David Lee Summers's Blog, page 114

Bubonicon 45

Hard to believe it’s almost time for Bubonicon again! Bubonicon is an annual science fiction convention held each year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This year, it will be held from August 23-25 at the Mariott Uptown. The writer guests of honor are Brent Weeks and Tim Powers. The guest artist is Alan F. Beck and the Toastmistress is Diana Rowland. You can learn more about the convention at their website, bubonicon.com

Hadrosaur Productions will be back with a table in the dealer’s room. We have all kinds of great new products including my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order and the anthology A Kepler’s Dozen: Thirteen Stories About Distant Worlds that Really Exist. When I’m not on panels, you will likely find me there. My schedule at Bubonicon is as follows.

Friday, August 23

9:30-11:00pm – Astro Boy Salon – For the Love of Cheese: Son of the Cheese Magnet. In this panel, I’ll be discussing many of my favorite cheesy movies and the fine line between “classic schlock” and “just plain bad”. On the panel with me are Adam Jarmon Brown, Craig A. Butler, Victor Milán, Scott Phillips, Robert Vardeman, and John Jos Miller.

Saturday, August 24

10:00-11:00am – Main Room – Short Fiction in the Era of Digital Publishing. My fellow panelists and I will explore the implications of digital publishing on the realm of short fiction. On the panel with me are Daniel Abraham, Suzy M. Charnas, Joan Saberhagen and Josh Gentry.
2:30-3:00pm – DC Comics Salon – 25 Minutes with David Lee Summers. Let me tell you a tale. I’ll give a short reading from my new novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order. I may also give a quick sneak peak at Lightning Wolves.
5:20-6:30pm – Main Room – Mass Autographing Session. I’ll be there along with all the other Bubonicon authors to sign my books.

Sunday, August 25

1:30-2:30pm – Main Room – What if Humans NEVER Go Into Space Again?. I’ll be moderating this provocative panel exploring what might happen to science fiction writers and humanity in a world where people never go into space again. On the panel with me are Mario Acevedo, Doug Beason, T. Jackson King, and Morgan J. Locke.

If you’re in Albuquerque next weekend, I hope to see you at Bubonicon 45!

Revenge of the Wild Wild West

I apologize for my absence from the blogsphere the last couple of weeks. I sailed into a perfect storm of writing deadlines and astronomy job responsibilities that kept me off line for much of the last couple weeks. Now that I’m on the other side, I can report that my latest wild west steampunk adventure, Lightning Wolves, is now turned in to the publisher and I’m awaiting edits. Also, we were able to test out a new high resolution camera on the Kitt Peak 2.1-meter telescope. The results of those tests look like they’ll result in a new scientific publication. So, although I’ve been absent, I’ve hardly been idle!

Fortunately, the last few days have not been all work and no play. I was able to take some time to enjoy a couple of good books and a couple of a good videos. As I searched through my video collection, I came across my set of the television series The Wild Wild West. There’s no question that the show had a strong influence on my flavor of wild west steampunk storytelling. The problem with The Wild Wild West is that while it started strong, later incarnations never really lived up to the promise of the original series. In fact, the series itself was strongest in its first, black-and-white, season. As the show went on, network censors demanded that the violence be toned down and it was played more for laughs than for action. Still, the original series did pretty well throughout its four-year run. The real problem came with the sequels.

When I speak of sequels, the first thing most people will think of is the 1999 movie with Will Smith and Kevin Kline. Thing is, I’m one of a handful of people I know who actually kind of like the film. Of course, the operative words there are “kind of”. The humor in the movie falls flat more often than not, but I enjoyed the visuals and thought when they played it for action more than laughs, it showed real promise.

The movie wasn’t the only attempt at resurrecting the series. There are two sequels that many people don’t know about. These are the TV movies The Wild Wild West Revisited and More Wild Wild West that starred Robert Conrad, Ross Martin, and a host of guest stars, many of whom appeared in the original series. These films, which were broadcast in 1979 and 1980 respectively, should have been great, but like the 1999 film were played more for laughs than action and those laughs often didn’t work out as well as expected. The thing I love most about these films is that they were shot at Old Tucson Studios near the observatory where I work. The scenery is gorgeous.

