free targa top, courtesy of the fire department.

By Marko Posted in in the news. 4 Replies

And that’s one vintage Porsche 911 less in the world:

Man seriously injured after crashing Porsche.

That’s in New Hampshire (albeit wayyyy north of here, in Coos County near the border with Maine), and that is was a 1967-vintage Porsche 911.

One of my frivolous middle age pipe dreams is to own a restored Porsche 911 built in my birth year, 1971, but that desire has no basis in rationality. As the owner of that 1967 911 found out, cars of that vintage have pretty lousy safety equipment. A 911 of that vintage usually has an air-cooled 2.0l 128hp flat-six in it, which was a stout amount of power for a sports car of that time, but I could probably outrace one in a modern minivan, and with air conditioning, Bluetooth, a kick-ass stereo, and better handling characteristics. But those old babies aren’t about that.

Of couse, as this accident shows, you can hurt or kill yourself with just about any motorized conveyance if you don’t know or respect its (or your) limits.

lyra, age 6.

By Marko Posted in castle frostbite., family., parenting. 6 Replies

People of Earth!

Your tiny Empress turns six years old today.

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<insert obligatory kvetching about how time flies, something something diapers blah blah before you know it &etc.>

The tiny Empress has really made strides this year socially. She’s been in Kindergarten since July, and she loves it with a fierce, white-hot intensity. That kid right there? She will be the Queen Bee or the Chief Delinquent in high school, and possibly both.

Love ya, kiddo. But no, you can’t have “just pound cake” for dinner. We have to throw in some alibi vitamins somewhere.

monday morning post-pinkie pie party action report.

By Marko Posted in castle frostbite., parenting., writing. 7 Replies

It’s Monday, and the house is QUIET. The dogs are snoozing in front of the pellet stove, which we had to turn on again last night because the temperature was predicted to dip down to freezing overnight. That marks the first day of the year when we had to run the pellet stove and the window air conditioning unit ON THE SAME DAY.

We had a little shindig for Miss Lyra on Sunday. She turns six on Wednesday, so we pulled the party back just a bit to the one weekend this month where most of our friends were available. There was cake and presents and an inflatable 12-foot pool and ten kids in the 3-9 age bracket running around on the Castle grounds, so you may understand why I emphasized the QUIET in the first sentence of this post.

Now back to work. I have this thing called a “contract” that specifies I have to deliver this here novel by the end of the month, and it still needs a little work, so I should probably get to it. But understand that this is not a Monday gripe. Drinking coffee in a quiet house and making up stories beats the hell out of digging ditches or changing diapers when it comes to ways to make a living.

“terms of enlistment” availability.

By Marko Posted in capitalism., writing. 8 Replies

To abide by the terms of my publishing contract, I can no longer offer Terms of Enlistment directly as of today.

If you want to purchase a copy, you’ll have to wait until May 14th, when 47North releases Terms of Enlistment again on Amazon. The good news is that this time, there will also be a dead tree version available, and an audio version as well. But because I can’t compete with my new publisher when it comes to selling copies, I can’t sell them from the blog or other sources anymore.

To all you people who purchased the first, self-published edition: thank you. The success of the little Space Kablooie novel has exceeded my most optimistic expectations. There aren’t very many novels that sell as many copies as quickly as this one did, especially not in the self-publishing arena. I’m still utterly dazed by what has happened in the last eight weeks.

achievement unlocked: book deal.

By Marko Posted in writing. 27 Replies

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been more quiet than usual on the blog and the TwitFaceSpaces lately. There’s a reason for that, of course, and I’m free to share it at this point.

My awesome agent Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency has sold the publication rights to Terms of Enlistment and its sequel, Lines of Departure, to 47North.

<insert Kermit flail>

What does that mean for the near future of the book series?

I have pulled all my self-published copies of Terms of Enlistment from the online sources where they were available. It is no longer on Kobo, B&N, or iTunes, and I won’t be able to offer any copies directly anymore. It will be available on Amazon’s Kindle store, but temporarily as a pre-order.

