Speaking of ebooks . . .

. . . and monopolies:

Microsoft to Take Stake in Nook Unit of Barnes & Noble

Story.

It must be spring . . .

. . .  when hope springs eternal, and a young man's fancy turns to - books?

A new bookstore just opened in town. It sells "real" books. New ones.

Wow.

The owner is either an eternal optimist or a drug dealer trying to launder money. I'm thinking the former.

My first purchase: Complete Works of Shakespeare, to replace the edition that seems to have walked recently.* No home should be without this William guy's plays. As the bookstore owner mentioned, he seems to have a future in front of him.

* No, this doesn't relieve you of the responsibility of returning it.

Brother's Keeper

As the Cold War was winding down, there were a number of Russian nuclear bases where security was less than perfect. Researching those bases - and at the same time realizing that the Russian government was not the comatose body we in the West were told it was - sparked the ideas that led me to write this book.

Somehow, they got joined to a timeless theme:

Your brother's a traitor. What's your responsibility to him? And to your family?

I'm not sure I've figured out the answer yet.

(Brother's Keeper is $2.99 here at Amazon.com.)

Carlos Hathcock

One of the nice things that's happened in the wake of American Sniper's success is a renewed interest in war stories. It's also reintroduced people to some of our country's bravest heroes, including Carlos Hathcock. Hathcock, who served during Vietnam, was the greatest American sniper ever in the opinion of just about every elite sniper around, including Chris Kyle.

You can read about him in a book called, appropriately, Marine Sniper, by Charles Henderson. The book details some of Carlos Hathcock's career in Vietnam; it reads like a good novel. Henderson manages to get into Hathcock's head, and tells us a lot about war along the way.

The book has long been one of my favorites on the war. It's a highly recommended read, and is readily available on-line.

Pookie Bear




Hard Wired by Mars Rising Films . . . action thriller meets Cyber Punk with fantastic results... 


You can subscribe for future installments at YouTube . . . More info on the filmmakers on Facebook.

Due out early next year



Namco-Bandai is publishing.

Not one of my projects, but definitely looking forward to it.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams


For me, the best part of Havana Strike aren't the fighter scenes or the tech stuff; it's the relationship between two of the main characters.

And in the book, it comes down to this song:



You can get Havana Strike at Amazon.com.

Why North Korea is dangerous . . .

Item:

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) – North Korea is armed with "powerful modern weapons" capable of defeating the United States, a top military chief in Pyongyang said Wednesday amid increased speculation abroad about the nation's missile arsenal and nuclear ambitions.

. . .

"The Korean People's Army is armed with powerful modern weapons … that can defeat the U.S. imperialists at a single blow," he told party and military officials, using familiar descriptions of the country's rivals. 

USA Today story.

While that's good for a belly laugh from most of the world, the man who said it - and many of the people in power with him, actually believe it. And no amount of real evidence is likely to dissuade them.

If you have a mental patient with a sub-machine gun, sooner or later you have to disarm him, or face the consequences.

On an unrelated note, is it just me, or does it look like Kim Jong-un is under arrest in this photo:

Speaking of Rockford . . .

Somehow I missed this the other day.

Item:

Universal Pictures has set David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write The Rockford Files, a feature adaptation of the memorable series that ran on NBC from 1974-80 and featured James Garner as the down-and-out private eye. The studio will develop the film as a star vehicle for Vince Vaughn to play Rockford, and Vaughn and Victoria Vaughn will produce through their Universal-based Wild West Picture Show Productions banner.

Story.

James Garner talks about how he got involved in the original series:



Full interview here.

Will they, or won't they?

A counter view:

Iran 'has not yet decided' whether to build nuclear weapon

The commander of Israel's armed forces offered a measured appraisal of Iran's nuclear ambitions on Wednesday, saying that Tehran had "not yet decided" whether to build a nuclear weapon.

Story.

Havana Strike

Havana Strike was published in 1997. The world has changed greatly since then. Cuba unfortunately hasn't.

True, there are many positives signs on the island, and from what I've heard, conditions have greatly improved since the late 1990s. Still, even the most optimistic would be hard pressed to call the island a democracy. The great potential of the Cuban people - as creative and hard-working as you'll find - remains stymied by the dictatorship that still rules and in many cases ruins their lives.

I first got the idea for the book while I was doing research for something else and came across the original now-declassified CIA papers relating the Cuban missile crisis. One of the reports blew my mind: in essence, it said the Agency could not be sure that one or two missiles had not been left behind.

The story began there. But I was also influenced by friends who had escaped the island and come to America. I was very fortunate and privileged to hear some of their stories, and while it would be difficult if not impossible to trace anything in the book back to those accounts, in a very real way they inspired me to write.

You can get Havana Strike for the Kindle at Amazon.com here.

Traveling  at hypersonic speed . . .

. . .  ain't for sissies. Or aircraft with (relatively) thin skins, apparently.

