Alex Gordon's Blog

…or in my case, April wind-swept torrents with added tornado warning sirens.

AKA Spring in the Midwest.

What can I say? The year is flying. Still slow and steady goes Chaos Agent. Lots of politics in this one as Jani comes to realize that her supposed cultural advisory position to the idomeni Oligarch is anything but, especially as events and people from her past turn up to complicate matters. I’ve known the major plot points and ending for a while, but now the mystery/investigation plot pieces are coming together and combining with past events and emotional matters. As with Endgame, things that happened during the War of Vynshàrau Ascension play a role.

In office equipment news, I finally had to decommission my ancient HP LaserJet 1100, and when I say “ancient,” I mean I needed to use a serial:parallel adapter to use it. It worked for ages with only the occasional jam, but then the jams became more and more frequent and it was tax time which meant Kris needed to print All The Things for her CPA, so. Over the years, I came to understand that HP printers were no longer the default option when it came to reliability, so I did some digging. I wanted an all-in-one color laserjet, and Consumer Reports recommended the Brother MFC-L3765CDW. Found it on sale at Costco and grabbed it. Still adjusting to the joy of wireless printing at home. I mean, I had it for a little while back when I had a functioning inkjet. But for Reasons, it stopped working. Now I have it again, and it’s marvelous.

It’s out! My first collection!

For someone who doubted she would even be able to write short, it’s a kinda big deal.

Anyway, here’s the blurb:

A boy…a girl…a spaceship…

A collection of stories about a lost love, a stolen spacecraft, and life on the run.

Gia Solari has never forgotten the day that Del Morehouse flew out of her life.

Unfortunately, he stole a ship to do it.

Even worse, that ship was the Peregrine, a one-of-a-kind experimental craft loaded with patented tech that its owners would like returned, please. They always believed Gia knew what Del planned, and now, after five long years, they’ve come after her again with a simple request: tell us where Del Morehouse is, or we will destroy your life.

Gia doesn’t know where Del is. But she wants to find him, too. Because he’s in danger. And she still loves him.

Del Morehouse had his reasons for stealing the Peregrine, the sorts of reasons that only made sense to another pilot. She was beautiful. Handled like a dream. At times, it even seemed like she communicated with him.

He had no idea. But he would soon find out.

And then there’s the ship herself. Her nickname is Perry, and she’s full of surprises.

Universal link to the ‘zon etc

Book View Café

…it’s almost March.

Work was done. I finally released the updated trade paperback of Code into the wild. If you already have it, no reason to get this one. I just changed the ISBN and publisher info to Glass Green LLC and did some very light editing that consisted mostly of removing exclamation marks my God what was I thinking with all those damned things. I also changed the paper from white to cream, which means the book is thicker and the pages look like those of a work of fiction and not a soft-cover textbook.

The Breakaway collection comes out in a couple of weeks.

Chaos Agent work continues. I’ve also written the odd scene for the next book and sketched out a possible novella, neither of which is really useful but it’s the way the overall story is working out.

In one of those “I knew this day was coming” situations, I finally had to replace my ancient HP1100 LaserJet printer. I bought in the late 90s or early 00s—I needed to get hold of a serial-to-parallel adapter for it when I joined the World of Apple back in 2004. I printed out so many drafts on that thing. Then electronic submissions became the standard. I liked printing in color on occasion, so I switched to inkjets. But after I went through a couple of those, I got sick of dealing with ink cartridges and clogged printheads and dug the 1100 out of the figurative mothballs. It’s chugged along these last few years, coming through at tax time and when needed for various non-writing related tasks. But the connection with my laptop would drop every few jobs, and recently paper jams had become more frequent. A decision needed to be made. It’s tax time. I needed a working printer. Plus, well, I wanted to be able to print in color and I wanted a wireless option, too. I decided the timing was right when I found a list of recommended all-in-one color laser printers in the latest online Consumer Reports newsletter and then found that their top pick was on sale at Costco.

So I am now the owner of a Brother MFC-L3765CDW. It is a monster, 45 pounds and way more printer than I need, but when I need it, it will be there. I also like the copy and scan functions (even though I’ve been using an app on my phone for most of that these last few years.). I’ve named it “Chonk” for now because it is a major one.

But decommissioning the old 1100 makes me a little sad. It was Old Faithful for so long. And it’s not a cliché to say that they don’t make them like that anymore.

…Happy New Year?

