David Lee Summers's Blog, page 131

Upcoming Events

Last week I updated the calendar at my website to include two upcoming conventions that I will be at. The first is less than a week away. That convention is Fiestacon, also known as Westercon 62 which will be held at the Tempe Mission Palms in Tempe, Arizona. I'll be there on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the convention, July 3-5. To learn more about the convention, visit Fiestacon.org.

At Fiestacon, I'll be on the following panels:
Friday, 2pm – 400 Years of the Telescope
Satruday, noon – Fi

New interview, a reading, and more

This has been a busy and good week. To recap a bit, I was interviewed twice. You can find information about the space pirates internet radio interview in the post entitled Space Pirates Plunder Internet Radio. Read on to learn about the second interview. Also, I gave a reading for the folks at Internet Voices Radio. Again, keep reading to learn how you can listen. If that weren’t enough, it was wonderful to learn to that my latest novel The Solar Sea was selected as a Flamingnet Top Choice.

Flamingnet Top Choice

I just learned that my latest novel The Solar Sea has earned a Flamingnet Top Choice Award at Flamingnet Book Reviews.

To read the complete review visit Flamingnet.com.

I think the reviewer was quite perceptive in the few criticisms of the book. As such, I thought it was worth taking a moment to address them.

The reviewer notes that the idea of whale communication was reminiscent of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Certainly it’s true that both address the idea that whales might be intelligent

Space Pirates Plunder Internet Radio

On Tuesday June 2 from 10am until noon Eastern time, tune your web browser to Internet Voices Radio for Crazy Tuesday! This Crazy Tuesday is all about SPACE PIRATES and regular host “Row-hard” Rowena Cherry will be joined by “Madman” Mark Terence Chapman, “Dastardly” David Lee Summers and Jacquie “jolly” Rogers to plunder the icy blackness of space. Hope you’ll join us!!

To get a preview of some of my thoughts on space piracy, you can see my guest post at Rowena Cherry’s Space Snark Blog.

I Boldly Went…

…to see Star Trek last week.

All in all, I felt the new Star Trek hit all the right emotional notes. I believe much of the credit goes to the cast. Though the writers clearly played homage to the original characters, each of the cast members worked to make the iconic Star Trek characters their own and turned in consistent and believable performances that I truly enjoyed. The two standouts for me were Bruce Greenwood as Captain Pike and Karl Urban and Dr. McCoy. Credit also goes to Michael Gia

A Short Break, Star Trek, and Space Sirens

A Short Break

I had a shorter than normal break from work during the week of April 26. In some ways, it felt more like a pit stop than a real rest. I went to the doctor to have a persistent cough checked out. With swine flu in the news, this led to some extra testing, but after a day at the doctor’s office, the diagnosis proved to be allergies as I originally suspected.

I spent the next day at the dentist. The balance of my week was spent mailing out the spring issue of Tales of the Talisman an

Taxes, Edits and a Wedding

Unfortunately I managed to miss my weekly update that would have been posted on April 18. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the events of the past two weeks and a look ahead at an upcoming book signing in Las Cruces.

Wedding

I first met Gwynne Williams when she started babysitting for my daughter, Myranda. Since that time, Gwynne graduated from high school, went to New Mexico State University and ultimately started working with my wife Kumie at Better Life Pet Foods in Las Cruces. During that t

The Week in Review – 4/11/2009

Galaxies Near and Far

This past week found me back at Kitt Peak. I spent Tuesday through Thursday supporting observing programs at the Mayall 4-meter telescope. Astronomers were using the observatory’s newest instrument, the wide-field infrared imager called NEWFIRM, to look for the most distant galaxies in the universe. On Friday, I moved over to the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope to support a program collecting infrared images of dark matter galaxies that are close to our galaxy.

I find the concept

The week in review – 4/4/2009

Happy Birthday, Kumie

This week started out with Kumie’s birthday. I returned home from Kitt Peak and we went out to dinner to celebrate. Though I had given Kumie her first present a week before, I knew she still needed a new Handheld PDA, since the old one was wearing out. This led to an adventure in shopping on eBay.

I haven’t shopped on eBay for years. The last time was in my early days at New Mexico State University and I was shopping for a computer for my office. I remembered I had the a

The Week in Review – 3/27/2009

At Kitt Peak

This week, I returned to Kitt Peak National Observatory on Sunday, a day before my work shift began. My wife and daughters came out with me. Verity and Myranda were at the start of spring break, so this was an opportunity to spend some time together. On Sunday night we watched movies and then on Monday afternoon, I walked up to the 4-meter telescope with Verity, my six-year-old. It’s a bit of a climb from the observatory parking lot to the telescope, but she was a real trooper.