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Another Testimonial: ‘Amazingly Authentic’

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In the run-up to publication of Walking On the Sea of Clouds, here’s what award-winning editor (and author of This Giant Leap) Edmund R. Schubert had to say about the novel:

From the science to the science fiction costume party to the one scientist’s African accent, everything about Walking on the Sea of Clouds feels amazingly authentic. They say an author should write what he knows, and based on this book, I’d say that Gray Rinehart has been in outer space, walked on the moon, thrown up in a NASA-approved barf-bag, fired thruster engines, and driven an LVN (gotta read the book if you want to know what that last one is). You can experience all that and more for yourself, too; just jump in on page one and don’t stop until you get the end.

Orange Moon #1
(Image: “Orange Moon #1,” by Alex Leier, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I’m sorry to say we still don’t have an official release date yet. But stay tuned for more info!

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What Can You Tell About This Book By Its Cover?

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Do you think the old adage is correct, that you can’t tell a book by its cover? Maybe in some ways, but at least the cover should give you an idea of what kind of book you’ve picked up. I think mine does.

Here’s the complete cover of Walking On the Sea of Clouds:


(Click for larger image.)

Here’s what it says on the back:

“Annoyed you haven’t been to the Moon yet? Then pick up Walking on the Sea of Clouds; you’ll feel like you’re there.”
—Charles E. Gannon, author of the award-winning Caine Riordan series
_____

ON THE LUNAR FRONTIER . . .
. . . survival and success require sacrifice.
. . . some sacrifices are greater than others.
. . . sometimes surviving is success enough.

Every frontier, every new world, tempts and tests the settlers who try to eke out an existence there. In Walking on the Sea of Clouds, a few pioneering colonists struggle to overcome the unforgiving lunar environment as they work to establish the first independent, commercial colony on the “shore” of Mare Nubium, the “Sea of Clouds.” What will they sacrifice to succeed—and survive?
_____

“This book will be treasured by anyone who has ever dreamt of visiting the Moon, walking on another world, or bathing beneath the light of a distant star.”
—David Farland, author of the NYT-bestselling Runelords novels

“Two things are immediately clear. First, Gray Rinehart knows his field(s) inside out; and second, he writes with grace, skill, and professional polish. What more could any reader ask?”
—Mike Resnick, multiple Hugo-award-winning author

So, does that tell you what you need to know about the book? I hope so.

Stay tuned, here and to WordFire Press, for more info as we work our way up to release!

___
P.S. I’ve got a new sign-up form for my mailing list. If you’re not getting my every-once-in-a-while newsletter, use the form in the upper right to sign up.

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Two Brief Testimonials

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The novel is coming, one of these days! No release date yet for Walking On the Sea of Clouds — it’s still supposed to be a Spring release, and Spring has a few more weeks in it. I’ll let you know when to start looking for it to appear, but meanwhile I thought I’d present two more blurbs.

First, from Mike Resnick, whose stories have garnered more awards and award nominations than any other science fiction writer:

Two things are immediately clear. First, Gray Rinehart knows his field(s) inside out; and second, he writes with grace, skill, and professional polish. What more could any reader ask?

Second, from Martin L. Shoemaker, the award-winning author of “Today I Am Paul”:

Gray Rinehart knows that real engineering is messy, and that Murphy was an optimist. When whatever can go wrong with constructing the first Lunar colony does go wrong, teams on the Moon and on Earth struggle to save the project–and their lives. This is meat and potatoes for the hard science fiction fan.

If it’s permissible to put two different things together, I guess you might say that I know my stuff, and my stuff might appeal to hard science fiction fans. (I admit I really like that “meat and potatoes” line.)

So if you know any hard SF fans, maybe they’d find something to like in my novel.


Look, up in orbit, a Supermoon! (August 2014 Image from NASA/Bill Ingalls.)

Stay tuned, here and to WordFire Press, for more info!

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Another Testimonial: ‘You’ll feel like you’re there’

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The WordFire Press team and I have made progress on my forthcoming novel, Walking On the Sea of Clouds, though I’m still not sure what the actual, definite, no-kidding release date is yet. I’m still counting on it being a Spring release — which, if you’ve seen previous posts about the book, you know I take to mean between now and the summer solstice.

