I do not celebrate birthdays. Despite the convention, you have only one. All days after that are living days. The particular orbit of our planet around the sun has nothing to do with age. Age is biological. If our planet orbited at the distance of Uranus, most of us would never celebrate a birthday. Worse than the birthday celebration for the living is the need to celebrate a birthday for someone dead. As an orbital celebration shouldn’t it be their deathday we celebrate?

Social custom is social custom. For this April Fool’s day, I decided to play along and celebrate the -126-year birthday of Keith Hobson. You read that right, the minus 126-year birthday of Keith Hobson. To be born on April 1, 2145 Keith will witness humanities devastation and play an important role in its revival.

(The  events in The Fundamentals happen 125 years after the Arabian impact. Symmetry dictates that I wait till next year, but screw symmetry.) 

Keith Hobson meets Erin Smart–Keith’s View was not cut from The Fundamentals, but it is missing. This is Keith’s and Erin’s first meeting told from Keith’s point of view. When editing the final version of The Fundamentals I found that I had a few chapters told from minor character viewpoints. That was important for me to understand the story; I had to get inside their heads, but it was not important to telling the story. So, the linked scene was altered to Erin’s viewpoint.

If you have not read The Fundamentals, there are a few spoilers here, but nothing plot shattering. That we have a stranded alien trying to save his human daughter is the tagline of the novel. That Keith Hobson is a telepath who can control electronic equipment with a thought is a spoiler.

Fuck, now I have spoiled the spoiler.

Regardless, this is an interesting look into story development. Reading it two years after it was written, I am surprised how well the scene survived my final edits.

Read Keith Hobson meets Erin Smart – Keith’s View in the Shorts Section.

The first week of January, 2018 I sat down to write a short story about Ryan Jameson, the reporter from The Fundamentals. It quickly grew into a larger project than I expected. The result is Special Correspondents Lottery, a novella length tale of how Ryan Jameson found his way to the Santa Maria and in the center of the biggest event in human history.

Including a glossary for a fantasy or science fiction epic is standard practice. Tucked away at the end of a book, they are useful references if you have set a book aside for a while and need to re-familiarize yourself with the language and culture of a story.

My first copy of the Lord of the Rings was a massive, hard-bound copy I checked out from the Public Library. It included all three books, a biography of Tolkien, and a glossary that rivaled the Silmarillion. I had a special bookmark for the glossary and often lost myself tracing entries while assembling Middle Earth in my head.

The trend on Facebook this month is to post what you are “thankful for.” Most of my friends are pretty much where I am at. Catching up for the four or five days we have missed. While most have went for things like god and family, the same stuff they will say around the table on the 25th, I am taking a different approach.

Here is my catch up list:

Day 5: I am thankful that I won’t have to wait 6 hours to vote in the morning. Kansas has done a much better job of suppressing the vote than other states.

http://goo.gl/y6tdg

Day 4: I am thankful that billionaires and corporations can give an unlimited amount of money to political campaigns. Maybe now “trickle-down” will finally work.

http://goo.gl/ATfcM

Day 3: I am thankful that legislature in Ohio allowed fewer days to vote in the general election, than in the primary. Without it, these mimes would not have gotten any press.

http://goo.gl/BQGXr

Day 2: I am thankful that I do not have to read my D20 dice in Egyptian.

http://goo.gl/G7f2D

Day 1: I am thankful for Science Fiction.