Welcome to November. And that means it’s time to crunch some numbers.
For Ballistics By The Inch, we had a total of 293,427 hits in October. That beats September by about 12,000 hits, and puts us within about ten thousand of our all-time-high month when the site first launched – that amounts to about one day’s hits. The total overall hits is now 3,818,460 – we should break four million in about three weeks, about the time of our second anniversary. Wow. Thanks everyone!
And a personal note: I’ve mentioned in passing that sometime in the very near future I will sign the final contract for the commercial publication of Communion of Dreams, with the book to be rolling off the presses in just a few short months. When I sign that contract, we’ll need to pull all the downloadable content from my homepage – but no worry, because the book will be available in electronic formats for different readers at a very reasonable price, as well as being available in both hardcover and paperback versions. Word of this has helped prompt a surge in downloads in the last month, and October’s totals were double that for September – overall, some 1,200 downloads of the complete novel. A nice affirmation, and puts the total downloads of the book at something approaching 29,000. Thanks, everyone – I hope you decide to get the updated version and/or a hardcopy of the book when it comes out soon!
So, happy November!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, Phil Plait, Predictions, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Seth Shostak, SETI, Space
The Fermi paradox is at the heart of Communion of Dreams – given what we know, where are the extra-terrestrials?
What do I mean “given what we know”? Well, the Drake equation has been a staple of science fiction (and at least part of the justification for SETI) for decades. Filling in the factors in the equation has always necessitated a lot of guesswork – the Wiki entry goes into that fairly well – but now we have more solid information on at least one of the more important components of the equation: how many terrestrial (Earth-like) planets are there in our galaxy?
Phil Plait has a good rundown on this, coming at the number from two directions, using the latest astronomical observations:
How many habitable planets are there in the galaxy?
By now you may have heard the report that as many as 1/4 of all the sun-like stars in the Milky Way may have Earth-like worlds. Briefly, astronomers studied 166 stars within 80 light years of Earth, and did a survey of the planets they found orbiting them. What they found is that about 1.5% of the stars have Jupiter-mass planets, 6% have Neptune-mass ones, and about 12% have planets from 3 – 10 times the Earth’s mass. This sample isn’t complete, and they cannot detect planets smaller than 3 times the Earth’s mass. But using some statistics, they can estimate from the trend that as many as 25% of sun-like stars have earth-mass planets orbiting them!
And what does that mean? Here’s the closing calculation from Plait:
2 x 1013 / 8000 = 2,500,000,000 planets
Oh my. Yeah, let that sink in for a second. That’s 2.5 billion planets that are potentially habitable!
How many of them would host indigenous life? How many of *those* would develop intelligent, technological civilization? There’s a nice interactive on the PBS site which allows you to play with this. Using that 2.5 billion number, but assuming that only half the planets which could support life will actually develop it, and that only 1% of those will develop intelligent life, and that only 10% of those intelligent lifeforms will develop technological civilizations capable of interstellar communication . . . you wind up with 125,000 such civilizations. You then have to make some assumptions about how long such a civilization would last, and what the likelihood would be that they would be around now (at the same time we are), but still . . .
I’ve complained previously that I worry that solid evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence will be discovered before Communion of Dreams makes it into print. That window is now closing. But you know, I really wouldn’t complain too much now if such evidence beat me to press.
Jim Downey
As I sipped my first cup of coffee, Alwyn (my dog) came up and sat down next to me, tail wagging vigorously on the carpet.
I had just let him in a few moments previously. “What is it, bud? You want to go back outside?”
He bolted for the door.
I followed, let him out into the yard.
* * * * * * *
I walked into the bedroom, still damp around the edges from my shower.
The window was open, and there was a stiff breeze coming through. Temps outside were only about 54 degrees, so it was quite crisp.
But the first thing I did, in spite of the cold, was not to put on some clothes. Instead, I checked my phone to see if there had been a call while I was in the shower.
* * * * * * *
My friend’s email was to the point: if something happened, and the publisher with whom I am negotiating for publication of Communion of Dreams went out of business, I needed to have it clear that all my rights under the contract would automatically revert to me.
I thought that was a given, since if one party in the contract no longer existed, then the contract be would null and void. But I’m not an attorney. I included a note about the matter in my email to the publisher.
* * * * * * *
Alwyn ran off to the side of the yard, looking up. In the thin morning light, I could see a raccoon, caught in a tree.
Alwyn ran back and forth, looking up. The raccoon climbed higher.
Thing was, the tree he was in was on the other side of the fence. Alwyn couldn’t touch him if he came down and sauntered off.
But the raccoon didn’t know that.
* * * * * * *
I’m still waiting.
