When [DELETE] is Better Than [SEND]

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Most authors are quite considerate people, especially those who realize how small and tight-knit the science fiction and fantasy community is, but every once in a while one takes out their frustrations on your friendly Slushmaster General. We call this showing off one’s authorial (un)professionalism.

Consider this love note I received after sending one of our standard “thanks, but no thanks” e-mails:

Oh really, then perhaps you’ve missed the fact that every professor to janitor who has picked it up loves it and has asked for a sequel.
Did you even read the synopsis? Clearly you’ve not even taken the time to read that.
This book is the diamond on the ground you fail to look down and see.
It’s on many levels and those who read it see this fact.
I’ll enjoy proving you wrong once Oprah picks it up, FOOL!

Sincerely,

It’s good to know that at least the author was sincere.

Beyond the grammar itself, the most amusing part is the bit about the synopsis, because the author’s submission did not include one. I even went back and checked — my notes said “no synopsis,” but last it was possible that I missed it. My notes, it turned out, were correct: the synopsis wasn’t there, so of course I didn’t take the time to read it.

I understand the cathartic thrill we can get from writing an e-mail like this (I’ve written a few myself). And, given the fact that I see hundreds of submissions every month, the chance that I will remember the author’s name in a few months is actually quite small. Still, I believe this falls into the category of e-mail that, once you’ve written it, is best to “delete” rather than “send.”

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Luna-10: First Spacecraft in Lunar Orbit

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Forty-five years ago today — March 31, 1966 — the Soviet Union launched Luna-10 to the Moon.


(Luna-10 spacecraft. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)

Luna-10 was the first spacecraft to achieve orbit around the Moon, making it “the first human-made object to orbit any body beyond the Earth.”

And, proving that the Space Race was as much a game of international pride as anything, the launch “was timed so that the spacecraft would come around on its first orbit just as the Twenty-third Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was convening for its morning session.” It took a little subterfuge to demonstrate that pride, though:

At the Communist Party Congress, the “Internationale” was played over loudspeakers for the assembled 5000 delegates on the morning of 4 April, ostensibly broadcast live from Luna 10 as it rounded the Moon. In fact, it was revealed thirty years later that it was a recording from Luna 10 from the previous night, used because the controllers did not trust a live broadcast and because in a session earlier that morning it was discovered that a note was missing in the transmission from the solid-state oscillators programmed to reproduce the notes of the song.

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Codex Blog Tour: CASSIE ALEXANDER

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The latest in our discontinuous series of “blog tour” posts featuring fellow members of the Codex Writers online community.

Today our guest is Cassie Alexander, a registered nurse and the author of the Nightshifted trilogy about Edie Spence, a nurse who works on a floor for vampire-exposed humans. Nightshifted will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2012.


(Courtesy of Cassie Alexander.)

How did you start work on Nightshifted, and how did the work progress?

I first conceived of Nightshifted as a short story. Part of me always knew it’d be a novel, but I’d been so burned by the time-invested-but-no-love cycle of novel writing before that I couldn’t bear to think I was working on one. So I pretended it was a short story, and then when I reached the end of that short story, I pretended I was working on another short story in the cycle that just happpppened to be the next few scenes, and by the time I was done with that “short story” I could stop lying to myself and get on with it already. The book had bitten me, and wouldn’t let go.

That’s fascinating! So how long did it take to complete Nightshifted, based on that short-story-after-short-story approach? And once you were finished, how did the rest of the process go?

It took me eleven months to write it and edit it. I was also doing short stories and working pretty much full time — it wasn’t the biggest priority for me continually at that time.

Then, it took me another eleven months to find an agent.

It took my agent about a month to get me notes, and then me about a month to send her my edits and ancillary material (proposals for books 2 and 3, a bio, etc.). Then, it took ten days to get its first offer, and about a week after that for the auction to settle out.

I talked to my new editor the day Nightshifted sold, and have been working on its sequel ever since. Moonshifted is due in June, and Shapeshifted is due in December. Just like Prince Humperdinck (“…and Guilder to frame for it”), I’m swamped … but in the best possible way.

Tell us a little about your search for a literary agent. How did you avoid getting discouraged during the search?

The agent search was interminable. I really wanted to start working on the second book, but every time I did, I’d get another, “You know this is really good, honest, but no,” rejection. I’d get requests for full manuscripts, get my hopes up, only to have them repeatedly dashed.

It’s hard, too, because so much of what you’re doing when you’re trying to find an agent is like trying to set yourself up on blind dates. Hours of Google-stalking, crafting the perfect query letter to put your best foot forward — after so much effort, you can’t help but get your hopes up.

I accidentally lucked out in two ways. First, I sent out my queries in batches of four or five. Because people were interested, once the ball started rolling, I almost always had a partial or a full out, to pin my hopes on, which helped as other rejections piled in. Secondly, any time anyone rejected me, I cut and pasted their line in my spreadsheet down to the bottom of my list. By putting all my rejections out of sight, I didn’t realize how many I had until quite late in the game. By then, I had the strength to keep going, out of sheer stubbornness.

