The Literary Titan book review panel has spoken, and what they’ve said is, give a gold medal to The Reefs of Time! Here’s my gold medal. Here’s what they say:
“Our literary awards are given to books and authors that have astounded and amazed us with unique writing styles, vivid worlds, complex characters, and original ideas…
The Gold Award is bestowed on books that we found to be perfect in their delivery of original content, meticulous development of unique characters in an organic and striking setting, innovative plot that supports a fresh theme, and elegant prose that transforms words into beautifully written books.”
I took a shower today with water heated by the sun! What a feeling! Our solar heating panels went up on the garage roof last week, and our aging 40-gallon hot water tanks were removed, and replaced by a humongous 119-gallon lifetime stainless steel tank that feeds both apartments in our two-family house. Primary heat is the sun. Secondary heat is an electric heater in the tank. Our expectation is that about 75% of our water heating requirements will come from the sun, annually. More in the summer and less in the winter, obviously. But even in the winter, plenty of heat comes from the sun. The excellent work was done by New England Solar Hot Water.
Remember, back in December, I told you about the trench I was digging? That was for this.
Speaking of home heating efficiency, our ductless AC/heating system was finished a few weeks ago by New England Ductless, and now (in moderate weather) we’re heating more efficiently with electric heat pumps. We’re still figuring out the best way to control them (which we do using our smartphones), or rather to balance them with the legacy steam heat in the colder weather. These condenser units are kind of dominant on the outside of the house, so I guess my home project for this summer will be to build some kind of privacy fence around them.
This was all made possible in part by a two-town group discount, various tax credits and rebates for renewable energy installations, and a 0% interest loan program run by a state agency (MassSave) and funded by utilities. All that brought the net cost down considerably. The hot water installation should pay for itself in 4-5 years.
My guest spot went live today on Edward Willett’s podcast series, The Worldshapers! Ed is a writer of over sixty books, and his podcast series has included a slew of great science fiction and fantasy authors talking about their writing process. He has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish an anthology of stories by authors who were guests on The Worldshapers podcast in its first year. Take a look! Give them some love!
Meanwhile, you can listen right here to the interview, or go to the podcast site.
Alert reader Laura _ sent me this copy of The Reefs of Time that she bought from Barnes and Noble online. Anything look wrong to you?
As you can see from this shot, I am holding just the cover open. The first page inside the cover is Prologue Two. Missing are all the front-matter pages, including title page and copyright, dedication, “Previously in The Chaos Chronicles” synopses, and Prologue One. Yikes! How many other people got defective books like this, and didn’t trouble to get in touch with me to let me know?
The book, as far as I have been able to determine so far, was printed by Ingram, a usually solidly reliable producer of books. I’ve asked for an investigation, but I don’t expect to have an answer anytime soon.
If you, or anybody you know, received a defective book, please let me know! Thanks!
Oh, and ditto if you get a copy of Sunborn with the cover type skewed to the side (which happened to me).
I told you recently about a new print edition for Sunborn. Now I’ve got an audiobook you just have to have! This fourth volume of The Chaos Chronicles is billowing into the stores, with narration by the incomparable Stefan Rudnicki.
It’ll be in lots more stores soon, including Audible and Amazon. Also Overdrive, so you’ll be able to ask your public library to order it. (Not yet. But they can order the first three books.)
My Asus laptop has died, this time the true death, I think. Two years ago (seems like yesterday), it died in a similar fashion, just going poof, bye when my back was turned. That time it was the motherboard, and I suspect the same is true this time. That time it expired on the last day of the warranty, and Asus (after considerable prodding) did the right thing and fixed it. This time it’s three years old. And I just two weeks ago got the latest Windows update to work on it. This is so depressing. A computer should last longer than this! They’re just like the replicants from Bladerunner, with a built-in expiration date.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…”
This weekend, Boston’s long-running Boskone science fiction convention, will be running in the Westin Hotel on the waterfront—same location as Arisia, a month ago. Where Arisia was somewhat media oriented, Boskone is more focused on the literary end of science fiction. It also usually boasts one of the best art shows among SF cons.
I’ll be there Friday evening, Saturday, and for a little while on Sunday. If you see me, stop and say hello! I’ll also be selling autographed books during the Boskone Book Party, Saturday evening. Come buy some books! (Or just say hello.)
Sunborn, the fourth book in The Chaos Chronicles, has blazed forth in a new treebook edition, a solid trade paperback designed to go nicely with Reefs and Crucible and all the others! The complete set will look great on any shelf! It’s available right now from Ingram, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, which means you can ask your local bookstore (or library) to order it, or you can buy it online. (As of this moment, it’s discounted at B&N. I don’t know why, or how long it will last.)
With this, all the published books in The Chaos Chronicles are available in print as well as ebook. (Still planned: a reformatting of Neptune Crossing, which is in a larger trim size than the others. It was the first one I put back into print, at 6×9 inches, and I later decided to go with the 5.5×8.5 inch size for the new books.)
Coming soon: an all-new audiobook of Sunborn! It’s already recorded and uploaded. It might take a couple of weeks to become available. Don’t change that dial!
Stars are dying. Bandicut and his friends must learn what threatens the Starmaker Nebula—and confront a billion-year-old adversary of life as they know it…
Screwdrivers, really? Yes, really. This is one of most interesting short videos I’ve seen in a long time. The History Guy takes on “Robertson, Phillips, and the History of the Screwdriver,” and if that sounds like a snoozer, trust me, it’s a fascinating take on invention, powerful personalities, world history, and why the heck most of us have Phillips-head screwdrivers (and screws) instead of the easier-to-use square-socket (Robertson) screwdriver that apparently is common in Canada. Those darn Canadians have beaten us again!
Both my laptop and my desktop computers have finally run the gauntlet of last year’s major Windows 10 update to ver. 1909, without getting borked by the update! Why is this a miracle? Let me count the ways, or rather the times both computers have—all on their own—tried to do this, each time ending in disaster. Windows tech support, including Level Three (high) support, invested hours in trying to solve this with me, all ending in failure. This time it succeeded, but only because of other Windows users to the rescue.
What went wrong was that the update program each time created a new user profile—[username].000—and moved all of my files into it, text, music, photos, everything. That’s what it left me with, plus the nearly empty shell of the old profile [username]. What’s wrong with this (besides offending my sensibilities)? Everything! All my software is set up to look for files in a particular location. This changed the paths to all the files. Dropbox failed. Onedrive failed. iTunes failed, Word and Scrivener failed….
What brought about the miracle? Some user’s discovery, posted on a Microsoft support board, that if he uninstalled his Zune software and removed all traces of it before the update, everything worked the way it was supposed to. Please note: Zune software is a Microsoft product. I use it to support my Zune music player, which I still use, and love. Don’t you think Microsoft should have designed their update to take their own legacy software into account? Failing that, don’t you think they should have informed all support personnel of the workaround, especially since the information has been posted on a Microsoft support board since last summer? I kind of do.
It took me a while to find the time and determination, but I finally did the same thing: ran a full backup, uninstalled Zune, tried the update. And it worked! It worked! No more do I live under the Sword of Damocles of unplanned update/borks! (For now, anyway.) And I reinstalled Zune, and all is well.
In celebration, I present you with a picture of my 20-year-old lava lamp! It doesn’t exactly work right anymore, but it’s still trying.
The Literary Titan book review panel has spoken, and what they’ve said is, give a gold medal to The Reefs of Time! Here’s my gold medal. Here’s what they say:
