Karm must save his civilization. He cannot let the fact they are already extinct stop him. The problem is... time travel was the easy part of his plan.
Click on the button below to go to Audible and get your copy of Hegira, now an audiobook! After much deliberation, and quite a few requests from folks visiting my ComicCon booths, I have decided that Hegira, book one of The Brin Archives, will be released as an audiobook. I am currently working with a producer from Audible audiobooks who is has taken on the reading of my book. We are about halfway through the process and should be done in time for your Christmas shopping season. I will be back later with more details as things get closer to the release date, but keep an eye out here and on my Facebook page for further details.I am very excited to hear back from all of you who listen to the audiobook version. Let me know what you think.
I will soon set up the process for another of my books, Aeon Rises. If these both show promise as an audiobook, then I will finish the Brin Archives trilogy in this format. There is always something new and exciting to try in the world of books and authoring. Oh, and by the way, I am back into writing again on a new science fiction novel, working title of King of Gems. This will be a mash-up of scifi and fantasy, sort of a Tolkien meets Asimov idea I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. More on this later. NASA and the space program are what inspired my love of science. I remember watching the Mercury astronauts launching into space and being amazed at the idea of people in space. Apollo 11 captivated my imagination as nothing ever had. To this day I cannot look up at the moon without thinking about how we actually sent twelve men to walk there. This is why I became a science teacher. If I can share some of my awe and amazement over what science can do for us, then I feel like I have accomplished something good in the world. This is also why I now work at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. They allow me to continue sharing my wonder of the universe with children and adults alike.
This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to be asked to share with our guests a bit of the private artifact collection of Mr. Ben Gaylo, chief technical engineer at Grumman Aerospace and the lunar module project. It was his job to help design the lunar modules, and then to troubleshoot anything that went wrong with any of them. While Mr. Gaylo has passed away, his family was generous enough to contact DMNS and share with us some of the artifacts he had collected during his career with the LEM. It was incredible to see the faces of visitors as they got to see some of the equipment that allowed us to land on the moon. Docking position and range indicators, descent rate tapes, titanium-beryllium bolts, an abort button and some of the switches and circuit breakers were all part of the collection. People are still enthralled with the lunar landings. Many of our older visitors shared their stories with me about their memories of the landing. Our younger guests were in awe at how primitive looking the equipment is, and that we really used those items to get to the moon. All-in-all, a wonderful way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of such an historic event. This is not a plea for money. My goal with this post is simply to bring awareness to a rare genetic disease.
As some of you may know, especially if you follow me on facebook, my four-year-old grand daughter has a genetic condition known as Inverted, duplicated and deleted 8P chromosome. This is an incredibly rare condition. In fact, only about eighty people in the entire world have been diagnosed with it. As a result she is afflicted with severe muscle weakness, her cognitive abilities are very limited, and she in unable to talk. Over the weekend of June 28 - 30, Columbia University in New York held the first ever conference for those who are affected by it. Approximately eighty families attended, each afflicted child having some version of the disorder. The conference is known as Project 8P. The following link will take you to the webpage for Project 8P. Here you can learn more about this condition and what is gong on with current research.At this time we are trying to increase awareness about this disease among the general population, and also in the medical professional world. Please help us spread the word so more doctors and medical personnel can learn about and help find new therapies, maybe even a cure for future generations of kids. Finally! After almost six months recovering from my open heart surgery, I have been able to concentrate and focus enough to get beck to writing! I was beginning to wonder if the fog in my brain would ever clear. Physically I felt fine, but trying to write was next to impossible until now.
In addition, I am working on the idea for a new novel. This one will be a sort of mash-up between science fiction and fantasy. Nothing to reveal any further just yet since I am still formulating the basic plot outline in my head. Writing should commence in a week or so, if everything goes according to plan.
I found this short article from Scientific American to be right on the money. This is the sort of education museums and other non-profits do best. click on the link to read. Museums and non-profit organizations need to partner with traditional public education school districts to take advantage of the strategies each mode of education does best.
Sorry I did not post an update last week, but things were incredibly busy. All incredibly good news though. My recovery is proceeding about 2 weeks ahead of the schedule the doctors told me about prior to the surgery. After the post-operation follow-up visits with both my cardiologist, and surgeon, I have been allowed to start driving again, and have permission to start back to work on a limited basis, with some lifting restrictions. I also am going to start cardiac rehab this week. This means going down to the facility next to St. Joseph's hospital and doing a supervised work-out for about an hour, three days a week. Turns out this location is just down the road from the museum, so if I work in the morning, I can simply hop on over to the rehab facility for an afternoon session. At this time, I am sleeping about 6 hours straight, uninterrupted through the night and have virtually no pain. My chest is somewhat irritated around the incision, and my ribs are still a bit sore, but nothing like two weeks ago. I am able to not only do the treadmill at the fitness center, but the stationary bike and rowing machine. Some limited wrok with kettle bells is also okay.
My only issue now was the afib continued. Now the doctors assure me this is perfectly normal for almost all cardiac surgery patients.To try and reset my heart's electrical system, I had to go in for a procedure called electrocardioversion. This means the doctor put me under anesthesia for about a minute while he zapped me with some paddles. This works most of the time to reboot the heart and get it back in normal rhythm. Fingers crossed for it to be successful. At least I left the hospital with everything working normally. Since my recovery has gone so well, there is not, at least at this time, much more to report. It is simply a matter of allowing time to do its healing magic. I should be absolutely back to full strength and completely healed, sternum knit back fully, at about 3 months, so mid-March. Therefore, I think this will be the last of my blog posts on the recovery process. I hope it proves helpful for someone out there. Thanks for listening. First of all... Happy New Year 2019 everyone! I hope all of you have a wonderful and exciting, in a good way, new year. I know I am certainly looking forward to some more pleasant experiences ahead.
Physically, the toughest part is sleeping at night. my back still gets pretty sore about 3:30 every morning. My ribs still need time to heal up and stitch themselves back together so every movement is painful. Not too bad, but enough to keep waking me up. The good thing now though is I can sort of sleep on my side without too much discomfort. This has helped relieve some of the pain in my lower back from being so flat and still all night. Heating pads seem to help. I also use a tennis ball between my shoulders and a wall to rub out some of the stiffness. I really need to get back to my chiropractor, but that will have to wait a bit more. Walking is getting much easier, when I can get out. Diane and I went for a two hour walk one nice day, then another day we went to Planet Fitness for an hour. I used the treadmill and a recumbent bike. I will be able to start cardiac rehab on Jan. 14 so that should be interesting to see what they want me to do. To help keep me occupied, I am also now learning how to tie balloon animals. This will come in handy with an new program we will do at the museum this year. At this time, I can, sort of, tie a dog, giraffe, flower, T-rex, and Stegosaurus. I still need lots of practice, but it is fun to learn. The real trick to it all is keeping my mind occupied so I don't go stir crazy. A person can only watch so many movies. Each day I try to mix things up a bit and do something different just to keep it interesting. Can't wait until I can start to drive again. This week I get to go see my cardiologist for the first time since the surgery. Next week I have an appointment with the surgeon. Hopefully they will think I am progressing well enough to let me drive a bit sooner, and possibly get back to work a little sooner than expected. We will see how it goes.
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