Our Adventures at Syfy Bartow

We knew getting to Bartow would be tiring. Neither of us have been at our best the last few weeks, so we started the weekend tired and a little overwhelmed. For one thing, we were both still working on ‘Bartow Projects’ right up until we started packing the car. Scratch that, my hubby was still working on projects even as we started packing the car on Thursday.

One of our neighbors saw us trying to get a folding table and a gazebo in the car and came over to see if he could help. Those were the big, awkward things we were trying to pack first. Most everything else was smaller and lighter, and we could manage them. But it’s nice to know we have nice neighbors.

We got most things in the car on Thursday, and decided we had room to take a fellow Klingon who otherwise did not have a way to get to Bartow. He showed up on Friday about 11am and helped get the rest of the stuff in the car. Then we got on the road about 2:18 pm.

I’m a little bit of a nervous driver these days, especially when I’m driving roads I don’t really know well, so it was tough for me to keep my speed up near the speed limit. It should have taken us an hour to get to our hotel in Bartow, but it actually took 1.5 hours. We found our stuff we would need for the night and settled into our room. About 7, we walked over to Mike’s Grill for supper.

We got up about 7 on Saturday, and went to Mike’s Grill for breakfast, because we knew it was going to be a long and hard day. People who come to the street festival can go home when they get tired, but vendors have to unload their vehicle, pitch their gazebo, set up their table and get their wares displayed by 11AM, when the festival starts. Then they are expected to man their table until 6PM, when the festival ends, when they tear down their display, strike their tents, retrieve their vehicle and pack everything up.

We had to do this twice, once for MoonPhaze and once for the Klingons. Happily, my booth space was right next to some friends, so I had help setting up the gazebo and taking it down. And there were many Klingons there for this event, so it looked like a mild case of bedlam when I dropped off my two Klingons and all the Klingon stuff we had brought, but I knew they would soon have things up and running.

I assume the Klingons had fun. I had a great day for MoonPhaze. I had 50% more book sales than I did at the previous best event, which was a 3-day sf convention. I was very happy.

About 3:30, the organizers told us that rain was expected in about an hour, so if we wanted to tear down and bug out, that was acceptable. Around 4, it started misting, and people started packing things away. By 4:30, it was raining, and the organizers called an end to the event. By then, most of the visitors had left. I packed all my stuff up and stored it temporarily under a store’s overhang while I walked over to the Klingon area to get my car and load up the Klingon stuff. Then we went back to my booth area, where our passenger repacked the car to get everything in, and we helped our friends in the next booth take down gazebos and load their van.

We were all cold, wet and worn out when we got in our car and headed back to the hotel. We got there about 7 and stopped at Mike’s Grill for supper, which included some wonderful beef noodle soup.

Tired as we were, we count this event as a success!

Something Different

 And now we interrupt this series of blogs to bring you a commercial break.

I've often wondered what other writers talk about in their blogs, without it seeming like they are constantly pitching their wares. I solved that dilemma for myself by talking about the various research I've done, whether or not that research had anything to do with what novel I am currently writing or editing. I hope my efforts amuse my readers.

But I am an author, and a publisher, and so once in a while, I need to inform the world what I have been doing. Buckle up, this is a speedy re-hash of the past 6-8 months.

De-Evolution by John Lars Shoberg was published (MoonPhaze LLC) in November of 2020. It is a science fiction novel about humans who colonize a planet and cannibalize their ship to help build their colony. Then they find out that what they had thought was an example of native fauna was actually an intelligent species, although their culture had devolved in the past 100 years to that of cavemen. Will the humans be similarly effected? —It is available on Smashwords.com, Amazon, MoonPhaze.com, and possibly at your local book seller. It has been met with some success. You can find a review of it on https://jimsscifi.blogspot.com/, entry dated Saturday, June 19th, 2021.

The Stone Ship (The Stone Builders #2) by John Lars Shoberg was published in May of 2021. Although it is a sequel to The Stone Builders (Available from MoonPhaze.com), it stands on its own pretty well. It is a science fiction adventure. —The military found a large chunk of a spaceship made of stone while exploring a new star system. They assemble a group of scientists to study the artifact, and leave them there to their studies while the military ship goes off to finish exploring the system. Then an unknown ship is noticed approaching the scientists. Is it the Stone Builders, looking for their ship? Or even worse, the unknown species that managed to destroy a ship made of stone? —It is available on Smashwords.com, Amazon, MoonPhaze.com, and possibly at your local book seller. It has had the same amount of success as De-Evolution, in a shorter amount of time, although we haven't found any reviews of it at this time.

Meanwhile, I have written 2 romance novels and a short story. And I'm deep in the middle of getting them published.

Hank's Widow (Small Town Happiness #1) by Linda (NMI) Joy, my pen name for romances, will be published July 20, 2021, if I don't run into too many snags. I've already had a few, but right now I'm waiting for the cover to be finished before turning it over to the printer. —After her husband is killed in a winter traffic accident, Wanda finds in his papers a deed for a house in the middle of Nebraska. Unable to afford their Chicago apartment on her own, she decides to move to that house. In her husband's extended family, she finds 3 cousins who all look remarkably like him. Will she ever finish grieving when her husband's face is around every corner? —It is currently available for pre-order from Smashwords.com and MoonPhaze.com. I expect to get it uploaded to Amazon in the next few days, ready for that July 20th publication date.

"The Game" (Small Town Happiness #0.5) by Linda (NMI) Joy, will also be published July 20, 2021. It is a short prequel for Hank's Widow and my other romance, which is currently being edited. "The Game" is a short story happening about 6 years before Hank's Widow, which shows how the Four Cousins' close relationship fell apart. Because it is so short, (24 pages), it will only be in ebook formats, and will be bundled with Hank's Widow at no additional charge.

