13:03

A lot of things happened in 1303. William Wallace and Edward I of England had a little dust up. Pope Benedict XI succeeded Boniface VIII, who had just founded the University of Rome La Sapienza. The Treaty of Paris gave Gascony back to the English. On what would later become my birthday, Beatrice of Castille died. A future emperor of China was born. In August of that year, the Lighthouse of Alexandria was destroyed by an earthquake. I won't pretend that I knew all those things, but I was able to find them out with a little research.
Today, 13:03 took on a new meaning for me. Recently, I submitted Warrior's Scar to a review blog that I like. Immerse or Die is a great concept by Jefferson Smith. He has a 40-minute treadmill workout, during which he reads a new book. Then he posts how long the book held his attention, as well as his thoughts about it. Warrior's Scar lasted thirteen minutes and three seconds. Jefferson had good things to say about my concept, but like I say, thirteen minutes and three seconds. Damn. Now I know from reading his blog that beating ten minutes is a significant feat. But I wanted it all, and I blew it. An editing error and a last-minute correction did me in.
As much as I hate 13:03 right now, I've learned from it. I'm changing how I keep the timeline of the series, as well as how I track it. Over the next few months, as I finish book five and release the second editions of books two and three, you can bet that while there might be other mistakes, my timelines will be right.

Objects in the Rear View Mirror...

When I took the plunge and began writing full time, I closed a medical modification business I had owned for over ten years. I installed grab bars and ramps, but my main product was a transfer pole of my own design. Without getting into specifics, transfer poles are grab bars that can anywhere in a room. I closed the business and haven't looked back. But I did have a few poles left in the shop. So when a patient's daughter called me yesterday and asked for a pair of them to be installed in an assisted living facility that I had a good relationship with, I agreed and made the appointment for today. After all, those two poles represented $300 that I could put toward the burnt orange Elio I have reserved.
This morning I turned the power on in the shop for the first time in over six months. As I cut and machined the parts to make the top brackets, my muscle and mental memory kicked in thanks to the smell of hot steel filings and took me back to those days. It was like seeing an old friend. I remembered the elderly woman who answered the door completely nude, much to her daughter's horror. I remembered the WWII vet who showed me a picture of himself receiving a medal from General Eisenhower. Another vet who gave me his WWI trench knife to thank me for my work. There was a Russian woman who runs a board and care that insisted I put a pole in every one of her rooms. There were also memories of jerks. The guy who told me, "A person of your station in life should know better than to suggest someone of my station might use plywood in their home." A woman who kicked me out of her house because I felt sympathy for Trayvon Martin's family. There was even a lady who tried to blame me for water damage caused by a grab bar I didn't install.
But the job I did today went smoothly. I showed up and the building had a work order waiting for me. The patient's family was there to write the check. The install was easy. In fact, it was almost textbook perfect. The bed was already in an ideal spot, the joists were perfectly aligned with the toilet in the bathroom, and I was out of the building in less than half an hour. If every job went that smoothly, I would still be doing that work in addition to writing.
I walked out of the building and put my tools back in the truck. I texted my wife that it felt oddly nostalgic to revisit that time, if only for one job. I pulled onto J Street and headed for the Cap City Freeway. By the time I was merging onto I-80, I was thinking about a conversation Cort is going to have with a family member in book five. Like the cars in my mirror as I glided into traffic, that world is behind me now and somewhere beyond the mountain ridges in front of me, is a future of my own creation.

When The World Catches Up

One milestone that an only an author writing science fiction can understand, and that he or she both dreads and secretly longs for, is the moment when fact overtakes the fiction we write. Whether H.G. Wells, or Edgar Rice Burroughs or even yours truly, that moment is a gauge of both vision and comprehension. We dread it, because what we write is no longer special. We long for it because when that parity occurs, we are vindicated. We are no longer fiction writers. We aren't hacks. We are not storytellers. At that moment, we are visionaries. For just a moment today, I felt that.

I grew up in Green Country, an incredibly beautiful region of northeastern Oklahoma that borders parts of Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. It's also oil country. Tulsa was known as The Oil Capital of the World for most of the twentieth century. Geologists from all over the world still study there at the University of Tulsa.

