Little-Known Facts about Another Shot

As you've probably noticed, Another Shot is a little longer than Outsider. That's partially because Another Shot started out as two novels. As you're reading it, see if you can tell where the original break was.

The first of the two novels wasn't bad, but the second one was too short and I didn't want to do some major padding, so that meant only one thing: major cutting. I must have cut almost 100 pages from them, which wasn't easy, believe me! It's seriously hard to cut a scene you love with your whole heart. I had a conversation between Booth and Hawkins that I still miss, but it just didn't work—so out it went.

I found the name of the series totally by accident. I was flipping through a dictionary when I stumbled upon a line drawing of the sun, Earth and the moon. There were intersecting lines drawn between the edges of the sun and Earth, and on the far side of Earth there were three shadows: one dark triangle in the middle with two lighter gray triangles on either side. These lighter triangles were labeled the penumbra, the area between the darkest shadow and the light. The area between the dark and the light!! That perfectly sums up one of the big images of my novels, where Lamont is trying to guide his crew closer to the light and farther from the darkness that threatens to engulf them. I still can't believe how lucky I was to discover that just by turning some pages of a rather large book.

I've partially recreated the image below, with color and without the moon. During a lunar eclipse, the moon would orbit around Earth and pass through the first penumbra, then the umbra, then the second penumbra before emerging into the light.

A version of this drawing is what I used to create my Penumbra Series logo, which you can see on my Facebook page. It will probably pop up in other places, too.

Unfortunately, I've discovered there's a Penumbra Series horror adventure game that gives you some pretty scary images if you Google "Penumbra," so beware of that. I am in no way associated with that game, just to be clear, and I named my novel series before I knew about it.

Please spread the word about Outsider and Another Shot. There's a button at the bottom of the page that should let you Like or Share this blog if you're on Facebook. Otherwise, word of mouth is very good, too!  Thanks for your support.