That’s very encouraging for those of us who are still on the hunt for an agent (and a publisher).

Looking back on the process, what was the biggest surprise you got out of working on Nightshifted? Is there anything in particular you hope your readers get out of the novel, or the series?

I think the biggest surprise as the author was that … other people cared.

When I finished Nightshifted, I put out a call to my writer friends and about eight people offered to read it for me. Seven of them actually did. I was just thinking about this the other day, in that I’ve never had that high a read-through for a project of mine before. It was a good sign before I even knew I needed good signs — and the eighth person, who didn’t read it? I’d gotten their e-mail address wrong!

(My first reader from this group, who turned notes around to me in under 48 hours, will always have my eternal love. I’d just about convinced myself it was crap and I was an utter fool — major post-novel burn out — and his e-mail saved me.)

As far as readers getting anything out of it — I hope they do, but I’ll leave it up to them.

What did you learn from Nightshifted that you’re applying to your next project?

Outline, outline, outline. I’ve already completed two drafts of Nightshifted ‘s sequel, Moonshifted, and I’m soooooo glad I outlined first. It saved me a ton of time. When doing final drafts of Nightshifted, I found myself at my wits’ end a lot, trying to decide what things would happen in what order for the most impact — I could feel all the scenes that I needed to have, but straightening them out was awful. Having an outline, even a very generic one, was a lifeline.

___

Thanks, Cassie, for taking the time to answer a few questions and for showing us that perseverance pays off! Best of luck with Nightshifted and its sequels.

If you’d like more information about Cassie and her books, her website is www.cassiealexander.com.

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Flying By Comet Halley

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Twenty-five years ago today — March 28, 1986 — the ICE spacecraft flew by Comet Halley.


(Artist’s conception of ISEE-3/ICE. NASA image.)

ICE, or the International Cometary Explorer, was originally designed to study the solar wind, and named the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3. It launched on a Delta rocket in August 1978.

It was initially placed into an elliptical halo orbit about the Lagrangian libration point (L1) 235 Earth radii on the sunward side of the Earth, where it continuously monitored changes in the near-Earth interplanetary medium. In conjunction with the mother and daughter spacecraft, which had eccentric geocentric orbits, this mission explored the coupling and energy transfer processes between the incident solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. In addition, the heliocentric ISEE 3 spacecraft also provided a near-Earth baseline for making cosmic-ray and other planetary measurements for comparison with corresponding measurements from deep-space probes. ISEE 3 was the first spacecraft to use the halo orbit.

After accomplishing its initial mission, ISEE-3 was retasked:

In 1982 ISEE 3 began the magnetotail and comet encounter phases of its mission. A maneuver was conducted on June 10, 1982, to remove the spacecraft from the halo orbit around the L1 point and place it in a transfer orbit involving a series of passages between Earth and the L2 (magnetotail) Lagrangian libration point. After several passes through the Earth’s magnetotail, with gravity assists from lunar flybys in March, April, September and October of 1983, a final close lunar flyby (119.4 km above the moon’s surface) on December 22, 1983, ejected the spacecraft out of the Earth-Moon system and into a heliocentric orbit ahead of the Earth, on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner. At this time, the spacecraft was renamed International Cometary Explorer (ICE).

In addition to being the first spacecraft to orbit a Lagrangian libration point, ICE was also the first spacecraft to fly past a comet. It flew first by Comet Giacobini-Zinner, and later by Comet Halley.

Interestingly, in 2014 ICE’s orbit will bring it “close enough to Earth that it could be recaptured if a spacecraft were available.” I wonder if that would make a good story ….

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With One Day to Spare: Hugo Nominations Are In

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If you’re a member of Renovation, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, or were a member of last year’s AussieCon, and you haven’t submitted your nominations for the 2011 Hugo Awards, you don’t have much time left! The last day to nominate anything is tomorrow.

I submitted my nominations this afternoon. I probably should’ve been reading slush, but that’s the way it goes.

With respect to the nomination process, I’ve decided I need to develop a system whereby I mark and set aside good stories throughout the year, instead of going through the stack of last year’s magazines (on paper and online) and books and trying to remember which ones I really liked.

With respect to the nominations themselves: just in case any of my family and friends thought I might give in to the temptation, I did not nominate myself for a Hugo, nor did I nominate myself for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Finally, on a related note: Mary Robinette Kowal, winner of the 2008 Campbell Award and the current Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, mentioned me in her blog entry this past Tuesday: Campbell Award Eligible Writers You Should Pay Attention To. Thanks, Mary!

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The Fall of Mir

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Ten years ago today — March 23, 2001 — the Mir space station fell to Earth.


(Mir, as seen from the Shuttle Atlantis on STS-71. NASA image.)

The first components of Mir were launched in February 1986, as I noted in this space history blog entry. The station remained in orbit three times longer than its design life of 5 years.

After more than 86,000 total orbits, Mir re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Friday, March 23, 2001, at 9 a.m. Moscow time. The 134-ton space structure broke up over the southern Pacific Ocean. Some of its larger pieces blazed harmlessly into the sea, about 1,800 miles east of New Zealand. Observers in Fiji reported spectacular gold- and white-streaming lights. An amazing saga and a highly successful program finally had come to a watery end.

