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.

Ain't Too Old to Die

The summer wanes, which is another way of saying that it's dying. Wanes is a better word, but I needed a segue into my topic: Death. To be more accurate, my topic is the fear of death. To be exact, how good it is to share with my kids escaping falling to our deaths.

As a husband and father, I wisely seldom go out of my way to place my body and life in jeopardy. This summer has been an exception.

In Scotland, on the Isle of Skye, there's an area called The Quiraing, which should always be capitalized. According to IsleofSkye.com:

"As part of the Trotternish ridge it has been formed by a massive landslip which has created high cliffs, hidden plateaus and pinnacles of rock."

It's also one of the most beautiful natural areas I've ever seen. No matter what I wrote, I'd not do it justice. Neither do these reduced resolution pictures, but it's the best I've got.

The Quiraing

The Quiraing

The Quiraing is also considered one of the Great Walks of Scotland. My daughter Jamie, son Alex, and I took that walk this summer, while my wife wisely relaxed.

Stunning, breathtaking, and a dozen other words come to mind for The Quiraing. So does the word dangerous. We veered off the main trail a bit. Okay, we veered a lot and found ourselves climbing up the side of a large mass of crags that I've come to find is called The Prison.

The Prison

While ascending, it occurred to all of us that going up was certainly going to be easier than going down, at least if we took the same steep, narrow, gravelly path. Nevertheless, we soldiered on. It was an adventure! Besides, there was bound to be a better way down on the other side, right?

About three fourths of the way to the top we noticed a second path heading down, but it looked "sketchy" to us. No, that wouldn't do. The path we were on had to go someplace better, so we followed it.

Many heaving breaths (mine) and a few bruises and scratches later, we arrived at the top. The view and the feeling was glorious.

View from the top of The Prison

We indulged ourselves for a good ten minutes, and then finally decided to find the "good" path down. My daughter noticed a gap between two rocks and crawled over to take a look. She poked her head into the gap, and then pulled back. "No way!"

It was a sheer drop of mebbe 50 to 70 feet.

We scrambled around and found another near drop. Not quite as sheer, but still un-traversable by non-goats.

That only left the "sketchy" path. And indeed it was, including a descent down a very steep rocky gully that we had to climb facing out, otherwise we couldn't see any foot or hand holds. The traverse wasn't long, just terrifying. My twenty-three year old daughter went first, then my seventeen-year old son, with me bringing up the cowardly rear.

Obviously we survived, and exuberantly congratulated ourselves. "Wait until Mom hears we almost died!"

But wait, there's more! On our way back, I made a tiny stumble along a narrow trail and fell. On a sidewalk, or woodlands trail, the consequences would at worst be a twisted ankle and scraped knee or hand. But this was The Quiraing, and by inches I missed tumbling down a hillside to die amongst the scattered Scottish sheep some 200 feet below. I felt great!

Flash forward several weeks when my kids and I celebrated Father's Day about a month late. And how did we do this? By once again subjecting ourselves to a possibly-not-death-defying fall.

The Toledo Zoo has a new and wonderful Aerial Adventure Course that includes options such as ziplining, an aerial ropes course, and a short (30 feet!) jump while you're connected to an arresting device that works kind of like a gigantic retracting tape measure. Another option is the Flight Line which is an 80 foot jump! We also voluntarily faced that bad boy. (No pictures follow because you're not allowed to carry cameras, phones, etc.)

Here's the set up for the 30 foot jump: The arresting mechanism (giant tape measure) is above your head at the edge of the platform. You look up and see the probably well-built device and obviously sturdy mounting brackets. The course attendant attaches the arresting cable to your harness. You see the cable leading up to the tape measure. Everything makes sense. Just step off the platform and fall – then immediately get slowed by the wonderful mechanical system and gently land below.

Here's the set up for the 80 foot drop of the Flight Line: Stand at the edge of the platform. The attendant connects the cable to your harness. The other end of the cable goes down, below the platform, out of sight. Even if you look down, you can't see where the cable goes. Is the cable actually connected to anything? Possibly not. In theory it is, with about 20 feet of slack. That's right, there's a 20 foot free fall to look forward to.