I’m still waiting for a phone call, or an email, from my doctor’s office, with some information about the results of the CAT scan I had on Friday.
I hate waiting.
I particularly hate waiting when I feel worse day by day. The right side of my chest hurts more. I now get a bit short of breath just standing or doing *anything*. I’ve started to experience moments of light-headedness.
I’m hoping that I’m on the other side of the fence, able to just walk away from the threat.
But I fear the dog below.
Jim Downey
Update: I have an appointment to see my doc tomorrow morning, 9:15. CAT scan is “basically normal”. So now I wonder what we do.
Filed under: Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I noted earlier that I hadn’t heard from the publisher about when Communion of Dreams would be out.
That has changed.
Just a bit ago I got an email with information about moving forward with publication. I’m going to wait to coordinate a formal announcement with the publisher, but the good news is that we’re looking at a very short time horizon before it will be out. I have a couple of weeks to get the manuscript tweaked (some very minor changes were requested), and we’re now jumping into cover design and whatnot.
Yay!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Failure, Health, Humor, J. K. Rowling, Publishing, Science Fiction
The last couple of days have been a bit busy, a bit rough (some residual annoying pain from the pneumonia getting in the way), so apologies for the light posting.
I did just put up a post about the infinity symbol video at Sixty Symbols. But I am rethinking whether I want to continue the project of writing about each of their videos – we’ll see.
No news to share on the book fronts. Neither word from the publisher about when they’re going to print Communion of Dreams, nor any positive responses from agents about Her Final Year. Feel like I am in something of a holding pattern, and it’s frustrating.
As I have listened to the news of the different Nobel Prize announcements, I did have an odd thought: what if someday they do indeed award the Prize for Literature to J.K. Rowling? If so, I bet in the web searches that news reporters would do, my spectacular (but fun) failure to campaign for that would probably pop up. That’d be amusing. Good thing I can laugh at myself.
And so it goes. I think I’ll give the dog a bath.
Jim Downey
Gah.
I’ve mentioned here and on Facebook that I’ve jumped into the pit of despair known as Searching For An Agent for the care giving book. Talk about a soul-sucking, mind-numbing process.
Gah.
Anyway, since my Good Lady Wife has been tackling this problem in the logical way (using Literary and Agent guides and listings, websites designed to help bring authors and agents together, et cetera), I thought I would approach it from somewhat less conventional directions, hoping that I might come across some possibilities she might not. One such effort has been to read Agents’ blogs. There’s a bunch of these, and of course they’re stuffed with “insight into the industry” and “helpful tips on how to get your query letter noticed” and suchlike. Good, basic information.
Or is it?
Here’s what I mean: the industry is changing. And a lot of what you read on these blogs doesn’t necessarily apply a year or a month or even 30 minutes after it has been posted (if it ever did). And if it did apply then, the advice may have reflected someone’s own agenda more than reality. Or their own misunderstanding about the industry.
Here’s a classic example that sums up my point, nicely. Alan Rinzler is a well established, well-connected editor and agent with decades of experience. He has a blog stuffed with information about the publishing industry. Occasionally he does profiles of literary agents, and two years ago he did one of Elise Proulx, which went on at some length about her desire to find upcoming talent. Here’s a quote from that piece:
“I’m eager to discover writers who aren’t famous yet but will be,” says San Francisco-based literary agent Elise Proulx.
“My mission is to promote literature and make some money for deserving authors,” said Proulx, whose five tips for unpublished writers appear below. “My specialty is both high quality fiction and what I call “pragmatic nonfiction”, meaning books that are useful and prescriptive, like good parenting books,” added Proulx, an associate at the venerable Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency.
Cool, eh? She sounds like someone pumped about her job, her firm, her industry, doesn’t she? Well, here’s the kicker, an addendum to that same profile piece:
News flash (12/08):
We’ve received word from Elise that she’s left the literary agency business. We’re very sad to see her go and wish her good fortune in all her endeavors.
OK, I don’t know why Ms. Proulx decided to get out of the business. Could have been for personal reasons completely unrelated to what is happening in the industry. But that move came about two months after the profile piece that Rinzler posted about her. She had to know that this change was coming – and yet see what she told Rinzler?
Gah.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, Guns, Habanero, Health, Publishing, Writing stuff
OK, it’s been a while. But not due to anything bad.
First, I am feeling a lot better. I’ve communicated with my doc, and it looks like the last round of antibiotics finally did the trick with the pneumonia. I still have some recovery to do – minor lung pain and whatnot – but I am at least sleeping normally again and have a lot more energy. Now I just have to ease back into getting decent exercise and enough rest, and then I can start on making up for all the stuff that didn’t get done in the last month.
