Jorie, of Jorie Loves A Story, asked me to do a video interview; she supplied the questions about my Road Ghosts books, and I answered them in a video. Read her wonderful review of my series and see my video at the following link:
https://jorielovesastory.com/2018/03/10/video-author-interview-echris-garrison-road-ghosts/
Looks like I’m on a whirlwind tour, as I have had a few stops in a short time!
First, I was asked by Sapphyria’s Books to list my top ten “Supernatural” TV episodes. I love that show, so the tough part of that assignment was paring the list down to only 10:
https://saphsbooks.blogspot.com/2018/03/e-chris-garrison-reveals-her-top-ten.html
Next, at Book in the Bag, I’m interviewed for their Writer Wednesday feature!
https://bookinthebag.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/writer-wednesday-e-chris-garrison/
Finally, at Sheila’s Reviews, I had a bit of fun. When authors talk about their characters, they can sound like they’re talking about real people. In this guest blog post, I sit down and have a couple of beers with the main characters of the Road Ghosts Trilogy. And they have awkward questions for me:
http://sheiladeeth.blogspot.com/2018/03/think-you-know-where-fictional.html
Next up on my Road Ghosts blog tour: Jorie Loves a Story! Full disclosure, Jorie and I became friends years ago, partly over a disagreement in how we view vulgarity. And I’ll be the first to admit, the Road Ghosts books contain a lot of swearing. I wil also admit that this discussion with Jorie did change my mind a bit, and I have considered the audience a bit in my choices for dialogue since then.
Anyway, Jorie does give my books a thorough and enthusiastic review, for which I’m very thankful. I hope you enjoy what she has to say about the Road Ghosts as much as I did!
So, here’s my second pit stop on the Seventh Star Press Road Ghosts Omnibus Blog Tour! I was interviewed by DJ of the MYLIFEMYBOOKSMYESCAPE book blog. Check it out!
https://mylifemybooksmyescape.wordpress.com/2018/03/06/author-interview-e-chris-garrison/
I’m on a blog tour this week! I’m kicking it off with a behind the scenes look at how my Road Ghosts books came to be, long before there was any thought of a trilogy or an Omnibus. Thanks to my publisher, Seventh Star Press for putting the tour together.
And yes, that’s a deliberate ‘Supernatural’ reference.
Here’s the first blog post, on Beauty in Ruins:
https://beauty-in-ruins.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-road-so-far-by-e-chris-garrison.html
My science fiction / fantasy anthology of short stories, Alien Beer and Other Stories, is finally in ebook form, on the Kindle! You can buy it by itself, or… coming soon, when Amazon links the paperback and Kindle editions as the same book if you buy the paperback on Amazon, you get the ebook free.
More publishing news coming soon…
The Sun through eclipse glasses.
I am psyched about the eclipse. I’m traveling to see it properly, because in Indianapolis, the Sun will only be 91% eclipsed by the Moon. That’s as good as I’ve ever seen it before (in 1986 and 1994), but this time I want to see the stars come out in the daytime, and I want to see the corona.
In 1986, I was really unsafe and looked at the eclipse through a stack of exposed slides. I have no idea if it blocked enough light to be safe, and even then I only took quick peeks because I wasn’t sure. But I did see it, and it was fun when many of the other kids in my high school had no idea why it was getting dark outside without a cloud in the sky.
Don’t be stupid, do not look directly at the Sun. Ever burn things with a magnifying glass as a kid? The lens in your eyeball will do that to your retina and you will be blinded.
Animation of the 1994 Eclipse, Kirkwood Observatory
In 1994, I was working for the Indiana University Astronomy Department, and I’d set up their first webserver. I found out that we had a solar telescope at Kirkwood Observatory, and that a Sparc 5 workstation (made by Sun) had a video capture card. I set things up so that an image would be taken every minute and that it would be copied over the the webserver every 5 minutes. The thought was that we had no idea how much load it would put on the machine if it was viewable more often. And as it turns out, we had over 2000 unique visitors in 4 hours, and I was especially proud of the visits from NASA and from other countries. I was also happy to have been emailed by a professor elsewhere who’d shown the eclipse to his class of a hundred or so thanks to my web-broadcast.
http://www.homebrew.net/solar/
Mid Eclipse May 10, 1994 12:03 EST (17:03 UT)
To this day, I count that as the event that really launched my career with the web and as a sysadmin.
So here’s what I learned on that day in 1994. Of course, you can easily buy eclipse glasses to view the event, but here are some safe, low tech ways as well:
Pinhole cameras made of 1″ square mirrors (on poles with silly putty) were set up around the observatory, the reflection of the sun projected a nice image the eclipse on posterboard.
The leaves acted as natural pinhole cameras, projecting hundreds of crescents on the ground as the eclipse progressed.
If you have nothing else, form your hands into a waffle pattern to make pinhole cameras to project on the ground.
