The quest for Mars

NASA photo

Mila Todorov and Jancey Beaumont are in competition for that honor too — to die on Mars. Even knowing their lives may be shortened by decades, the thrill of the quest for Mars is too great to pass up.

For those who’ve been asking when T-Minus Two would be available on Kindle, the answer is now. You can click here to download it directly to your Kindle or Kindle app. If you’ve already bought it, already read it and now have an opinion about it, there’s no better way to spread the word than to write a review. It doesn’t have to pass muster for the New York Times Book Review. Just a star rating and a few words about what you enjoyed or didn’t. Thoughtful critique stimulates interest in books.

In other book news, I’m awaiting today’s delivery of a manuscript (The Touch of a Woman, coming November 2015 from Bella Books). It will almost certainly be littered with pencil marks and insightful notes from my editor. What kind of insightful notes? My editor is notorious for a single phrase: needs visual. In fact, I’ve considered giving her a stamp to save her hand from having to write it over and over. What she means is I’ve failed to describe what the reader should see if she were watching a scene unfold. E.g., what does the room look like, what are they wearing, how is her face distinct from an empty blob on a stick? I try to do more of it, but sometimes I get carried away and she pulls out her second favorite phrase: who cares?

While that book has been undergoing edits, I’ve started on my first one for 2016 called Trial by Fury. It’s a plot-driven book, the kind that spurts twists and turns and lines of dialogue so fast it doesn’t let me sleep.

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On a personal note, when we packed up the California house this year for the migration back to North Carolina for the summer, we realized that we haven’t taken to the desert the way we thought we would. One of our big motivations for moving there was to play golf, and wouldn’t you know it — I can’t do that the way I’d like with the new implants in my back. My game was bad enough without the knowledge that it was sure to get worse. So we’re looking at going back to Miami. The idea of leaving a deep Blue state for a Red one isn’t appealing, so here’s hoping we can turn Florida blue again.