Second, we did another round of ballistics testing this week, focused primarily on a bunch of new ammo types in the very popular .380 caliber. Got some interesting results – more on all of that, later.
Third, got a rejection from the agent who had expressed initial interest in the care giving book. Here’s what she said:
This needs a lot of work. By “this” I mean both the proposal, which is really dry, and the material, which is uneven because of your source material. You need to put more effort into using the source material to tell a story, not sticking it into chapters and relying on it as the primary storytelling device.
Which tells me that she completely didn’t “get” the whole idea of the book. I don’t usually dismiss out of hand any criticism, but I also have enough sense to not over-react to the first response I get. We will continue to look elsewhere for someone else who may be interested in representing the book.
Lastly, got the first harvest of Red Savina habaneros out of the garden. Last night prepped and dried about two dozen. Here’s a pic of them before they went into the oven:
And here they are when I took them out this morning:
Once dried, turned them into about 3 ounces of delicious nuclear-powered spice. Yay!
So, things continue. Now I need to do a bit of yard work.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bipolar, Book Conservation, Depression, Failure, Gardening, Health, Press, Publishing
I mentioned last week that I was somewhere in the downswing of my bipolar cycle. It’s sometimes hard to explain what that means. For those who haven’t ever experienced a true depression, here’s perhaps an insight into what it is like.
This morning I got a lot done. Errands ran, exercise in, seeing to a lot of annoying administrivia for my (soon-to-be-over) position as president of our Neighborhood Association. Then this afternoon a nice young woman reporter came by for a long interview for Vox Magazine – a profile piece they wanted to do about me as a book conservator. She was well prepared for the subject, asked a lot of solid questions, and gave me plenty of opportunity to brag on my profession. Then we got into some other personal things about me, and by the time she left I knew that she was quite impressed with all I have done, all that I have accomplished, and the successes which are currently in process.
She left, I got some conservation work done. Then I went out to the garden and harvested the first couple of ‘Lemon Boy’ tomatoes and green bell peppers – which I just chopped up and added to a nice tortellini salad waiting for dinner.
Sound good? Well, yeah, it should.
Know what I was thinking? That I had waited far too long to take care of the administrative tasks. About the client who called me during dinner last night to check on a conservation project which I didn’t even remember having been told to proceed on, and how I needed to scramble to get that done. And that the tomatoes and peppers are late, and an indication that this year’s harvest from the garden was going to be waaaaaaaaaaaaay down – perhaps only a quarter of what it usually is, and that was clearly due to some kind of ineptitude on my part.
This is not a major depression. I can function just fine. I am able to motivate myself to get things done. I can recognize my accomplishments.
But I take little joy or pride in anything I’m doing. I feel like I am constantly trying to paper over the cracks in my world, to hide the screw-ups I make lest someone figure out just how incompetent I am.
Don’t misunderstand this as a whine or a plea for “help”. I’ll be fine – I have been through this more than enough times to know the path out of the valley. I just thought I would share a little perspective on what it is like to be where I am.
Jim Downey
Whew – long Skype session with my co-author today. Almost three hours. But very, very productive. We got a little less than halfway through Her Final Year, but were able to work through all the issues up to that point. This will be the last major editing that this part of the book will get before we’re ready for submission. Yeah, there will be tweaks and changes still, but this will put us on the other side of the hill. We’ll finish this tomorrow afternoon.
Interesting process, using the technology this way. Working with a document jointly, in real-time, discussing as we went – pretty cool. And those who know how much I hate telephones will take it as a real measure of just how much John (my co-author) and I are alike, that we were able to do this. That’s easily the longest phone conversation I’ve had this century, perhaps in my life.
So, a bit of a break, then see if I can finish up the tweaks needed on the proposal, so we can send that off.
Jim Downey
*oh, there’s a reason for the reference beyond the content of the post. This is post #910.
Well, if you want it, that is.
See, the query last Friday attracted some interest from an agent, who said that she wanted to see a full formal book proposal from us for Her Final Year. Between getting ready for my class (which is going great, thanks), and getting other promised projects done, I didn’t have a chance to turn my attention to the proposal until yesterday afternoon. After about 8 hours working on it, I got it done – in ‘first draft’ form. It runs some 32 pages.
Anyway, I just thought that I’d make it available, if anyone wanted to get a sense of what the book will be like. This proposal contains a synopsis of each chapter of the book, along with an excerpt from each chapter. I don’t intend this to be a public document, but am willing to share with any friends or readers on a limited basis. And no, I won’t be offended if no one else wants to see it at this time. Feedback on the proposal welcome, but isn’t a requirement to look at it.
So, if you’re interested, drop me a note, or post a comment here.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 