Waiting for Glori (Small Town Happiness #2) by Linda (NMI) Joy is hoping to be published in January 2022. I am currently doing a 2nd edit/rewrite, and I typically do 3 or 4 edits. —Gloria has finally escaped from her husband's abuse and neglect. Now she needs to figure out how to stand on her own, for her son's sake. Progress takes time, but she doesn't stop to wonder if her independence will allow her to find love.

And I have an artist working on the cover for And the Meek Shall Inherit, another science fiction novel by John Lars Shoberg. I need to go through it for one last edit, looking for pesky grammar mistakes that have managed to slip my attention before this. We are anticipating a November publication date.

AND I made a goal of publishing 4 books during 2021, so I need to find another... Perhaps one of ours that is no longer in print. There's 3 or 4 to choose from.

Wow. I tired myself out just going through the list and remembering all the stuff I still need to do. And on the other hand, I'm a little amazed at all I've accomplished. I'd like to remind all my readers, that if you've read a book—whether a MoonPhaze book or not—please help the author out by posting a blog. Goodreads is a good place to do it, if you belong, or maybe on your own blog.

Good reading!

Closing 2019

As 2019 draws to a close, I’ve been looking back over my daily journals to see what I’ve been doing. Let me explain that a little. I have my daily ‘To Do’ list, where I list all the things I’d like to work on that day. And things I don’t really want to do, but need to, like take my pills and brush my teeth. Fact is, if it isn’t on my list, I probably won’t remember to do it.

At the end of the day, I transfer everything I’ve crossed off to my journal and add some comments. Depending on my mood, those comments might be brief (‘I got some stuff done today’), or they could be long and rambling, touching on all sorts of things that happened during the day and how I feel about them. It’s just a method of proving to myself what I’ve done, a way of reflecting on what I’ve accomplished and how I feel about things.

In looking back over the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing, writing, re-writing, editing and writing. Oh, yes, and writing.

What does that mean? I’ve been working on a lot of different writing projects. I write 2 blogs and try to post those weekly. Now, that usually means research for one of them, writing and re-writing for both of them, before I can post them. About an hour a day for each blog serves the purpose for that. Maybe a little less.

I’m also trying to write some shorts in order to produce an anthology of Atlan shorts in 2020. I keep running into walls where I’m not sure exactly how the next section of the scene goes, but I give myself an hour a day to work on that. Sometimes that only produces 500 words, others I’ll get 1000 words done. I haven’t gotten to the re-writing stage on that, because I have 3 or 4 more shorts to rough draft to get the number of words I need for a book.

I’m editing John’s next book for a spring release. This is a 2nd edit, so it goes faster, since I’m mostly looking for grammar and punctuation. Hopefully, I found all the places that didn’t quite make sense in the first edit, and John fixed them. On the other hand, I’ve read this book before (during the first edit), and I tend now to start losing my focus after a time, so I only work on it an hour a day.

I’m also writing a novel (a romance). This is a straight rough draft at this point, and I usually give it an hour a day, more or less. If I don’t feel like working on that one, I have 2 other novels (a near-future sf and a paranormal detective) that I can move over and work on for a day or two.

That’s a lot of writing projects. Could I get more done if I concentrated on one? I don’t know. I seem to be able to focus for an hour or slightly more at a time, and then I’m ready to move on to the next project. By splitting up my day in such small chunks, it looks like I’ve accomplished a lot, because I can say I’ve worked on a bunch of projects. And I have ‘naturally occurring’ breaks when I can get up and do other things, like let the dog out or throw supper in the crock pot or even go outside and work on the yard. Except for letting the dog out, those things are on my to do list and can be crossed off.

I don’t know if any other writers work on so many projects at the same time. Yes, it takes time to get anything ‘done’ done. It will be a month or three before I get the romance rough draft done. It could be another week before I get this short rough draft done and can start on the next. But in a year or two, I hope to be churning out books regularly.

Wish me luck! And perseverance.

Gone Fishing on Ganymede

In the past, fishing was a skill used to provide food for the table. Whether or not ancient man enjoyed the process, they needed to be good at it – or at hunting – in order to thrive. Today, fishing on a personal level has become a pleasurable activity for some. They don’t need to do it to put fish on the dinner table, but they find the experience rewarding. Some go so far as to try for ‘a big fish’ out in the middle of the ocean.

What do you suppose will happen when humans find their way to other planets?

Water has been found on our moon, Mars, Ceres, even Pluto, as well as various other places. On Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, salty water is hidden under a thick (about 95 miles) crust of ice. There is probably more water on Ganymede than all of the Earth’s surface water combined. Scientists believe that ocean is 60 miles deep, about 10 times the deepest part of any Earth ocean.

I can envision future tours being organized to take die-hard fishers to Ganymede to drill a big hole in the exterior ice to facilitate fishing. I doubt if they’ll dangle a 100-mile-long fishing line into that hole – think how long it would take to reel it back in! So maybe their spacesuit for leaving the space boat would also be a diving suit, and they would ‘hunt’ for ‘fish’ with a spear gun.

Hmm. There’s problems with that vision, according to some of what I read. The Ganymede’s ocean is not only covered with ice, it also rests on ice, pressurized into a crystalized form. On other moons, the ocean bed is rock, which apparently keeps the water warmer, and provides various minerals as it is eroded by the salty ocean. The theory is that those warmer, rock-bedded oceans are far more likely to produce some kind of ‘life.’

Still, we keep getting surprised, the more we look around our neighborhood, don’t we? And science fiction writers like to take the science we know now and extrapolate possibilities we don’t – yet - have any proof for.