A busy month, nearly at its end, that included way too much time spent shoveling snow and shivering. After two winters so mild that I thought I’d been transported to the Carolina coast, Midwest winter is back, baybee. We’ve reached the point where the prospect of daytime highs in the 30s (F) sounds like heaven, and the first of those is still a couple of days away.

::thinking warm thoughts::

Work on Chaos Agent continues. Not as far along as I’d like to be, but that’s pretty much how it is these days. I continue to work out scenes for the next couple of books at the same time, which in a way is helpful—I know which breadcrumbs to scatter about in CA. But in another way, it feels like I’m standing facing three walls of floor-to-ceiling notes with string connectors and keywords scribbled in black marker. You know, like this guy.

A hint about the plot? Okay. Newly-appointed Speaker of Humanish Jani Kilian, Lucien Pascal, and a small group of hybrid support and medical staff are on their way to Shèrá when a plea from John Shroud causes them to detour to a Channel Worlds Neoclona facility. Complications are the last thing they need, but John hands them a big one. On to Shèrá they go, where even more await. A couple of old faces return, one as a POV. An old enemy from Jani’s youth surfaces. Whole fistfuls of breadcrumbs.

In other news, I have a collection entitled Breakaway coming out on March 10. I gathered together all the Del & Gia stories, and added a related story, “The Repairer of Lost and Broken Things,” that appeared in the ZNB anthology Solar Flare.

I enjoyed writing these stories. I’m glad to have the chance to gather them in one place.

Need to fill that new e-reader? Just plain need something new to read?

Book View Café is currently running its annual Boxing Day Sale, which actually runs from the 26th through the 31st.

It really is a great deal.

Jericho

And now the Jericho e-book is available at Book View Café and the ‘Zon.

Working on everything else.

Gideon

Slowly adding vendors, but so far the Gideon e-book is available at Book View Café and Amazon.

A trade paper edition is in progress.

If you’re in the mood for an unsettling tale or two, Nature’s Ways is available for free for a limited time over at Book View Café.

…wth does the time go?

I do have another Del & Gia story, “Learning Curve,” in the latest issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly. The theme of this issue is “Zeroes and Ones.” AI overlords. Sentient machines. Or, in the case of my story…

…well, you’ll have to read it, though if you’ve read any of the previous stories, you can probably guess.

In other news, I played host several weeks ago to a monarch butterfly chrysalis for the first time I’m aware of. I mean, I do have a number of milkweed plants in my backyard, and have seen caterpillars many times. But then one day they would just vanish—I’ve no idea whether they survived or met the fate of most caterpillars and succumbed to accident, lunch, disease, etc.

I can’t say that this caterpillar picked the best spot to settle in and transform—the chrysalis was attached to the edge of a board on the back of my house, fully exposed to the elements. I worried that a gust of wind would blow it away or some passing bird would pluck it off. But as the days passed, the little sucker persisted, a lovely jade green object with dots of what looked like gold but were really a combined effect of the carotenoids present and the structure of the chrysalis.

Finally, one Saturday morning about 10 or so days after I first spotted the chrysalis, I saw that the green had darkened. When I checked the next day, I saw the black and orange of folded wings. I was looking up how to tell when eclosion (the term for hatching) was imminent when I glanced over and saw that damn, I missed the moment. I then hustled to move the new butterfly to firmer footing so its wings could dry out and expand. As its wings spread, I saw it was a he (see the last photo, the little dot on the right hindwing). I kept an eye on him as he dried out, worked his wings, fluttered around the deck railing and various potted plants, then finally took off.

A very cool experience.

I was in the mood for gelato, but I didn’t feel like going through the temperature-monitoring while waiting for the corn starch to fully cook*. So the other day I froze about a pound of chopped-up bananas and today I made “nice” cream pretty  much according to this recipe. Instead of nut milk, I added a couple of tablespoons of half-and-half and about the same amount of whole milk.

The ingredients (yup, those are lots of bitters back there. great in seltzer with ice. I’m a total addict)

My food processor is on the wimpy side, power-wise—I needed to add the milk to thin the nice cream just enough to get it to mix properly.

The finished product

It’s currently in the freezer setting up, but I tasted it and it’s great. Creamy. Banana is there but imo not too noticeable because of the cocoa (not that I’d mind—I love bananas). I used 16.5 oz bananas, which is roughly 3 cups according to The Internet, so about 1.5x the amounts in the recipe…except for the milk because see above.

it’s chocolaty. It’s creamy. Four stars would make again.

*I make Sicilian-style gelato, which uses corn starch to thicken rather than eggs. Don’t make that face—it’s essentially frozen pudding.