Author: Pat Chiles

An expatriate Southerner in the Midwest, writing about writing and whatever dadgum else interests him. Author of the science fiction thrillers FROZEN ORBIT, FRONTIER, and ESCAPE ORBIT, published by Baen Books.
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One Giant Leap

Apollo 11 Launch. Credit: NASA

Despite (or perhaps because of) today’s dreary headlines, I’d be neglecting my space-nerd cred if I didn’t point out that today is the 43rd anniversary of the first moon landing.

I was five, and completely obsessed with the whole program. My grandpa loaded me up with Apollo toys from the Gulf station, including some nifty stuff that came inside Tang jars (the official OJ of the space program). The coolest was this little plastic disc that you’d pop out of the lid and bake in the oven. It came out as a perfectly realized Apollo Command Module.

Yeah, I had a couple dozen of them. Plus models. Plus GI Joe astronauts. Plus books. So it was pretty much a no-brainer for my parents to let me stay up well past bedtime to watch the first moonwalk on TV. And I wasn’t the least bit fooled when my Mom called in from the front porch that she could see them up there on the Moon (unlike my little sister, who fell for it).

She couldn’t fool me. I had a telescope, and therefore knew better. Didn’t stop me from trying later on, though…

Our youngest has always had a fascination with the moon. Not sure why – who can explain such things? But I totally get it. When he was younger, he’d ask me if he could go to the moon when he grows up. I told him I certainly hope so. He said “I’m going to go to that moon, and smoke a cigarette when I get there”.

It’s beyond disappointing that we stopped going and have been mired in low Earth orbit ever since. I don’t want this to just be another vague story my kids hear about from their old man – I want them to see it happen again. I want them to have the chance to go – and to go even farther.

Thankfully, that may be even more likely now than it was just ten years ago. Here’s hoping my son has the chance to light up a cig on the moon one day.

But afterwards, he’d #$%@! well better never touch one of those cancer sticks again.

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Not Again

So now you can’t even go to the movies without fear of some psychopath shooting up the place. I can’t begin to imagine the horror, or what the families are going through right now. One of the victims was a six-year-old.

Regardless of the wisdom of taking a young kid to a midnight movie, many wise fathers have told their sons, “nothing good happens after midnight”. There is so much to grieve and/or get pissed off over that it’s hard to know where to start. So let’s just start ticking ’em off as they bubble up through the old frontal lobes…

Like too many businesses, the theater had a strict “no weapons” policy. Which, in this case, worked out entirely as expected assuming one tries to understand the criminal mind. To wit: if someone enters a public place with the intent of doing mass murder, do you really think a sissy little “no weapons” sign is going to stop him? If this doesn’t illustrate the absurdity of such thinking, I don’t know what will.

But then again, who am I kidding? The usual hand-wringing pantywaists are already jumping on the gun control bandwagon. I’m looking at you, Piers Morgan. Please explain how the UK’s draconian anti-gun laws have demonstrably affected violent crime in your home country. Hint: it hasn’t been for the better. Unless you’re a bad guy, that is.

When or how does this “dangerous spiral” stop? When we get over our collective cultural fear of self-defense, that’s when.

Last year I did a couple months’ worth of Krav Maga training, which is an Israeli army martial-art form that looks an awful lot like MMA. Some of the things we learned were how to fight your way out of a flash mob, and how to disable an armed assailant. Neither are situations I’d want to find myself in.

But you know what that showed me? That the best defense against a gun is another gun. It’s an ugly fact, but so is mass murder.

Lest you think I’m just another knuckle-dragging 2nd Amendment nut, here’s an illustration of that principle in action from earlier this week. And while clearly justified, it’s also a cautionary tale of the responsibility gun carriers have to be alert and to control their adrenaline in any way possible.

Finally, we can always count on the one-party media to fall all over themselves as they attempt to link another mass shooting to the Tea Party. Because, you know, there can’t be that many people named “James Holmes” living in the Denver area – right?

Whoops. Looks like they pulled another Loughner boner. Sarah Palin, call your office…

So I guess we are to believe the vaunted ABC News operation was tripped up by “social media”? More like they threw away any sense of restraint in favor of taking the opportunity to smear conservatives. Again. It’s like they’re just waiting for the chance or something. What’s even worse is knowing that’s how they really look at us; that it’s inconceivable anyone could fundamentally disagree with their worldview and not be crazy.

What’s crazy is when they keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result. That kind of sloppy, agenda-driven “reporting” has blown up in their faces every single time – so why they expected this to go any better is beyond me.

Which brings us to the not-yet-final punchline to this horrible event: the suspect may even be a registered Democrat.

Not that it matters, no more so than the Occupiers who tried to blow up that bridge in Cleveland. Right?

But I’m just a blogger. Don’t take my word for it.

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Live on Kobo

It wasn’t quite “pushing the easy button”, but it was mostly painless: Perigee is now for sale on Kobo.

I couldn’t get it to accept my ISBN numbers for some reason, and there’s no obvious way to link to reviews from Goodreads and other sites. More to follow as I figure it out…

UPDATE: Always helps to dig a little deeper in the user’s guide (duh). Finally got it to accept the ISBN, which will eventually link itself to Goodreads.

