Matthew Alan Thyer's Blog, page 50

Trying Something Else New

KDP just made a number of changes. Even better, per Amazon’s usual MO, they didn’t really mention most of these changes prior to rolling them out. That’s okay by this here indie, I have been trying like the Dickens to stay away from my sales reports. Write, son, write. Not an unkindly motto, but I’ve got to complete UP SLOPE.

Tonight however, I broke my reporting fast and glanced at my numbers. Good grief! No one mentioned that I’m invisible. I seem to have lost my corporeal nature.

Even though...

Call to Action, Nomination

Over at Indie Author Land they are holding a contest to find fifty indie books worth reading. There is a short list of potential candidates, but for each genre they are still taking suggestions. Science fiction, I mean real, honest to goodness stories in space, are still be written. Written well, and often by independent authors. But, and no offense to people writing in other genres, there’s a lot of not-science fiction on this sci-fi list. Take a look.

Indie Author Land asks the following que...

Update

Today I got my groove back on, oh yeah! I’ve been sort of wallowing in something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike self-pity. I’ve been underwhelmed. Distracted. I’ve let my discipline slidea little. And, as anyone who taps keys for a living knows, that’s when your word counts start dwindling.

This evening, however, I was able to get the baby to bed at a reasonable hour (although it did require a great deal of rubbing his back to get him to slip off into a slumber deep enough for me to le...

Interview with Susan May

Susan May

Not only has author Susan May written a very compelling contribution to the FROM THE INDIE SIDE anthology this collection is largely her brain child. The story of how this came to be is told well in this interview of Suspense Magazineand it too is compelling, much because it underscores the idea that all a writer needs is one part good idea, one part determination, and one part words in a manuscript to find success in publishing.

Susan May is a mom and a authorwho has turned out some...

5%

That’s how much of the ocean we have explored. There is still a lot out there to know and learn. A really excellent TED talk with Edith Widder.

Epic Run Day

Not everyone wakes up in the morning and says “Damn, I need some miles today,” but today that is exactly what I needed. After a yummy breakfast at Main Street Bagels I set my sites on climbing up the Grand Mesa. Conventional routes were out. Seriously, too much traffic and not enough space for the bulki. So instead we chose a seasonally closed route known as Land’s End.

It’s a mostly dirt scenic by-way that climbs up a west face of the big flat-topped mesa on the east end of the Grand Valley....

The Abstract Says It All

The medical uses for this are astounding to say the least, but the James Bond-esk implications just blew my mind all over the wall. From Oxygen gas-filled microparticles provide intravenous oxygen delivery on PubMed

We have developed an injectable foam suspension containing self-assembling, lipid-based microparticles encapsulating a core of pure oxygen gas for intravenous injection. Prototype suspensions were manufactured to contain between 50 and 90 ml of oxygen gas per deciliter of suspensio...

Blood, Guts and Glory: Endless Attempts to Monetize the Oldest Sport

If you ask around you’re likely to hear all sorts of candidates, humanity’s oldest sport could be wrestling or boxing. Various inculcations of sports that employ balls in one form or another. Even martial arts in their great variety. But if you ask the question “what is our oldest sport?” you’re unlikely to hear the reply “running.” I’ve always wondered at this, it’s an anthropological oddity in my mind. Humanity has been running since before it was humanity. Arguably, there was undoubtedly a...

CreateSpace, Hard Core

Mary F’n Poppins

I took the opportunity of nap time today to track down a missing package. After type-setting THE BIG RED BUCKLE and running through a proof it was my intention to order a box of books to take along with me to Emerald City Comicon last weekend. The shipment was supposed to arrive two days before I planned on leaving, but with pre-trip preparations and a nearly finished manuscript breathing down my neck, when those gems didn’t show I honestly didn’t even notice. And now, today,...

2k Out and Back

Rift Valley Speed Record from Mexican Knee on Vimeo.

Ridge soaring. Really amazing, nasty, rodeo, punchy, fantastic ridge soaring. This is beautiful.

On January 16th, Greg Knudson lands his Boeing 747 cargo jet in Nairobi, Kenya. He exits one of the heaviest aircraft in the world, carrying one of the lightest on his back: an Enzo 2 paraglider.

After two years of preparation, the 52 year-old Californian will attack the official FAI paraglider speed record for 200km. By ‘surfing’ the Elgeyo cliffs...