Newsletter Week of 26 Jun 2020
- The Rule of Five episode 2.21 is now available for Patreon supporters
- The Rule of Five Quarterly #15 now available for Patreon supporters (coming soon on Amazon)
- A Voice in Every Wind (new trade apperback edition)
The end of the month is always a time to pause and assess one's progress. The end of June is even more so, as it's also the end of a quarter and the mid-point of the year. Like many folks, I have goals for verious time periods: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. It's so easy to get caught up in short-term progress (or the lack thereof) and lose sight of the big picture. So it''s nice to have the opportunity to see and acknowledge long-term progress; nothing produces enthusiasm like success. And having enthusiasm makes it easier to stick to those short-term goals.
So far, 2020 has been a productive year for me. I've released new print editions of 3 books (Act Well Your Part, Weaving the Web of Days, and A Voice in Every Wind), six Rule of Five episodes and two Quarterlies, and five gay erotic ebooks under a pseudonym (these are hardcore porn, but if you're okay with that, click here). Three of my Analog book review columns have appeared. I've made substantial progress on my projected memoir and on Hunt for the Dymalon Cygnet, the follow-up novel to Dance for the Ivory Madonna.
I managed to get two of my old defunct websites up and running (this site and my Legion of Super-Heroes fan site). For my Legion site, I indexed comics from 1995,1996, and 1997. I started this weekly newsletter and have managed to keep it going since January. I did some PR work for Thomas's earrings on Etsy. I participated in three cons: MoComCon, Farpoint, and Virtual Balticon. I've continued scanning books to PDFs and ripping old DVDs to MP4s. Finally, I embarked on the Great Kitchen Renovation, which has unearthed our kitchen table and brought order to a lot of chaos.
Despite the pandemic, I've kept up with friends—including biweekly D&D sessions and a biweekly teleconference with the Andover Group, a bunch of super-talented misfits who found one another in high school more than 40 years ago.
If I'm very lucky, the second half of the year will be even better.
- Scanned 14 more books
- Ripped 7 more DVDs to mp4
- Put together The Rule of Five Quarterly #15 (coming soon on Amazon)
- Legion of Super-Heroes website: Finished indexing the year 1997
- Added 800 words to my memoir
- Set up new trade paperback of A Voice in Every Wind
- More work on the next gay erotic short story
- Great Kitchen Rearrangement: Kitchen table now usable, installed HDMI monitor & MacBook for video
We found the kitchen table!
I have always been fascinated by timekeeping and calendars (the formal term is "horology," which sounds like something else entirely). In 2004 I published The Science Fiction Book of Days, listing a science ficiton/fantasy event for every day of the year, plus many days that aren't part of the year.
I delight in working out calendars and timekeeping systems for my science fiction. Several examples are part of the Scattered Worlds mosaic, and The Rule of Five universe and the Hylggran series have their own independent systems. Most of these are variations of our familiar calendar, based on a 24-hour day and 365-day year, broken down into 12 months of 30 days each, plus five intercalary days. The big difference is a ten-day "week" (called, naturally enough, a "tenday").
Other horological systems are more baroque. My Second Terran Empire, eight thousand years in the future, uses a year of 400 24-hour days, divided into ten months, each of 40 days (four tendays). The galactic territory of Geled gave up on Earth-based systems and used the planet Geled's periods, giving a year of 292 days, each 22.4 hours long. There are 16 months, each of them 37 days long—which is six six-day "weeks" plus a seventh intercalary day. Every so often, that 37th day is dropped to compensate for leap years. (And you thought you have trouble remmebering which day it is.)
The Rule of Five, which is set in a pocket universe totally unconnected to today's world, gave Melissa and me (okay, mostly me) the opportunity to design a new timekeeping system from scratch. I redefined a second as 1.3824 of our seconds. 50 such seconds (69.2 of our seconds) make a minute; 50 minutes (57.6 of ours) make an hour, and 25 hours (exactly 24 of our hours) make one day. Then 10 days makes a week, 5 weeks makes a month, and 10 months makes a year of 500 days. All monthly calendars are the same; we even worked it out so that each month, the 13th is a Triday.
...And you thought writing science ficiton was easy.