A Guest Blog: Lisa M. Collins and Archaeology

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Lisa Collins is an online friend of mine, a lady after my own heart for her interest in several sciences. So when she put out a request to guest blog for her latest release, The House Bast Made, I said, "Sure!" despite the fact that my blog has been inactive for several months. (Hopefully this will change in future; it seems that the various social media have not followed through on the intended charges for "advertising.") So here she is, to tell you a little about herself.

~~~

Archaeology and Me

by Lisa M. Collins

I have a deep and abiding love for all things ancient Egyptian. When I was little, I found an old, worn book about the country, which I still have to this day. Imagine me out in the backyard doing excavations trying to find bits and bobs of interest. In my mind, I was a great archaeologist. As time moved on, other subjects took the place of archaeology in my heart. By the time I graduated college, I considered myself a historian. What most people don’t understand about degrees in the humanities is that you must be able to communicate in written form. Without words how would the world have learned from Plato, Aristotle, the Prophets, Bertrand Russell, or Martin Luther King, Jr?

The written word is what accurately preserves ideas, leading to thought, and then to action. This drives me to present my words, thoughts, and ideas in writing. I studied not only the masters like Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Austen, Woolf, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, and Maya Angelou, but also speech writers for the White House and newspapers. Any time I find a writer who draws me into their story, I study how they accomplished the goal.

My desire to write starts off with a sad tale and a dash of memory. In 2008 the company I worked for downsized and I was one of the many who were let go. I had a small severance package so I didn’t immediately have to hit the byways looking for work. There I was, looking for what to do next and I was reminded of how, when I was little, I would tell stories to entertain my friends. To figure out how to begin writing my imaginings down for others I went to the wisest ‘person’ I know—that’s right, Dr. Google! I came across NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Being a total fiction n00b, I decided to take up the challenge and write 50,000 words in the month of November. Believe it or not, right out of the gate, I did it!

Later I got a job working for the State of Arkansas, but the itch to write never fell into the background. I kept dabbling and learning from others. Eventually, I had several things published in non-fiction venues, such as the state newspaper and journals, but passion was to write fiction. One thing you need to know about me is that I love goal setting and lists, so I set a goal of producing one new short story a month, and a secondary goal to find publishers who would print my work. As any of you out there in publishing already know, I got my fair share of rejection letters. My very first one hangs on the wall by my desk.

Rejection is hard, but I didn’t let that hold me back. I went back to the drawing board. Read books on craft. Read novels like I wanted to write. The day finally arrived in early 2013 when my first science fiction short story, The Tree of Life, was accepted into an anthology! I was over the moon! Rejections, however, still happen. I have come to the realization they are part and parcel of the writing life. Each one I receive proves to me I’m not standing still, I’m working, and I will prevail. Also in the last five to ten years a new way of presenting work to the public has exploded into the mainstream. Indie publishing. Now writers have the opportunity to showcase work directly to readers without a go-between. Some writers do all their work independently, others only work with publishers, but I find myself in between these two. I am both traditionally published and indie published. I love the freedom to chart my own course.

When I was writing my latest novella, The House Bast Made, I got to put my archaeology hat back on. It felt good, like I was revisiting an old friend…you know, the kind that gets you into trouble, but you love every moment. This book was such fun to write. I knew the setting in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings was going to be perfect for some fantastical paranormal fun. Our archaeologist, Reid Cannon, comes to the realization—myths need not be fairy tales. Reid and his friends get embroiled in a war between gods and goddesses that has raged for eons. Reid and his crew must come together to save a friend from the brink of death and the world from utter chaos. My hope is that you will enjoy your time in the Valley of the Kings and join us next time when Reid Cannon travels to South America!

Where can readers find out more about you and where can they buy The House Bast Made?

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-M.-Collins/e/B00PPV5QYO/

Twitter http://twitter.com/coolvstar650