On May 14th, Terms of Enlistment will be re-released by 47North in Kindle edition, and at that point it will be available on Amazon.com again; a print and audio version will be produced soon thereafter. Those of you who were kind enough to leave reviews will be happy to hear that the 47North edition will keep all the reviews and star ratings of my self-published version. I will work with the team at 47North to make any changes and edits they find necessary (no matter how hard you think you’ve looked, there are always still typos somehow), but overall it shouldn’t be drastically different from the version that’s currently available.

As a result of the deal, 47North will also publish the sequel, Lines of Departure, this time simultaneously in print, Kindle, and audio formats. I am delivering the final manuscript of Lines of Departure by the end of next month, and I’ve been told they are aiming for a release in early 2014, possibly January.

I realize that some of you may be irritated at the fact that Book #2 will be delayed when I had already announced that I’d bring it out in May. It will, however, be a better book because the team at 47North will provide the editorial guidance, along with the production, marketing, cover design, publicity, and other support that will allow me to fully concentrate on my writing schedule and make sure it’s the best version of the novel it can be. As much as I know my stuff, I’m still just a one-man team, and for Terms of Enlistment, I’ve had to do not only the writing, but also all the editing (and there were many editing passes), cover design, marketing, ebook formatting, direct sales, support, accounting, and everything else that comes with putting out a novel. All the time spent on those things was time that had to be subtracted from my ability to actually write the books! With the novel and its sequel going to 47North, I can now concentrate on the sequel and the next two books in the series, as well as future projects.

To make sure that there’s stuff for you to read while you wait for Lines of Departure, I intend to bridge the gap between releases with short stories and a novella in the Terms of Enlistment universe, which will appear alongside Lucky Thirteen on the Kindle store in (hopefully) regular intervals.

So there’s the big news item of the day. The Terms of Enlistment books finally have a publisher, and I have both the time and the financial security to spend my days writing instead of being my own publishing house. I was getting sick of answering all these different phones and doing different voices for the sales, tech support, marketing, and editing departments.

reader question: what’s wrong with gun registration?

By Marko Posted in masters and servants., things that go boom. 24 Replies

Commenter “Jarin” has a question regarding gun registration which I answered in the comments thread, but which deserves a blog post response.

Jarin asks:

I don’t understand what the fuss is about registration… (no, really, I don’t get it, someone please explain it). Why should we not have registration for something as easily dangerous as guns? Why should firearms have less regulation than automobiles? Seriously, look at the paperwork around owning and operating a car. And yet, everyone does it. Why not treat firearms similarly?

First of all, registration does not do anything to prevent crime. Don’t believe it? Let me write down the serial number of my gun on these two pieces of paper and hand you one of them. What crime exactly are you going to prevent with that?

Second, registration is pretty much good for nothing except preparatory groundwork for confiscation. (Look at NY for a current-day example.) Canada’s expensive gun registration did not help solve a single crime but carried a $60 million price tag. That’s a lot of money that could have gone to stuff that actually fights crime. Lots of gun owners in this country get justifiably nervous at the idea of a registry of firearms when historically such a registry has only ever served to provide the authorities with a list of addresses for confiscating firearms.

Third, firearms do not have “less regulation than automobiles”. If they did, I’d be able to walk into any gun store and walk out with any gun I want, without having to show anything but a means to pay. I could own whatever I wanted on my own property without license or insurance (you only need those for a car if you plan on operating it on public roads.) My carry license would be valid in all fifty states and most countries abroad.

I wish they’d treat firearms like cars when it comes to regulation. If cars were regulated like guns, you’d need to pass a federal background check for each and every dealer purchase, your driver’s license would only be good in your own state unless some other state had explicitly agreed to reciprocity, and things like the capacity of your gas tank, the spoiler on your trunk lid, or the mode of shifting could be legal in one state but a five-year mandatory felony prison term in a neighboring state.

chicken recess.