In Warrior's Scar, book one of The Warrior Chronicles, I created The Memorial Sea. It is an inland sea that encompasses all of Green Country, and a large portion of the area around it. The sea was created when nearly three centuries of oil drilling and fracking, combined with an ignorance and then casual indifference toward their effects, a massive earthquake caused a complete collapse of the area's substratum. As the ground settled in the area and the water table rose, it created the sea almost overnight. Millions of people died, hence the name, and the face of the southern Midwest was changed forever. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Today, I was on my way to a basketball function and NPR had an interview with a researcher from the University of Oklahoma, talking about the recent surge of earthquakes in the area. There was a lot of science, a lot of oil history, and a lot of words that linked together really well, forming the basis for what happens in Warrior's Scar. Which I wrote last year, way before the interview today.

I'm not H.G. Wells, though I have read every word he has published. I'm also not Edgar Rice Burroughs or Gene Roddenberry. But like them, my vision has been validated. Maybe not on the same scale, but don't hold that against me. Today there was a great moment to me. A moment that assured me I am doing something right.

Happiness is Doing What You Love. or Oh My Gods, What Have I Done?

I have a brother who is a Captain and Tennille fan. He is also a bigwig. By that I mean he was recently chosen to be the president to a 30 million dollar a year privately owned company, and one of the two hardest workers I have ever met. The second is my wife. Lorelle busts her ass harder than Tyler does.
Anyway, after reading my last post Tyler sent me a text saying, "How come I'm president of a 30m company and you seem happier than me? You little pud."
My response was, "You just answered your own question. This morning I woke up, made some coffee, picked some cherries, played a round of disc golf, then went home to write a space battle. Your day was slightly more stressful I would guess." As a side note, Lorelle encourages me to play disc golf with a friend twice a week because it gets me off my butt. I love my wife.
My blood pressure spikes just like my brother's does, but in my case it is because my new Star Mamba driver lands in the creek, or maybe supper is later than I'm used to. Seriously, Lorelle will tell you, a me without food is an agitated me. A very agitated me. That's the Happiness is doing what you love part of this post.
But the Oh my gods, what have I done? part exists, too. That same night, just twenty-four hours after I officially quit my old job, book sales hit a thirty-day low. Before I went to bed that night, I looked at my sales. After using my home defibrillator on myself, which entails taping two bare wires to my chest and plugging them into an wall outlet, I swallowed a shot of whiskey and tried to sleep. Slumber did not come easy.
The next morning I woke up, made my coffee, had some fruit for breakfast, and opened my Chromebook. After reading the news and tabbing the science news I needed to read, I clicked on the tab for book sales. All was right in the world again. My sales for the first eight hours of the day were just a little higher than my entire sales day reflected the day before.
The obsessive-compulsive side of my personality, which to Lorelle's chagrin does not bleed over into cleanliness, compels me to analyze things like this. How does one Saturday compare to another? Do sales jump on common paydays? If the Moon is rising in Virgo, do sales dip? You get the idea. But this dip and jump coincided with nothing I could measure. No solar flares, no double rainbows, not even the arena vote in Sacramento. There was no discernible connection between the calamitous drop and sudden rise in daily sales. That frustrates me. It fell into the category of Why the hell can't I figure this out?
In my previous business, I faced the same sort of thing, but it was on a much larger scale. To some degree though, I could predict what was going to happen in my work, based on what was happening in Lorelle's, since the two industries were related. When she had a slow spell, I would have a slow spell about four weeks later. When her work picked up, mine would about four weeks later. As a writer, I no longer have that barometer. That adds to the What have I done? sentiment.
The point of this is one that will benefit writers. The rest of you have read my ramblings for nothing other than a glimpse into my world. But for you writers out there, I've learned something. Look at your sales every day if you want to, that's fine. But DO NOT stress over a low day, because there will be others that balance it out. In fact, just look at your thirty-day averages, which is something that Amazon's KDP program makes very easy with their new layout. That line graph is awesome.
Okay, now it is time to kill a few aliens while Judge Judy screams at stupid people in the background. I wonder if there is a correlation between the mentality of her litigants and the bloodshed in my stories.