Once again, my daughter Jamie goes first. I think we should have given her the middle name of Intrepid. It takes her about a minute to work up to the jump, so I know that doing it isn't all beer and skittles.

My son Alex goes next. The bastard takes about five seconds on the platform before dropping out of sight. But that's good, right? It can't be that scary.

My turn arrives, and I stand at the edge, looking up at the sky and definitely not down. Dread diffuses through my body.

I imagine the hundreds of hours of engineering time that went into designing this system. Even though I'm an engineer myself, I have faith that the system was over-designed by at least a factor of four. Nobody would take a chance on the system being able to fail.

On the other hand, the engineers aren't the people who built or maintain or operate this horribly flimsy rig. Seriously, the other end of the cable might not even be attached to anything. I didn't hear Jamie or Alex after they went over. They could be dead already. My dread begins to coagulate into a solid, frozen mass.

I turn to the Death Guide, a cheerful looking young lady. "What's your name?"

"Caroline," she replies. "What's yours?"

"Spencer."

We chat some more. She makes assuring sounds. I stare at clouds. She reminds me that although I don't have to jump, my daughter and son are waiting for me at the bottom. Yeah, likely imitating very thin pancakes.

After what feels like mere seconds, and in reality must be more like five minutes, I step out, feel my dread focus and sharpen into a terror punch to the gut…and fall.

I honestly don't remember anything about the free fall itself, but I do remember the slowing down and tilting back at about a 45 degree angle. And then landing gently on my back and feeling relief burble up and tumble all over.

The best part was the aftermath, laughing and talking with my kids. "That was terrifying!" "Can you believe it?" "Oh my god, that drop was sooo much farther than I expected!" "I'm so glad we did it!"

It's marvelous knowing that I'm not yet too old to risk death, real and imagined, to experience an adventure with my children.

World Fantasy Convention 2016, Uber Corgi, and Serendipity

This is a partial report on my doings at WFC in Columbus. I only attended Friday and part of Saturday this year.  My original intent had been for longer. Unbeknownst to me, however, cosmic forces far beyond the understanding of mere mortals intervened.  My dear Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series! That forced an adjustment to my shedule, as the Brits say.

I had a nice time driving down from Toledo to Columbus with Marc Tassin. This was the longest conversation we ever had, and we both learned things about the other and laughed a bit. I caught up briefly with Beth Vaughan, who’d already been in Columbus for a couple of days. She’s writing her fingers to nubbins working on SOMETHING NEW.

Friday night I hung out at the bar. With my daughter Jamie. We watched the Cubs and Indians play game three. We had dinner elsewhere, and then settled in to watch baseball. Jamie doesn’t really care for baseball. She doesn’t drink alcohol, except for an occasional glass of wine. The evening’s result? It was great! I couldn’t have had a better time or company.

Saturday was kind of the usual con stuff, although World Fantasy is really more of a pro convention than many others. I met Maurice Broaddus, who has been a nice addition to Marc’s GenCon Writers’ Symposia. I got knocked out in the art room by a painting titled The Sanguinary Innocent by Jarrod Erik. I was tempted to make an offer, although with a minimum bid of $1,400.00 I would have been persona non grata upon arriving back home.

“But just look at this. What stark beauty. What power.”

“What the in the ever loving HELL were you thinking?”

What I DID buy turned out to be even better, and all it cost was $15.00. While perusing the dealer room, I noticed a cheerful fellow behind a table hawking his new collection of short stories with some illustrations. As part of his pitch he offered to do a custom pen and ink drawing of any beast you could name.

“Any beast?” sez me.

“Any beast. What do you have in mind?”sez cheerful writer/artist.

“Well, years ago my son came up with the concept of Der Uber Corgi. It’s a big Corgi wearing a World War I spiked German helmet.” (The helmet is called a pickelhaube, btw, and Der Uber Corgi’s nemesis is The Iron Ostrich. But that’s a story for another day.)

“Heh. Sounds cute. Big Corgi.”

“I mean BIG, like Godzilla-sized, laying waste to the city.”