By Marko Posted in aminals., castle frostbite. 15 Replies

The girls have been confined to the run and their coop since last summer. With the weather finally nice, and the bugs finally out in force again, I decided they should have some recess time outside in the afternoons again. They love their freedom, risky as it is.

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stickahs on our cahs.

By Marko Posted in castle frostbite., new hampshah. 34 Replies

 

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Here’s a picture of Frostbite One in all its churned-up-mud-road-dust-caked glory right now. (Quinn thought it needed some Batman logos, which is probably correct. Few things can’t gain from the application of a Batman logo.)

It’s basically pointless to drive this thing through a car wash between the months of December and May. You might as well just set fire to a ten-dollar bill.

Frostbite One is a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan. As a testament to my mostly-shut-in stay-at-home Dad existence until January, I’ve racked up only 94,000 miles on it since we purchased it in late 2005. It’s still in really good shape, though. No major parts failures in over seven years, just the usual wear parts needing replacement. You see a slightly aged minivan that’s still in great condition despite the few nicks and dings here and there. (The dent in the bumper was acquired at South Carolina’s Folly Beach in October 2010, and to date marks the minivan’s only interface with a stationary object.) You see new winter tires, quite a bit of caked-on dirt (again, dirt road), and a really faded oval D sticker above the model name on the trunk lid.

What don’t you see?

Bumper stickers, that’s what.

Despite the Grand Caravan’s substantial, shall we say, posterior, I have not festooned it with any stickers other than that oval D above the model name. Nothing to indicate hobbies, political affiliation, pet causes, or the number and gender breakdown of family members.

I live in New Hampshire, which is fairly libertarian-minded, still largely pro-gun, and really safe when you look at the crime rate statistics. But I routinely have to take Frostbite One out into the surrounding states, and some of them are somewhat less libertarian-minded, to put it mildly.

For example, I own guns and I enjoy shooting, and I have a drawer full of gun brand logo stickers from various purchases and swag events. But I don’t use them on the car because I do not want to drive down to Boston to pick up a friend or go to a con and end up in front of a MA state trooper in a vehicle with New Hampshire plates that is festooned with gun-related stickers (or worse, “From My Cold, Dead Hands” political ones.) I’m a responsible gun owner and follow local laws, but MA has extremely restrictive gun laws that can land people in hot water very quickly. If I go to MA and forget a box of range ammo in my van–or even just fired brass for reloading–I am looking at three years in a MA state prison if said state trooper pulls me over, goes through the van with a very fine comb (because HEY, GUN NUT), and finds so much as a single piece of expended brass.

Then there’s the fact that gun logos or Second Amendment-related stickers on a parked vehicle are practically a glowing neon sign advertising “HEY, THERE MAY BE GUNS IN HERE”, especially in places where the local law stipulates that a licensed gun carrier has to disarm before entering specific places, like a school, day care, public gathering, or restaurant that serves alcohol.

Another concern is the advertising of politically unpopular viewpoints on one’s vehicle, which can be an invitation for property damage by people who don’t appreciate dissenting or “provocative” opinions in their field of view. I have more than one libertarian friend whose Ron Paul sticker was defaced or removed from their cars while they were parked on the grounds of academic institutions, for example. I also know of an incident where a friend’s car was keyed along the side of the door and across the back of the trunk lid where my friend had put an atheist sticker. A lot of people seem to think that some opinions are worthy of immediate fiscal punishment, and the minivan has enough scuffs and dents as it is without some college Trotzkyist or Defender of the Faith adding to that collection with a car key and/or a spray can.

Anyway, that’s why Frostbite One isn’t stickered up like a six-year-old’s My Little Pony birthday party. Hey–there’s a sticker theme that can’t possibly be offensive, or likely to get me a frisking by the side of the Interstate…