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/lisaauthor

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacollins

Pinterest http://pinterest.com/coolvstar650/

Google+ http://google.com/+LisaMCollins/posts

Instagram http://instagram.com/coolvstar650

Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/lisa-matthews-collins

Pen and Cape Society: http://penandcapesociety.com/lisa-m-collins/

Wookiees for Cookies Racing Team https://wookieesforcookies.wordpress.com/

For Deep Fried Dixie Goodness follow Lisa as Tea and Cornbread https://twitter.com/teaandcornbread https://www.facebook.com/teaandcornbread

And at the Tea and Cornbread blog http://teaandcornbread.wordpress.com/

Looking for more of:

Healthy Writer Series https://lisacollins.wordpress.com/category/healthy-lifestyle/

Author Interview Series https://lisacollins.wordpress.com/category/interviews/

Sign up to get the latest info on book launches and special newsletter only promotions!

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~~~

A little more about Lisa:

Lisa M. Collins has always been interested in Outer Space, Adventure stories, and Southern culture. She was born in Dixie and has always lived south of the Mason Dixon Line. She graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s degree in history with specializations in American and Russian history. Lisa lives in central Arkansas with her husband and an adorable cat, Baby Girl, who believes she is Lisa’s co-author. Lisa has one adult son who is married to his high school sweetheart.

Lisa’s non-fiction has been published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. . She copy edited and researched on Understanding Global Slavery by University of California Press. Her science fiction story, The Tree of Life, is in the 2013-2014 anthology by Holdfast Magazine. These days she edits for Metahuman Press, and is an upcoming creative contributor with Pro Se Productions and Mechanoid Press. She is a Sally A. Williams Grant winner from the Arkansas Arts Council for writing.

Meanwhile, as the blog break gave me a chance to get a brand-new book out the door (more about THAT later!), I'll try to get my act together and start posting again on a regular schedule, guys.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Believe in the Magic

I'm a writer. Things in my head get set onto paper and made real for others. In possibly my most popular series, the Displaced Detective, I postulated that what is fiction to us is reality in other worlds, other spacetime continuums.

And maybe this is true. I can't say it is, but I can't say it isn't, either. I used science to create that science fiction.

However, today is Christmas Eve, the most wonderful, magical night of the year. A night commemorating when God came close to us. The night when that jolly man in the red suit defies the laws of physics with a bunch of reindeer. And, so the legends say, at midnight the animals talk. Today, anything is possible.

So tonight I tell you...believe.

Believe

(words & lyrics by Glen Ballard & Alan Silvestri,

performed by Josh Groban for Polar Express)

Children sleeping, snow is softly falling;
Dreams are calling like bells in the distance.
We were dreamers not so long ago,
But one by one we all had to grow up.
When it seems the magic's slipped away,
We find it all again on Christmas day.

Believe in what your heart is saying,
Hear the melody that's playing,
There's no time to waste,
There's so much to celebrate!
Believe in what you feel inside 
And give your dreams the wings to fly!
You have everything you need
If you just believe!

Trains move quickly to their journey's end,
Destinations are where we begin again.
Ships go sailing far across the sea,
Trusting starlight to get where they need to be.
When it seems that we have lost our way,
We find ourselves again on Christmas day.

Believe in what your heart is saying,
Hear the melody that's playing,
There's no time to waste,
There's so much to celebrate!
Believe in what you feel inside, 
And give your dreams the wings to fly!
You have everything you need,
If you just believe...

If you just believe...

If you just believe...

If you just believe...
Just believe...

Merry Christmas, my friends.

-Stephanie Osborn

Christmas Eve 2013

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

The Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop 2013

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

The Second Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop will be held in Huntsville, AL 3-6 Feb 2013. This workshop (I'm a member of the science committee and the steering committee) is a gathering of scientists and engineers who want to try to solve the problems of interstellar travel. Papers offering concepts will be presented and discussed.

The Workshop itself may be rather more complex than the average layperson would enjoy, and membership closed several weeks ago in any event, but here is the text of a press release on some public events that will be associated with the Workshop, for those that will be in Huntsville and surrounds during those dates.

