Happy Birthday USMC!

 I was never a Marine, but I respect the Corps. Perhaps it's time to re-read Chesty Puller's biography, "Marine!"

Bad Ass-tronaut!

I've known about astronaut and electrical engineer Christina Koch for several months, but it's only very recently that I learned more details about her life. She's currently the record holder for the longest space flight by a woman, and you can read about her at space.com:   https://www.space.com/record-breaking-astronaut-christina-koch-female-space-records.html

There's a fun interview with her, during which she does a neat microgravity trick. Much more importantly is her perspective on long term spaceflight. And this isn't her first time in extended isolation. In 2004 through 2007 she traveled the arctic and Antarctic regions, and also spent a winter season at the South Pole, where she experienced -111 degree temperature.  She's been a member of firefighting and ocean glacier search and rescue teams. She helped invent an x-ray spectrometer for NASA, among other things.

A cool video of 5 things about her can be found here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5T37kIEXa8

Number 5 on that list is that she traveled and worked in Ghana – and so did my daughter Jamie! (I admit my wife Ellen and I were not happy about Jamie's original plans for that trip. Ebola was breaking out in nearby Nigeria and Cote d'Ivore at the time.)

Ms. Koch will be returning to Earth on 6 February, and I wish her a very safe flight home. I think I might have one of her descendants show up on Pearson Space Station or elsewhere in the solar system for my follow-up to my MG/SF novel The Other Side of Space. I already have Dr. Maggie Jemison in the first book – a fictional descendant of the real astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison. (Maggie saves Jason's life, by the way, and helps him to save... oops. You'll just have to read the book!)

Writer's...Flood?

I'm not a prolific writer. I have three completed novels, and many short stories, but it's taken me many years.

I know that's much more than a lot of folks who say, "I want to be a writer," but much less than others.

My day job is running my own small engineering company a) which I love, and b) at which I've been reasonably successful. That and raising a family takes time, so it's not surprising that I don't have more fiction accomplished.

But I also love writing. So much so that I currently find myself in kind of a strange position: I have too many projects that I'm interested in pursuing, and it's a bit paralyzing. What's the opposite of writer's block? Writer's flood?

The three completed novels are all meant to have at least sequels, if not be the first of series. Nevertheless, I've also started two new novels. The first is an adult mainstream story based on my time as a disc jockey in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The second is a ghost story based on Filipino mythology of Babaylans (sort of shamans) and some really fascinating evil spirits. As I've done more research, I'm getting interested in contacting and talking to whatever relatives I might have in the Philippines. My father was one of eight kids who came from the Ilocos Sur region. Perhaps my daughter Jamie will come through with the Fulbright she wants to pursue and work there for a year.

But what about the sequels to my first three novels?

I've always maintain that I won't work on those until I sell one of the first ones, but dammit, ideas for those are now starting to push for more room in my skull. I need a contract to just simplify things and help me choose a direction!

Any takers?

You Can Always Do Better, But…

I make my living as an optical engineer. I've been doing it for many years. During the first half of my engineering career I worked for other companies before starting my own.

During the time of working for others, I observed the very common tension between engineers and salespeople at companies that develop products. The old saw goes that engineers say the product is never ready to be released, and salespeople sell it before the first drawing is done.

Obviously reality lands somewhere in between.

Writing does too. One difference is that the writer, alone, is both engineer and salesperson. The writer has to finish writing something. Sometimes you never think it's done. Sometimes you're so fed up with it that you wish it would simply go away.

I write, re-write, re-write, get critiqued in group, re-write. Then sometimes I let my writing sit for a while, maybe weeks, maybe months. When I pick it up and read with fresh eyes, I usually find a way to make it better. Sometimes I also realize that despite my lack of commercial success (so far), I can be pretty darn good, on occasion.

But I don't do this more than twice. My inner salesman yells, "It's finished. Next!" And he's right. You can always do better, but don't make one story your life's work. Polishing brings diminishing returns. Writing IS.*

*with apologies to Robert A. Heinlein.

My Father's Age

It occurred to me recently that I'm the age my father was when I was born. Most people experience this, and I have no new insights or revelations about the experience. It's just something rattling around in my noggin, and so I'll add a couple of pictures of him:

This first one is with his brother Manual (Uncle Max) on the right. As my own brother said, they look like a couple of Filipino gangsters.

The second one is with my mom. My father died when I was two, and so I only know him through stories other family members told me. Looking at this picture, and knowing of the times, I begin to appreciate more the difficulties that they both had with being a couple and raising their children. My mother never talked to me much about this. I may have been too young. Or perhaps it was just the way things were and they simply carried on without complaining loudly about it.

Lois Mc*MASTER* Bujold

Many years ago my friend Helen Kourous turned me on to Lois McMaster Bujold's truly great Vorkosigan saga. Like a lot of people, I devoured them rapidly. One of the nice things about being late to the literary party is that you get to read, read, read – picking up one wonderful book after the next. It's binge-watching before there was such a thing.

Several years later I re-read the saga. Now I'm near the end of my third reading, having just finished Diplomatic Immunity. If the epic has aged in any way, I'm certainly not sharp enough to notice. It remains a Hall of Fame-type collection and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Beyond the heart-palpitating adventure is the deep humanity, pain and love, despair and exultation, and all the places in between.

To be clear, I did not love Cryoburn, and I've yet to read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. Nevertheless, the saga is a wonder, and Ms. Bujold deserves all the accolades she's received for the tales.

But did she sit on her laurels? Of course not! She went on to produce the excellent Curse of Chalion series, and then the Sharing Knife series. This woman is a WRITER. She has more I-Wish-I'd-Written-That books than any other person I know.

And she's still doing it! Just within the past half year I've caught up to her Penric novellas, set in Chalion's world of the Five Gods. And by those gods am I having a great time.

If you haven't read Bujold, do yourself an enormous favor and get started—now!

Still Not Complete Failures as Parents!

My son Alex is on his high school's varsity Quiz Bowl team. He's not the Captain, although he does hold the unofficial title of Field Marshal. (He's self-commissioned, but his coach agreed.)

He seems to really enjoy the intellectual competition, but more so with himself. Nevertheless, Alex has a trait that I quite admire: Whether he wins or loses, at almost any game or challenge, he tends to have fun.

During the team's most recent tournament, they won all four of their matches, and Alex reported that he had done particularly well. "I really killed it today." He also spoke of his considering the opposing players, and how they might look at his enthusiastic play and think, Sure, it's easy to have fun when you're winning.

Then he told us of the realization that he had: It's not that he was having fun winning, it's that he was winning, in part, because he was having fun.

Some people never realize this. Fortunately, many do.