*laughing* While We're At It ...

Since we're focusing on the books of SONG for the moment, we may as well go the whole nine yards.

Here are the Alianora Books: COME HELL AND HIGH WATER

What with one thing and another, the natural disasters of 2017 seem a lifetime ago.

Yet, as they unfolded I almost pulled HELL AND HIGH WATER from the 2017 publishing list. The events in the books were just hitting too close to home, so to speak.

Then it dawned on me what I was seeing before my eyes.

For many, 2017 was a time when push came to shove, when bad went to worse and from there right on to worst.

So what was I seeing that grabbed my attention?

Nothing.

NOTHING got in the way of people stepping up and helping other people.

That's what I saw.

I didn't see folks giving a hoot about color, didn't hear them asking about religion, or social status, or lifestyle choices. For a time the 'identity politics' we've all become so familiar with flat out did not exist.

So, besides the NOTHING, I saw HOPE.

I bet a lot of those video news clips are still available on line. We should all go watch them.

Meanwhile, ponder on this for a bit: WE are the descendants of the folk who survived that other time of HELL AND HIGH WATER. Apparently a lot of us have inherited at least some of what got them through those times.

Did the regular folk of Earth back almost 13,000 years ago know that their world was going to literally explode under their feet and over their heads?

No.

Did the advanced culture in the middle of the North American Continent think for an instant that their technology would be rendered useless in the blink of an eye? Did their Star Folk see anything coming ahead of time?

No.

When a new Keeper of the Faith was born in the year 500 CE (AD) did Alianora and Drustann of Dunnottar know what they were getting themselves into when they wanted to assure themselves that the Faith they cherished was still on the right track - and arrangements were made for them to go back in time to find out for themselves?

No.

The Story, and the Warning, they bring back with them changes a lot of things.

Meanwhile, we have our own version of the Arthurian Tales going on. The battles that Hart fights are based on those tales (easy enough for an Arthurian Scholar to figure out) but are also purely our own interpretation. Gotta love fiction!

Did the regular folk of Earth in the 500s CE (AD) have any inkling of what was about to descend on them? A few did - and their choices, their actions, made all the difference.

Potentially Habitable Planets Right Next Door - relatively speaking ...

HERE we go!!!

click on link! It's an MIT article ... 

Who wants to go Hiving, pioneering in the stars?

Image: M. Kornmesser/ESO

And here comes a symbol you might be familiar with:

O_O

It's the one I generally use to indicate one of those 'weird coincidences' that keep popping up during the writing of this series of books.

That they're still popping up after all this time, and they're almost always pretty (or VERY) new scientific 'discoveries' that relate in some way to our story lines still strikes me as a little weird - okay maybe a lot weird, but what the heck am I supposed to do, ignore them? Can't do that, the Characters would pitch fits all over the Spiral.

In my head, we in our own time are at least a thousand years away from 'Hiving the Stars' ... or so I thought ... until today ... 

Danann takes place far in our future, as do the short stories about our 'early pioneers' ... and COME HELL AND HIGH WATER is set well over ten thousand years far in our past. I don't write about 'current events'; at least I don't intend to.

Heaven help me.

I can't hardly keep up with our Characters ... let alone today's scientists ... 

O_O

Slated to come out this year (2016) COME HELL AND HIGH WATER is fiction ... at least it's supposed to be ... but ... maybe not totally ... apparently ...