Fortunately, the Wild Wild West saga isn’t limited to film. I recently discovered a limited comic book series that was published in 1990 by Millennium Comics. 1990 was the year I got married. I was in graduate school and starting a new job. I wasn’t exactly following comics closely during that time, so it’s perhaps not surprising I missed it! I recently came across it and picked up a copy of the series and I’m glad I did.

I found that the comic series did a great job of capturing the spirit of the first season of the series. Not only is Dr. Loveless here as the villain, but he’s accompanied by Antoinette and Voltaire, his assistants from the first season. One of the things I wish they had done even in the original series was to have folded in a little more real history. This comic series brings in several historical figures who conspire in an elaborate plot to assassinate President Grant. The artwork was a little disappointing at times, but the story more than compensated for it. This was nicely done and I wish Millennium had produced more of these.

What’s more, the weird western and steampunk worlds have brought us some worthy successors to The Wild Wild West. I’m currently reading Cherie Priest’s Ganymede which is set in Seattle and New Orleans. Although one might not think of New Orleans as the west, it was certainly featured in The Wild Wild West. Of course, I’ve also enjoyed the Miles O’Malley stories of David B. Riley, which are now collected in an omnibus edition entitled The Devil Draws Two.

I hope Lightning Wolves also proves to be a worthy successor. I’m still in that afterglow of finishing the novel where it all seems wonderful and I fear it’s all terrible. Fortunately, it’s now in the hands of a great batch of editors and beta readers, who will help me whip it into shape while I start thinking about the directions the next book will take.

Interview with Steve B. Howell

Anthony Cardno not only interviewed me on his blog, but he interviewed Steve B. Howell, NASA’s Kepler Project Scientist and my co-editor on the anthology A Kepler’s Dozen. You can read Anthony’s interview at Interview with Steve B. Howell and learn what a project scientist actually does, get some updates on the Kepler mission, and learn what it was like for a scientist to work on a science fiction anthology.

Yesterday, I finished the first complete draft of my novel Lightning Wolves. I’m the kind of writer who tends to edit as I go, so the first three-quarters are somewhat beyond the “rough draft” stage and I feel pretty good about them. Today, I’m working to catch up with a number of projects that have been on the back burner while I let the novel sit a little bit. Then I’ll give it another read through and turn it in to the publisher.

Interview with David Lee Summers

Today I’m wrapping up the first draft of my Wild West Steampunk novel Lightning Wolves, so I thought I’d share an interview Anthony R. Cardno conducted with me earlier this month about my anthology, A Kepler’s Dozen. He asked some interesting questions about assembling the anthology along with my work in astronomy. I discuss how my story in A Kepler’s Dozen relates to my other science fiction tales, the process of working with a co-editor, and even share my own favorite anthology. Hope you’ll drop by and take a look.

Read the interview here: Interview with David Lee Summers.

Summers Family Summer Reading

Today I’m blogging over at Dark Cargo about what my family is reading this summer. I discuss how they’re supporting me as I wrap up my latest Wild West Steampunk adventure and what they’re reading when they’re not proofreading the book. The photo illustrating the article also shows my daughters reading in one of the settings of my novella Revolution of Air and Rust. Drop by, and leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you and your family are reading!

Summers Family Summer Reading.

Astronomy on Independence Day

I spent my Independence Day this week in the operator’s chair at the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak. Astronomers typically work every single clear night, regardless of weekends or holidays. I’ve worked during many Thanksgivings, Memorial Days, Presidents’ Days and more. In particular, I was supporting a project looking at stars with planets or planet candidates identified by the Kepler Space Probe and getting spectra of them. Spectra tell us things like the chemical composition of the star and the temperature, which in turn helps us know whether any planets discovered are potentially habitable.

Basically, when operating the 4-meter, I spend the night at the console shown above. It’s not as colorful as watching a fireworks show, but it’s still pretty thrilling to point the telescope at faint stars, then take a glimmer of light, spread it out through a spectrograph, and understand an object that’s hundreds or even thousands of light years away.

Quiet nights at the telescope can be a good time for reflection and on this weekend after Independence Day I do find myself privileged to be an American. I’m fascinated by the history of this great land, and I’ve turned to expressing that fascination through my steampunk writing. That said, I recognize this country is far from perfect and its leaders have made more than their share of mistakes, but one of the things that makes America great is perhaps that it’s easier to correct those mistakes here than it is in other countries. We’re still generally free to form our own opinions and express them.