So, how about this? There’s a lot of different salts, besides table salt, which could be helping Ganymede’s ocean remain liquid. Nobody definitively stated the only salt in Ganymede’s ocean was NaCl (table salt), so these other salts could provide minerals for building ‘life’. I’m not sure the temperature of the ocean is that big a deal, but the salty ocean of Ganymede reacts to the magnetic field of Jupiter, and I’m thinking that reaction might produce some heat, although probably not much.

Sounds good to me. So good, I anticipate someone will make some money someday, selling signs that say, “Gone Fishing on Ganymede.”

http://www.space.com/28807-jupiter-moon-ganymede-salty-ocean.html

http://earthsky.org/space/underground-ocean-on-jupiters-largest-moon

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/03121716-ganymede-ocean.html

World Con 2016

Today was the first day of World (SF) Con 2016. The World con moves around from year to year. This year, it’s being held in Kansas City and is called MidAmeriCon 2. (Kansas City held its first World Con – MidAmeriCon – back in the ‘70s.)

The cheapest time to buy a membership is right after the vote that determines where the World con will be held TWO years from now. The votes happen at World con, so the members of this year’s convention get to decide what city will host the convention in 2 years. Of course, their choices are limited to those cities who have figured out how and where they would have the convention.

Worldcon 2017 will be in Helsinki. We didn’t buy memberships to that one, because we seldom follow the con outside the US. When the worldcon is held somewhere other than North America, there is a North AmeriCon held that year. That location for 2017 will be chosen at this worldcon. We might go to that, depending where it is. The choices are San Jose and New Orleans.

World cons last for 5 days. They used to be held over Labor Day weekend, but that made it difficult for parents to attend, because the school year was just beginning. So they have migrated to mid-August. North Americons are typically 4 days long.

Worldcons generally have a few thousand people. When they are held in large cities – like LA – they might have 8,000 attendees. So much larger than the 200 attendees at the first, held in New York in 1939.

Other conventions are larger; Dragoncon in Atlanta, Nebcon in Omaha are just 2. But worldcons are big enough to be daunting, especially to shy or introverted people. The dealer’s room is large, the art show amazing, the costume contest can be over the top. And the panels! LOTS of panels, on all sorts of subjects. As usual, I find 2-3 panels I want to attend, all at the same time, and probably at opposite ends of the convention center. It can be tough to choose which one I will actually go to.

Sooner or later, we run across friends at worldcon. Some are people we know from smaller conventions. Others we only run across at worldcon (or North AmeriCon). In either case, we take some time to chat and catch up.

If you’ve never been to a worldcon, a description really can’t do them justice. I suggest you save up your money - tickets can be $250 for 5 days at the door, and the surrounding hotels are high-end brands. If the WorldCon is close enough for you to drive, you could save some money finding a cheaper hotel further away. But you will have to pay to park somewhere near the convention each day. And don’t forget to have money on hand for food; WorldCons provide snacks (chips, veggies, crackers) and soda at certain times of the day, but not anything that could be considered ‘real food.’

Despite the expense, they can be fun and informative. However, they are not a comicon, an anime con, or a media con. They are a literary convention. They are aimed mostly at science fiction & fantasy readers. When we walked through the dealer’s room today, we saw 4-5 tables selling t-shirts, and at least twice that many selling books.

So if you don’t read, this probably isn’t the convention for you.

Personal Appearances

These days, it is the responsibility of the author to do most - if not all - of the marketing for their book. One way to do that is to make ‘personal appearances’ - talks, readings, book signings, that sort of thing. For authors who write science fiction, fantasy or something fairly close to those genres, much of those activities can be done at science fiction conventions.

1) You can participate on ‘panels’, either alone or with other speakers. Panels are discussions or talks on a particular subject, and the marketing involved includes mentioning your (most recent or most known) work when you introduce yourself. 2) Readings are falling out of favor with some sf conventions, but others will still give you a time slot. 3) Most sf conventions have a ‘freebie’ table, where you can place fliers about your work. 4) The author or a group of authors can rent a table in the dealer’s room, where they can sell copies of their books. 5) Autograph sessions can be organized at that dealer’s table. 6) Get out there and mix with people! The more people have met you and had a conversation with you, the more they are likely to buy a copy of your work.

My first appearance this convention season is Willycon, held April 10-12. Held at the college in Wayne, Nebraska, it is the smallest convention we attend each year, but it is a good way of ‘easing’ back into the convention scene after a long winter of hibernation. John and I have been going since the convention got started, and a number of former students are now friends with us on facebook.

I like Willycon because I am not always at my best after that long hibernation, so a small convention lets me get my groove on, so to speak. I always take some fliers for the freebie table, and participate in at least one panel or workshop. This year, as lack-of-planning will have it, I am having a stubborn tooth root surgically removed the day before Willycon, so I have deliberately limited myself to one panel, but it will be fun!

“Well, this is it; We’re all going to die!” will be an audience-participation-expected panel, where we will compile a list of all the various ways humans (or at least most of them) could be wiped off the face of the Earth.

John Lars Shoberg has a few panels that he is giving, including the ‘flip side’ of my panel, which he calls “Surviving the Apocalypse”, or something similar. After I and my audience come up with a list of dooms, he and his audience will figure out how humans could survive each awful fate.

Hope to see you there, or at one of the other conventions we’ll be attending this year. More info on those other conventions in the future.

Thoughts on Electric Cars

A power company in Missouri will be installing close to 100 vehicle power-up plugs in Northwest Missouri and the Kansas City area. “That’s nice,” was my thought. “Now, if I had an electric car, my home charge would (probably) get me to Kansas City, and that charge would get me close to St Louis. But there’s still a long distance between St Louis and Florida. I wonder if any other power companies will do the same? St Louis? Paducah? Nashville? And so on? And how far out of my way would I need to go for one of these power-ups?”

As an author, I’m an ideas person. I have to be. I have to come up with ideas about characters, plot, scenes, everything. When I write science fiction, I don’t know exactly how thing works, I just have to be convincing.

