF and fantasy writers (such as CJ Cherryh, Vonda McIntyre, and Doranna Durgin), mystery writers, romance writers, and others. Many of the authors are award-winners, and all the books being promoted were originally published by traditional publishing, but have since either gone out of print, or were otherwise unavailable as ebooks. This is a new effort, but the list is growing steadily as more writers hear about it. Check it out!

There's a web site: http://backlistebooks.com/ and a Facebook page, where you might pick up some interesting news from the authors. Starting Saturday, many of the group will be sponsoring a 25% off Halloween promotion on their Smashwords titles. That includes my three Chaos Chronicles books at Smashwords!

Star Trek Stars in Westerns / Rowling Interview

2010-10-06T18:21:00.000-04:00

Here are two fascinating collections of video clips. First, courtesy of SyFy/Blastr, we have gathered together short clips of Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, and James Doohan—all acting in grade-B westerns in the years prior to the original Star Trek. It's pretty mind...er, bending stuff.

http://blastr.com/2010/09/4-weird-western-roles-of.php

Also courtesy of Blastr, we have an up-close-and-personal Oprah interview with Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. It's pretty interesting. But don't be taken in by the sensationalistic headline (the sort of thing Blastr is inordinately fond of). Rowling says she could write several more Harry Potter books—what a surprise, eh?—but doesn't say she actually will. Still, good stuff. It comes in several parts.

http://blastr.com/2010/10/jk-rowling-writing-3-more.php

Human-Powered Ornithopter

2010-10-06T17:53:00.003-04:00

Flap those wings! On some airline flights, I've felt that it might be necessary to help by doing that. So does Pearls Before Swine:

But here's something real. A team of University of Toronto students kept a human-powered ornithopter (wing-flapping aircraft) aloft for a short flight after being towed up to takeoff speed by a car. Just a first step, but a beautiful first step!

http://www.youtube.com/user/OrnithopterProject

Cosmic Accidents

2010-10-06T17:31:00.002-04:00

New Scientist magazine recently ran a long article called Cosmic Accidents: 10 Lucky Breaks for Humanity. It's a timeline, starting with the Big Bang, of all the things that had to happen just so, for the universe to develop in a fashion that would allow us to be here.

(Image: NASA/ESA/ESO/Wolfram Freudling et al. (STECF))

It starts with getting the density of the universe just right, and the balance of matter and antimatter just right, and goes all the way up through the dinosaur-killing asteroid making room for us little mammals, and the conditions that may have led to the evolution of language. The whole thing is online here.

But wait—aren't there supposed to be "no accidents"? Hmm. If questions like that, in the context of issues like this, cause you to twitch one way or another, maybe you should read Beyond God and Atheism: Why I am a 'Possibilian' in the same issue of New Scientist. Alas, you must be a subscriber to read the whole article, but the title and opening paragraphs give you a pretty good idea of the content.

Strange Attractors on Smashwords

2010-09-24T14:37:00.004-04:00

Strange Attractors, the second volume of The Chaos Chronicles, went up for sale at $2.99 a few days ago. It and Neptune Crossing are migrating out from Smashwords to Sony, Apple, and other retailers. I haven't gotten it onto the Kindle store yet, but that's next. [Edit: It's now on sale in the Kindle store, as well.]

Strange Attractors at Smashwords / Kindle

The Short, Sweet Life of Pippa

2010-09-15T02:38:00.000-04:00

We buried a 5-month-old puppy yesterday. Her name was Pippa, and she weighed less than ten pounds. She came to us from Puerto Rico with Allysen, where she had been rescued and made briefly part of Allysen's parents' household. She was adorable and sweet and alert, probably part border collie but tiny. We decided that she was of the breed Foxbat, or Borinquen terrier, and she captured all of our hearts. She made friends with Hermione, our boxer, who doesn't always like other dogs. Moonlight the cat was a slow adopter, but I was sure it was just a matter of time before they bonded, too.

Pippa never got that time. She was here for just four days before she started having seizures during the night. The seizures subsided for a short time after we started her on some meds from the vet, but soon they returned—frequent and severe. Monday night, late, we took her to the Mass Vet Referral Animal Hospital, where we got the grim news that the outlook was poor without major medical intervention, way beyond anything we could undertake—and even with the intervention, there would be a lot of uncertainties. And so we made the heartbreaking decision to let her go peacefully, which she did while we held her in our laps. We brought her body home, and the next day laid her to rest in the back yard. With her we put the ashes of Sam the beagle and Mattie our first boxer—ashes we'd kept on a shelf for years because we couldn’t bear to do anything about them at the time. It comforted us, thinking that Pippa was in good company.