I express my thoughts and explore ideas through my writing. Recently I came across a review of one of my books, claiming I was clearly a member of a certain political party because of some remarks a character made. It left me scratching my head. Sure, if a character expresses an idea, it’s something I’ve thought about, but my character and I may have very different outlooks. What’s more, even if I do share an opinion about one subject with a political party, it doesn’t mean I agree with others.

If there’s one thing that concerns me about America today, it’s a tendency to view things along very polarized party lines. If a person believes A, they must by necessity believe B,C, and D also. The truth is that like starlight, there’s a whole spectrum of ideas.

As the fireworks fade and light shows end this weekend after Independence Day, I encourage you to form your own opinions and take constructive action when you see a need for a change. Don’t be afraid to disagree with a friend and remember you can still be friends even if you disagree. I think that’s a viewpoint most of the protagonists in my novels and stories would agree with and it summarizes why this country really is so great.

Barrelling into Summer

Summer is off to a busy start. I spent this past week working on three major projects. My steampunk novel Lightning Wolves is due at the publisher’s by the end of July, so I set myself a pace of writing 2000 words a day when I’m not at my “day” job at Kitt Peak National Observatory. So far, I’ve been able to keep up that pace and I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll be getting the first part off to beta readers in early July while I wrap up the ending.

In the meantime, I’ve been working with the Science Fiction Poetry Association to get their annual Rhysling Anthology to press. The Rhysling Award is the award for best speculative poem published in the previous year. There are two categories. One is for poems under 50 lines. The other is for poems 50 lines and over. This year’s Rhysling Chair is John C. Mannone. I designed the cover using a wonderful photo of the Bubble Nebula taken at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Thanks to the National Observatory for letting SFPA use such a cool image. It kind of reminds me of the vortex at the opening of Doctor Who.

As I write this, I’m at the end of a two-year term as SFPA’s vice president. It’s been my honor to serve and I wrestled long and hard with the question of whether I was going to run for re-election, but I decided that I had so many commitments on my plate, it was better to step aside and let someone else help run the organization. Nevertheless, it will be my great honor to announce the Rhysling Awards at WorldCon in San Antonio later this summer.

Earlier this year, I mentioned that I was canceling Tales of the Talisman’s summer reading to allow us to catch up with the magazine’s production schedule. Sure enough, that’s the third big project I’ve been working on this week. I’ve been editing stories for the summer issue and getting them ready to send them to the art director so she can make illustration assignments. I would have finished editing stories for the issue this week, but it turns out I’ve been called in to work at Kitt Peak a night earlier than I was expecting, so edits will get finished during my next break.

As if that weren’t enough, our water heater decided to die this week. At least it waited until summer!

Lightning Wolves and Outlines

I’m settling in to write the last few chapters of my wild west steampunk adventure Lightning Wolves over the next few weeks. Today, I took a walk down by the Rio Grande to get myself in the old west frame of mind.

The debate between working from an outline or writing by the seat of one’s pants is an old one. I tend to prefer working from an outline because I have a day job that takes me out of town to an observatory every other week. I’m never quite sure when I can squeeze in a few minutes here or there to get some writing in.

That said, I’m not slavishly devoted to my outlines. I review them periodically as I’m working and adjust them if I see that the plot is going in a slightly different direction than I thought it was going to. That happened this past week with Lightning Wolves.

In fact, the plot had not deviated very far from the outline, but the characters were in somewhat different emotional places than I imagined they would be. The decisions they would make at this point were not the ones I imagined when I originally outlined the book, so I changed course and reworked the outline of the novel’s ending. This actually proved to be a good thing since there were a few things I’d originally written in the outline I wasn’t sure how I would resolve. Now, I have a resolution that works for me.

Will I continue to follow the updated outline through the rest of the novel? I’m getting close enough to the end that it’s likely, but I will allow myself room to change and room for my characters to grow.

Lightning Wolves picks up where my novel Owl Dance leaves off. If you want to learn about the first novel visit http://www.davidleesummers.com/books.html#owldance

Bringing my Writing and Astronomy Careers Together – #SFWApro

This week, Hadrosaur Productions released the ebook edition of A Kepler’s Dozen: Thirteen Stories About Distant Worlds That Really Exist. I co-edited the anthology with Steve B. Howell, project scientist of NASA’s Kepler Mission. Both of us also contributed stories to the anthology. I’m especially excited about this anthology because it allowed me to bring my passions for astronomy and science fiction together in one place.