In the meantime, I’m pleased — and, I must admit, quite humbled — to present another endorsement, this one from Charles E. “Chuck” Gannon, author of the award-winning Caine Riordan books:

You’ve always wanted to go to the Moon. You’ve always loved hard science fiction. You’ve always gravitated toward believable characters. You’ve never found a way to get all three in the same place, at the same time. Well, now there’s a way. Here’s how:

You pick up Gray Rinehart’s Walking on the Sea of Clouds, the most faithful and gritty ‘you are there’ novel of early lunar settlement I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. This is hard SF at its hardest — by which I mean that not only is the science spot on and largely off-the-shelf, but the characters conform to the emotional and psychological limits of folks we interact with every day. There are no galactic crises to be overcome, no interpersonal conflicts that erupt into homicidal rage, and no cast of quirky tycoons, femme fatales, or wise-cracking test-pilots. This is the Moon as it’s likely to be in the early days of colonization, where even the smallest problems have impacts far beyond what living on Earth has trained us to anticipate.

Annoyed you haven’t been to the Moon yet? Then pick up Walking on the Sea of Clouds; you’ll feel like you’re there.

Hopefully that whets your appetite for the story, or you know someone who might like the kind of story Chuck described. And hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll be able to tell you how to order a copy!


Want to go to the Moon? (Full Moon image from Apollo-11, from NASA.)

Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to share this with anyone who might be interested!

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This Punk Can’t Punctuate

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… consistently, that is.

File this under, “how a manuscript becomes a published novel.”*

I spent the last week or so poring over the proof copy of Walking On the Sea of Clouds, and realized that I’m not as good at the mechanics of writing as I thought I was.

  • Spelling? Not too shabby. I think all the spelling errors had been caught by the time this proof was done.
  • Grammar? It was pretty clean on that front as well, with the exception of a few things that could go either way. For instance: they changed one brief passage from simple past tense to past perfect tense, to avoid some confusion.
  • Punctuation? Abysmal.

And what’s worse, every punctuation error in the proof came straight out of the manuscript I submitted. They didn’t change them, I guess because they thought I wanted them that way, but very soon I wanted to grit my teeth at my own inattention to detail.

My main problem was hyphenating words that didn’t need hyphens, such as writing “pre-fabricated” where “prefabricated” is a perfectly good word, or “set-up” instead of “setup.” Not a tragedy, by any stretch, but what annoyed me most was that I had been inconsistent within the document itself and used both versions here and there — “de-briefing” in one spot, say, and “debriefing” in another — with no rhyme and certainly no reason.

So, herewith I apologize to the editorial and production team at WordFire Press for not being more diligent in catching all those errors sooner.

Employee Must "Wash Hands"
Punctuation can be pretty important. (Image: “Employee Must ‘Wash Hands’,” by Sean Graham, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I suppose I could have kept silent about my punctuation problems. Once the errors were corrected, folks who hadn’t seen an advance reader copy wouldn’t know how inconsistent my punctuation was in the early going. But I thought it was better to come clean about it, by way of expressing my thankfulness for the opportunity to catch the problem in production. To me, it validates my choice to go with a small press instead of self-publishing.

Will the final product be perfect, in the sense of having no flaws? Of course not. But it will have fewer flaws than the version I just saw, and that’s what matters.

And the good news is that this stage of the proofing is done, so now we press on. Wish us luck!

___
*That line sparked a strange idea: To write a song to that effect, along the lines of the old Schoolhouse Rock number, “How a Bill Becomes a Law.”

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A Testimonial: ‘This book will be treasured’

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We still don’t have a definite release date yet, but we continue to work on producing my forthcoming novel, Walking On the Sea of Clouds.

This week I’m reviewing the proof copy sent to me by the fine folks at WordFire Press. They say it’s a Spring release — and Spring officially began two days ago! So sometime between now and the Summer Solstice I anticipate the book being available.

Meanwhile, here’s a very nice endorsement from David Farland, New York Times-bestselling author of the Runelords series:

There is a very rare and special pleasure that comes from reading a beautifully written book from a true expert in his field. In reading Walking on the Sea of Clouds, it immediately becomes apparent that Gray Rinehart is intimately familiar with the field of near-future space exploration. He understands what it will take to get mankind to the Moon and beyond. He writes about the military as only someone who has been in the military can. He writes about bureaucracies and funding in the way that someone who has struggled with them does. When it comes to astronauts and space exploration, his characters ring undeniably true. He understands that some people are motivated to give all that they have in order to go into space simply because he has devoted so much of his life to this great endeavor.

This book will be treasured by anyone who has ever dreamt of visiting the Moon, walking on another world, or bathing beneath the light of a distant star.