Here's Pippa, as I imagine her right now on the Rainbow Bridge.

On to Smashwords

2010-09-11T17:05:00.000-04:00

Neptune Crossing is now available on Smashwords, from which it will go out to the Sony ebookstore, Barnes & Noble, the Apple store, and others. $2.99, in a variety of formats.

I've tweaked the cover a little, because the red type just didn't display well on the store pages. (Scroll down a couple of posts to see the original.) Wondering a little if I should hire a professional to make it look better—a couple of people have told me they didn't care for it very much—but I'm not sure. What do you think?

Neptune Crossing -- Smashwords edition

Bidness Model, Shmidness Model

2010-09-07T16:23:00.004-04:00

The arrival of Neptune Crossing in the Kindle store is part of a grand experiment, begun with my free downloads and continuing into the indefinite future. The business model of how to make a living as a writer has been shifting on a daily basis, it seems. Just selling to a publisher and waiting (and waiting) for the check doesn't work anymore for most of us. (It never worked that well to begin with. Most of us have always had to do other work to pay the rent, whether by teaching, speaking, doing another kind of writing, or serving venti lattes.) But self-promotion, networking, blogging, ebooks, self-publishing—and on and on—have become increasingly important jags and peaks on the tectonic upheaval that we call "the writing life."

Back in the good old days, when men were real men, and little furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were—no, wait, that's Douglas Adams's line. Back in the day, though, we used to be able to tell aspiring writers that self-publishing was for niche-marketers and losers, with the occasional "exception that proved the rule." (Did that expression ever make sense?) That's no longer so obviously true. Publishers Weekly has begun paying attention to self-published books, and if that isn't a sign of the times, I don't know what is. One thing that has become obviously true is that more than a few established writers are going to their backlists and getting their out-of-print books back into circulation on their own through places like Amazon and Smashwords, or through newer companies that exist for this very purpose.

Here are some examples:

Thriller writer J.A. Konrath, whose high-profile blog has described his success in self-publishing his early and o.p. novels, and now new work as well
Bookview Café, a consortium of SF and fantasy writers, including Vonda McIntyre and Ursula K. LeGuin, marketing their own previously published books and stories
Closed Circle, a collaborative run by CJ Cherryh, Lynn Abbey, and Jane Fancher to sell their o.p. SF and fantasy novels
Diane Duane, self-publishing some of her own o.p. fantasy novels and marketing directly from her website

Count me in. Trying, in my own way to pick a path through this chaos, I've now managed to get all my novels, past and present, into ebook format—and some into print-on-demand trade paperback. But which path to take? I've taken the broadband approach. As of now, I have ebooks available through the following channels:

Three ebooks from traditional publishers, with traditional royalties — priced at $6.99 - $9.99
Nine ebooks from E-reads, at a higher royalty (50% of net) — priced at $9.99, but discounted in some stores
Three ebooks released already or soon directly to Kindle (and eventually to other stores), at a 70% royalty — priced at $2.99
One ebook free for the download on my website — not available for sale, but with Paypal donations encouraged
Five of the books on sale are also available for free download in limited (2) or full (3) selection of ebook formats, Paypal donations encouraged

I haven't made up my mind what to do about the free downloads. There's no question they've increased my readership. There's some question about whether they're helping or hurting sales of the books that are for sale. The next six to twelve months, I hope, will be telling. What they tell, I'll post here. (Not exact sales figures, probably, but trends.)

Wish me luck. And tell your friends!

Neptune Crossing Goes Kindle

2010-09-07T14:15:00.006-04:00

Now—for the first time in human history!—you can download my novel Neptune Crossing direct to your Kindle, and start reading in seconds, from anywhere in the solar system that you can get Whispernet! All for a mere $2.99, DRM-free.

This won't seem earthshaking to those who have downloaded the book for free from my website. But for the Kindle shoppers who, until now, could browse their way wirelessly to my Kindle page and find Sunborn, but not the first three books of The Chaos Chronicles, I hope it'll make a difference. Strange Attractors and The Infinite Sea will follow. As will uploads to other stores.

Here's the new cover, designed by yours truly, with the help of Chaoscope. Hope you like it. [Edit: I've changed the type color. I liked the red, but it just didn't show up clearly enough online. Here's the old and the new.]

Buy at Kindle store