Steve and I have been colleagues since I returned to Kitt Peak National Observatory in 2008. At the time, he was serving as the scientist for the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope. I was hired to be an observing assistant for the 3.5-meter, along with other telescopes on the mountain. Observing assistants operate the telescopes and help visiting observers get the best use out of the telescope time they’re granted. Soon after I returned to Kitt Peak, Steve learned about my interest in science fiction and fantasy and even bought a copy of the anthology Human Tales, which features my story “The Griffin’s Tail.” Here we see Steve enjoying his copy at the console of the WIYN telescope:

A couple years later, after Steve took the job at NASA, he suggested assembling a collection of short stories set in the planetary systems discovered by the Kepler probe. I thought it was a great idea and took it to my colleagues at Hadrosaur Productions. They agreed and we decided to move forward with the project.

Hadrosaur’s primary publishing venture for the last decade has been Tales of the Talisman Magazine. Naturally, I approached a number of writers whose work has appeared in the magazine over the years to write stories for the anthology. We handled this as an invitation-only anthology simply because we wanted to make sure each story featured a different planet. We also approached other astronomy professionals with a strong interest in science fiction, including the University of Wyoming’s Mike Brotherton and my Kitt Peak colleague Doug Williams.

Our goal for this anthology was simple. The Kepler mission has been discovering hundreds of planets around other stars. We wanted to envision these systems as the real places they are and imagine what they might be like, just like H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs once imagined the planet Mars. Much as our understanding of Mars has evolved over time, we expect our understanding of the Kepler planets will as well. We may be wrong in some of our assumptions about what these planets are like, but we hope to challenge the young and young-at-heart to dream about these places and take a closer look for themselves.

Katy Garmany of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory wrote a very nice press release about the book that even shows you where the book’s planets are in the sky. You can read that here: http://www.noao.edu/news/2013/pr1305.php

The ebook edition of A Kepler’s Dozen is available at Amazon and Smashwords. The print edition is available at many online retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and direct from the publisher at Hadrosaur Productions.

Shortly after the book was released, it was announced that the Kepler spacecraft had lost one of the reaction wheels that keep it pointed accurately at one place in the sky. Despite that, Kepler has already produced more data than scientists have been able to keep up with. Steve and I are already talking about a possible second anthology that imagines even more of Kepler’s worlds.

One Lovely Blog Award

Deby Fredericks, author of the wonderful fantasy novel, Seven Exalted Orders, nominated me for the “One Lovely Blog Award.” Deby’s blog looks at dragon lore and history from around the world. If you enjoy dragon stories, fantasy, or folklore, this is a site you don’t want to miss!

This blog award comes with the following rules: Thank the person who made the nomination. Post the award graphic. List seven things about myself. Recommend seven more blogs. So, without further ado, let me present seven random factoids about myself:

I have two brothers and no sisters.
Of my brothers, I’m the only one who wasn’t named for someone in the family.
Despite that, I do share a name with a distant uncle—David Crockett.
Neither my parents nor I knew that Davy Crockett was a distant uncle until I was well into my 40s.
I am the only one of my brothers who is not a native Texan.
One of my brothers is also a writer and publisher.
Although I’ve never lived in Texas, I was on the staff of the award-winning literary magazine of El Paso Community College for several years.

Here are seven blogs that are worth taking a look at:

Sean McLachlan’s Civil War Horror discusses the Trans-Mississippi Civil War and historical fiction plus sometimes veers off into historical fiction.
Sky Warrior Books is one of my publishers and offers some great writing, publishing and marketing tips.
J Alan Erwine is an author and editor with many interesting projects.
Melinda Moore is an author, musician, dancer, and teacher who blogs about writing, shares guest blogs, and even the occasional recipe.
Rick Novy presents writing tips and interviews with some very well known authors.
Mike Brotherton maintains a wonderful blog that discusses astronomy, science fiction and where the two come together.
STEAMED! Writing Steampunk Fiction is a blog with several contributors including Suzanne Lazear, Theresa Meyers, Maeve Alpin, and O.M. Grey, plus regular guest posts. If you want to see just how varied and wonderful the world of Steampunk can be, this is a great stop.