If that sounds interesting, stay tuned — here on the blog or via my newsletter — to learn when you can order a copy! (And if any of your friends are science fiction fans, let them know to be on the lookout for it, too. Thanks!)


Want to go to the Moon with me? (Image: NASA/Goddard/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.)

Back to the editing….

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Don’t Expect Instant Transformation

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(Another in the continuing “Monday Morning Insight” series of quotes to start the week.)

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. James “Jim” Belasco speak at a conference. Belasco is known for his entertaining and insightful books on business and management, such as Teaching the Elephant to Dance and Flight of the Buffalo. He gave an entertaining talk, or so I recall after looking at my notes over the weekend. I particularly liked this quote I wrote down:

Unfortunately, reading my book … will not result in instant transformation.

I can relate to that.

Open Book Series
What will you get out of a book? (Image: “Open Book Series,” by Kristin Bradley, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

That resonates with me because it’s certainly true of Quality Education, the book I revised and released last year. Reading it will not magically transform your life or your thinking, nor will it automatically revitalize any school system — but I’m confident you can find some good things in it.

It will be equally true of the novel I have coming out in a few months, Walking on the Sea of Clouds. It’s a pretty good book, I think — not perfect, not close to being “great” as such things are reckoned, but good enough for what it is. If near-future science fiction is your thing, you’ll find some things to like in it.

I suspect what Dr. Belasco said rings true for a lot of my writer friends. We do what we do and what we can, and put what we’ve done out in the market for you to consider. We hope you’ll like what we have to offer.

But for me, it’s important that you don’t expect too much. Don’t look to me for something that will change your life or revolutionize your world: you’ll be sorely disappointed. All I try to provide is good words, be they stories or songs or whatever: not great words, not matchless words, but good words — for good people, like you.

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Why I’m Not Self-Publishing My Novel, Part III

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(If you’re interested, Part 1 of the series is here and Part 2 of the series is here.)

Since 2016 was a year ago already (!), a brief recap: my near-future science fiction novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds, is in the pipeline to be published by WordFire Press. Way back last year (!) a newsletter reader sent in this question: Why did I go with a small press instead of self-publishing? I came up with three reasons. The first two are linked above, and lead in sequential fashion to:

Third, and Possibly Most Important: Publishing is Hard

I say that with the authority of experience, because I’m already a publisher. I produced and published my two CDs — though I reckon the term is “released” in the music business — and that wasn’t a trivial effort. Granted, I didn’t engineer or master them and my performance on them was limited to what I could reasonably do, but once the tracks were mastered I handled the rest of the production process.

I also say “publishing is hard” with the authority of vicarious experience. Several friends of mine are in the self-publishing business, writing and publishing and art directing and marketing their own work. Some of them have enjoyed very high degrees of success. For my novel I could learn from their examples and follow in their footsteps and take on all those responsibilities as well, but, as Simon Tam said in an episode of Firefly, “That thought wearies me.”

Books

(Image: “Books,” by Moyan Brenn, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

 

The thought wearies me because I know how much effort it entails based on my experience in the nonfiction world. As my blog and newsletter readers alike know, late last year I self-published the revised and updated version of Quality Education — available here (and you and all your friends in education should definitely check it out). Not only did I restructure the book so that it’s nearly unrecognizable from the original print version, but I got it formatted for e-book as well as for print-on-demand production, consulted on the cover design (I knew better than to try to do it myself), and have since been trying to market it in the midst of everything else I’ve got going on.

The thought of self-publishing my novel wearies me because the experience of self-publishing my music and my education book nearly wore me out.

So, when we get down to the proverbial brass tacks, I really like the idea of participating in the publishing process with my novel, rather than running the process. And I hope that by leaving the details of production to the good folks at WordFire, I might actually free part of my brain to write some more songs and more stories — short and long!

___
P.S. For a different take on self-publishing’s place in the larger publishing universe, Larry Correia recently “fisked” an article from a “literary” author who had little good to say about self-publishing.
P.P.S. As noted at the outset, this brief blog series was originally an issue of my every-once-in-a-while newsletter. You can subscribe to get the latest on my shenanigans.
P.P.P.S. Seriously, I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a look at Quality Education, and encourage your friends in education to take a look at it, too. Thanks!

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Why I’m Not Self-Publishing My Novel, Part II

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(If you’re interested, Part I of the series is here.)