So, I pay my $15.00 for his book, and then wander the room awhile as he works. (I never liked people looking over my shoulder when I was building cabinets.)

I do hear him giggle a couple of times. When I return, he’s finished the piece, and he seems very pleased. He tells me it was a lot of fun. I take a look, and I’m seriously stunned. It’s not what I was expecting, because it’s pretty much exactly what I was hoping for, only even more so. I find it hard to tell him how pleased I am, and I know my son Alex will love it.

The writer/artist is a fellow named Jerome Stueart. (Yes, that’s the correct spelling.) His book is titled The Angels of Our Better Beasts. And his stories are TERRIFIC! I won’t go into any review here, but I can say that if his drawing was the cake, his stories are the best butter crème coconut frosting I can imagine. Alex loves coconut frosting.

I almost didn’t go to World Fantasy this year at all because of the Cubbies. Alex and I had watched every game of their playoff run together, and the World Series, of course, is the epitome. How could I miss one of those games with him? Now I’m so glad I did. Even with no other consideration, spending the evening with Jamie, and then discovering Jerome Stueart and bringing Uber Corgi home was so, so worth it!

The Other Side of Space: 2nd Draft

I finished the second draft of my MG/YA science fiction novel a couple weeks ago. Alas, it was too late in the year to follow Dave Farland's example. He says that he'll go to a grade school or middle school and work with teachers who will ask their students if they want to read the book. Dave will pay each student to read and simply mark any words that he/she doesn't understand. Once all the participants have done this, he'll meet with them, and it usually leads to an active discussion about all aspects of the book. He says it works very well.

Unfortunately the school year is over. Still, my number one target audience (my son!) now has the book in his hands. I've never been more anxious about someone reading my work. I'm trying to keep myself from pestering him about what he thinks so far, but it's tough. I've been keeping busy with other projects, as well as getting back on the agent-research train.

Part of that research has included reading more MG/YA/SF (runnin' out of letters here!), with my most recent being Marissa Meyer's Cinder. I'm about two-thirds through the book, and it's been a terrific read. The story is a creative twist on Cinderella, with the heroine being a cyborg in a world where they are property. I won't give away plot points, but Ms. Meyer has so far very nicely succeeded in 1) making me care about Cinder and 2) cranking up the tension with multiple instances of jeopardy and emotional suffering for her. Good job!

The Other Side of Space Completed!

Okay, so it's only the first draft, but it feels fantastic. The final fourteen to fifteen chapters (out of forty-one) went pretty quickly. More importantly, I enjoyed writing them more so than any other large chunk of text I ever produced. I'm not saying it's my best work, but I had such fun writing it, even the more challenging bits.

I'm feeling a strange mixture of pride, relief, and to a certain extent a little bit of loss. I'm reminded of what Churchill said about his History of the English Speaking Peoples.

"Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind." --  From Churchill's The Gathering Storm.

Not that I'm suggesting my little fiction story is worthy of even cleaning up Mr. Churchill's cigar ashes. It's simply the idea of a long piece of writing being a friendly comfort that resonates. Of course my friend and companion is still there, patiently waiting to have his face mashed and his limbs twisted as I begin the second draft, but it's not the same thing as fresh creation.

I hope to finish the re-write in short order, and then present it to my son Alex. I wrote this one for him.

Forbidden Island, Universe Sandbox, and Falling Pianos

George, Alex and I played a game of Forbidden Island last Saturday night. This is a very good game in which all the players must work together to a) retrieve four treasures from the island, and b) escape the island together. Meanwhile, the island is trying to kill you by flooding!

The cooperation aspect is unusual and a nice change of pace from most games. As in real life, however, even well-meaning teammates can occasionally grind each other's gears, especially under the pressure of imminent death. It can be remarkably intense -- but very fun! -- for a cooperative game that lasts maybe a half hour.

One thing we've learned in about ten different sessions: We always discover a new rule or detail of the game. I'll admit that the rules aren't super simple, but neither are they a complex web. Nevertheless, we've never failed to be surprised by some little feature. For example, we just realized that each treasure can be picked up at either of its two possible locations in any given game, even though there is only one treasure figurine of each type. We've dubbed this "quantum entanglement of treasures." We didn't exploit this feature, and Alex hates it, but it's there and we'd always missed it before. Maybe we're just dense.