That's One Small Step for Shawn, One Giant Leap for Shawn's Bowels

Twenty-odd years ago, I started writing as self-imposed therapy. My mom had just died, and writing was my way to express my feelings without expressing them, so to speak. I wrote poetry and short stories for years, but never thought about publishing. When Google + came on the scene, I started a hashtag series called 'GamingConfessions' and a few people liked it. Once in a while I told a story of my childhood, and the people in my circles oohed and ahhed over it, so I kept it up.
Two years ago, I took part in NaNoWriMo, but for some reason I didn't finish it. I kept feeling the itch though, so when it came around last year, I modified it a little bit for myself, and called it SwiNoWriMo, because at the time, Skeptik Swine was my G+ ID. I made a circle of people who were interested, and told them to scold me every day I didn't post a little progress. SwiNoWriMo was a success. I finished a book and found an artist to do a cover for it.
Lorelle then jumped in, and damned near every day she asked when I was going to publish it. To shut her up and make it look like I intended to follow through with being an author, I sent the book out to that group of people who were in the SwiNoWriMo circle, and used them for 'crowd-sourced editing'. That weekend was Thanksgiving, 2013. At the end of the weekend, I had a finished product. And every day, Lorelle bugged me to publish. It took some time to research and learn what did and didn't work, to set up my royalty accounts, and enrolled in KDP from Amazon. Finally, on December 8th, 2013, I couldn't take Lorelle calling me out anymore, and uploaded the book file to the Kindle store. Then I pressed 'Publish'.
Those first few days were terrifying. I remember how happy I was the first time I saw a sale pop up. Someone in the UK bought my book. For the first six weeks, Warrior's Scar was even on a time travel top ten list in the UK, right between H.G. Wells and a Doctor Who book. I still look at that screenshot once in a while.
When February 2014 arrived, I started to really think I was on to something. I had a real editor, some great beta readers, and good feedback from both readers and other authors. Warrior's Blood released that month, and I was able to start projecting sales figures and think about writing as a career. I figured out that after six books, I would be able to close my business and write full time. Lorelle and I talked about what my numbers needed to be, where we would have to cut corners, how we could make it work, and even what my bare minimum royalties would have to be in order for me to close down my shop and move on. Dexter had to cut back a little on his dog biscuits, and Lorelle and Alex gave up a few things. We pulled the plug on our cable, etc. Getting rid of cable turned out to be a GREAT decision, regardless of my writing success or failure, by the way. I met my 'bare minimum' goals in March. Then came April 23rd, 2014. I released Warrior's Realm that morning. I put the first two books on sale and started watching the numbers.
As all this was going on, I was still working my other business, but I hated it. For every good job I had, there were three that were horrible. Not because of any one thing, just little things that made me miss the world I have built around Cortland Addison. I had one customer schedule me and two competitors to do the same job at the same time, and he gave the work to the company that got there first.  Another lady called and asked me to rearrange my schedule to suit her, which I did, then she cancelled on me. Little crap like that, but it was enough to make me hate the sound of my phone ringing.
Fast forward to this past weekend. Lorelle and I spent it in the bay area watching Alex play basketball, and in the course of our many discussions, from tucking in boobs and oral sex to our upcoming vacation, we also talked about the money I would have to spend on materials and some new tools to keep selling medical equipment. We also talked about my books, where the story was headed, and how my sales have been. Which brings us to this post.
I closed my business today. I still have a little back stock I am going to sell off, but as of this post I am a full-time author. A full-time author who is scared shitless. A successful, full-time author who is scared shitless.
Oh fuck, what the hell have I just done?
The only thing I am sure of, is that I couldn't have done it without the support Lorelle and Alex, or the help of Tracy, Lillith, Eve, Shawn, Melissa, and Goose. And of course, thanks to you, my readers, for actually buying the books. You guys all rock!
And I am still scared shitless.

Texts, Tears, and Childhood

This week, the Korean ferry disaster is in the news quite a bit, and one of the aspects of it that is really making headlines is the fact that so many of the passengers, mostly teens, used their cell phones to either text or call their loved ones. In book three of The Warrior Chronicles, Warrior's Realm, a similar thing happens. Cort and his company of Ares Marines are overwhelmed by an enemy force. In an effort to give their fellows a chance to survive the onslaught, Cort and a couple of others overload their power packs. But before he hits the button, Cort sends Kim Point, his love interest, a brief message saying goodbye. You will have to read the book, or find the teaser I posted about it, to learn what was in the message.
The concept is one that I spent a lot of time working on. I had to make it a message that Cort would send, make it realistic for what such a message would contain, and make it the right length for the amount of time he had to get in position. But that was all for a twenty-first century warrior, in control of his own destiny, fighting a twenty-fourth century battle on another planet. How would it play out for an average person? A teen, no less.
One young man texted his father, "Dad, don't worry. I've got a life vest on, and we are huddled together." Another sent a group message to his friends. "If I've wronged any of you, forgive me. Love you guys." Those two teens have not been found. One teen that is safe after being rescued, sent, "Mom, I'm sending you this now, because I'm afraid I might not be able to say it later. I love you."
To have written my scene just a few days before the ferry disaster, and then see teenagers send their loved ones messages that are so similar to what my fictional hero sent his fictional love interest, is bittersweet to me. On one hand, it feels good to know that today's teens, facing their own mortality, think of those they are leaving behind. I would like to think it's not cultural, but rather a trait that most teens embody. After all, they are growing up in a world with much more death and sadness than the one I grew up in. But on the other hand, it sad to me that a teenager has to demonstrate that kind of courage. It's one thing when a Marine recognizes the approaching scythe being wielded by Death's bony hand, but when a group of teens faces it just as bravely, I wonder what happened to childhood.

