Here we are making a last dash for the year’s finish line. I know this is somewhat superstitious to say so, but this has been a spectacularly shitty year in so many ways. Whether it’s the people we love passing on (Rickman, Bowie, Prince), or this weird presidential campaign, or the recognition that we are propagandized and ruled by our inferiors.
I can only imagine that somewhere near the end of December, a Miami Herald waiting for Dave Barry’s year-end roundup will find him under his desk in a fetal position saying, “It’s all too much … it’s all too much.”
However, any year in which I am alive is a good year, and I hope it is for you, too. After a fast start in which we published three or four books, we slowed down for awhile while I was working through “Ride of My Life.” That is still going on, but we’re pushing forward on several projects at the same time.
In fact, let’s start with “Ride.” What I thought would be a fast rewrite has turned into a Napoleonic Army style slog to Moscow. I had underestimated the effort it would take to get this baby back on track. The opening third went through the keyboard like gangbusters, only to slam to a halt when our hero got to NASA.
See, there’s a big difference mentally between writing about the space program in the future tense than in the past. I started “Ride” in 2001, when launches were a regular thing and the International Space Station was being built. During the 2008 rewrite, we were mourning the Columbia tragedy and the end of the program was approaching.
Now it is in the past tense. The surviving shuttles have been sent to museums, NASA seems to be floundering for a consistent direction, and the big news is coming from the private sector. What was current history is now a quaint relic of a slowly forgotten past.
This played with my mind. Knowing what I know now, what was an amusing dream no longer seems amusing. Over the past few months, I acquired a small library of astronaut memoirs, and the more I learned, the more it seemed like writing this book was a Very Silly Thing indeed.
I was also not happy with the middle section. The crew was not well defined. They were mostly background figures. I clearly had not done my research on how the shuttle systems were actually used. If I was to place Ted Prescott aboard the Discovery, if he was supposed to operate the Canadarm, then by God he had to know his tether control from his radial control.
Time to do more research. I took notes on the new memoirs, and reread my old copies for new insights. I hunted down pictures and videos. I went back and forth on when to place the story. I could tack on a flight at the end, a flight that, for reasons I won’t go into here, would be forgotten from the history books. But Ted couldn’t have gotten aboard that flight by winning a contest; the vogue for “space tourism” had vanished. Moving it back was necessary, but where exactly? I needed the ISS up there for plot reasons, but it couldn’t be after Columbia. That left somewhere in 2001. Can I move it back before 9/11, another event that would cast a damper over the book? Careful thinking and a close examination of the ISS at that time suggested a window of opportunity.
Believe it or not, that took a couple of months to work through. I’m having to reinvent this book as I’m not just rewriting it, but adding to it. New scenes with the other crew members, some of it to show off the technology and lessons learned from spaceflight, but also to give Ted the obstacles to overcome to becoming part of the crew.
I’m not just learning to write a novel; I’m learning to write this one.
WHAT ELSE IS IN THE CARDS
SUBURBAN STOCKADE
I’m still editing this monster of a book, a compilation of posts Teresa wrote during 2015 and 2016. The original manuscript came in at 160,000 words, so I’m trimming bits here and there as I go through it. Then Teresa gets the changes and changes it all back.
I’m kidding. A little editor-author humor there. Seriously, I want to get the editing done by late December so that we can publish in the spring.
223B CASEBOOK SERIES
All of the stories for volume 4 (1910-1914) are in. I just need to write the introductions and footnotes, and the yearly essay in Conan Doyle’s lifetime. We’re also shooting for a spring publication, after season 4 of “Sherlock” comes out.
Ideally, I’d like to get the rest of the books out in 2017. I don’t like leaving a series hanging in mid-air. But at this point the future is cloudy.
THE NORMAL PARENTS’ GUIDE TO COLLEGE APPLICATIONS
Huh? What’s this all about.
If you’ve been following the few posts on Planetpeschel.com, you’ll know that my son and I have been working through the college application process. Campus tours, financial aid, The Common App, “prior-prior”, “holistic approach to applicants,” and “It looks just like Hogwarts” had become part of our vocabulary over the summer and into the fall. And while I’m writing this, my son is writing one of a dozen essays he’ll use on his application.
So I’ve been taking notes and reading books, and I’ve decided to write a book about the process and our journey, but from the standpoint of a parent who’s not trying to get his kid into Harvard (actually, it’s the University of Pennsylvania, and not that hard; I’ll explain why in the book).
I want TNPGTCA to be for parents who are new to the process and somewhat dazed by the weirdness of it all. I want to tell them what to anticipate when they tour the campuses, what are the good questions to ask, what is the state of admissions today, and how to work the financial aid maze.
This is going to be a short book that’s not going to go into the history of the SATs like I saw one guide did, nor tell you how to optimize your child’s essay to make Stanford swoon for him/her. It’s going to be more about making the right decisions and not end up with owing debt the size of your mortgage. I’m hoping for a spring publication.
FINALLY
So not so much good news right now, but I wanted to thank you for reading, and extend a hearty welcome to our recent signees to the newsletter. So let me leave you with a few bits of the funny before you go on to the email from that nice Norwegian prince who needs to sneak money into the U.S.