Why has everybody been designing electric cars that are good for running around your home town, but not for traveling? I like to travel. If I could do both in an electric car, I would be scrounging up pennies to get one. Instead, I had to opt for a car that got decent gas mileage on the hiway.

I keep hearing about ‘tweaks’ some car company has made - like when you apply the brakes, a slight charge is trickled back into your battery.

Why stop there?

Here’s some ideas I wish SOMEbody would incorporate into an electric car. 

1. Solar panels. They’re being put everywhere else, why not on the car’s roof, trunk lid, hood... even the fenders, doors, sides and bumpers! They don’t have to be big and clunky; they can be small and flexible. (I’m not in favor of alternating colors into a checkerboard, but maybe that’s just me.) Trickle that power into a spare or already-discharged battery, and you’ll get further before you have to pause and charge up all the batteries.

2. Wind power. Windmills are good enough to put in the fields, why not put some tiny ones on the car? A few unobtrusive intake slots, and again, you’ve got some electricity to trickle into the batteries. Just moving down the street, a vehicle has air sliding past it, why not use it?

3. Human power. For those times when the sun isn’t out, or you find yourself way out in the middle of nowhere with dead batteries, this would be your backup. Open up a panel - perhaps in the dash in front of the passenger seat - and out pops cycle pedals. If you could change the position of the pedals, you could either use your legs or your arms. Just pedal away to charge your batteries so you can get further down the road.

I actually use these ideas in some stories set in the not-too-distant future.

Okay, talk to me. What improvement would you like made to today’s electric cars?

Pluto & Company

Sometimes, reading science fills my imagination.

Remember when Pluto was declared NOT a planet? Mercury is also tiny, I objected. Turns out, Pluto’s diameter is half of Mercury’s. They are both small, but that is a significant difference. Still, they have decided Pluto IS a planet, although they stuck ‘dwarf’ in front. I didn’t realize that until today.

Pluto has a moon. Charon is big enough, compared to Pluto, that it doesn’t revolve around Pluto; they both revolve around a point between them. Weird. I don’t know of any other planet & moon that does that. Today, I discovered Pluto has 4 additional moons. Way to go, Pluto!

There are other dwarf planets in our system, way out in the nether regions, so Pluto is not alone. At least 3 have names. Our system has more planets than the 9 I grew up learning about.

Pluto has an atmosphere. What? How can it? It’s so tiny, so little gravity, so cold- Some times. When Pluto gets closer to the sun (it comes within Neptune’s orbit), some of the surface thaws into a thin atmosphere, mostly nitrogen with methane and carbon monoxide for flavor. When it’s not that close, that atmosphere freezes and falls to the ground.

In 2006, NASA launched a probe for Pluto. It woke up in December 2014, and is seeing if it needs to correct its trajectory. In July 2015, it will reach a point 6,000 miles from Pluto, and it will snap pictures and take readings as fast as it can. At some point after that, it will send its observations to Earth. Just think, if you had snuck onto that spacecraft just before it launched, you’d... Well, you’d be dead, because it wasn’t built for passengers, but your body would almost be there to not see it for yourself!

The most interesting bit of today’s research was that frozen dwarf planets may be the most numerous type of planet in the universe. Really? I figure we should set up bases on/in ours. Why would we want to? Once we figure out how to colonize Pluto and its cohorts, we would know how to colonize frozen dwarf planets in other systems; to study, to serve as a base, a stepping stone.

Yeah, when I dream, I can dream big. I got that from the science fiction I read as a kid.

What do you think? If you were designing a colony for Pluto, would you build on the surface or dig inside?

Textbook Cases

No researched science today. I feel lucky to be out of bed; I don’t have the energy to research, so this post is based on experience and observations.

Colds last 7 to 10 days. Children get ear infections, not adults. That may be what the ‘textbooks’ say, but it’s not written in stone.

In November, I thought I had an ear infection. Since the age of 30, I’ve come down with them occasionally. What I actually had was a sinus infection. Somebody in our household develops one every year, seems like. Doc gave me antibiotics for 7 days and sent me home. I dutifully took the pills and eventually felt better. But not well.

In December, I went back, saying, “Something’s still not right.” Sure enough, I had a sinus infection. The same infection? Could be. So I got antibiotic#2 for 10 days.

10 days later, as I took the last of those antibiotics, I noticed my throat was scratchy. What the-? How can I come down with anything when I’m on antibiotics? Of course, antibiotics work on bacterial infections, not viruses, so I figured I had caught a cold.

Colds last 7 to 10 days. So I tried to be patient.

Eventually, “This is day 11 of the cold I came down with the last day of those antibiotics,” I told Doc with a bass gravelly voice. Guess what! Yep. Sinus infection. The same one? Who knows. So he pulled out the Big Guns, antibiotic#3, for 10 days.

I went home and climbed into bed for 6 days. Oh, I did get up - it’s hard to push fluids when you’re sleeping - but never for long, and when I was up, I didn’t have any energy.

Supposedly, antibiotics help you feel better after 48 hours. Not this time. On day 5, my throat was not as sore, and today, I have not needed a nap. But I only have 3 pills left.

Monday, I’ll see Doc again.

I used to worry when I made a character sick that I wasn’t ‘following the rules’ for that illness. But obviously, from this winter alone, illness doesn’t always ‘follow the rules’. And when I write science fiction - or fantasy, for that matter - I can make up an illness, and define its ‘rules’ myself.

If I have a spaceship of 500 people in quarantine because somebody came down with Martian Measles, some of the crew will catch it right away, others will take longer to show any symptoms. Some might take a few days to get over it; others might take weeks. Certain crew members had it as a child, and won’t catch it at all. A few others have had Martian Mumps, which is sort of related, so they probably won’t catch Martian Measles.