To recap: my near-future science fiction novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds, is in the pipeline to be published by WordFire Press, and a few weeks ago a newsletter reader sent in this question: Why did I go with a small press instead of self-publishing? I came up with three reasons.

Last week I laid out my first reason: the value a publisher adds to a novel. So here we go with:

Second, I Value Publishers’ Selectivity

I may be more aware of this aspect of publishing because I’m on the front lines of selecting novels for a major publisher — Baen Books — but in general novels selected for publication by big houses and small presses alike have crossed a certain threshold of quality, simply by virtue of being selected from a large number of submissions.

Be the first to read...

Imagine that you can only afford one (or maybe two) out of all the books on all those shelves — that’s what a publisher faces in selecting novels to publish. (Image: “Be the first to read…,” by Thomas Leuthard, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

 

The “threshold of quality” assumption may not be equally true in all cases — some publishers take chances on novels and other books they might not usually take, for various reasons — but in most cases a novel gets into the publication pipeline because someone declares it good enough to carry the publisher’s logo. In fact, often it’s multiple someones: an initial reader (or two or three), maybe a senior editor, perhaps others in the marketing and management end of things, and of course the in-person publisher.

I consider that a vote of confidence in my favor, and I appreciate it.

The publisher’s selectivity is not, of course, a guarantee of success. There are no such guarantees. I don’t know if the story will capture people’s attention, though I certainly hope it does. We’ll see, won’t we?

Meanwhile, next week I’ll cover the third reason I’m trusting a publisher with my novel instead of self-publishing it.

___
P.S. This blog series was originally an issue of my every-once-in-a-while newsletter. You can subscribe to get the latest on my goings-on and projects.

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Why I’m Not Self-Publishing My Novel, Part I

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One of my newsletter readers asked this question, so I obliged and answered it in a newsletter issue, but I thought some other folks might be curious about the inner workings of publishing … so I’ll answer it here, too.

We pause here for a word from our sponsor: Yes, you too can subscribe to my newsletter and get the latest news or whatnot I decide to send out, and even get to ask me questions like this one. And now, back to our story…

If you hadn’t heard, my near-future science fiction novel, Walking on the Sea of Clouds, is in the pipeline to be published by WordFire Press, a small press in Colorado. A few weeks ago a reader sent in this question: Why did I go with a small press instead of self-publishing? The question is even more appropriate now, since just last week I self-published a new edition of my first book, a nonfiction examination of education and how the system might be improved.

I came up with three reasons why I was happy to join forces with a small press instead of trying to self-publish my novel, and I’ll hit them one at a time in three separate posts. First,

I Think a Good Publisher Adds Value

The continuum of opinions on this is probably pretty wide, so let’s see if I can explain my position. Each time we read a book (or listen to a CD, or watch a movie, or whatever), we evaluate it, whether we write a review or not — this is where I might ask you to post a review of one of my CDs or of my book(s), except that I’m terrible at doing reviews myself — that is, we assess the book’s subjective value in terms of our reading experience against its objective value in terms of what we paid for it.

EDIT>

(Image: “Edit,” by Matt Hampel, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

 

What goes into our subjective evaluation is different depending on our expectations and what adds to or detracts from the experience. A major factor in fiction is the story itself: does it flow well, does it transport us to a time and place we enjoy, do the characters and their situations resonate with us, etc. A good publisher can put a book through successive stages of editing to improve the story. For instance, my novel has gone through the “developmental” edit stage and will go through additional edits as the process continues.

One thing that can affect our enjoyment of the story is simply how easy the book is to read, not in terms of style but in terms of presentation. With respect to that, a book that is well-edited and laid out nicely so that it’s easy to read will probably score higher than one that is sloppy; a good publisher can therefore add value by making an average book better, and a good book beautiful. We may also factor in such things as cover art, and a good publisher can often retain better cover artists than a self-publisher can.

So, even before we consider that a good publisher has marketing and sales connections beyond what most self-publishers can muster, they can add value to the product, the book, itself.

And that’s the first reason I’m not self-publishing my novel.

I’ll cover the other two reasons in future posts. In the meantime, I need to get back to the day’s writing and editing.

___

P.S. Before I go, here’s where I ask you for your help: If you know a parent, teacher, or anyone interested in ways we might improve our educational system, point them to the new edition of Quality Education — completely restructured and updated from the original version — available now on Amazon in both electronic (Kindle) and trade paperback formats. When I released it last week, it reached as high as number 13 on Amazon’s “Education Policy and Reform” list.

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