SFsignal sent me an advance review copy of Ada Palmer’s debut fiction (she’s written nonfiction before) novel Too Like the Lightning. However, SFsignal is no longer hosting new content so I’ll post my review here. First: Fantastic cover art! But, as you’ll see, it’s a bit misleading. I have a feeling if a scene from […]
LaLaLander Review of The Filter Trap
The faux news (think The Onion with a brain and no gloves) site La La Lander published a review today of my second book, The Filter Trap. The site has a fledgling book review section that should not be confused with the rest in terms of tone. The books and reviews are sincere, the rest […]
The hills are alive with the sound of fire
Around 3pm on Tuesday I felt a ping from my pocket. It was a facebook post from a neighbor: Intriguing to say the least. By the time I opened a browser (I was at work) more posts from neighbors had gone up, but the most frightening one looked like this: At that point, I showed […]
Ballooning Birthday
In years past, Sam and I have traded “excursions” as birthday gifts. She got me a parasailing trip. I got her a plane flying lesson. And so on. For her birthday this year I wanted to give her something I knew she had on her bucket list but we couldn’t fit into our Europe trip: […]
Acheron Bound and Down: The obvious and disappointing plot of Alien: Covenant
The wheels have slowly been turning for some time to make it easier to guess the plotline of the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2012 Alien prequel Prometheus. That film ended with characters driving an “engineer” (I still shudder at how Scott bastardized Giger’s original space jockey to shoehorn a dumb ancient aliens theory into the […]
Financial Professionals
The truth is slowly starting to emerge about investing. What used to be available for those that had the good sense to seek out resources like the Motley Fool is becoming more widespread. Jon Oliver recently threw his weight behind what those behind the scenes have always known. We were taught this in our finance classes […]
Three Month Update: The Filter Trap
On April 8th I self-published my second novel: The Filter Trap. I purposefully didn’t promote the book (or even mention it was up for sale to friends) for nearly a month so I could establish a control period to gauge the effectiveness of later promotions. When the Kindle promotion (free downloads) launched I advertised it […]
Fireworks on the Hill
On July 4th Sam and I hiked up the hill behind our condo to watch the fireworks. The part of the trail that connects our property to the ridge line was only dug out late last year after I borrowed equipment from facilities manager and started it myself. After cutting through the first twenty feet and […]
Trekonomics
Before the untimely demise of SFSignal, I had just started reviewing books for the blog (a writing achievement for me!). They only published one of my reviews before John decided to shutter the site as an active source of sci-fi information. However, kind-hearted as he is, he sent me a few of the books that […]
The (un)Importance of Design
The website is dead, long live the site! I began this blog in 2001 after moving out of the Ohio State University dorms. I looked like that guy in that picture with the homemade Weezer shirt, obviously taken before Weezer broke my heart. I was blogging posts before I could buy beer during the wild […]