this morning a jarring dream woke me up from sleep. I looked at my clock and it was 7:40am! I hadn’t slept this late in a long time. So I get up to use the bathroom and right on the heels of me barely sitting on the toilet, in walks my wife needing to go. So I get up and see that she’s leaving for the kitchen. I go left she goes left, I go right she goes right. We were bumping into each other for awhile there. Yeesh. Then she starts with the hacking and coughing episodes. She’s got it so hot in the bedroom it’s like a sauna. I came out to sleep on the couch in the leaving room for about 3 hours. I tried going back to bed but I think I got an hour sleep, if that. She’s all miserable and snapping at me but she went over to Superstore and that’s when she seems to be happiest the most. It’s not her fault. Some people deal with viruses/colds better then others. As for me, well I got the rest I needed, I guess and I’m working on my first coffee on this my last day of my 4 days off but I get another 3 days off at New Years. 

Speaking of this upcoming year, my excitement for the upcoming year began to glimmer because isn’t this the year that Nasa is to launch their Kepler mission? In case you didn’t know, the Kepler mission is part of Nasa’s on going Terrestrial planet finder (FTP) mission to discover earth sized planets. Notice I said size not type. Nasa believes that odds are high they’ll find about 800 of these Earth size planets where they’re going to search 100,000 stars over a 4 year period using the photometry concept and specially designed CCD’s. Nasa will be using the Transit method to discern earth size planets. I like the follow-up aspects of the Kepler mission by ground based observatories that weeds out white dwarfs, that give off light the size of earth that sort of thing. Out of the 100K stars and 800+ earth size planets just in our solar neighborhood, how many earth type planets do you think we might find? My guess is more then quite a few. Has the Kepler mission got you drooling yet? If not don’t worry, it won’t be ready until Next year! They bumped the mission back by a year. Now, Nasa has found earth sized planets before. More recently with an Earth-like planet found around star Gliese 581, 20.5 LYs away. But I believe Nasa will not only find plenty of earth sized planets but even earth type planets with a thriving civilization in my lifetime.

I’m currently reading “Maelstrom” by Kage Baker. It’s a comedy and by far the best story so far in this “The New Space Opera” anthology. If things go well, I should have it completed by the end of January as my first book read for ‘08.

This up coming year I’m going to try and publish another short story. I also see changing jobs for a sgj (and that could be in the forecast if Rob won’t pay me more money. it certainly isn't because he can't. In 2007 I banked over $60K. They paid me roughly 11k to do it-so it's not like they don't have the money or anything.) if I can get the sgl that is. I’m also going to write another novel and continue to work on F.  I'll post the To Do list in January '08.

To Do list for 2008:

1.) Have F ready for submission

2.) Complete another short story for Static Movement

3.) Complete short story for print market.

4.) Complete HT novel.

5.) Have High Risk Assessment novela  ready for submission.

Of course if I get the sgj then I’ll have a lot more time to write and an expanded To Do  list to edit.

I checked out the “Zombies of Sleep” link in my "About me" on my website and it seems that the link leads me to another domain completely irrelevant to science fiction and the ezine Static Movement. So I went and created a block titled “e. Jim Fiction.” I managed to find an Archive link to SM for their issues in '07. (Thanks Keith) I might even post a snippet for Friday snippets that links to SM itself. Interesting that Chris has her first Print issue of Static Movement. I think it’s a Lulu edition but you’ve got to start somewhere I guess. My story didn't make the cut. Oh well.

I was just over there at Keith’s Blog and he’s reading some of the “Honor Harrington” series. My buddy Charles really enjoys the books. Thanks for the heads up about POV switches Keith. I picked up on the first 3 of the books in case I like them and I’d have 2 more to work with and an independent Weber book on the same topic. In another post Keith talked about the “Design your own anthology.” I saw this last week over there at SF Signal. Seems like a lot of work to get a anthology. I’ll just go to SM and sites like that or wait for the Print anthologies to come out. The photo is books from my Library Thing page. There’s the 4 David Weber books lying on their sides and “The New Space Opera,” (center above next three books) )I’m currently reading and the next three books I’m about to read. I don’t have a lot of Fantasy because I don’t read a lot of Fantasy (until now) I play or have played a lot of Fantasy (D&D) in my past and hope to do so again when my wife and I get the X Box Elite and our Big 50” LCD TV screen. They say LCD's are better for gaming. This year my Big ticket item was the Piano. Next year it’ll be a Macbook. I’m tired of PC bloat wear and Windows OS patches out the yin yang.

As for anthologies, well I enjoy reading anthologies and I must be one of the few that do. Most science fiction magazines are anthology like in print or online. The picture here are the books I’m about to read including “The New Space Opera” (Anthology, I’m reading now.) That’s too bad about the price point for anthologies. Robert J Sawyer was telling me that the Writers of the Future publishes in the tens of thousands of copies. Of course Bridge Publications (or whatever they’re calling themselves now, Galaxy?) is an in-house concern so they don’t have the same kinds of problems that someone publishing from Lulu would have.

Anyway, that’s all for now

e. Jim