Warning: Best when consumed by the publication date.

One of the things that is very important to me about my writing is that I can claim the sub-genre Hard Science Fiction. I have a few stories in my head that don't fit the category, but The Warrior Chronicles  are firmly there. What that means is that my technology, my science, my books have to be plausible, and I won't just say, "The ship went to warp ten." In Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books (No, I am not going to compare myself to Burroughs, I am just giving an example of what I am writing about.), he uses 'rays', or parts of the light spectrum, like gases, to propel the craft used by the inhabitants of Barsoom (Mars). At the time he wrote it, the concept was reasonable. But we have since discredited many aspects of his tech and physics. The same will happen with my books. In time, science will prove many of the theories I use for FTL travel, time travel, and FTL communication to be incorrect. But I want to hold that wolf (Get it? Wolf? No? Have you even my books?) at bay for as long as possible. I even have a guy who helps me with that. A physicist who I run my science by, offers suggestions and opinions to help me keep the science as real as possible. Everything from destroying planets, to creating anchor points in our local space-time.
I spend a lot of time reading physics papers, weapons research, etc. I talked about it a bit in my Jack of all Trades post. This morning, I came across a white paper about a theory that, if confirmed, will throw my FTL drive system out of the black hole, so to speak. It is about event horizons, particle walls, and extreme gravity. I took two things away from the article and two supporting pieces. Number one, I never, ever, ever, want to cross the event horizon of a black hole. If you ever come in contact with someone who offers you the chance to do so, politely turn them down. Trust me on this. The second thing I took from the physics headache I got today, is that my science may be disproven within a decade. Dammit! My hope is that the science behind my Jonah Drive Construct isn't discredited before Warrior's Realm even makes it to Amazon's Kindle Store.
Someday, I know aspects of my science will fall to the side as drivel, but until then, I want my hard sci-fi fans to enjoy my work. After my science fails, at least I will be in good company. I mean, I've already seen my name next to Edgar's on a Kindle list, so I can at least claim that, right? Right?

Read my mind. Buy my daydreams. Buy them now!

I've spent the last few months learning how to market my books. For every site that says "Give away your book one day a quarter." I find one that says "Never, ever, ever give your book away." For every blog that says "Sell it everywhere. Don't be exclusive." I find another that says "Find the highest royalty and stick with it." For a noob like me, it gets confusing. Very confusing. Cover art. Creative Commons rights. Blogging. Blurbs. Social media. Calgon, take me away! In fact, it's been somewhat stressful. So much so, that I have been doing marketing research and marketing and self-promoting so much that I've been too overwhelmed to write.

Then I was chatting via G+ with that grammar Nazi I was telling you about last post. You remember Tracy, right? The one who sodomizes me with commas and quotation marks? Anyway, Tracy was schooling me on numbers. Write them out, don't write them out, substitute 'whatever the fuck percent' for .0000000002%. Yeah, her. That lady.

Anyway, in our chat, Tracy said something to the effect of "Don't worry so much about how you relate the number that it interrupts the writing process. I(she) can fix it later if need be." So I stopped fretting over numbers and devoted that extra time to fretting over marketing. The writing process was still interrupted. Crap.

So last week I expanded the scope to which I applied that advice. If my books sell, they sell. If they don't, they don't. My job is to write them, Amazon can sell them for me. Oh, I'll still remind people my books are out there, and I will still giggle like a school boy when I get a good review, but I'm happy with where things are. So what does this mean for you, the reader? Once I let go of the things I didn't know and focused on continuing to impersonate a writer, I started writing again. Ten thousand words in the last two days. Or is it 10,000 words? Or whatever-the-f...you get the idea. I write 'em. You read 'em. At least I hope you do.

