Damon Alan's Blog, page 8

Buying a House

My wife and I are buying the house we’ve rented for the last 2 years.

I had forgotten what a horrible experience buying a house is. The hoops to jump through. The details not to miss. The feeling like you’re forgetting something that will derail the entire thing and make you look like King Doofus.

We’ve owned before. I recommend it if you can, and if you can’t, then steer life to the point where you can. The great thing is that if you want to paint a mural on the wall, it’s your wall. The not so great thing is that if the wind blows off all your shingles, it’s your roof.

This house is really cool, though, and it will be nice to be able to garden, have a few chickens for fresh eggs, and get another dog if I want. The basement is slated to become the coolest rec area ever, although it will take time. Everything is expensive anymore.

I can’t wait to set the garage up how I want, to be honest. Get rid of some things I don’t like, build some workbenches, have a place to create. I have a plan for redoing the basement, most of the work/art/creation for that will happen in the garage. It’s nice to be handy, it saves you a lot of money. If you’re not handy, be very nice to someone who is.

Since it’s harder and harder every year for kids to move out of the house due to the modern economy, I might need a big house for a while. This one has kid room, which is nice. No boyfriend room, husband room, etc, but it does have daughter room. And, someday, grandkid room.

That’s all if I haven’t forgotten some important thing. Which I may well have.

Stupid hoops. I’m tired of jumping.

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Working hard

Sorry for the few updates, I’ve been working hard on the series.

Stennis was out on January 7th, but I’ve been putting winter weather to use and sitting behind the keyboard hammering out book 5. The Depths of War.

It’s currently sitting at 51,048 words in first draft, which will mean it will be slightly larger than Stennis when completed, I think.

In other news: My wife had surgery on her foot Friday, and she came through that with flying colors. She had surgery a year ago to fix a problem, and this one was just to remove the hardware. I’m glad, I’d like to stay as healthy as I can with her for as long as possible. She’s tough, so I suspect she’ll be pushing me around long before I’m pushing her around in a chair.

I’d expect the next release of the Dark Seas Series to be around mid-March, probably on the 15th because that’s my birthday and what better B-Day present than a release. Since it’s been cold here and I like the indoors better under those circumstances, much will get done, and if you could see me working you’d probably see me doing what I’m doing right now a lot. Typing.

On something a bit more advanced than this, fortunately.

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Grasping Nothing

Those of you who’ve read The Anvil of Dust and Stars, this is something that’s in the book. There are small fighting craft called grapplers, they move in space like atmospheric fighters on steroids. They can thrust in any direction simply by gripping the very fabric of space and, using a tracked engine that interfaces with the quantum foam, push against space itself.

I wanted a means to have combat that wasn’t just “point at where they’ll be, and fire” type stuff. This article talks about the basis I used to get beyond that.

Space is not empty. It’s foam. And I believe fully that one day the grappler engines I write about in my books will exist.

Grasping nothing

The grapplers were one of my favorite things to write, and remind me of the PT boats of WWII. They were small, easily destroyed, but they packed a punch well beyond their size with the torpedoes they carried. Grapplers are like that. G-Ks, or Grappler-Killers, are patrol boats. They’re designed to put lead onto the grapplers and end their threat. Both of them have grappler engines, which make them jink around space like mosquitoes avoiding a swat.

Smaller ships, frigates and destroyers, can also have grappler engines mounted in my universe, a maximum of 2. Because if two engines are pulling exactly the same, the ship will roll, turn, etc. With three they could conceivable pull in enough opposition to pull the ship apart.

I will have more of them in the future, most likely. If not more in the Dark Seas series, more in sequels/prequels.

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Novae

If a star goes nova, the kill zone around it will depend on the distance from the star. I’ve read several different estimates.

130 light-years. NASA estimates 25 light-years. Some estimate as many as 450 light-years. These ranges are for a supernova.