~~~

Going to the Stars – Is it possible?

The Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW), the Huntsville AL L5 Society (HAL5) and Calhoun Community College invite you to spend an evening with some space visionaries who are meeting this week in Huntsville to discuss the possibilities of interstellar flight. That Workshop is being sponsored by the Ultimax Group, Baen Books, the British Interplanetary Society, NeXolve, and the ORION astronomy society. At this free public forum, we are honored to have Paul Gilster of the Tau Zero Foundation, Bill Cress and Richard Obousy of Icarus Interstellar, Kelvin Long of the British Interplanetary Society and the Institute for Interstellar Studies, and Gordon Woodcock, former NSS Director, to talk about the dream and challenges of going to the stars. The event will be moderated by Les Johnson of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

The event is free and open to the public. The event will take place on Tuesday, February 5, 2012 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Calhoun Community College Huntsville Campus’ Student Center – 102 Wynn Drive NW, Huntsville. For more information, please contact:  Yohon.Lo@nss.org  or visit the event website at http://www.lesjohnsonauthor.com/tviw/tviw_2013 or http://www.HAL5.org.

About Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW)
The Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop is an opportunity for relaxed sharing of ideas in directions that will stimulate and encourage Interstellar exploration including propulsion, communications, and research. 

The 'Workshop' theme suggests that the direction should go beyond that of a 'conference'. Attendees are encouraged to not only present intellectual concepts but to develop these concepts to suggest projects, collaboration, active research and mission planning. 

It should be a time for engaging discussions, thought-provoking ideas, and boundless optimism contemplating a future that may one day be within the reach of humanity.

About Huntsville AL L5 Society (HAL5)

The Huntsville Alabama L5 (HAL5) Society, the Huntsville Alabama chapter of the National Space Society (NSS), is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), grassroots, space educational / advocacy organization. Since 1983, HAL5 has made significant contributions toward developing low-cost space access technologies, space education, and public outreach. For almost 30 years, HAL5 has hosted a continuing series of public lectures, forums, and events on space-related topics. HAL5 also has made significant contributions to nitrous-oxide hybrid rockets and to rockets launched from high-altitude balloons, one of which was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1997.

~~~
Come on by and see what scientists and engineers are doing to make interstellar space flight possible!

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

A New American Space Plan launches!

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com


On November 27, Travis Taylor, Pete Erbach, and Rog Jones of the Rocket City Rednecks appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno! Among other things they did, they promoted the new book, A New American Space Plan, by Travis S. Taylor with Stephanie Osborn!

Now, Travis is one of my best buddies. He's also my writing mentor and (obviously) occasionally co-author. We communicate one way or another not infrequently.

That sneak Travis did not EVEN tell me!

I am SO EXCITED!!!!!!!

Per one of my publishers November 29th: "Now # 4 in Aeronautics & Astronautics and # 9 in Astrophysics & Space Science. # 45 in Physics"

I checked, and found it was currently #29 in ALL of Science & Math! It had moved up to #3 in Aeronautics & Astronautics! (My old friend and colleague Homer Hickam had the #1 spot there, I'm pleased to say.)

We're still high on the lists! Travis will be appearing on Fox & Friends Monday morning about 8-ish, and will be promoting the book there too! Look for him and our book!

Folks, let's keep getting the word out! I think we have a science best-seller on our hands!

To purchase, go here!


-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Back to the Future

Continuing our guest blogging by experts in their fields, we are about to enter the science arena. I am considered by many to be a polymath - a modern Renaissance woman who has a broad range of knowledge and expertise. I suppose it's true, though I blush every time someone applies the terminology to me. Still and all, there are things that I prefer to be double-checked upon. One of these specialties is neuroscience. So when I, for instance, dug into the potential effects and reasons for use of drugs such as cocaine by one Sherlock Holmes for my Displaced Detective series, I turned to this man - Dr. Tedd Roberts - to verify my conclusions and add information as to WHY cocaine produced the results it did. Tedd is a fascinating man and you can talk with him for hours; he's very unpretentious and has a great sense of humor. He is also a real, true, deep, knowledgeable science fiction fan. So let's hear what he has to say.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

 

~~~
Back to the Future

By Tedd Roberts, Neuroscientist

My friend Stephanie Osborn asked for some guest blogs, and I was happy to oblige. However, I then was faced with the question of what to write. Unlike Steph, I am not a Rocket Scientist, and I'm not always certain that what I *do* is of interest to those who are not in my field; but the recent passing of Astronaut Neil Armstrong (not "Neil Young", NBC – and not "Lance Armstrong", Facebook) and "the future that never was."