So get out there and buy my daydreams, people.

Wanna Be a Beta Reader?

Last night, I was preparing book two of The Warrior Chronicles for ePublishing. I had uploaded the cover art the day before, the grammar check was finished, I put in a table of contents, complete with chapter hyperlinks. Then I uploaded the draft copy to see how the book will look on a Kindle and make sure the hyperlinks worked. Woohoo! Yay! Kudos to me! Book two is almost ready! Yee Haw! I clicked 'Save as Draft' so I could wake up this morning and download the mobi file and send it to my cadre of beta readers. They are quite a diverse group truth be told, so they make a great posse, because the book can been seen from so many different angles. There's Goose, the laid back husband and dad. He's a skateboarder and music junkie who loves a good space battle but wouldn't harm a bee if he could avoid it. He's nearby and I met him through an augmented reality game called "Ingress". That became mutual circling on Google Plus, which ultimately led to him being in my beta group. Then there is Shawn 2, the 'not-me' edition. A mild-mannered credit union guru during the work week, he turns into Bob Vila on his days off. This cat just decides "Oh, I think I will build an updated Taj Mahal today." and a few hours later he's posting pictures of mass pilgrimages to his latest creation. Now we come to Shawn's wife Mel. She spends a lot of her social time gaming and cooking. She posts pictures of what appears to delicious food, and is a general cut up. But her passion is animal rescue. The two of them have a house full of rescued animals. Birds, cats, and because they live in Florida, I think they have a gator or two. When she can't adopt an animal herself, she posts about it to find someone else to adopt it. This is near and dear to me, so she is one of my favorite people on the planet. Next there is my wife Lorelle. She tolerates science fiction on TV or the big screen, but it is not her reading choice. In fact, it's not even in the same solar system as her favorite genres. She wants a book with a nasty medical problem, a murder, and a love story. She give me the perspective of someone who isn't into the genre, meaning she makes sure I write in a way that non-Trekkies can follow both the story and the tech. Finally, my two 'special' beta readers, Tracy and Dawn. Tracy criticizes my grammar. Constantly. I've filed assault charges against her for it, there's a restraining order hearing coming up, and yet she still shows up, violating me with question marks and apostrophes and pretty much anything else she can use to abuse "Men Who Are Asses"™. Finally, there is Dawn. She is author who writes in several genres. She does so very poetically, and has a different target audience than I do. She's also been doing this a lot longer than I have and has a completely different style. One way to compare our work would be to picture a story as a museum: She takes you on a guided tour, describing every piece, filling your mind with images that almost put you in the story as an observer. I push you into the museum and lock you inside. You're on your own. Either you get my story or you don't, but I'm not walking you through it. I don't care. I don't write for you. As I have said before, I write to get the story out of my head. It's purely a mental health issue to me. You've just met the group of people I email my books to before they go live on Amazon. Except...remember how I said I clicked on 'Save as Draft'? Turns out I clicked on 'Save and Publish'. Fuck. When I woke up this morning I had an email from Amazon saying Warrior's Blood was live and on sale. In fact, after looking at the publishing reports I already had a few sales. So after cussing and discussing, I'm leaving it up there. That's right, folks. Warrior's Blood, book two of The Warrior Chronicles, is live and on sale. The whole world is my beta group.

Surprise! I'm an Impostor!