I can do that. I’m the author.

Black and White

This last week, I’ve been reading about Black Holes. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Interstellar’, that involved a Black Hole that they were trying to avoid while skirting around the edges. Neil deGrasse Tyson applauded the science in that movie, so it’s educational as well as entertaining, right?

I’ve been reading science fiction for several decades, so I’m pretty well acquainted with what little is known about Black Holes. But theories grow and change, so I periodically read up on the subject, just to tweak my ‘knowledge’.

Most of what I read I already knew: Black Holes have so much gravity that nothing can escape once it’s entrapped, not even light, so they appear black. The gravity field of a Black Hole is so massive, that it even warps time, making it go slower. Black Holes are created when a star dies and collapses in on itself. And current theory is that there’s a super-Black Hole in the center of each galaxy.

But there were a couple things that made me pause and think. Such as the current theory that each Black Hole has a universe inside it. Therefore, this universe we live in must be inside a Black Hole. It makes me wonder what a Black Hole looks like from the other side. Where is the opening into our universe, and why haven’t we found it yet? How does that fit in with the theory of parallel universes? Are all the universes inside other Black Holes parallel universes to ours? Or am I trying to smash too much into one theory?

There was also the idea that since Black Holes exist, then there must be an opposite counterpart, a White Hole, where stuff would be spewing into our universe. Wow! And would a White Hole have negative gravity, the opposite of a Black Hole’s massive gravity? And would a White Hole spew lots of light and radiation, just like a Black Hole swallows up that stuff? Sounds like they’d be easy to spot. In fact, in my mind, a White Hole sounds like the other side of a Black Hole. So how come we haven’t found any? Well, just be patient. In 2006, an unusual burst of gamma radiation was detected, and currently being studied as a potential White Hole event.

And most of these facts and theories have been used in science fiction during the time I’ve been reading it. I can’t remember the name of the book(s), nor the author(s), but I can remember a scene or two that used each fact/theory. Except one. I don’t remember any books about Black Holes containing universes, but maybe I just didn’t get my hands on that one.

What about you? Read any good Black Hole books lately?

Shamrokon Report

After visiting the doctor, we rode the train to Holyhead (Wales), where we caught a ferry to Dublin (Ireland). We pulled into Dublin port around midnight on Thursday, and were lucky to catch a taxi going in our direction. The driver asked if we were in town for the convention, we specified which convention, and he knew exactly what hotel it was in. He almost delivered us to there, instead of the one we had requested, which was 3-4 blocks away. We checked in, and this was an actual hotel room, instead of a closet.

Shamrokon was the European science fiction convention. Although held in Dublin this year, it travels from city to city, like the World Con does. Since we were traveling to London for the World Con, and Dublin was just a wee bit away, we decided to check it out.

John thought the con started early on Friday, at 9 or 10, so we had breakfast and walked over, only to find signs that registration would open at noon. So we walked back and I made the mistake of laying down. When it came time to go, I could not get up, and my throat was sore. John went by himself and I slept. I did get up for supper, but I was probably asleep again before the sun went down. It was disappointing to miss the first day.

Saturday, we walked over and kind of went our separate ways, choosing different panels to attend. In looking over the list of panels, I got the impression that European conventions take their science fiction somewhat more seriously than Americans. But it’s possible I didn’t understand any inside jokes they may have.

They also had far more panels devoted to one guest than I’m used to seeing. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with that guest’s work, so I didn’t feel a need to attend those panels. Actually, I seldom attend panels that are based on one of the guests; it’s the subject matter of a panel that gets my attention.

One panel I attended on Saturday was about how their plan to have WorldCon in Dublin in 2019. I wouldn’t have a chance to site-see before we left, so the idea of coming back appealed for me. They were taking a bus load of people to the Convention Center on Sunday morning, but I had a panel to be on. Happily, John opted to join that bus load for the look-see.

Another panel I attended gave the answer to, “Why have a pen name?”, a question I’ve wrestled with for some time. Let’s say somebody reads books by Trudy Myers and they are fantasy and science fiction. Then they see a new title and grab it (I’m dreaming a little, but this is just an example). If it turns out to be a romance or a western, that reader will be disappointed and confused. But if I write fantasy and science fiction as Trudy Myers, romance as Linda Joy and westerns as Mel O Myers, and they know that, then they know what to expect based on the name I’m using. It’s all about branding. I don’t know if I ever heard anybody explain it so well before.

Saturday night, we got to see the new Doctor Who in his first episode on a big screen (Well, bigger than we have). What fun!

My panel was about mapping and world-building. The moderator spoke about star-maps, and I stated that I had not mentioned stars in my novel, but I did mention the planet’s 4 moons, which the natives call ‘Mother & daughters’. I design worlds by deciding where the plates are located and which direction they move, which gives me mountains, rift valleys and some volcano locations. Then I consider the prevailing winds, which would determine which areas get lots of rain, and which ones get very little. Later, I was surprised when all the questions that came my way were about the moons! Did I know their orbits? Did they have strange tides because there were 4 moons? I tried to give answers that would satisfy their curiosity.

Dublin’s Shamrokon was an interesting experiment for us to try. It was not nearly as big as a World Con, and hadn’t expected to be. It had 5 (maybe 6) panel rooms, ranging from large (seating 350) to medium. If I had to guess, I’d say it was about the size of a decent regional convention in the US. Maybe that’s why I could enjoy it; the size did not overwhelm me. Also, the trees in the yards, the houses and businesses along the route we walked to get there and back were... homey.

2014 World Con Report

This year’s World Science Fiction Convention was held in London, England. We don’t normally go it is overseas, but we decided if we were going to do any traveling, it was time to get started. I won’t go into details about our trip to get there, except that a storm in Atlanta (Georgia) made our trip an endurance battle.