Those of us who grew up reading Golden Age Science Fiction expected that by the 21st century arrived, we'd have cities on the Moon, and maybe even Mars. Earthbound cities would have floating buildings, flying cars, personal jetpacks, and moving sidewalks that could whisk us away in the blink of an eye. We would have computers that talk, and robots that (hopefully) didn't. If you were a bit younger or read exclusively the post-modern cyberpunk futures, you may have expected a Blade Runner future with ten-time-overcrowded cities, scarce resources, homicidal androids and unwieldy pollution. Alas, the former future never came, and fortunately, the latter is not yet upon us.

As I look around, however, I see a future that none of us quite imagined. I don't have Dick Tracy's 2-Way Wrist TV – but only because we 21-cen humans don't like our screens to be that small. Many of us carry a computer more powerful than the entire Apollo program on our belts – complete with videophone. Like Star Trek's Commander Spock, we can ask our computers practically any question and get a near instantaneous response – and we didn't have to wait for the 23rd century to create Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask or Wikipedia. My music is all digital, and comes from a device even smaller than my pocket phone – or my tablet, computer, or car – and is delivered wireless to tiny earbuds with the equivalent sound of a room-sized stereo system of just 20 years ago. Lasers are no longer mysterious devices that will save or destroy civilization, but pocket novelties to be sold at a convenience store.

Nowhere is the advance of future technology more evident than in the field of medicine. We may not have Dr. "Bones" McCoy's biobeds with an instant readout of the patient's health, but modern medical imaging has advanced well beyond Star Trek imagining. Advances in "Diffusion Tensor Imaging" map water molecules with such precision that doctors can trace the large connection pathways made by the axons of neurons in the brain and determine the precise location (and type) of damage that causes brain areas to no longer communicate with each other. Computed tomography and conventional MRI provide nearly instant 3-D images of the inside of the body, and nuclear medicine provides tracers that can be used with such positron emission tomography to track medicine and chemical flow throughout the body and even identify regions with abnormal activity prior to detectable cancers.

Last weekend I watched an SF movie in which one of the protagonists was a double-amputee. Even 10 years ago, it would be extremely rare to see this even as a peripheral (or aftermath) character – but there was a scene in which this man (a real-life hero, incidently) stood up on his titanium and plastic legs and charged the enemy. DARPA has a program to build brain-controlled prosthetics for arms and hands, but for the past 10-15 years, medical science has been providing advanced leg and foot prosthetics to that provide many of the functions of flesh without the computer interfaces that we used to think were necessary. I was motivated to enter my field 35 years ago by the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" (and Martin Caidin's "Cyborg" books [on which “The Six Million Dollar Man” was based -Steph]). While we don't have the bionics imagined by Caidin, we certainly have a good start; especially since a South African double-amputee (Oscar Pistorius) ran in the Olympics this year – not the Paralympics, the Olympics – in the 4 x 400 m relay.

