Damon Alan's Blog, page 10

Newsletter Test Post

This site is awesome. You need to know that. That’s the news, folks.

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Published in a monthly periodical.

Here’s an opportunity to read a short story in my style of writing.

This here Universe ain’t big enough…

The awesome thing is that American Mensa, who published it, illustrated it as well. Rights are back to me in 30 days, at which time I’ll put it up with a few other short stories on this site.

I’ve removed the first three chapters from book 1 of the Dark Seas series, as it was something I wanted the readers to know… but it didn’t really fit in with the entire rest of the series (so far) being mainly about Sarah Dayson.

Those chapters will be available on this site as well, as a short story called Hive Origins once I get it all cleaned up and ready to publish.

Eventually, when enough short stories are in my pocket, I’ll publish a collection of them, while also keeping them here to be read on line for free.

Enjoy the one linked above. It’s one of my favorites.

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Born too early.

Did you ever feel that maybe you were born too early?

The secret code of eternity

In a few generations the Earth’s population will have peaked. There is a great video about that on YouTube here.

We will have private industry colonizing space.

We might very well have conquered medical mortality.

Disease will be on the run, if not eliminated.

Maybe it will be possible to travel to the nearest stars because a hundred years will be such a small part of our expected existence that we won’t care about spending it onboard a can hurtling toward a new and unknown home.

I think this is one possible future that humanity has, and I’m sorry I’m going to miss it. Mine generation, X, and maybe Generation Y and the Millennials may well be the last humans to know death. Drat. Born three generations from an unlimited future.

On the other hand, maybe today is the best time to be alive. Tomorrow could be a time of depleted resources, lost opportunity to expand into space, and war. Maybe medical science will revert to the 1920s in many ways, what with antibiotic resistant bugs and the outrageous pricing behavior of pharmaceutical companies these days. Maybe some future point will be a nuclear exchange, with billions dying. That is not how we want to control our numbers.

Instead, let’s go with plan A. I don’t mind dying if I go knowing my grandkids will carry my memory into the coming millennia. Would I rather be there with them? Yes. But there is some goodness in knowing they may well live as long as they want. Aged 50 in 2016… I know it won’t be me that lives thousands of years. As much as I expected it would be when I was aged 10 in 1976. I have a 10 year old today. Maybe, just maybe, my 10 year old dreams will be her reality.

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This is so very cool.

The Space Shuttle Galileo

 

I want to park it at my house just to play in. Pew! Pew!  Maybe put LED monitors over the front windows with space vistas. Mount it on hydraulics so it moves with any steering inputs.

Hah! Nerd fun.

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A preview. But not if you dislike spoilers.

This may be a bit of a spoiler for book 4 of the Dark Seas series. If you don’t want to know anything until you get the book in your hands or on your Kindle, do not read on.

Really.

This is a spoiler alert.

Spoiler alert.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2, so you know I have been working on it.

It’s been a while

A lot has happened in the last month!

Let’s start with the good. First and foremost, I suppose, is that Renegades is now published. Available on Amazon in print or ebook format, Fleet Captain Sarah Dayson continues her battle to save humanity, one enemy at a time. I just got 10 copies in the mail yesterday.

The second thing that’s happened on the good side is I am going to be published in the September issue of Mensa’s newsletter, The Mind. A short piece of fiction I wrote called “This Here Universe Ain’t Big Enough…”

My wife and I, after living on all sides of Colorado Springs and in several houses, have finally decided to buy the one we’re in. So as soon as we put back the $$$ for a down payment, we’ll be homeowners once again. It’s been almost a decade.

The bad… I got a spinal injection, and this is probably the main reason I haven’t posted much. A needle in the vertebrae. Or in between them, to be precise. For leg pain. The good news is worked, the bad news is that it’s caused numbness in my left hand that makes typing a pain in the booty. But I’m adapting.

Book 4 of the Dark Seas series is started, and I think it’s going to be awesome. We’ll see a resurgence of the warship Stennis, as well as a game changing method of warfare that Sarah Dayson will prepare to take to the enemy, aka the Hive. The first large scale application of that will probably be in book 5.

 

So you’re all caught up! Here’s a link to Renegades. I like it a lot, it is getting the story where it needs to be for the battles to come. Not that this one doesn’t have a battle. It has a big one, at least in the sense of how it changes Sarah Dayson.

Renegades, Book 3 of the Dark Seas Series. Click this line!

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Dallas

Seems like I’m making this sort of blog post way too often.

I am torn apart by the losses suffered by the Dallas Police Department tonight. All because of the hate within the hearts of men. There is no problem that should result in us shooting each other, black, white, cop, civilian. As Americans we are part of the greatest nation that has ever been in the history of mankind. We have freedom the likes of which hasn’t been known since we were hunter gatherers. And yet with each step we take toward violence, that freedom hangs more and more precariously in the balance.

