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Hey everyone! Andrew here.

Sometimes things happen that you can only hope are making you a better person in the long run. This week I learned two things about myself. First, I can take a bit more pain than I thought I could and second, staying hydrated is really important, particularly as you get older. So what am I talking about? Well, this week, dear reader, I nearly lost the sight in my left eye. Thanks to having an eye structure that is particularly prone to glaucoma, my eyes are not handling aging well and as a result, I ended up with a hole ripped in my left eye retina earlier this week. I knew immediately that something was very wrong and I went to the ophthalmologist who rushed me into emergency laser surgery. I went into the clinic at 5:30pm and ended up back home at 10:30pm the same night with a new-found respect for other people’s pain tolerance and for the general importance of
water. Long story short, I can see, but it will be a few days before we know if this worked or not. I have another appointment on Wednesday. I will keep you posted on how it goes and whether I should be measuring up for a pirate eye patch or not. Needless to say, there was not much writing done this week so I have no update on that front. I am also trying to stay off devices to let my eye recover. I’m thinking about audiobooks but honestly, I don’t enjoy the “reading experience” as much when I listen to a book as I do when I read it myself. In any case, I will experiment with it and may get myself an Audible account and see if I can train myself to listen better. Do you use audiobooks? I’m pretty sure I polled this group before and most of us don’t… so you may not be the best folks to ask, but if you do have advice, please do write in and tell me.

All the best,

Andrew (ZZ)

Zero-Point Awakening – The Complete Series Books 1-8

While it’s definitely very busy with a lot of plot lines, it also takes the time for a good, strong twist here and there to keep the hooks really digging into you. And the books only get better as the series goes along.

– Amazon 5 Star Review

Read this Box Set Promos

Check out these bargain and discounted reads from our fellow speculative fiction authors!

Earth’s Hegemony controls the surrounding alien civilisations with ruthless force. Its aim: dominate the galaxy to protect humanity.

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Hunted across the stars and betrayed by every government, smugglers Devon and Jadsia flee in a battered warship. Their last hope: the ashes of Krylon IV.

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When the world ends, you adapt or die. Can two strangers trapped in a zoo survive as zombies close in around them?

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Four kids. Four disabilities. Four new superpowers. Nothing about therapy was normal anymore.

Check this out window.survey_rules = window.survey_rules || {};window.survey_rules['38'] = [];window.language_direction = "ltr"; AI surpassing humans: brilliant speculation or nightmare fuel?
Pure genius — bring on our robot overlords!

Exciting, but I’ll keep one eye on the off switch

Creepy. We’ve seen enough sci-fi to know how this ends

Depends who’s in charge — the humans or the code

Ask me again after my AI makes me coffee perfectly

Other (Tell us your deep cut!)
Survey Result

And now, let’s take a look at last week’s poll results. We asked, “What’s Your Favorite Time of Day?”

Here are the results:

Late-night cozy vibes → 38%Morning coffee time → 33%Afternoon reading hour → 10%Golden hour → 10%Other → 10%Dinner time → 0%

Andrew: We’re a community of night owls and early birds with very little in between! 38% of us are “late-night cozy vibes” people. Do you like reading when the rest of the world is asleep? I cannot sleep myself without reading for a bit. It’s always been how I wind down. My wife will read but she does it before going to bed. Not me, I have to read in bed and then get sleepy. 

What does surprise me is how close the morning coffee crowd came in at 33%. I love my morning coffee and I also read at breakfast before going to work. So I guess I read…all the time. I prefer reading at night though.

The fact that dinner time got zero votes is hilarious. Either nobody in this group eats dinner, or you’re all too busy reading to notice meal times. I’m going with the latter.

I got a few wonderful emails about this one, and I want to share something really special that happened. Yaakov wrote in response to Starla from last week’s poll about spacewalking pain-free: “To Starla. I have constant joint pain, even with a morphine pump, working 24/7. Yes, to diminish my TBR would be wonderful and I would be out of cell range so I couldn’t buy anymore! I would teach my new friends to read the best literature, science fiction.”

Yaakov, your vision of teaching space friends to read the best sci-fi literature while finally getting through your TBR is a lovely idea. Being out of cell range is probably the only way any of us will ever finish our reading lists!

Mr.E also wrote in as well. Thank you! I hear you re body clock, although mine works pretty well. I get discombobulated when I travel internationally. Jetlag really messes me up. 

Thanks for sharing your preferences with me! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go rest my eye before my next appointment. Wish me luck!