The future is here, we are living it. It's not the future we imagined, but in many ways it is better. Now it's time to go out and imagine the next future – it may not come true, but if the 21st century has taught us anything – it's that the future will sneak up on us before we even expect it.

~~~

Tedd has his own blog, Teddy's Rat Lab, that is very worth perusing: http://teddysratlab.blogspot.com/

I thank him most kindly for a wonderful analysis of where we are, how far we've really come, and where we want to be.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Updates On Books.

by Stephanie Osborn
www.stephanie-osborn.com


Ok. Books. Let's have a quick look-see as to what I've got going on.

Book 4 of the Displaced Detective series is coming out mid-November if all goes according to plan. It is entitled, The Case of the Cosmological Killer: Endings and Beginnings, from Twilight Times Books. It is essentially the second part of The Rendlesham Incident. My first two stories ended up being too long for a single volume each, hence the double-volume works. The reason is because each contains, not one, but TWO stories, interwoven. Sorry about that, and I can promise that all the rest of the books in the series (and yes, TTB has given the go-ahead on the rest of the series!) will be single-volume works, because I’m already writing them.

Also coming out in November, I believe on Election Day, will be "A New American Space Plan, by Travis S. Taylor with Stephanie Osborn” from Baen Books. This is exactly what it sounds like, a discussion of what we’ve done as a species in space, what’s going on now, and where we as a nation SHOULD be going, but aren’t, and who might beat us to the punch. I put together an especially enlightening “history of space exploration” appendix that projects into the future according to the various plans already in place around the world. It’s very telling. It's also scary as *expletive redacted*.

For those who like poetry, I have an ebook of verse entitled Stolen Moments from Chromosphere Press, available on Nook and Kindle. Also available from Chromosphere (and with TTB’s blessing) is the short novella The Fetish which is set in the Burnout universe; and the popular science ebooks Sherlock, Sheilas and the Seven-Percent Solution, about the effects of cocaine and reasons why Sherlock Holmes may have had ulterior motives in his use; I should note that it is listed as part of the Displaced Detective series even though it is non-fiction. This is because the research was fundamental into my interpretation of Holmes in that series. Chromosphere has also published my The Weather Out There Is Frightful, about solar and space weather and how it does/could affect you personally.

I'm currently working on the fourth Cresperian novel, entitled Heritage. Also progressing slowly on the sequel to Burnout, Escape Velocity. (This one is difficult because of Burnout's disaster scenario so closely replicating the Columbia disaster, and because of the recent retirement of the Shuttle fleet, with which I was intimately involved during my career. Be patient with me on this one.) Travis Taylor and I are trying to shake loose to write the next book in the Point series. I have a steampunk novel, the first of The Adventures of Aemelia Gearheart, entitled The Bellerophon Club, being shopped around, and a children's book, StarSong, coming out soon.

And of course there are the next Displaced Detective books: A Case of Spontaneous Combustion, A Little Matter of Earthquakes, and The Adventure of Shining Mountain Lodge, are all in the works, with ideas for more past that.

There are purchase links to all available formats and known vendors on the links for each book, by the way. Pop on over to my website and see what's there, and what's coming.

And above all, have fun!

-Stephanie Osborn
www.stephanie-osborn.com

Solar Activity and the Activity Indices

Okay, back to bar magnets again. Because the Earth has one. But of course it's three-dimensional, not like our iron filings on paper example. Imagine picking up the bar magnet with the iron filings and paper attached, and rotating it 360º, letting the iron filings remain in the areas they move through. Now you have an image of what a three-dimensional dipolar (2-pole) magnetic field looks like – sort of like a giant pumpkin. With the solar wind (which is probably the largest influence on the interplanetary magnetic field) pushing on it from the Sun direction, the side of the pumpkin facing the Sun tends to smush in, but the side away from the Sun tends to stretch out and form a long tail. (You can see a really good animation of how this works here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animati3.gif) This is all to say that you HAVE to think of the geomagnetic field three-dimensionally. And if it is three-dimensional, then each part of the field has an x-, a y-, and a z-coordinate component.

Let's simplify for a minute. Let's say that we're going to look at the component of the geomagnetic field that is running horizontally to the Earth's surface at any given point. Now because the Earth is curved, this is a tangent line that is continually changing as you move around the Earth. Now let's look at the disturbances from normal, caused by solar weather – coronal holes, CMEs, what have you.

So we have these variations, that are going to be different for different parts of the Earth for the same event. How do we measure it? It's a little like a Richter scale for geosolar storms. It runs from zero to nine, and there's a special formula that enables it to be calculated regardless of the location of the observatory, just like the Richter magnitude of a quake can be determined from seismographs on the opposite side of the globe. This scale for solar-induced geomagnetic activity is called the K-index. Zero is essentially no activity; anything above 5 is considered a storm level of activity. The bigger the number, the greater the effects seen on the ground, and the farther south the auroral oval can be seen. At a K=9, the aurora can be seen...in the TROPICS.

