Surviving the apoc-eclipse and other news

There was a total eclipse of the sun the other day.  You may have heard about it.  I don't live in the "totality" zone, but I looked directly into the inferno anyway with my cheap sun specs.  It's okay, though, because if you can't trust your vision to cardboard welding glasses that you got for a buck at the local supermarket, then who or what can you trust?

Some people on the television were talking about the eclipse being a "spiritual" event.  Well, no... it's astronomy.  It's Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei.  It's a cool event, but that's not reason enough to go all cargo-cult about it.  But, hey, whatever.  Live and let live. 

I went to the post office this week and procured a post office box.  This is necessary in order to have a physical address for one's spam er, author newsletter.  Then I opened an account with Tinyletter.  They let you have up to 5,000 subscribers, no charge.  Awesome.  I'm calling my newsletter Sword & Plasma Rifle.  Pretty cool, huh?  I thought so.  Weapons are always cool.

I've formatted the Free Space books and will do a final once-over to look for goofs.  That's the problem with making changes--if you change something in one book, then it might affect something in another book.  And then making that second change might have ripple effects of its own, and so on and so forth.  It's like Hercules with the Hydra.  This is why I've decided that outlining a book as thoroughly as possible before writing it is the best way to go.  My outlines are more like synopses at this point.  The idea is to not have to think about plot or anything, and just basically write in a paint-by-numbers fashion.

After the trilogy is ready to go, it's all Hostile Planet all the way.  I'll be able to focus all my attention on the Wheel of Fire, and that will be great.

So there you go.  That's where I'm at.  Onward and upward!  :D