Five Things on a Friday: Joining The Peace Corps

Happy Friday, friends. 

We had a busy week at Casa Cabeza. Among other things, we sent our oldest child off to the Peace Corps on Monday morning. She is now serving our nation overseas! 

As you can imagine, we had quite the emotional scene dropping her off at Westchester County Airport, only to see all her would-be flights get cancelled throughout the day until she finally wound up back at home just after 8 pm Monday night. She was then up all night trying to rebook her flights, which continued to get cancelled throughout the night and into the following morning. Thank you American Airlines! She finally made it to staging in Miami over thirty-six hours after we'd initially dropped her off.

Needless to say, she was a tough combination of exhausted and frustrated by the time she joined her cohort. But her follow-on flight went better, and once she finally catches up on all the sleep she missed over the course of those disastrous travel delays, I'm sure she'll be fine.

Sally and I are proud but also sad this week. What can you do?

Chapter 6

Despite his mother’s warning, Blaine found himself in Special Agent Tiffany Trujillo's FBI-issued Lincoln cruiser the next morning, heading north up the Taconic Parkway toward Sing Sing Correctional Facility and Dr. Necropolis. Tiffany had worn a professionally laundered white shirt beneath a plain, dark blue pants suit. For once, she looked more like an FBI agent than one of the world’s most famous former superheroes. She remained quiet to the point of being uncommunicative, however, and after twenty minutes or so, her demeanor started to make Blaine nervous.

Five Things on a Friday: Who Made Who?

Let's start with a banger...

Beers with Engineers Interview

As promised, the first of my Podmatch interviews just dropped. You can check it out right here.

See the show notes after the jump.

Chapter 5

First Lieutenant Blaine Winters rolled through the gates of Winter House, his family’s Mount Kisco estate, a little after sunrise. As such things went, the place wasn’t too large — a mere fifty acres set off from the road by a low stone wall and a long, tree‑lined cobblestone drive. Technically, the family still owned the beaux‑arts style Diogenes Building a few blocks north of Columbus Circle, but his father had moved the family up to Westchester shortly before Blaine was born. That made Winter House the only home Blaine had ever known.

Five Things on a Friday: Dear Mr. Fantasy

How are we doing, friends? 

I've been busy this week. It feels like there's a lot going on. I wrote a new prologue for Gun Girl Gracie this week, but as of this writing, I've not even had time to go back through it for its initial rewrite. Right now it's just sitting there, like an itch I can't quite scratch.

Anyway. Let's talk.

YouTube Short: Army's 648-Yard Offensive Explosion vs Bryant

 This clip didn't make the cut for AFF's social media this week. But I still liked it, so here...

If you want to catch the rest of the show, you can find that on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

Chapter 4

By the time Exercise Period rolled around, Frank knew what he had to do. The only drawback? He’d need some help. And a trip to the infirmary. And also, potentially, an addiction to a powerful but dangerous hallucinogenic combat drug. All of this assumed that he could pull off a covert distillation in the first place. But Frank wasn’t about to let Anton run wild with the Neural Disruptor — nor with Jaynie, for that matter. Not when a little of the old mad science might change things, even here, stuck within the grotesque confines of Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Cover Quotes for Dr. Necropolis

I've got two right now, and while I can't put either full quote on the book's actual cover, these are still really cool. They're going in there somewhere.

Five Things on a Friday: College Football Begins!

Friends, I've been busy as all hell this week. 

My wife and daughter Hannah went to Bar Harbor, Maine, leaving me to water the plants, watch the dog, and mind the house. Not a big deal, really, except that I've also been working, swimming, and gearing up As For Football for Week 1 of the college football season. Thankfully it rained pretty consistently through the back half of the week, but finding an extra half-hour to water the plants became a real challenge on Monday. In addition to everything else, I wound up doing three podcasts this week, two for AFF and one to promote AFF and The Return of Dr. Necropolis. 

All of that was great, but it definitely kept me jumping.

Thankfully, things slowed down later in the week, giving me enough time to breathe a little.

Chapter 3

It took nearly three-quarters of an hour for Tiffany to peel off her cocktail dress, climb back into her Titania gear, and pull her too-long auburn hair back into something she could legitimately wear as an investigative professional at a crime-scene. Showing up in her old gear would be bad enough, she knew, but if she did it with her hair done up from the baby shower, she’d never hear the end of it from Casey fucking Walcott. 

Four Things on a Friday: A Personal Round-Up

I want you guys to appreciate how busy I got this week. It's college football Week 0, both AFF podcasts ran over an hour this week, and I'm looking for a cover artist for The Return of Dr. Necropolis. And let me just note that as much as I love that title, "The Return of Dr. Necropolis" is long and a bit cumbersome for an actual book cover.

Sigh.

If you missed it, we had a truly outstanding AFF Army Football Show this week. Shannon Horne's husband Paul Horne joined us for an in-depth dive into Army's O-Line. I can pretty much guarantee that you've never heard anything like this before. 

It got surprisingly mathematical. Paul went straight for my engineer's heart.

Anyway. I am trying to write here a little more often, so here goes.

Chapter 2

Tiffany stumbled going up the stairs to her apartment. She loathed wearing heels, but she’d been in them for almost four hours now, and the light outside her apartment had gone out almost two months ago. She needed to call the super about it, but she’d barely been home enough to make the phone call. Maybe it would’ve made more sense to fly, but she felt bone weary, and using her powers took effort. With the traffic around Stamford, the drive out to her sister’s place had taken almost two hours, and then she’d needed to summon the energy to look happy watching all those mindless suburban housewives fawn endlessly over Dorothea’s pregnant belly.