Now, as the main character in my first published short story* lamented, Mir and its predecessors are “rusting homes to fish instead of men.”

___
*To complete the shameless plug, you can add “The Rocket Seamstress” to your own made-to-order anthology of short stories on the Anthology Builder site.

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Two 'Gray Man' Space History Connections

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Fifteen years ago today — March 22, 1996 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to Russia’s Mir space station.


(STS-76 launch. NASA image.)

Shuttle mission STS-76 was the third Shuttle-Mir docking mission, and carried astronauts Kevin P. Chilton, Richard A. Searfoss, Linda M. Godwin, Michael R. Clifford, Ronald M. Sega, and Shannon W. Lucid. Lucid stayed aboard Mir when the rest of the crew returned to Earth.

What’s the Gray Man connection to STS-76? When Dr. Sega became the Under Secretary of the Air Force, I worked for him until my retirement. In fact, he presided over my retirement ceremony:


(Two-time Shuttle astronaut Dr. Ron Sega, Under Secretary of the Air Force, presents Gray with a letter of appreciation from the Chief of Staff. USAF image.)

The second Gray Man space history connection comes from another launch, 5 years ago today: a Pegasus-XL rocket carried three microsatellites (ST5-A, -B, and -C) to orbit as part of NASA’s New Millennium Program. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was stationed at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB many years before, I was on the Flight Readiness Review Committee for the first-ever Pegasus launch.

It looks ever more doubtful that I’ll get to fly in space, but it was nice to be at least marginally associated with the space program during my career.

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Space Station Assembly: Leonardo in Space

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Ten years ago today — March 21, 2001 — the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to the International Space Station.


(Sunrise launch of STS-102. NASA image.)

Mission STS-102 was also known as ISS Flight 5A.1, and delivered personnel and equipment — including the Italian “Leonardo MultiPurpose Logistics Module” — to the station.

The Italian Space Agency built the Leonardo MPLM, the first of several such modules which served double duty as cargo carriers and space station work areas.

The primary shuttle crew consisted of astronauts James D. Wetherbee, James M. Kelly, Andy S.W. Thomas, and Paul W. Richards. The “Expedition 2” crew, U.S. astronauts James S. Voss and Susan J. Helms and cosmonaut Yury V. Usachev, were taken up to the ISS; the shuttle brought astronaut William M. Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri P. Gidzenko, the “Expedition 1” crew, down from the station.

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Satellite Radio in Space History

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Ten years ago today — March 18, 2001 — XM-Radio launched its first satellite.


(XM-2 launch. Sea Launch photo. Click to enlarge.)

Known as XM-2, or XM “Rock”, the spacecraft was launched by Sea Launch from the converted oil well platform “Odyssey.” A few weeks later, in May of 2001, another Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket launched XM-1, nicknamed XM “Roll”. Today, the XM portion of SiriusXM Radio uses similar spacecraft known as “Rhythm” and “Blues.”

A few years after this launch, I got to go out on a Sea Launch mission as one of the space technology security monitors for the Defense Technology Security Adminsitration. As I’ve said before, it was one of the most interesting temporary duty assignments of my Air Force career.

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How Big is the Universe?

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Over at the redesigned Baen Books* web site, they’re running features by Baen authors — a short story one time, a short article the next — and the recent article “The Size of It All” by Les Johnson is fantastic. Here’s the opening (with emphasis added):

For ten days in 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope pointed its mirror to a small patch of seemingly empty sky near the Big Dipper and started collecting light. (“Seemingly empty” means that no stars or galaxies were at that time known to be in that particular piece of the sky.) The part of the sky being imaged was no larger than the apparent size of a tennis ball viewed from across a football field. It was a very small portion of the sky. What they found was awe-inspiring. Within that small patch of nothingness was far more than nothing. The image revealed about three thousand previously unseen galaxies, creating one of the most famous of Hubble’s images and my personal favorite. The sky is not only full of stars but also of galaxies and they are very, very far away.

Here’s the mosaic image the telescope produced:


(Hubble Deep Field. NASA image.)

Since that image was taken, the Hubble Space Telescope has produced the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which revealed ten thousand previously unseen galaxies, even farther away and further back in time, in another “seemingly empty” part of the sky.

It’s apparent that we are nearly insignificant specks in the grand scheme of the universe, and if you read “The Size of It All” you’ll get an idea of just how small our world — indeed, our entire little part of the celestial sphere — is. The question of how big the universe really is always puts me in mind of one of my favorite Chris Rice songs, “Big Enough”**:

When I imagine the size of the universe
And I wonder what’s out past the edges
And I discover inside me a space as big
And believe that I’m meant to be filled up with more than just questions …

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by it all. It’s on those days that I rely most on faith to keep me going.

___
* FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m affiliated with Baen as their “Slushmaster General.”
** Copyright Clumsy Fly Music. Used without permission, but in good faith so hopefully they won’t send their lawyers after me.

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