Book promo…

And there are some GOOD ones this week (as always, actually)…

First up, Space Cowboys 2- Electric Rodeo

As always, click the cover for the Amazon link!

The blurb-

Next is Rob Hampson’s new novel The Moon and the Desert
The blurb-
What would it really take to make the Six Million Dollar Man? a medical thriller on earth and in space!

Glenn Armstrong Shepard had his sights set on going to Mars as a flight surgeon, but a training accident on the Moon left him crippled. Now he has a new plan: to be fitted with bionic prosthetics and come back even stronger.

Fate and the Space Force have other plans, and Glenn is grounded. Another doctor—his ex-fiancée—takes his place, and Glenn will have to fight to prove he can be an astronaut once more. . . .

Rob uses his background as an actual scientist to bring this one to life!!!
Next up is Mike Rothman and D.J. Butler’s new story Time Trials
The blurb-
EARTH’S PAST MAY HOLD THE KEY TO ITS FUTURE

Marty Cohen was a gifted linguist and student of ancient military strategy who stepped away from academic Egyptology and opened a woodworking shop. Away from the bitter politics and petty rivalries, he’s happy to take care of his people, play the occasional war game, and try to make a good life.

Yet when business takes a turn for the worse, an opportunity appears. He gets summoned back to Egypt: an off-the-grid dig funded by an eccentric financier has discovered texts that may be the earliest Egypt has produced, and they’ll pay Marty silly amounts of cash just to fly out and take one little look.

Marty turned his back on the academia game, but he’s a small business owner who has to make payroll, and he can’t say no to the money.

But the texts open doors to an astonishing journey: the ragtag team of archaeologists finds itself in protohistoric North Africa, a drying land dominated by horrors, where humanity is badly in need of champions.

And behind the war against the fearsome overlords lies a greater struggle: Marty and his team have been chosen to be champions of all Earth and to run a gauntlet on humanity’s behalf.

Failure will mean extinction.

Next up, Holly Chism is out with a series of six short stories revolving around dragons! The Dragon is in the Details
The blurb-
Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.
And last, but certainly NOT least, Lawdog and Cedar have another comic out- The Squeaks Caper
The blurb-
Lawdog tells two tales from his childhood in Africa.

Speaker, known as Squeaks, gets to live the mongoose dream when a python drops literally at his feet. The python has other thoughts. Chaos ensues, with the family thrown into an uproar by the chase.

The trial of a goat becomes an educational experience for the young Lawdog and his even younger brother. Will justice be done? Will the goat speak in court? Read on and find out!

The whole thing is illustrated by Cedar Sanderson’s quirky pen-and-ink style. Pictures of Nigerian flora and fauna accompany the full pages portraying scenes from the tale, and bonus illustrations at the end will leave you amused at her whimsical imagination.

A warning… All of these will hook you in a heartbeat, and you’ll want to read them all in one setting! Just don’t do it on successive nights if you have to get up and go to work… Just sayin…

And so it begins…

The fight over the military portion of the budget is off to the races…

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has outlined new spending requirements to boost deterrence against China, including billions of dollars in new weapons, new construction and closer military-to-military collaboration with America’s allies in the region.

The command’s congressionally-ordered assessment delivered Wednesday calls for more than $87 billion in spending between 2024 and 2028; with $15.4 billion for fiscal year 2024 alone. That represents a significant jump from last year’s $9 billion request for FY23 and five-year projected spend of $77 billion.

Full article, HERE from Defense News.

Admiral Harris tried to do some of these, but was shot down. Admiral Aquilino is a former commander of Seventh Fleet and very familiar with the AOR…

I can hear the Army and Air Force screaming over these plus ups, and they will be doing everything they can to carve these away and get money for ‘their’ wish list…

Sigh… I HATE infighting, especially when the administration is against the military anyway…

Finally…

Not that anyone will be held responsible, but at least there IS a hearing going on!

Congress revisited the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the current threat level from the country where the United States was at war for 20 years in a pair of hearings Wednesday.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee heard from six witnesses in a hearing that focused on evacuation efforts during the final two weeks of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Full article, HERE from the Washington Examiner.

This is the testimony of one Marine Sergeant…

That is hard to watch… He lost his right arm and leg to the bombing, and it’s a miracle he’s alive.

Perspective…

Changes depending on where you are, or what you are doing…

Chasing submarines in the Pacific was always ‘interesting’, even more so when you had to bounce from location to location. Many do not realize how BIG the Pacific actually is…

There is a reason that military and aviators talk about the ‘tyranny of distance’ in the Pacific.

That’s California in the upper right, Australia in the lower left, and Antarctica at the bottom. 7140 miles from LA to Sydney, or 5477 miles from LA to Tokyo might give you an idea. By ship, it’s 20 days to Tokyo, 28 days to Australia.

And you can hide a LOT of submarines in that body of water!!!