Five years or so ago, my wife got a big promotion. She went from being a worker-bee to being a queen-bee. The most amazing part about it was that very few people at her license level had been promoted to that position. And she is damned good at her job. The productivity levels of the buildings she has managed are good. Her teams make fewer errors than similar groups do, and they are a happier group than most in their industry. My 'day-job' is in a related industry, so I hear lots of good things about my wife, often from people who don't know of my connection to her. In short, she is a great leader, a great boss, and a great manager. I say this so you will understand the part of this post that is about me.
One of the things she used to say back when she was new at the management thing was that she felt like an impostor. As if one day, someone was going to walk into her office and tell her to pack up her shit because they found out she was a fraud. I sort of understood, but not really. I've always been very confident about my endeavors. I assume I can do something, and I do it. What others thought of my work was irrelevant. That was, until now.
I want to be clear about something before I go on. I don't write for money. I don't write for recognition. I write because I daydream. A lot. All the time, every day. In the shower, in the truck, when I'm laying in bed, pretty much anytime I am awake, I daydream. If I write those daydreams down, I can move on to the next one. Otherwise they dominate my entire day, sometimes screwing with my concentration. So I write to clear my head. All that being said, I get paid to write. I ain't giving you my daydreams for free.
My financial success as a writer depends very much on what others think of my work. It depends on reviews. It depends on sales rankings. It depends on phrases like 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought'.
Two weeks ago, I freaked out because Warrior's Scar showed up on a top ten list. Granted it was on a top ten list in a very limited sub-genre of science fiction in another English-speaking country, but I have been on that list for weeks now. I'm proud of that. Today I had another one of those moments. A friend told me he finished my book and enjoyed it, so I told him to review it. I also emphasized that I wanted an honest review, not a that of a friend. Wondering if his review was up yet, earlier tonight I went to my book's Amazon page and saw something new. When I looked at that 'Also Bought' section I was talking about, two things jumped out at me: the names of two authors whose work I have on my Kindle. Writers whose work I have paid for, in one case repeatedly.
My name is up there with real authors! Holy Crap! And even better, when you click on one of those two books, mine shows up as a 'Also Bought' recommendation. When I saw that, my stomach did a little flip-flop. So as I write this post, I am worried sick that someone is going to kick in my door and demand that I turn over my Chromebook because they have determined that I am a fraud. They can have it when they pry it from my cold, dead, hands. Because I keep seeing my name associated with real authors. Maybe I am an impostor. Maybe I am a fraud. But as long as I keep seeing my name next to those of real writers, I'm going to keep faking it.

Jack of All Trades, Master of One.

One of the things I have been most struck by in my journey to become a published (albeit self-published) science fiction writer is the amount of work it really takes. It's not just writing down your daydreams. I can't speak for romance writers, mystery writers or authors of other genres, but the amount of research required to write hard science fiction is as vast as the universe I write about. I've spent weeks studying particle physics, hours trading messages with astrophysicists, and I've even studied linguistics.

I've designed powered armor, launch systems, a Mars colony, an intergalactic government, and even dabbled in bio-engineering as I created a few aliens. Just last night I put the finishing touches on an agricultural system that will allow humanity to enter into trade agreements with over 700 species from across our arm of the galaxy. Keep in mind I did all this to just to get a single idea out of my head. That idea? What would happen if a true warrior from our time jumped a few centuries into the future?

Warrior's Scar began the journey for me. I wrote it mostly to get the story out of my head. But before I could do that, I had to make it believable. Not only for me, but also for my readers. I've never been able to write "It happened". I have to write "It happened because...". That means I can't say "The ship jump to beta Centauri." I have to explain the technology that made that jump possible. This little bit of OCD puts me firmly in the realm of 'hard science fiction'. Hard science fiction. Dammit. Now I have to study. Now I have to research quantum theory.

I'm a cowboy and a country boy at heart. The weekend before I moved to northern California almost twelve years ago, I was shoveling horse shit and spreading hay for my horse. Astrophysics? Hardly. Now skinning a catfish? That was more my speed. Pull it out of the water, nail its head to a tree and peel the skin down it's body. Bread the meat with some buttermilk and cornmeal, throw it in boiling lard until it floats easily, drop in some balls of cornbread mix, and you can bet your waistline that I'm an expert as you down the catfish and hush-puppies. But decades ago, at an age too young to understand its nuances, I read Dune. Then I was hooked. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne... You get the idea. Those were the stories and writers that I cut my science fiction teeth on.

Remember how I said I was a country boy? I could write an epic western without reading anything more than a map. I may do it someday. I suspect every writer has something they could write easily. Some topic about which they could finish a novel in a week. But for whatever reason, we don't. We challenge ourselves. We find the story we have to study about. The story we spend three hours researching for every hour we write. We find the story that broadens our own horizons the same way we seek to broaden the horizons of our readers.

I want you to remember something the next time you read science fiction. It wasn't just written by an author. It was also written by an almost-astrophysicist, an almost-geologist, an almost-biologist, and an almost-engineer. Maybe it will even be a story by me, the jack of all trades and almost-master of one.

Which brings us to this blog. Every writer is supposed to have one, right? So come along on my journey. From designing economies to burning dinner so I could write down 'that thought' before it escaped my mind, Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Writing the Future will let you look over my shoulder as I look into the future.