up to #5

According to the Whiskey Creek Press newsletter, Storm Chaser is now the #5 bestseller of all WCP titles.

This, of course, makes me do the Snoopy Dance.

Considering I'm going to be preoccupied over the next several days getting estimates on a roof replacement, filling out paperwork and applying to refinance my home loan, finishing the chimney demolition, and sorting through thousands of photos for the fire department history project, I needed that good news to pull me through. Thanks to evereyone who's bought my novel, and a special thanks to those who also read it! Spread the word around, please; since Storm Chaser isn't available in "brick and mortar" bookstores, I need all the word of mouth I can get.

column: Replacing NASA's Space Pickup

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

It doesn’t get brought up a lot in polite conversation, but many pundits considered the space shuttle a piece of crap.
 
A very cool piece of crap, but still.
 
It was designed by committee to be a fully reusable spaceship, but it finally emerged only partially reusable, took a tremendous amount of servicing between missions, and was more expensive to use than the one-shot spacecraft it replaced. The ship’s 33,000 fragile heat tiles had to be applied, by hand, individually.
 
( Oh, don’t get me wrong; we could have done better. Still, despite the limitations and costs, the space shuttle program overall was a success, especially after how fouled up it was at the start. The TV show Mythbusters once demonstrated that – ahem – poop can be polished, and I mean that literally. They needn’t have bothered: The people of NASA proved it figuratively, by taking an embarrassing boondoggle and producing real benefits )