Delay

Unfortunately, things seem to be on hold for the sequel right now, although I'm expecting that to change soon. I'm waiting to get some information from another source before I can proceed much further.

However, I'm hoping that next weekend I'll have more of the pieces and I can open up a new title in CreateSpace. I think that's the first step to really believing the project will happen. I thought it would be this weekend, but it didn't work out. That's okay, I'm not on a strict schedule ... but I can feel myself getting a little antsy. The internal pressure is starting to build as I gear up for the big push to get published.

I'm sorry I don't have more to report this time, but I'll try to have more next weekend.  Have a great week!

Space Tourism

Sigh. I just found out why I won't be going to space just yet: Virgin Galactic is charging $250,000 for a future ride on one of their spaceships. Unless I sell a whole lot of books, I guess I won't be going that route anytime soon. (If you're interested, here's where you can book your flight: http://www.virgingalactic.com/booking/)

That's okay, I hadn't really counted on that type of spaceflight yet ... although, given the chance, I'd take it! If you know anyone who wants to give away their ride on a parabolic flight, let me know and I'll step right up to accept it.

For now, though, I'll be content to use that old standby, my imagination. That's certainly better than nothing. It created five novels, after all!

I've finished the corrections to Another Shot. Now I'm double-checking the format and waiting to hear from the artist (about the cover image and the "About the Artist" text at the end of the book). I'll keep you updated on how that's going.

Remember to spread the word! Wouldn't you love to read my blog about a trip into space??

Bonus Post!

I just saw this video today and thought: Wow!

I wanted to share it because I think it's exciting what SpaceX has accomplished. Here's the information that went with the video:

Published on Oct 12, 2013

On Monday, October 7th, Grasshopper completed its highest leap to date, rising to 744m altitude. The view above is taken from a single camera hexacopter, getting closer to the stage than in any previous flight.

Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up on atmosphere reentry, SpaceX rockets are being designed not only to withstand reentry, but also to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing. The Grasshopper VTVL vehicle represents a critical step towards this goal.

Grasshopper consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.

(FYI: 744 meters is almost half a mile.)
That's right: the rocket goes up and then it comes down, but not in the usual manner. This kind of stuff always makes me giddy. I can't wait to see what's next!

Making Corrections

The proofreading is done! At last.

Now I'm making corrections to my file, based on the proofreading I did. However, it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Since my file is already formatted the way I want, I can change the whole look of it simply by adding or removing a single word. This can be a problem if it means a paragraph is broken awkwardly or the page count changes. I've had several instances where I changed one word and then had to go change several other sentences just to make things line up again. Oddly enough, the forced changes occasionally made the phrasing better than the original! It's funny how that works.

For example, I had a sentence that read this way: "Your altitude is good," Hawkins said, his eyes glued to the controls.
I never liked that part about "eyes glued to the controls" because it's a cliché and why is he looking at the controls anyway?
I changed the sentence to read this way: "Your altitude is good," Hawkins, said, keeping his eyes on the instruments.
Doesn't that seem better? That also meant that a two-line sentence farther down appeared on the same page, rather than being broken up between two pages.
Little adjustments like that are what make this a slow process, but it will make the finished product much better. (It makes me cringe to think of my novel as a "product," but that's ultimately what it will be.)

Once I get the corrections made to the file, I'm going to double-check all aspects of the formatting. While I'm doing that, I'm going to create a notebook of the various format settings so I'll be ready when it comes time to format the third novel. (Yes, there will be a third!) That should save me some time in the future.

So I'm making progress. Remember to tell all your friends about Outsider so they can get it read before the sequel is published!

Closet Spaceship Part 2

      Let me tell you a little about my travels into the future. As I mentioned in my first Closet Spaceship post, this was thanks to my trusty ship Macintosh SE, which carried me unimaginable distances in very little time. I can’t explain how it could do that, but I suspect others could find the same capabilities in their own computers, laptops or notepads.

Anyway, the first time we tried anything long-distance, I found myself on a spaceship that was transporting prisoners. One of the quirks of travel with Mac is that sometimes I’m invisible to the characters (so I can watch the action without influencing it in any way) and other times I’m visible to them (so I can interact with them). The majority of my earliest trips were unobserved. I guess that made it easier for the people there, who already had more than enough to keep them occupied.

Take Sean Foster, for example. Here’s a twenty-four-year-old who’s been sentenced to twenty years in prison and has to spend it on a planet outside our galaxy, where he’s pretty sure he’ll be forgotten by everyone on Earth. It’s a bleak future, so he didn’t really need me popping into the picture and trying to explain how I got there. Instead, I was able to observe his third day of captivity aboard the prison spaceship, which turned out to be quite different than he expected. He certainly didn’t think the spaceship would be attacked and he’d end up floating in space as the only survivor. He also didn’t think he’d meet a crew as interesting as the one under Captain Lamont’s command aboard the ship Outsider.

But that’s where he found himself—and so did I.

I only had to spend a few hours there to realize that this was a place I’d want to revisit. Mac accommodated me and we spent many hours aboard Outsider and on the surfaces of other planets as the years went by.

 

     In my next CS post, I’ll tell you a little about what happened when I first appeared aboard Outsider—that is, when the crew first laid eyes on me.