We lost boatloads of it after 9/11, what with the government spying on us all and the TSA groping our kids and grandmothers.

We lost more as the War on Terror progressed over the last decade and a half. And now we’re about to lose more because some complete moron decides he’s going to walk down the path of indignant righteousness stupidity and kill people that he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know the hearts of the people he murdered. He doesn’t know the pain the families of these police officers are going to feel. He only knew he had hate inside. And he acted on it.

Black Lives Matter get it all wrong. Black Lives don’t matter any more than any other life. They don’t matter any less either. Individually we determine our worth to society, and color has ZERO to do with that. Herman Caine is certainly more valuable than Charles Manson. And Carl Sagan was certainly more valuable than OJ Simpson. It’s how things work. We give of ourselves to build society, and in return we make a better place for our kids. If we take steps to knock down the bricks that others built, then we are not worthy of the life we’ve been given.

I do hope the shooter is arrested.

And I hope he’s tried, and if found guilty, executed.

Because his life has a negative value to society that he can never recover from.

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Happy Birthday, America

Happy 4th of July, peeps. I hope that everyone has or had a great dinner with family and friends. Played some games with loved ones. Ate until your pants hurt. It’s about midnight here at my house, July 4th starts in about 30 minutes. Today we went and bought brats, hot dogs, burgers… and plan on feeding both family and friends tomorrow. There will be kids running around playing games, adults having some beverages and playing cards, and the awesome smell of grilled meats permeating the air.

The dog will get his share, my wife and I will welcome people into our house, and we’ll cook to put smiles on the faces that matter to us.

We’re lucky.

This day celebrates our freedoms, our country, our rights. It celebrates the spirit that led us to be free. It honors the sacrifices our forefathers made in lives and wealth for us to be free. Let’s not forget them. Take a moment to think of their bravery, their fortitude, their stoic stance for what was right. And realize that their spirit is still alive. There are times I fear the flame burns low, but America is still the beacon of light in a dark world.

Tomorrow will bring joy and laughter. Fireworks and games. Food and excess. But it will also bring respect for where those things were born.

In America. In the land of the free, and every time it need be, the home of the brave.

 

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We humans are sh*tbags to each other.

The Dark Seas series is military space opera. Sometimes. At other times it’s soap opera. And sometimes it’s a WWII submarine movie. And still, at other times, it’s a love story.

To be honest I probably shouldn’t have it try to be all those things. But I can’t help it.

“Of course you can,” you say. “You are writing it. You can do as you like.”

This is true. I am writing it, and I can do as I like. Apparently what I like is to give my characters a living breathing world… scratch that. Universe to live in. Where magic exists, but is based on a previously undiscovered fifth force of the universe. Where people have human needs, hopes, and desires. Where betrayal comes at the cost of lives and loves lost. Where battle is for keeps. And death is eternal sleep in the cold abyss.

My overriding theme is partly about the Hive, but the fundamental level of the series is this: We humans are shitbags to each other.

Sure, we find those in life who treat us well. We all have some, maybe as many as a few hundred unless you’re famous. But the reality is that outside of that circle of those who love us, people will screw us over, plunder our successes, and steal everything we have. Maybe even kill us. No, not everyone. But enough that the world is a very dangerous place.

This is portrayed in the Dark Seas series. A bad corporation bent on industrial espionage creates the original Hive matrix. War ensues. Even so, elements inside humanity fight with each other even as they try to fight off the Hive. Unsuccessfully, because the Hive are unified. Humans are the farthest thing from that.

Dark Seas is a reflection of our world today, where even in America (The Alliance) we are factionalized and violent to each other. We rob, steal, murder, rape and destroy the essence of our fellow American. Again, not everyone. But enough that crime is a concern in our worlds. In book 3 this theme looms large for Sarah Dayson. She encounters betrayal and learns a very valuable lesson about human character.

But even in this, there is hope. People make heroic sacrifices. The children of humanity, the Adepts, rise to the occasion that Sarah finds herself in. Despite horrible brutality and the lingering pain of loss, Sarah’s friends become her salvation.

I think that message is important in our daily lives. When the world seems to want more blood than we can spare, our friends are our saving grace.

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Orlando

I want to express my outrage at what happened at Pulse Nightclub.

All I can say is that if you don’t like what happens in America, don’t be in America. If you want to be in a place where people are not free to love who they want when they want, then go live in that place. Because America is a place where we have freedom of association. Freedom to choose our friends, our companions, our lovers. No ideology will dictate to the rest of us how we will behave or what we will believe. So give that shit up right now.

We Americans have our squabbles, but often they are about our particular issue on the freedom spectrum. Suppressing another or harming them does not increase your freedom.

So stop it.

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