Sometimes…

You just have to wonder about some procedures…

*** British Airways Flight Operations Department Notice ***
There appears to be some confusion over the new pilot role titles.
This notice will hopefully clear up any misunderstandings. The titles P1, P2, and Co-Pilot will now cease to have any meaning, within the BA operations manuals. They are to be replaced by Handling Pilot, Non-handling Pilot, Handling Landing Pilot, Non-Handling Landing Pilot, Handling Non-Landing Pilot, and Non Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

The Landing Pilot, is initially the Handling Pilot and will handle the take-off and landing except in role reversal when he is the Non-Handling Pilot for taxi until the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, hands the handling to the Landing Pilot at eighty knots. The Non-Landing (Non-Handling, since the Landing Pilot is handling) Pilot reads the checklist to the Handling Pilot until after Before Descent Checklist completion, when the Handling Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Non-Landing Pilot who then becomes the Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

The Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot until the “decision altitude” call, when the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Landing Pilot, unless the latter calls “go-around”, in which case the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, continues Handling and the Non-Handling Landing Pilot continues non-handling until the next call of “land” or “go-around”, as appropriate. In view of the recent confusion over these rules, it was deemed necessary to restate them clearly.

To avoid confusion, here is the restatement in American English below the fold…

Continue reading

Burp…

OMG, I ate too much!!! Cedar did a fantastic job with an ‘Italian’ meal at her house last night, and we had a huge turnout!

The usual suspects, plus Jesse coming down from OKC, Becky and hubby from Dallas, John from over by Gainesville, and Ben Yalow from Dallas.

The discussions were all over the place, from the opening paragraphs of both versions of  RAH’s The Puppet Masters, to research for menus, to plotting for new novels, to hang ups on works in process, to various military things, discussions of guns in books and movies, and Jesse brought a box of his 3D creations to play with…

And those are just the ones I caught parts of, there were ‘other’ discussions going on in the kitchen, on the porch, and in the living room as people circulated!

And I got caught up on my beta reads I owed people, so I can finally get back on my WIP tomorrow! I didn’t get a lot done the last two weeks, because of the situation and worry over PP, but I did at least get up to 42k words.

And I think the radio interview went fairly well, and they didn’t have to bleep me once, so I’m proud of that. But it IS embarrassing when you discuss people and ‘revision’ of books (Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming) and then forget the name of Roald Dahl’s wife (Patricia Neal) during the discussion… sigh

The interview can be found HERE.

Something a bit different…

I’ll be doing a radio interview today with Ed Bonderenka!

Looking forward to speaking with author JL Curtis today on
Your American Heritage. Join us. Call in.  2pm Eastern
I’m sure we’ll be talking writing and books, and who knows what else. Feel free to listen and have a good laugh when I screw up! I hope Ed has his bleep finger warmed up (sailor over here)…

Home…FINALLY…

Welp, yesterday was an ‘experience’ I don’t care to repeat…

Got up early to catch and earlier flight home from SMF, only to have one pilot turn up sick. Back on my original flight to DEN. Got there, looked at the weather and went and bought a big bottle of water. There was a SOLID front scheduled to hit DFW about the time I arrived!

Sure enough, a half hour out of DEN on what was supposedly a 1+20 flight to DFW, we started hitting turbulence. And couldn’t get out of it!

And then the fun started! A reroute NORTH, not south around the southern edge of the storm front. We ended up north of Ft. Smith, then routed down about to Alexandria, LA, then in the back way to DFW, all in what ‘I’ would call moderate turbulence. I could tell we were changing altitudes every 10-15 minutes, but we never got any smooth air. The flight attendants spent over an hour in their seats, and our 1+20 flight turned into 2+30 when we finally landed an hour late (and sketchy on gas).

But I did have a first on that flight! The first time EVER my bag was the first one up the conveyor belt!!! Grabbed the bag and ran to the car (many thanks to JimJim for coming to get me). We had just gotten on 820 heading out when the RAIN hit, closely followed by wind gusts I’m guessing were upward of 60mph, that were moving my SUV from one lane to the other. And we had to dodge at least one of the big road signs that been blown into the roadway! Folks were hiding under overpasses, or in some cases just stopped in the lanes (IDJITS).

It took right at an hour to get to Rhome, normally a half hour drive at speed, but we were doing 25 to 30mph and there were times we might have been able to see 100 yards…maybe… And more people stopped in odd places. Pretty much everybody was running their hazard warnings, and skating around due to the amount of water on the road.

A little over 2 hours later, I was finally home! And as soon as I finished this post, I crashed…

So don’t expect any replies early this morning. And a last update on PP, she is doing better, had her second PT and they ‘exercised’ the joint and nothing came apart! Great news, even if she was hurting afterward.

And some people were asking about the amount of snow up in Lake County… From a commercial photog who got a drone up!

6 inches of snow lakeside, 12 inches up where we were, and 18-19 inches on tops of the hills!

On the road…

Travelling back to Texas today (hopefully)…

Go read the folks on the sidebar while my able assistant works on tomorrow’s post…

Reality in 3, 2…

And the ‘joys’ of EV ownership…

YouTube personality Steve Hammes leased a Hyundai Kona Electric sport utility vehicle for his 17-year-old daughter Maddie for three reasons: it was affordable, practical and allowed Maddie to put her cash toward college, not fuel. Now, the upstate New York resident has a dilemma many EV owners can relate to: finding available charging stations far away from home.

Full article, HERE from ABC News.

Personally, I think  Subway has the right idea…

But I’ll never own/lease one. My trips are too long and I don’t want to spend as much time charging as I do driving…

Much less what the ‘cost’ of charging stations will be sooner rather than later.

Your thoughts?