From Earthsky.org:  

Dr. Mark Reid, a senior astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has said:

… were a supernova to go off within about 30 light-years of us, that would lead to major effects on the Earth, possibly mass extinctions. X-rays and more energetic gamma-rays from the supernova could destroy the ozone layer that protects us from solar ultraviolet rays. It also could ionize nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, leading to the formation of large amounts of smog-like nitrous oxide in the atmosphere.

The nearest Type 2 supernova candidate is Betelgeuse, 430 light-years away. It will be spectacular when it does go boom, but it will probably be harmless. This could have happened 429 years ago and we’d learn about it this year. Or it might be a million years from now. Nobody knows.

Type 1 supernova, however, is caused when a white dwarf accretes hydrogen fuel from a binary partner, when the fuel reaches a certain level of pressure it fuses all at once in a brilliant explosion. There are a lot of white dwarf stars inside of 100 light-years. But the chance of it happening in our lifetimes is probably less than being killed by a falling meteorite.

The reason I mention all of this is in Book 5 and beyond. I get to research some very interesting things.

 

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Release

Hey everyone!  Book 4 is released and available on Amazon.

Stennis.

I’m stunned by the number of people who bought it already, and by the number of people who downloaded the other 3 books in the series as well. It’s a great honor that each of you put faith in my writing to entertain you.

I’m deep into book 5, and will get it out ASAP. And, as I write, I make it my practice to stay one cover ahead of my current work in progress, so the cover for book 6 is done.

The Covers:

This is the cover for book 5, next to be released. Hopefully in May or June. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the cover for book 6, it might be my favorite yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you can bet if I took the time to make the covers, I’m going to make the books behind them as awesome as I can.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of you.

Let’s hope 2017 is awesome, and doesn’t upset the apple cart any more than it already was by 2016.

I was on the radio on January 1st and 2nd (the 2nd was a repeat). Interested in hearing it? This is the link.

Damon Alan on the radio.

Thank you KCME 88.7 here in Colorado Springs for letting me have that opportunity.

Saturday the 7th I’ll be at Hooked on Books signing my latest release, but the 7th is RELEASE DAY for Stennis, book 4 in the Dark Seas series. Woot! I hope you like it.

Book 5 is well underway, 12,000 words written.

In real life news, everything has been quiet here. I’m a bit relieved the holidays are over, I hope to start posting more science again on here. It’s been a while, I know. You can find the Facebook presence for Dark Seas Books and get more activity there, but still, I’ve been hanging with family and haven’t kept up like I should for the last few weeks.

Here is the link to book 4 if you’re interested, right now it’s just on Kindle, although I have printed copies for you if you want them. Just come see me Saturday at Hooked on Books just east of Cascade on the north side of Bijou street.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you all got what you want, spent time with family, and had good food.

Here at Spacestation Alan, things are great.

Orbital Defense Command is signing out to cook dinner.

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Book signing

Hey, it’s been a very busy December. Let me share.

First, of course, is the shopping. Man, opening up Firefox and logging into Amazon… that’s killing me!

Cover for Book 5

I haven’t completed book 4 yet. LOL! But I have the cover for Books 4 and 5 pretty much done. When I can’t write, I like to turn to digital art, and covers kill two birds with one nuclear missile. So I not only reveal the cover of Book 5 here, but also the Title. The Depths of War.

 

 

The cover for Book 4 is practically done as well, and I’ll go ahead and provide an update. I’ve been asked to speak at a book store in January, and I have to have the book not just done, but published and available for sale by then. So I have a deadline. I have nearly 51,000 words written, and have another 8 chapters or so to go. The plot has taken twists I didn’t even see when I started writing this book, and I’m very pleased with it. It completes the problems Sarah Dayson is left with at the end of Book 3, and then provides her with some more things to think about. Book 5 is REALLY going to be a doozy, and Book 4, while exciting and filled with conflict, really sets up the series for Book 5.

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Black Holes

Here’s a nice video about the size of black holes. One of the most interesting aspects of our universe, they are the destroyer of everything they touch, but the creator of life itself in the sense that galaxies cannot form without them. No galaxies, no star formation. No star formation, no planets. No planets… well, you get it.

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