Jan Millsapps's Blog, page 2

Let’s Hear It For Good Ol’ Vesto!

One hundred years ago today, an unassuming junior astronomer at Lowell Observatory made a discovery that forever changed our understanding of the universe – yet hardly anyone recognizes the name Vesto Melvin Slipher. Who? “We have hired a new observer, Mr. V.M., imported from Indiana,” Miss Lulu writes in her journal. More people moving about day [...]

Books in Place

I’m staying for a few days in a historic inn: no TVs in the rooms, but books everywhere. Old books stacked on tables in the lobby, upright books lining shelves along the stairway, books nested in a basket by my bedside. I have yet to open any of them, but did take time this morning [...]

Books that Won’t Behave

Thinking about how to present my novel in an actual library setting, as I will be doing on Wed., Oct. 3, in the new library at SFSU. Libraries, imposing structures filled with study shelving lined with orderly books maintained by quietly efficient librarians, seem like places where one should not misbehave. But this is a [...]

How Many Ways Can You Get To Mars?

So this blog is back! I’ll be posting frequently – now it’s more about my book’s adventures in the world as I promote, distribute, market and occasionally perform with it. Last week I saw that the Exploratorium (SF science museum) has a current exhibit, “Return to Mars.” I know what they’re referring to – Curiosity [...]

What a Difference a Hat Makes

Just days before my book launch at Lowell Observatory, I learned that a certain higher-up there feared my book may be too controversial for the blessed Lowell family (who still haunts the place). I was devastated and nearly cancelled my trip, then had a second thought. I could put on a fancy hat and everything [...]

A Happy (Enough) Ending!

I’m signing off on this blog so I can concentrate and focus my time and energy on my book, plans for its launch on June 2, and marketing/promotion. I am working with Pedernales Publishing – exactly what I need – they’ve positioned solidly in-between traditional presses (who take your manuscript and do everything) and self-publishing [...]

Transit of Venus – Coming Soon!

Enough dawdling. I still have a few, far-fetched options, but recently the harsh truth arrived, twice in the same day, when both Atticus and McSweeney’s passed on my “VoM” manuscript – the two small presses I actually thought might may want to work with me. Venus is supposed to keep moving – that’s what the [...]

Persistence and Progress, Dusty and Etta

The new year arrived and still my manuscript isn’t a book. A moment of despair (OK more than a moment) when I realized this is exactly the same situation I was in last new year. There was a brief mid-year frenzy of activity when I finally made contact with a respected literary editor who did [...]

Ephemereality is Almost a Word

I’ve morphed this blog into many contortions this past year, but lately it’s been about the uncertain route a book must travel toward publication, its eventual culmination a rare and ephemeral event whose essence I pondered while lying in bed last week watching the Earth’s shadow creep across the full moon just prior to sunrise [...]

GREETINGS FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE

This artificial wolf, sculpted in mid-howl, sits right outside the entry to the Goldstone Deep Space Network in the Mojave Desert, where giant radio telescopes monitor distant signals from space. Wolves don’t actually howl at the moon. They howl to communicate with other wolves, and the higher they hold their heads when they emit the [...]