A couple of years ago I bought the Universe Sandbox astrophysical simulator. I also purchased Newton's Aquarium, and another program whose name I can't recall at the moment. U-Sandbox is my favorite. I'm a physics geek so I'd have wanted them anyway, but I specifically went looking for easy software to help me work some problems in The Other Side of Space. I did so when I was first outlining the book, and it gave me a good jump start with the plot. Now that I'm closing in on completing the first draft of the novel, I've had to dive into the sandbox again. (Things change during writing.) I won't spoil anything of the book here, but I just crashed a 500 kiloton teapot onto the Moon, multiple times! If you have clear skies, you might see the impact craters next time you look.

One interesting observation I made is that your initial velocity doesn't have as much affect on your impact velocity as one might think. For example, suppose you start from the radius of the Moon's orbit and you drop a tungsten piano onto the Earth, maybe with the Coyote as your target. When it hits his head, it will be traveling about 11.1 kilometers per second. This is almost enough to kill him. (By the way, this is just slightly less than escape velocity for Earth.) On the other hand, suppose you throw the piano down really hard, at 5 kilometers per second? The Coyote is done for, right? It must hit him at 16.1 kilometers per second. Except it doesn't! It brains the poor slob only doing about 12.2 kilometers per second.

I leave it to the student to think about why this should be the case. Don't worry about details, unless you're really interested, just the general concept. I'll offer this hint: A constant acceleration (or an accelerating force) operates on an object to change its velocity. Near the Earth's surface this acceleration is 9.8 meters per second per second toward the Earth's center. What that means is (ignoring air resistance) that  for every second that an object falls near the Earth's surface, it goes 9.8 meters per second faster. You drop a hamster hammer and it starts falling. At the end of the first second it's falling at 9.8 meters per second. At the end of the second second it's falling at 19.6 meters per second, and so on. The same basic idea is true even if the acceleration isn't constant, such as starting far away from the Earth's surface and falling for a long time.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog entry. All coyotes and hamsters were simulated. Teapots and Tungsten pianos were real.

GenCon 2014 continued: Westerfeld and Deadly, Unna?

I got to meet and chat with Scott Westerfeld after one of his panels. [BTW: His Q&A session was terrific. Scott was smart, and wise, and very funny. Alex was surprised at how funny. And Beth Vaughan did an excellent job moderating!] Fortunately I had something besides, "I love your books" at hand to open the conversation.*

The Other Side of Space (TOSS) includes a character who is an Aboriginal Australian. During my research, mostly on slang phrases, I ran across a few blogs and bulletin boards with some truly vile, racist diatribes against the Aboriginal people. Really virulent stuff. I mentioned this to Scott, and asked how the racism in Australia compares to the U.S. [Scott was born and raised in the U.S., but has lived in Australia for the past 12 years.] I couldn't imagine similar comments about blacks in the U.S. surviving for long. Maybe I don't hang out at bad enough water coolers.

Scott told me that in some rural areas where a mostly white town was near an Aboriginal reserve or former reserve, things still could get pretty awful. Not to say that the cities are racism free, but the kind of stuff I'd mentioned was more likely to be found in the sticks. He then recommended a YA book titled Deadly, Unna? by Phillip Gwynne. Even though it was first published in 1998, Scott felt it was reasonably up to date for my purposes, and a good read. He didn't say so, but it was chosen by the Children's Book Council of Australia as "Book of the Year: Older Readers."

As Nadia Wheatley of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, "Combining humour, politics, fine writing and football, it's pretty hard to beat."  It's a very good book. The first five paragraphs had me hooked on the main character's voice. I'd be willing to hear any story from Blacky.

So I learned a few things about Nungas and Goonyas (blacks and whites) in the book's world, spent many very enjoyable hours, and now I'm looking forward to reading more of Mr. Gwynne's work.

Thanks, Scott!

*Note to my Future Fans, if any get created: I won't ever mind hearing this!