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Kobo Publishing: How Much Longer?

Some tantalizing details about Kobo’s self-publishing platform have hit recently, and it looks like they’re prepping their website for launch.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting this since hearing about it several weeks ago. It was supposed to be a done deal by now, but they’ve been sitting on it a bit longer to collect more info from their beta-testers.

Which is all well and good, but come on ya’ll…get on with it already!

If you’ve not heard of Kobo, think “Canadian Kindle” and you’re there. It’s also (I think) the most popular e-reader in Europe. So yeah, I’m anxious for this to get going so I can stop struggling with Smashwords’ “meatgrinder” conversion (a more appropriate label would be hard to find) and expand my audience. It’s never fun having to pick through every single line of a 400-page Word document, and is downright teeth-grinding when you’ve already got the $%#@! book in epub format.

Yep, it’s just sitting there on my hard drive. Oh, and on Barnes & Noble’s as well…

So hold on, Canadian and EU readers: one way or another, some bang-up stuff is coming downrange any time now!

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Just got the email from Kobo and they’re live. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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What’s Old Is New Again

In the closing notes of Perigee, I mentioned that one of the biggest reasons spaceflight has been so stupendously expensive is the problem of reusability. A big rocket is every bit as expensive and complex as a new airliner, but it all gets thrown away after one flight.

Think you could afford a weekend jaunt to Vegas if Southwest ditched their 737s at the end of every trip? For that matter, could they even afford to do business like that?

The answer, obviously, is a big fat NO.

There are other things at work, namely a bureaucratic legacy that has made it overly complicated to build any launchers for NASA (especially “human rated” ones). Their own internal studies admitted that if SpaceX had developed the Falcon launcher family along the traditional guvmint model, it would’ve increased costs by a factor of 10 or so.

The Air Force’s “evolved expendable launch vehicle” (EELV) program didn’t bring those costs down very much. But they did result in some way-cool rockets than can be used for lots of stuff besides milsats. Here’s a Delta IV-Heavy, which will take NASA’s Orion capsule on its first unmanned test flight next year:

Delta IV Heavy NROL-15

Impressive. But now, check out this much smaller rocket – size doesn’t matter here, look at what it does:

Masten Xaero

Now for something that combines really big rockets with vertical landing, like something from a 50’s sci-fi movie. Given SpaceX’s success record, I have no doubt they’ll be able to make it happen:

SpaceX Reusable Falcon 9

Buckle up!

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Free at Last

My exclusivity agreement with Amazon for Perigee ends today, so it’s now available for Nook readers through Barnes & Noble’s website.

Kindle Select was a great deal when it started, but it’s been time to move on for a while. Free promos were a good way to build readership, especially when they counted against your total sales. It was easy (maybe too easy) to hit the jackpot lever and watch my title end up in the top 10 for its genre.

Both sales and loans to Amazon Prime members (which are still paid for) have slowed to a crawl. That’s as good a signal as any that it’s time to expand the market. So if you know anyone with a Nook, do me a solid and recommend it.

And if you have a Nook – well, what are you waiting for???

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What I Did On Summer Vacation

Took on a construction job for no pay, that’s what. Behold:

The commanding perch of stately Chiles Manor.

Had to burn up some vaca before the end of the month, and we needed to replace the P.O.S 4×4 back porch that came with our house, so there you have it.

An aside: in what universe does it make sense to sell someone a $200K-plus home and slap a $50 porch off the back door? The dang thing was so ridiculously easy to tear down that I have a hard time believing it met any interpretation of local building codes.

Some other hard (ie: expensive) lessons from buying a new-build home:

– Even the so-called “upgrade” appliances suck @$$. Go to Lowes and buy them separately. No sense putting stuff that might last 10 years into a mortgage that lasts for 30.

– Ditto carpeting. And the “standard” carpets are apparently made of recycled dog blankets. Again: DIY w/ Lowes or Homie Depot.

– The interior paint jobs barely qualify as primer. Painting sucks, but not as much when there’s no furniture in the house, so do this yourself too.

End of lesson. So, on with the story…

I’m not much of a handyman. Especially when it comes to electrical or plumbing work – my stance has always been that if it can flood the house or burn it down, it’s worth paying a professional to handle.

But carpentry? Hey, what can go wrong with that?

Lots, actually. But this project mostly went by without trouble and only went over budget because we wanted nicer spindles and I bought the railings pre-assembled just to save time. Building in 100º weather forces those kinds of decisions.

But since this is a post about writing, perhaps I should meander back to the topic…

It was good to spend a week working with my hands, despite the heat. That kind of work clears the head in ways not too many other endeavors can. It forced me to focus on the task at hand, with attention to detail in every phase with a judicious amount of problem-solving along the way.

For nearly a week, I’ve not really given any thoughts to writing or marketing. That’s been a good thing. I’m dead-tired, sore from head to toe, and have a farmer’s tan that will probably be semi-permanent. But my mind is uncluttered and ready to get back to work.

Time to write.

 

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