(Just for the sake of more information, the letter K was derived from the German word “kennziffer,” which apparently means “characteristic number.” Us scientists, we love our imaginative names, you know?)

Now if we reference the Kp index, we're talking about the interplanetary K index, not the geomagnetic K index. This is an average of all the K indices from all of the observatories, weighted as appropriate (remember, you won't get the same measurements from the various observation sites, so you have to factor that in, as well as the fact that the geomagnetic field is constantly changing). This gives us an indication of what the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is doing. BUT – not all of the stations report in at the same time. So then scientists have to calculate something called the “estimated Kp” which is just what it sounds like – an estimate for those stations that haven't reported in yet. This can sometimes be a very good predictor of what the magnetic field is going to do, and sometimes not so much. We're still very much learning this particular science.

But we're not done with indexes. There's also something called the a index. This is based on the AMPLITUDES (yep, there's the reason for using an a) of the deviations from geomagnetic normal, taken over a three-hour period. Then there's the A index, which is an AVERAGE (yep, that's where the A came from) of all the a-indices for a 24-hour period.

One more index we need to look at is the G scale, which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) way of quantifying the strength of the geomagnetic disturbance. For any K index of 4 or less, the scale shows G0. At K=5, we jump to G1 – minor storming. For K=6, we have G2. For K=7, G3. At K=8, we have a storm level of G4, and at the maximum K=9, we have maximum storming of G5. Think of it like the Earth's solar DefCon level.

Next week we'll go into those DefCon levels in detail.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

My husband is a keeper

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

I just returned from Libertycon, one of several major SF conventions in Chattanooga TN. There, I was delighted to be this year's Science Guest of Honor. These are good people, down-home, loving and friendly. As usual, they not only ran my standard bio in their program book, they also asked some people to give them their stories about me. Due to some crossed wires, they got two: one from my good friend Sara Harvey, and one from my husband, Darrell Osborn.

Now, Darrell and I have been married quite awhile, and like most married couples of long standing, we know we love each other and that's that. The busyness of life and the knowledge of belonging - as well as some reticence on both sides to be able to say the things that we feel deepest - means that the knowing is felt, not said.

Until the convention. And then my dear husband laid it all on the line for everyone to see. And I am so proud I can't stop reading it. So I'm going to share it with the world:

Let's start at the beginning. Decades ago, before many of you were born, my friend Danny and I were walking through the theater building on the campus of Austin Peay [State University] in Clarksville, TN. We were passing through the "Green Room" on our way to the stage when we saw an attractive blonde sitting on the couch. We looked at each other and then did what any red-blooded theatre geek would do. We hit on her. That was the first time I met Stephanie Gannaway. She was finishing her last year at APSU and preparing to graduate with a triple major in Math, Physics, and Chemistry. She was also picking up minors in Geology and Computer Science. My first thought was, "At last, someone I can talk to."

Fast forwarding a couple of years finds us married and living in student housing on the campus of Vanderbilt in Nashville. Stephanie was working on a Masters in Astronomy and I was creating havoc in the Live Entertainment Department at Opryland [back when it was a theme park -Steph]. One day word came down that Carl Sagan was coming to give a talk. You've got to remember, at this time Carl Sagan was a science rock star. Everyone knew "Cosmos" and he was a regular on Carson's Tonight Show. We later find out that Max, one of her professors, and Sagan were college buddies. The talk was great and we went to reception afterward. We progressed through the greeting line until we reached Max and Sagan. Max introduced Stephanie as one of the two astronomy graduate students. As Stephanie shook his hand, Max leaned over and whispered to Sagan, "She's one of the good ones." Sagan gave a knowing little smile and nod. That was our Sagan moment. Although brief, I think that short phrase and nod meant more to her than any of the degrees she had gotten.

A few decades have passed and so has Sagan. Now Stephanie has moved from science and her involvement in the space program to its symbiote science fiction. I have no doubt that the time will come again when she will stand before some sci-fi writer rock star and once again hear the words, "She's a good one." (That reminds me of the time we ran into Ray Bradbury; a story for another time.)

Last year I re-connected with Danny. He's now an Associate Dean at the University of Memphis. That's a great accomplishment, but I got the girl.

-Darrell "Doc" Osborn

Yep. I always knew Darrell was a keeper. <3

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

My first PopSyndicate article is up!

It's called It Ain't Rocket Science - Oh Wait, It Is! This month's article is on the World Science Fiction Convention which is this weekend!