DARPA's hypersonic HTV-2 test flight back in August was a great success, considering that the aircraft went some twenty times the speed of sound.

Before it crashed, that is.

Why? No one was sure until recently, when a report from an engineering review board decided it had gone so fast it lost its skin:

The ERB [Engineering Review Board]concluded that the “most probable cause of the HTV-2 Flight 2 premature flight termination was unexpected aeroshell degradation, creating multiple upsets of increasing severity that ultimately activated the Flight Safety System.”

Based on state-of-the-art models, ground testing of high-temperature materials and understanding of thermal effects in other more well-known flight regimes, a gradual wearing away of the vehicle’s skin as it reached stress tolerance limits was expected. However, larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle’s skin peeled from the aerostructure. The resulting gaps created strong, impulsive shock waves around the vehicle as it travelled nearly 13,000 miles per hour, causing the vehicle to roll abruptly. Based on knowledge gained from the first flight in 2010 and incorporated into the second flight, the vehicle’s aerodynamic stability allowed it to right itself successfully after several shockwave-induced rolls. Eventually, however, the severity of the continued disturbances finally exceeded the vehicle’s ability to recover.

DARPA release on the report.

An artist's rendering of HTV-2. A hypersonic aircraft could fly from the U.S. to a target across the globe in under an hour.

The real story on health care

Obamacare or no, the relentless drive of soaring health care costs and diminishing protections against it seems likely to continue.

Item in today's NY Times:

Despite a landmark settlement that was expected to increase coverage for out-of-network care, the nation’s largest health insurers have been switching to a new payment method that in most cases significantly increases the cost to the patient.

. . . .

Insurance companies defend the shift toward Medicare-based rates under the settlement, which allowed any clear, objective method of calculating reimbursement. They say that premiums would be even costlier if reimbursements were more generous, and that exorbitant doctors’ fees are largely to blame.

But few dispute that as the nation debates an overhaul aimed at insuring everybody, the new realpolitik of reimbursement is leaving millions of insured families more vulnerable to catastrophic medical bills, even though they are paying higher premiums, co-payments and deductibles. . . .

Full story. (Paywall.)

And then there's this, from the AP:

Breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay of Herrin, Illinois was put in debtors' prison over a $280 medical bill that was sent to her by accident

Ebooks and their price

Shortly after The Helios Conspiracy was published, I started receiving emails and other correspondence from readers complaining that the price of the ebook version was too high. They compared it to the hardcover, saying that the price was similar, but the cost to produce them wasn’t.

Actually, putting a book into hardcover doesn’t add as much to the cost as you’d think. It depends on the book, of course, but the general figure that’s thrown around is that a hardcover book costs $3.50 per unit, from printing to shipping. Most of the cost of any version of a book comes from the publisher’s overhead – the editors and others that are necessary to make books books. (Authors get about ten percent of the cover price, depending on whether it’s a hard cover or soft cover, how many have sold already, etc.)

But this isn’t about defending publishers and price points.

I don’t control the cost of most of my books, including Helios. I have no say about what the publisher charges on that book or any of them. Nor can I argue with their pricing or costs – it does cost quite a bit to run a publishing company.

But I did take to heart the complaints. And I am trying to do something about them.

Starting this week, I’ve lowered the price on the few ebooks that I do control. You can get two of early techno-thrillers, Brother’s Keeper and Havana Strike for $2.99 at Amazon.com. Both books are set in the 1990s, at the very end of the Cold War, and deal with themes that I think are still of interest today.

I appreciate feedback and support from my readers. I also understand that it’s thanks to you that I can put food on the table.

Hopefully, together we can continue to make that happen.

North Korea warns world . . .

. . . watch out. We're planning to screw something else up.

On Monday, the North Korean military said it would act “soon” and named its targets, including the government of President Lee, several South Korean newspapers and television stations, and “ratlike” elements that it said were “destroying fair-minded public opinion.”

“The special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors,” the North Korean military command’s “special operation action group” said in a statement

NY Times story.

This could be serious. Fresh from their missile setback, the North Koreans might blow up something important this time.

Of course, it'll be on their side of the border. But I'm sure it'll be worth watching.

Titanium ships

Lightweight, high strength titanium would be an excellent material for ships, especially small, fast craft like patrol boats and littoral combat vessels . . .  if it were easier to weld. And cheaper.

Those problems may soon be overcome. (Story.)

RIP

The next great rivalry

Item:

NEW DELHI -- India successfully tested its most advanced long-range nuclear-capable missile to date on Thursday, a launch which New Delhi hopes will serve as a deterrent against China, its regional rival.

Experts say Agni-V is the most advanced missile in India's inventory and places the country on a footing with Beijing, which already has missiles capable of striking deep into Indian territory.

Its range of over 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) means it could travel as far as Beijing and Shanghai. Earlier missiles had a range of up to 3,500 kilometers, falling short of many of China's major cities.

WSJ story.