Saturday, November 22, 2014

Opening Line

This thing still needs some work, but here is an opening line I'm working on for Chronopticus Rising:
"When Pierce Steadman awoke, he realized that not only was he no longer the mayor of Magnopolis, but that everything he worked for over the past few months was now in the hands of a madman."
More news coming shortly...

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Chrono Update

Edits are going well on the third and final book of the Chronopticus trilogy, Chronopticus Rising. Things are still on track for a mid-December release, and this time it will be across multiple channels (Amazon, B&N, iTunes, and Lulu). If you haven't seen it already there is a giveaway in progress over on Goodreads, and I'll probably run an e-book giveaway over on LibraryThing soon, too.

This novel has been full of challenges and thematically the whole series is one of the most complicated things I've ever written. There are also a lot of storylines and questions that developed in the first two books that will only get answered in the third. Originally, I hoped to one day write a sequel to Theft at the Speed of Light...but oddly enough, many of the ideas I was going to use ended up in this series instead.

Next up: a short story called "Fermat's Last Theorem of Robotics", followed by the standalone stormchasing novel, Race the Sky.

Race the Sky has a long, interesting history as I originally wrote the first version back in 2001. Despite a great deal of editing, I was unhappy with the original result and rewrote the book from scratch a few years later and saved the best parts of the first version.

After even more editing, I still thought the book could offer more. So, over the past several years I went on some storm chases, watched tons of storm footage, read multiple books on the subject, and read several chaser journal entries. Yet something was still lacking.

So I decided to study what the Bible said about the weather. And even wrote an entire book on the subject. Then, some other unusual events occurred and suddenly a new take on the subject materialized. I suppose you could call it a supernatural version of Twister, but Race the Sky is not a book I could have written ten years ago.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Return of Spirograph

A few years ago, I wrote up a post about my surprise at what happened to the original Spirograph set. I couldn't seem to find anything that resembled what I played with as a kid and the current sets seemed to be quite different. Alas, the other day, I stumbled on this and this and this. Apparently, the "original" Spirograph is back, albeit with mixed reviews.

Some reviewers complained about the use of putty instead of pins like the original set, while others mentioned warped wheels. Maybe someone with a 3D printer should come up with some new wheels and or try out different shapes to see their effects on the designs. Either way, these sets look a lot like the original, sans pins. Add a piece of corrugated cardboard and things would be complete.