David Lee Summers's Blog, page 60
February 22, 2020
Steampunk StoryBundle
Today, I’m excited to stoke the boilers and build up steam for a brand new StoryBundle filled with exciting books by several good friends and authors I’ve had the privilege of appearing alongside in anthologies over the years.
Kevin J. Anderson has assembled a baker’s dozen titles of gears and zeppelins, mechanical dragons, lost cities, frock coats, and tea, the best books from indie authors, all for whatever price you choose to pay. A portion of the money directly benefits the Challenger...
February 18, 2020
Discovery’s Enterprise
Last month, in my post about sending work to readers and artists and waiting for replies, I mentioned that I’d started work on a model I received for Christmas. The model was the Starship Enterprise as it appears in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery.
[image error]No matter your profession, I think it’s vitally important to do things outside your professional interest, whether it’s crafts, hobbies, sports, music, or some combination. Building models has long been one of my favorite past times,...
Discovery's Enterprise
Last month, in my post about sending work to readers and artists and waiting for replies, I mentioned that I’d started work on a model I received for Christmas. The model was the Starship Enterprise as it appears in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery.
[image error]No matter your profession, I think it’s vitally important to do things outside your professional interest, whether it’s crafts, hobbies, sports, music, or some combination. Building models has long been one of my favorite past times,...
February 15, 2020
Stand Alone or Series
When people first learn about my books, one of the first questions they ask me is whether they’re stand-alone novels or part of a series. In fact, most of my books are part of series because I think it’s fun to continue to explore the consequences of the actions a group of characters take across several volumes. That said, I also believe that each book in a series should stand on its own. In other words, if a reader has never encountered a book in the series before, they should be able to...
February 11, 2020
Music for the Journey
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve started evaluating my revisions of The Pirates of Sufiro and deciding whether or not it’s ready for publication as is, or whether I should take the book through another round of edits. As I mentioned in the last post, The Pirates of Sufiro tells the story of a planet founded by pirates and their conflict with even more unscrupulous people. I’ve also come to realize that The Pirates of Sufiro serves as a bridge, showing how a pirate captain like Ellison...
February 8, 2020
Why Pirates?
During a quiet moment at 2018’s MileHiCon, author Jane Lindskold and I sat down and had a nice conversation. In that conversation she asked why an apparently law-abiding, nice person like me would be interested in writing about pirates. After all, I’ve not only written about space pirates, but I’ve written about airship pirates in my steampunk fiction, and pirates have appeared in my vampire fiction. The drug traffickers in The Astronomer’s Crypt could also be seen as pirates of a sort. I...
February 4, 2020
TG Geeks Astronomy Interview
Back on the Thanksgiving weekend, my friends Ben Ragunton and Keith Lane came up to visit me at Kitt Peak National Observatory. They are the hosts of the Two Gay Geeks Podcast. On the show, they discuss science fiction, conventions, science and anything else that may be of geeky interest. I gave them a tour of the observatory and then we found a quiet place to sit down and chat about astronomy and my science fiction. The astronomy interview is live this week and the science fiction interview...
February 1, 2020
My Star Trek
Back in 2007, the current actor playing the Doctor in Doctor Who, David Tennant, appeared alongside one of the classic Doctors, Peter Davison in a short film for charity called “Time Crash.” In the short, Tennant has a moment that’s close to breaking the fourth wall. He glances at Davison with admiration, talks about all the things about him that inspired his interpretation of the character and then declares, “You were my Doctor.” Ever since then Doctor Who fans are fond of proclaiming which...
January 28, 2020
Waking up in the 20s
At the start of the new year, I read many social media posts reminding me that we’ve returned to the 20s. As it turns out, 1920 was something of a banner year for science fiction in that it saw the birth of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Frank Herbert. It also saw the birth of Patrick Troughton, the second actor to play the Doctor in Doctor Who and DeForest Kelley who would play the doctor of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek.
I decided to celebrate the start of the 2020s by continuing...
January 25, 2020
The Waiting Game
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I’m about to wrap up three book projects. One is the novel Upstart Mystique by Don Braden, which I’m editing and publishing. One is the anthology Exchange Students edited by Sheila Hartney that I’m publishing. The third is my novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, which I’ve revised for its twenty-fifth anniversary release. Over the last couple of months, each of these projects has involved a lot of time at the computer. I’ve been reading, revising, sending emails and...
