Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Whether ’tis nobler on the Net to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged trolls, or to take arms against a sea of opinions and by opposing refute them …

(Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.)

Seriously, I wonder whether I should relegate this site to the dustbin of the Internet archives — they say the Internet is forever, after all — or whether I should start back again, tossing out the oddball ideas I’ve collected. I literally have tens of thousands of words of half-formed blog post ideas collected in a Word document. Some of them might even be decent.

Sometimes I think I should get them out in the open and out of my head. I even — gasp! — blogged about that before.

Sometimes I think I should keep them to myself, that nobody’s much interested. (Sometimes I think that last bit doesn’t matter.)

(Sigh.) We’ll see what happens, won’t we?

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I try to give thanks every day, for any number of things. On this day of special thanks, my every-so-often newsletter was about what I’m particularly grateful for, and this afternoon I got to have Thanksgiving dinner with my 94-year-old dad for the first time in several years. He adopted me back when I was in elementary school, and I’m grateful for the excellent example he gave me — in fact, I often wish I was more like him than like myself. Thanks, Pop!

I hope you had a fine, festive, and fulfilling Thanksgiving!

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After missing LibertyCon last month 😟 due to personal issues, I’m determined to make it to ConGregate this weekend in Winston-Salem, NC. Which is not to say that all the personal issues have been taken care of — far from it — but I’m going to try to ignore them as much as possible.

Here’s my schedule:

Friday:

• 4:00 p.m. — Concert — a mix of silly and serious songs, including several selections from the new album, Taking You Out to See the Stars
• 7:00 p.m. — Opening Ceremonies: E Como Mai

Saturday:

• 1:30 p.m. — Panel, “Communicating Science”
• 4:00 p.m. — Game, “Well, Actually…”
• 6:00 p.m. — Baen Books Traveling Slide Show & Prize Patrol

Sunday:

• 9:00 a.m. — Prayer & Praise Service
• 1:00 p.m. — Filk Collective

Don’t be a stranger — and let’s have some fun!

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Related Items of Interest:
– My new album, Taking You Out to See the Stars, is now available on Bandcamp, as well as on streaming services like Spotify!
– Here are The Gray Man’s Recommendations for Near-Future, Near-Space SF Novels
– Watch the music video of “Tauntauns to Glory“by

With apologies for eventually asking you to click through to another site, I was recently invited to submit a book recommendation list to Shepherd.com, a new and growing book recommendation portal. It’s still currently in “beta,” but it’s a pretty neat site with a huge variety of book recommendation lists.

They gave me complete freedom to select and recommend any books I wanted, and (not surprisingly) the list I created is what I consider to be The best stories about near-future, near-space (though I confess I used the term “near space” VERY loosely).

In hopes that you’ll click the link above and go check it out, I won’t repeat the whole list here, but to give you the flavor of it: My first recommendation is Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

(NASA image of Earth over the lunar plain.)

So please check it out! and if you like something you see, please share it with your friends!by

Skip this entry if you don’t want to know how pathetic I am.

I should have known, when I got out my black suit for the funeral this past Saturday, that it was not going to go well. I had left the program from the last service I attended in the breast pocket of the jacket. It was the program from Jill’s memorial service.*

I should have known, when I read through the funeral program, that it was not going to go well. Instead, I barely saw the words. I was too caught up in my own thoughts: first, selfishly and (admittedly) angrily wondering why this person got to live 21 years longer than Jill did; second, just as selfishly wishing my recent ladyfriend was there, so I could hold her hand to try to make it through the service. But we had broken up a few months ago — itself a tragedy of errors, many caused unwittingly by me — and I had no one there with me.

Then the first song in the program began: “In the Garden,” a song that featured prominently in Jill’s life and, as a result, in her memorial service.

So I fled.

And came home to a very disappointing package in the mailbox. I’ve only told a couple of people about it, and I won’t go into its contents here; suffice it to say that it was disturbing and disheartening.

Now, I must admit that the weekend wasn’t all bad. I had a nice visit with friends I hadn’t seen in some time, and got to spend some time in the recording studio where we made some progress on the last couple of songs for the new album.

But the worst was yet to come.

(Image: “.,” by Jeremy Lelievre, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Because, by the diabolical magic of social media, on Sunday evening I was treated to pictures of my old ladyfriend — whose hand I had wanted to hold, and who I secretly hoped might one day wish to rekindle the romance we had — with her new fellow.

It wasn’t completely unexpected — I knew she was seeing someone, and had convinced myself that as long as she was happy, I could be happy for her. And, in the main, that’s true — my deepest wish is for her to be happy. But I wasn’t prepared for how much it would hurt to see her happy with someone else. (I recognize that it’s a hurt I earned, by being stupid, and careless, and even a little callous. It may even be a hurt I deserve.) When I was wishing I could hold her hand at that funeral, I had no idea just how far from me she had grown. But then, when I looked at pictures of the two of us on social media, I saw that she had untagged herself from every one. I can’t express how bad I feel, knowing that she must hate me that much. I’m gutted.

I do hope the man she’s with now is good to her, and good for her. I still care for her a great deal, and I will always love her. But this was a very difficult weekend to learn that she no longer cares for me, and is better off with someone else.

Such was this most recent, most wretched weekend of my pathetic life.

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*As in, Jill my wife, who died in October 2019.by