The convention was held in a huge convention center located in the dock area on the Thames River. There were several hotels in the immediate area, but they were expensive, and by the time I had figured out our plan early this spring, I couldn’t find one in the area that had a room available for our entire stay. We wanted to do some site-seeing, too, so I found a cheaper hotel closer to London Central... and only 4 or 5 blocks from a major underground station.

London doesn’t have street signs like America. The names of some streets are on the side of the corner building, if you are lucky. Some streets are no wider than an American alley. It made reading my map difficult, especially after our marathon of non-sleeping to get there. When we finally paused and asked for directions at a cafe, we had turned a block too early.

I had been told that European hotel rooms are smaller than American, but when we finally got to ours, we were stunned. The room was the size of the bed with about a foot of ‘walking space’ on 3 sides and an attached bathroom that’s smaller than ours at home (which is definitely ‘dinky’). There were no chairs, no table, no drawers or shelves to put your clothes. Very claustrophobic! The first thing I did was fall on the bed and sleep for 15 hours.

We figured out the underground system and crammed 4 days of site seeing into 3. We didn’t have time to do the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour, but eventually I realized our hotel was IN his ‘hunting area’. (How exciting!) We weren’t afraid to ask questions, so it wasn’t difficult to add a ‘Docks Light Rail’ route to our pattern to get to and from the convention center, but it did mean we were riding the underground during the morning rush hour. Crammed like sardines.

The convention itself was good. There were a couple of space organizations giving lots of science panels, which always seemed to be over-crowded. Many times, people got turned away because all the chairs were full, and sometimes that wasn’t a science panel, either. There were times when I had to go to my 3rd choice of a panel, because both of the first 2 choices were full.

The convention had registered over 10,000 people, but on any given day, there were about 5 or 6,000 people in attendance.

Food and drink was probably over-priced, since it was all brought in by businesses within the convention center, but we were dealing in Pounds, so it was hard to say. I can’t say any of it was good.

Registration had a looooooong line every morning, but seemed efficient when my turn came. The freebie table, however, was way too small. This one table had fliers, books, business cards, book marks, pens and who knows what else, all jumbled together because there wasn’t room to lay things out nicely. As soon as somebody tried to organize an area so their items could half-way be seen, somebody else came along and slapped down a stack of... something right in the middle of it.

To sum up London: metropolitan, crowded, fast paced, efficient mass transportation, confusing; but if you can get a local to slow down, they will answer questions. As an introvert, I was stressed because it was so cramped, which I couldn’t escape, but I lived through our 10 9 days there.

LonCon3, the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention, was also crowded, but fun. Some things could have been better, like more freebie tables, or more room for photographers of the costumes in the costume contest, or a better method of presenting art workshops. (In the art show area was too noisy, especially without a microphone, and only those in the front of the crowd got to see what the artist was doing.) But they did have tables and chairs in the hallways, as well as water coolers.

Make a note; there are no water fountains in London. You are expected to buy your drinking water.

Going to Mars

Every once in a while, I happen across a bit of information that indicates The Future Is On Its Way! It doesn’t seem to be arriving in a way that’s logical or methodical (to me), but I’m not in charge of these things.

I would have thought it logical to build the space station into an actual way station, possibly even a place to build things like space ships. They could be ‘launched’ without having to battle their way out of the Earth’s gravity.

They could be built with resources mined from the moon, which has much less gravity, so getting those materials into space would take less fuel. That would mean there would need to be some kind of working colony on the moon, to provide workers for the mine, and possibly for refining the materials, or even making the pieces for the space ship. And, of course, to care for the support systems for the workers; the food (garden), air and water supplies.

Eventually, some of that mining could be moved to the asteroid belt. More stations could be built out there, as way stations/refineries/colonies. From there, it seems it would be relatively easy to move on to Mars.

I know, I’m talking old school science fiction stories. Well, a lot of the science fiction authors I read as a young person were also scientists, so they tended to think these things out logically.

Instead, I find articles about thousands of people being whittled down to a handful of colonists for Mars. (How are they getting there? Where will they live? How many supplies will they need to take with them? I haven’t heard anything about any of that.)The space station humans worked so hard to create is all but forgotten. Same with the moon. A warp-speed ship is being designed, even though no one knows how to create warp speed.

The latest article I saw is about NASA’s plan to create one component of rocket fuel on Mars. No humans required. Although, once those humans did arrive, they could breath the component, since the robots NASA plans to send will be converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. The other component needed for rocket fuel - hydrogen - was mentioned in the article, but as an after-thought. As if all the colonists would need to do is run down to the local grocery store and get some.

I’m excited by the prospect of humans going to Mars and that someone is thinking far enough ahead to spend time designing a warp-speed ship. BUT I really think these things need a support system behind them. Otherwise, we are just asking for failure. One tiny little failure could doom a colony that had to rely on Earth for help. It would still take time for help to arrive from an asteroid colony, but not as much time.

Okay. We’ve taken a couple baby steps into space. Now we’re reaching for the big shiny toy in the next room, completely ignoring all the not-as-shiny toys between us and there.

Fact Follows Fiction

Hey, remember that last Star Trek tv show? The one that was a ‘predecessor’ to the Original Series, and thus to all of the Star Trek shows? Earth had just built its first warp-drive spaceship, and sent Capt Archer out to explore the galaxy with a Vulcan First Officer.

I recently stumbled across a news article that pretty much blew my mind and made me think of that show. It seems NASA scientists are designing a warp-drive space ship. Yes, the disk-shape that is so familiar to Trek fans is part of the design. And yes, it is called Enterprise. The IXS Enterprise, to be exact.

I’m not sure how well they can design a warp-drive ship when they haven’t figured out warp drive yet. How much room will they need for engines / warp drive, and how will that equipment need to be distributed around the ship?

