I wanted to let you know that Mercenary Calling is on one of Amazon’s Kindle Countdowns today in the US and the UK until tomorrow morning. Check it out if you want to pick it up for 99 cents or pence! Sample: Calvin Tondini had to squint against the glare to see the motorcade of…
Dad’s Chiang Mai Memoir
My father has asked me to beta read his memoirs of our time in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We spent a little over three very happy years there. We lived inside a giant, walled consular compound because my father was the Consoon American, the American Consul. Bouginvillea crawled over the latticework of the carport…
NaNo Advice: Morning Words, Lunch Words, and the Rest
The weather is turning cold. The leaves are falling. Around here, we went from the 80’s and humid to the 50’s and arctic overnight, so the leaves aren’t turning. Nonetheless, my mind lightly turns to thoughts of NaNo, in which one writes a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I have advice for…
Holes, Missing Sidebars, and Plasma Jets
I’ve wasted hours this weekend trying to restore the side bar to this blog and my space law site at groundbasedspacematters.com. The sidebar doesn’t show on my home pages. It shows on the other pages, but not on the first one. My google-fu is failing me, and when I get This Close to installing…
The Great Equalizer
Working on my new batch of Nwwwlf stories, I’ve been feeling super sorry for the women. The Martha’s Sons stories are set in the first century after landing on Nwwwlf, right smack dab in the middle of the whole sorry process of de-industrialiazation. The world still contains tantalizing glimpses of what humanity once had–a motorbike…
Capclave: After Action Report
I enjoyed Capclave. It’s a science-fiction convention in Maryland put on by the Washington Science Fiction Association. I did a talk on space law that had a good number of people turn up. Someone who used to work at NASA as an engineer was in the audience, and everyone else seemed keen on the topic….
I was wrong
I was not wrong that titles are difficult. I was wrong about what poem could help me out with the tale of the pan, Peter Dawe. Then I was wrong again. In my teens, when I held to the deep conviction that Francis Crawford of Lymond from Dorothy Dunnett’s Game of Kings was the most…
Titles are hard
I was clever this time. When I published Like a Continental Soldier, the final book in the Waking Late trilogy, I was already writing my next book. Having a new project in motion helps prevent that giant feeling of let-down that comes with the end of any large project. In fact, my next novel is…
Able to Give it Away–Thank you!
I wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent Sleeping Duty to #1 in the categories Space Marines, Colonization, and Space Opera (free books) for these five days. It’s been really exciting to watch it climb. There’s a lot of discussion in the author community about whether it’s worth it to discount a whole…
Just Released: Like a Continental Soldier
The final book in the Waking Late trilogy, Like a Continental Soldier, is now published. I do love saying that. The little glitches with the Amazon pages are worked out, and it shows it’s part of a series. It’s even available this week at the low, introductory price of 99 cents. Get it now! And,…