John Berkowitz, a fellow blogger writing a middle grade fantasy book, THE LAST PRINCESS recently challenged me to the 7/7/7 Challenge. What’s that you ask? Well, it’s a different way to view your own writing while at the same time sharing and challenging others to do same. Here is what you do: Go to page 7 of your work-in-progress Scroll down to line #7 Share the next 7 lines of your manuscript in…
Author: James
Pilot, geek, retired, happy, healthy, loves science/engineering and writing SciFi books!! 🤓
Milk Run & the Seven Bones of the Story
Hey folks, I’m writing a new book! It’s called MILK RUN, a science fiction novel about a young captain fresh out of space command school on his first assignment as captain of the DDG-S Princeton, an old destroyer class spacecraft. Earth is losing the war against the Telrachnids and our young captain is chosen to deliver a new weapon to a secret star base far from the front line fighting. But what our hero thought…
Requiem For The Query Letter
So, I’m doing some volunteer work for a wonderful non-profit organization called Housing Initiatives of Princeton (HIP). Some of you will know the obvious reason, but that’s another story. (Click here if you want to see what HIP is all about). I agreed to help HIP select an IT vendor to run their systems. So I put together the usual Request for Proposal that gets sent out—no sweat. But it turns out there are a…
Now Don’t Blink…
I hope that everyone is enjoying the summer. It’s the best time of the year! Here’s a piece of advice to make it last . . . don’t blink! Many of you have asked why I haven’t been saying much lately. Well, the excuse is . . . my day job fool! But I have also been busy trying to find a agent for Heaven’s Ant Farm. So far no takers, but from my research…
Wagon Train To The Stars
It’s been a while since my last blog entry. I’ve been busy with work and some personal things needed attending. I also wanted to spend more time honing my flying skills—got to stay practiced or you could have a very bad landing. I also started to read the book These Are The Voyages: TOS Season One by Marc Crushman and Susan Osbourn. It’s a historical recounting and detailed analysis of how Gene Roddenbury created the…
Heaven’s Critter Cams
Ever wonder how Adam and Eve were able to speak with the serpent in the Garden of Eden? From what we see in the Bible, it seems that snake just spoke to them—and in their own language. This is a common problem with old science fiction space stories where, for some reason, the earthling and alien easily communicate with each other—and in the King’s English even! Fortunately, most sci-fi writers today have overcome this problem…
Free Will & How the Devil Made Me Do It
In his web article, C. Terry Warner says that “agency refers both to the capacity of beings to act for themselves and their accountability for those actions.” Well, that is what HEAVEN’S ANT FARM is all about. The world that we live in is full of choices, some clearly good or bad…others suspect. What happens if we choose to turn left but not right? Or suppose someone decided it would be a great corporate team building exercise to…
Vanity Card #7- Is Lucifer a Christian?
It’s about a week before the #PitMad event. The Twitter universe is going to light up like a Christmas tree full of bright would be authors trying to attract the attention, and a favorite nod, from some agent looking for the next Stephen King. And yes my light will be shining as well, hopefully at eye level, to lure in that elusive agent contract. The #PitMad event happens March 11 and I got my…
1st 257 Words From Heaven’s Ant Farm
To give you a sneak peek of Heaven’s Ant Farm, below are the first 257 words of this science fiction novel. Warm waves of tall grass brush against a peach orchard and a green pasture that surround a large polygon-shaped home. Blue light streams out from the second-floor bathroom window and fades into the early morning sun. Inside the bathroom, a sleepy Professor Yahweh Tabbris stands in front of a tall black glass panel. It…
Space Poop Foils Big Bang Gravity Wave Experiments
Do you remember my blog back in April 2014 about how Cosmic Microwave Background radiation observations at the South Pole would be the first conclusive proof of gravity waves from the Big Bang? Cosmologists hope to show evidence of gravitational waves, those ripples in space time, generated during the earliest moments of the Universe when it expanded—some say faster than the speed of light. Scientists call this period of crazy expansion inflation. Well, things are not going well…