Featured Links:

Baen Books -- Gray is their "Slushmaster" in charge of paper submissions

Orson Scott Card's The Ornery American, which has published four of Gray's essays

Jim Baen's Universe

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Who is the "GrayMan"? Gray Rinehart is the author of one book, Quality Education, and many articles, essays and papers. Check out The Legend of Gray's "alter ego" to find out more about the original "GrayMan" of Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

CURRENT PROJECTS.

For this August 2008 update, another look at the writing projects we're working on:

THE NOVEL. At the beginning of the month, we passed the 40,000-word mark on MARE NUBIUM (THE SEA OF CLOUDS), our novel about two environmental engineers and other colonists struggling to keep a fledgling lunar colony alive. That qualifies it as "novel"-length according to the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, but it's not an actual "novel" until we finish the actual story. We still aim to finish by Halloween.

As we noted last month, our timing wasn't very good on this project. We missed the perfect marketing tie-in for a novel about lunar colonization: July of next year will be the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. We know we won't make that release date, because the novel would have to be immediately (and therefore miraculously) accepted and put into a whirlwind production schedule, something no publisher is likely to do for a first-time novelist.

(This isn't our first novel, technically. We wrote our first novel during the long winter nights at Thule Air Base, Greenland, using the same main character as this novel. And since the basic story of that novel is still sound, we hope to apply all the writing lessons we've learned to make a new version of that novel into a ready-made sequel. But that won't make any difference in terms of selling this novel.)

STORIES. Nothing new in terms of stories -- a few ideas, but the novel is taking precedence. We may enter the 5th Annual Codex Halloween Story Contest in October, if we need a break from the novel-writing.

ARTICLES, ESSAYS, ETC. For the Industrial Extension Service, we wrote a profile on one of the clients in the NC State Technology Incubator, and drafted a paper on "The IES Role in Job Creation". We still haven't done anything with the outlined we wrote for an article tentatively titled, "A Bold Proposal for the Next Secretary of Education," or our brief article on decision-making.

AND THE REST. Nothing new on THE ELEMENTS OF WAR or anything else. We're trying to keep focused on the novel for now, and save those other projects for when we're done.

2008 GOALS UPDATE:

- Write one novel and pitch it to editors and agents -- PASSED THE 50,000-WORD MARK
- Write at least one additional short story, essay, or article -- TWO "FLASH FICTION" STORIES
- Outline one additional novel -- A LONG WAY AWAY
- Enjoy friends and family as much as possible -- HAD FUN ON VACATION IN MYRTLE BEACH, AND AT THE MINI-REUNION IN MASSANUTTEN

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updated on
August 1, 2008

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