In the meantime, scientists are working on warp drive. They think they’ve found a possible ‘loophole’ in the Law of Relativity (which says you can’t go faster than light.) I can’t really explain this ‘loophole’ because the physics are way over my head, but just the thought that they are exploring the possibility is exciting!

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the fiction of Star Trek has become real life fact. If the first ST show hadn’t had those cute flip-top communicators, we might not have cell phones. Their electronic ‘clip-boards’ might well be a predecessor of ipads and ereaders. Cloaking devices? Almost perfected, although not yet ready to be used on starships. And 3-d printers could be a step toward replicators.

Next week - or maybe next month - I expect to hear that some scientist thinks he can make transporter beams. Although, I’m kind of with Dr McCoy on that one. I’m not sure I want my atoms ripped asunder and then reassembled in a new place.

How about you? What science fiction technology would you like to see them start on?

My Ideas

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a common question asked of writers, especially fiction writers. Have I written about this before? Ehh, probably doesn’t matter, because I get them from various and sundry places.

If left to my own devices, I tend to write about women who don’t quite fit in. Sometimes it’s an entire society of women who don’t fit in with the surrounding cultures (Atlans, Tay of Tunad). At other times, it’s one woman who doesn’t fit in with those around her (Mac, Cali, Kandaranna, Tay of Tunad). They manage to make a place for themselves without losing themselves in the process.

I’ve been writing these types of stories since at least the fourth grade. Probably because I was always a shy introvert of a kid who didn’t feel like she fit in. It didn’t help that my family moved around quite a bit, always looking for grass that was a little greener. Our shortest stint in one place was 6 weeks in Brush CO when I was in the 2nd grade, followed by our longest stint, 8 years in Limon CO (except for 3 months when we tried out Cheyenne WY). You’d think after 8 years, I would have felt accepted, but... not entirely.

The other interesting fact I’ve noticed about my stories about these women is that they are rarely written from that woman’s point of view. There are various reasons I’ve given myself for this curiosity, but I’m beginning to think that, deep down inside, I realize that if the reader gets to see this character from inside her own head, it would be easier to identify with the character, and that kind of negates the ‘don’t fit in’ aspect.

Other of my stories have different sources. Maybe I read a story by somebody else, and I decide it would have been more interesting to change the characters a bit, modify the location, twist the plot... An interesting dream that I half remember might inspire me, although by the time I get something on paper, it will bear little or no resemblance to that dream. A call for anthology submissions can be interesting to consider. In that case, I take the bare bones of what they are looking for and try to twist it around and push it out of shape to come up with something other writers won’t come up with.

There are lots of places my stories come from. I just have to pause and let them come.

Kepler Keeps On Giving

When I heard, several weeks ago, that the Kepler Telescope was crippled, and it was stationed so far from Earth that repairs were not possible in the foreseeable future, I really got depressed. That's it, I thought. No more exciting news about newly discovered, exotic planets outside our solar system.

Last week, I was really bowled over with the news that scientists had discovered another 715 planets, including systems with more than one planet in them. When I read further into the article, they were announcing 715 planets circling 306 suns. So, just doing some simple math, one can see that in that batch, the average is about 2.34 planets per star. Of course, no one ever claimed that 'nature' could do even the simplest of math, AND Kepler may not have been watching long enough to see evidence of planets further out from their stars.

My head was starting to whirl at this point, but I believe that brings the total of planets discovered outside our solar system to a little more than 1,700. Now, remember, Kepler only stared at one tiny, tiny area of our galaxy.

And, perhaps the best news this article gave me - the scientists had only analyzed 2 years of Kepler's 4 years of data. I am all atingle, waiting for more information on what Kepler saw in its all-too-brief, 4 years of life.

Distant Ancestors

In my never-ending quest to get my science knowledge a little more up-to-date (the better to write science fiction), I periodically surf the net in search of interesting but not too complicated science articles. This past week, I ran across quite a few articles about Neanderthals; when they died out, where they died out, why they died out, and so on.

You know about the Neanderthals; big heavy brows, broad flat noses, short chunky bodies. All those characteristics were helpful to them as they lived in Europe during ice age conditions. I don't remember how the heavy brows were helpful, but the noses helped warm the frigid air before it hit their lungs, and their compact bodies conserved body heat.

Up until recently, it was believed that the last of the Neanderthals died out in the area of Spain about 40-42,000 years ago, helped along on the road to extinction by the arrival of 'modern man' into Europe shortly before the demise of the Neanderthals. It wasn't certain that the two groups came into direct conflict and poked holes into one another, but if nothing else, they were both vying for the same food supply, and it was thought Neanderthals just couldn't effectively compete.

According to what I read this week, a new dating technique for old skeletons and other remains has now pushed the demise of the Spanish Neanderthals to around 50,000 years ago. So, were they completely gone before 'modern man' arrived? Probably not. The scientists were going to be conducting more tests on other sites, but it was rather expected that the new dating technique would also push back the date of modern man's arrival into Europe a similar amount of time. So, other than changing the position of a couple dots on a timeline, this didn't really change much.

On the other hand, genetic anthropologists have been analyzing tiny bits of Neanderthal DNA wherever they could find it, and by combining the results of all their work, they figure they've got about 12% of a complete Neanderthal DNA workup.

And it seems Jean Auel was correct when she wrote in Clan of the Cave Bear that Neanderthals and modern man had babies together. Scientists have compared current DNA to Neanderthal DNA and found that modern people have as much as 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals. The amount varies between ethnicities, but it's there.

So... I blame my son's unibrow on Several-times-great-grandfather Oogh, of the German Neanderthals.

Looking Ahead

Okay, last week I looked back at 2013, so this week I'll try to figure out what I'm going to do in 2014 to get me closer to my goal.

The first thing that comes to mind is I've got to overhaul / reinvent the website. (www.MoonPhazePub.wix.com/MoonPhaze) I can't afford to hire anybody, so it's up to me. I've been gathering notes on what makes a good website, and I have people I can consult for their opinion, so maybe it won't be too bad. Still, it's not my favorite activity, so it will be slow-going.

Hubby and I will be attending the World Science Fiction convention in London, and the European Science Fiction convention in Dublin the following weekend. That has been occupying a lot of my time, trying to figure out the travel arrangements and all that. That long a trip will suck up a lot of our resources, so as far as personal appearances, the 'usual' local conventions may be the only ones I can plan to get to. Still, that doesn't mean I can't schedule some appearances at book stores, libraries or corn fields in the region that I can drive to in a day, so I will be trying to organize some of those.

MoonPhaze Publishing has wanted to print its first hard-copy book. We'll be looking at means of doing it that will not require thousands of dollars up front, like going with POD. Of course, if we happen to find a few thousand dollars to go to a regular printer, we'll switch gears again. In any case, having a paper-back book on hand could make those appearances mentioned in the previous paragraph more enjoyable, both for me and for anybody who attends them.

I've signed up for some classes in leatherwork! In at least two of my universes, I have a segment of the population who work with leather, and this will help me 'identify' with them. Besides, I like to learn new things.

As far as writing, I've got 4 contests/anthologies to submit to during the first 2 months of 2014. It's time for my second novel (romance) to start looking for a home. My third novel needs some rewriting & polishing, the roughs of 2 other novels need to be finished, and I've started a sf novel rough. If I keep finding more contests and anthologies, I should be plenty busy!

Maybe I should get an early start on some of that, don't you think?

Defragging a Story

Have you ever had your computer defrag its files?

I've done it many times. I used to get a kick out of watching little squares disappear from one place on the grid and reappear in a different place, but the defragging  program no longer has that entertainment possibility. But I digress...

On Tuesdays, I post a new scene from 'Mac', a story I've been working on for - oh - about 35 years. Back then, I didn't have a computer. Heck, I didn't even have a typewriter. I wrote my stories in longhand, probably with a pencil, on anything resembling paper; scratch pads, used paper, partially used notebooks, paper grocery sacks, even unused tissues (although those required I use a pen).

When I did get a typewriter, parts of this story got typed up. When I got a computer, parts of this story got typed into that. Over the years, I've had several computers, and almost all of them had some Mac scenes as files.

At one point, I had the foresight to print out what Mac scenes I had in that computer, and boy, am I happy now that I did that. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Technology changes, and when you use a computer until it just won't go anymore, you don't always get to save what you absolutely want from the hard drive. How many times have I had to rewrite important Mac scenes because I couldn't retrieve them? I forget...

I thought I was really being smart about 2 computers ago, when I started saving Mac scenes on external drives. When I had to replace that computer, I made sure the one I got could still read those external files. But when I replaced THAT computer last year, it just wasn't possible to get a slot that would read 3 1/4 inch floppies anymore. So all those dozens of disks holding Mac scenes (and many other stories I've worked on) got thrown out when I was cleaning up from moving my office.

But something else happened when I was cleaning up from that move. I kept finding hand-written versions of Mac scenes; a couple scenes in this notebook, half a scene on a scratch pad, a scene in a steno pad... Lots of scenes, with no clue whether they were included in what I had printed out or not. I already have a 2-inch stack of these bits and pieces to go through, and I've still got a couple boxes of old papers and notebooks to clean out.

So now, I get to defrag this story. I get to type all these scenes into my computer, and then try to arrange the scenes in their correct sequence. That should keep me busy for a while!

Working a World Con

This year, my husband and I were in charge of Opening Ceremonies at Lone Star Con 3, the World Con held in San Antonio. Last year, we were in charge of both Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Chicon 7, the World Con held in Chicago. We have attended many World Cons over the years, but these were our first efforts at being staff members of a World Con.

I don't know if these experiences will help me in my efforts to establish myself as a writer, but they might. Instead of going to publisher parties and winding up being a wallflower, I showed myself to be an active participant, a capable and flexible planner, and a person who was easy to work with.

But wait, I was a behind-the-scenes type of staff person, so who would have seen all those good things about me? Good question, one I've been thinking about the last few days.

We were late getting access to the stage, so any convention attendees who arrived at the ceremony location early in search of a good seat, saw me moving set furniture and props, consulting with sound techs and the convention Toastmaster. When others could not decide on a good location for a late-arriving set decoration, I made the decision. If any of these good people noticed me in particular and caught my name, ... well, I only know of one person who attended this convention who does not do a lot of reading.

We met and interacted with other staff members. We received compliments from some of them for being cool, collected and flexible, but maintaining control. Some had expected us to have a melt down over the loss of our major piece of set decoration, a set of cardboard swinging doors. Happily, it was found and brought to us an hour before we were to begin, and 3 people immediately set to work putting it together for us. It would have been a shame if that item had never showed up, but we figured the attendees were coming to see the guests, not our choice of decorations.

Finally, we had some interaction with the guests, as we introduced them to the Toastmaster, explained what we expected from them, and alerted them that they would be next on the stage. Despite our efforts ahead of time to work with the Toastmaster on the list of guests, last minute details meant our list of people for him to introduce almost doubled in the last half hour before the ceremony started. He was a trooper, speaking briefly with all of them and taking notes. We were hard pressed to keep track of where he was putting them on the list, but we must have done something right, because we never had the wrong person waiting in the wings. These guests included (but were not limited to) famous authors and a well-known editor. Hopefully, they noticed our efforts in a favorable light.

In any case, we took our enjoyment of world cons and paid it back/paid it forward by being staff members.